I'm a little late with my assesment of Steve Jobs MacWorld keynote, but I think being a country away buys me a little leway.
Unlike some people, I didn't make any official predictions on what would be announced during the keynote. This is a good thing because it prevented me from looking like and idiot when I predicted that Apple would announce an Intel Mac Mini with a built in DVR, an Intel iBook and some kind of big plasma display. I should have seen the MacBook Pro coming a mile away, but I think everyone was a bit suprised by the Intel iMac. I actually hate the name MacBook Pro and don't like what this means for the future of the iBook name. Are we going to call it MacBook, or MacBook lite. Perhaps Mac Book Amatuer. I hate to think they would call it the MacBook Mini. People already have trouble with the difference betwen a Powerbook and an iBook.
Not suprising of course was iWeb. I'm looking forward to iLife '06, but that has absolutely nothing to do with iWeb. Between its clear preferance for .Mac, terrible HTML code, inability to add my own code, and the fact that I can pretty much create my own pages by hand, I doubt I will ever use iWeb. iPhoto is apparently a lot faster which will make Megan and I happy. iMovie looks great with its new template intros and transitions and I'm happy to see Apple filling out iDVDs templates.
Two really great products that Apple didn't announce are Google Earth and Griffin's TuneCenter. While I agree that the interface and performance of Googel Earth leave somthing to be desired, the application is just so much fun to use that I'm willing to forgive Google for the time being. I hope the interface gets better, but for now, I live. The TuneCenter is just the kind of product that makes Griffin one of the great iPod accecory companies. It doesn't just work with the iPod, but completely extends the iPod and makes it an even better product.
Overall, it seems like a pretty good MacWorld that should lay the ground work for a year of change for Macintosh. I imagine this time next year we will be marvelling over all the new Universal applications revealed by devolpers and hopefully will be marvelling over the speed of all the new IntelMacs. I think with the introduction of Windows Vista late this year you will also see people buying Macs so they can run Vista on them. The'll come for the great hardware, but slowly but surely switch to the great operating system. Those are my predictions for the next year, I'm trying to play it safe.
Also, as a quick note, today initiates a new feature here at 2035 Mi., Huerfana Photo of the Week. Every Friday, I'll upload a new picture of our new kitten pal, Huerfana.
Posted by Noah Brimhall at January 13, 2006 11:29 AMisee idick and ijane iplaying with their itoys. Then iview the idvd of the iplay. After which iinteract with my imachine to iblog it all.
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Yeah, Griffin makes nice products...
It would be interesting if the Intel switch allows some sort of hack to port Vista onto a mac machine...
I gotta get a new computer soon, though.. don't know if I should wait? And should I plunk down $3K for the 30" wall-mountable apple LCD? or should I wait for 1) price redux or 2) something better?
Posted by: BubbaGump at January 13, 2006 10:47 PMDad: I think maybe you are trying to say this whole iThing is getting a little out of hand, and you may be right about that, maybe changing the name of the iBook would be good.
Ryan: Actually, Apple has said more than once that they won't put any limitiation in place which would prevent you from installing Windows. Right now the only limitiation is that the IntelMacs use a next generation BIOS which isn't supported by Windows XP, but will be supported by Windows Vista. So it should be nothing to install Windows Vista on IntelMac hardware. I would wait a little while because the IntelMacs need new versions of applications to work at full speed (otherwise they run under a emulation layer). So far only Apple has any applications that are "Universal" (work on both PowerPC and Intel Macs) and they only have Mac OS X Tiger, iLife and iWork finished. Adobe, Quark and Microsoft have all anounced that there next version will be "Universal", but it will probably be later this year. Plus, don't you want to buy a MacBook Pro with a 17" monitor? That won't be coming out for a couple months. Finally, if you wait till Vista is released you might be able to install it on your new Mac.
Posted by: Noah Brimhall at January 14, 2006 10:32 AMUm. I'm like totally not following the whole geek discussion, so I will bi-pass making any comments on the subject.
I just wanted to comment on the new addition to the site: the "huerfana photo of the week."
I'm a fan.
Posted by: Danie at January 14, 2006 06:39 PMNoah --- You got it --- I had just visited a site called igod --egads-- very disapointing.
Posted by: DAD at January 16, 2006 03:29 PM