WWDC SteveNote Redux

OK, it's been a week since we got to hear about new Apple goodies from Pastor Steve. I'll give my analysis, FWIW.

First, this was a gawd awful boring presentation for the first 75%. Nobody wanted to hear about all the new iPhone partner yadda yadda. Kudos to Engadget for not trying to candy-coat everyone's displeasure during their live coverage.

Second, iPhone/iTouch games. Yeah it's nice that we get some games on the iPhone/iTouch. But frankly the games announced don't give me a woody and it's like 9 months too late. I would bet most touch users would be thrilled with a version of solitaire or minesweeper - or crossword puzzles - something simple and addictive. Unfortunately, the games being touted (e.g., Cro-Mag Rally, Enigmo) aren't high on my list and the fact that they might take advantage of some special iPhone/iTouch features isn't that impressive to me. As I said, the games are late in coming. We should be past this point already. Developers had to drag Apple kicking and screaming to release an SDK, and now we are paying for Apple's sonambulism.

Third, other iPhone apps. Most of the apps being touted are also not very thrilling. I mean - eBay? Who would track this stuff on their iPhone/iTouch? TypePad? Hello? Has anyone actually typed a sentence on their iPhone/iTouch and felt it was a quick and easy experience? Not happening.

How about Loopt - a social service that lets you track your friends and be tracked? I just can't see anyone other than a 16 year old teeny bopper really finding this a useful, fun app. Maybe it's just me, but I DON'T WANT my friends to know where I am 99% of the time.

MLB.com's video baseball highlight app - what?! How about actual LIVE video coverage? You can't be serious that anyone would get off on watching a highlight pseudo-real-time or otherwise, given that there are often only 2 or 3 highlights per ball game. (And yes, I love baseball.)

Even the AP app sounds lame - turn everyone into an amateur video reporter. Yuck! You'll get Sally's intimate video of her gross friend Zoey hawking a loogy on an expensive sports car parked at the 7-11. **sigh**

Fourth, OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard... no PowerPC support, no new features for users... **yawn**

Fifth, iPhone OS2.0 comes in July. Yay. Free for iPhone, but gonna cost iTouch users $9 - WTF! They should give this to touch users for FREE for having to put up with substandard features and lack of functions from the iPhone that they had to pay for already.

Sixth, Mobile Me replaces .Mac.... hurray?? Kudos for doing something to improve .Mac but the Me name is limp, and the logo is even worse. Given that I can't even get some basic .Mac features to even work, such as Back to My Mac - I'm skeptical Apple can do it right the second time around. Push mail thing might be OK, but with only 20GB of on-line storage I can't see it as a real home base for all your files. Having the functions in the basic form of web apps that act just like your desktop apps - hmmm. Do we really need this? Unsure at this point. Do you think that Windoze users will actually sign up for this? Nope - not happening.

And finally - the iPhone 3G! The phone Apple should have released in the first place comes July 11th in like 22 countries simultaneously, then many, many others. And yes, it's even coming to Japan on that date! Unfortunately, you could hear the collective groans of all of us in Japan when it was confirmed that SoftBank would be the sole carrier here. My colleague's spouse was so upset he declared he was actually angry that Apple didn't partner with a more reliable or established carrier. My guess is that Docomo wouldn't kowtow to Apple's model or demands and that SoftBank, the most desperate to improve their market share was more flexible. I guess nobody bothered to tell Apple that SoftBank is like the third owner of the company in 6 years, and that their infrastructure is still behind AU and Docomo.

Jobs claimed that the iPhone 3G price will be capped at $199 for 8Gb and $299 for 16Gb with a 2 year contract. But it's not clear if this is US-only, and I'd bet that in Japan it will sell for ¥30,000-50,000 if SoftBank has its way. And you can be sure that we will get gouged heavily for 'packet charges' for using internet features over the 3G network. The SoftBank people I spoke with had no idea on costs or anything else. I'm wondering if this is still under negotiation. It's also unclear whether a Japan iPhone will work transparently in other countries with iPhone service with roaming charges. This would be key for me, as would the possibility of changing contracts if I move to another country.

Functionality and features of the iPhone 3G are fairly impressive, if Apple's numbers are accurate - particularly for battery life. The 2 megapixel camera is not thrilling, but GPS sounds sweet (though I bet it won't work in English here). There is some concern over whether the iPhone will succeed in Japan, given its consumer's idiosyncracies and the better overall choice of phones and feature sets here compared to the US. One-Seg TV tuners are somewhat popular right now, but perhaps the better content available on the iPhone via iTunes or personal library will win folks over.

The burning question for me is will I purchase one? I'm not really moved to do so, but will definitely see what pricing plans are available. My guess is that most of us here in Japan feel the same way.

WWDC 07 Keynote - more detailed comments

Like many, I was very disappointed in Jobs keynote address, and not surprised that Apple's stock prices dropped. The lack of hardware was depressing.

But Jobs did introduce many 'amazing' features for Leopard, and announced a competing browser for Windoze users. I'll briefly comment on what he presented.

Leopard Overall

I have to say that most of what was demo'd was visually appealing, but not particularly practical. It gave me the impression that Leopard will be the OS for people "who don't care about getting things done". I also suspect much of the animations in folders, docks, and file sorting will mean alot of demand on your processor, RAM, and maybe HD space. It wouldn't surprise me at all if you had to have an Intel Mac to use Leopard. Waiting until October makes this more digestible for Mac users. By that time, the number of Intel machines used by consumers may exceed PowerPCs in use. Furthermore, PowerPC Macs may have started to reach their EOL by that time.

New Desktop

Meh. I don't use the dock much. It stays hidden. So all of these tricks and gimmicks on the dock seem like wasted processor cycles. I look forward to minimizing my mouse use in my computer experience, not increasing it. 

And, I actually like brushed metal looks.

Stacks

These are sets of files you make for certain tasks. I like the idea of putting all my image processing apps in one stack, and molecular biology apps in another stack. This seem better than trying to remember the name of little used apps or what you have available. The problem I have with the Stacks concept is the need to use a mouse to browse them. Maybe Quicksilver can be integrated with this. But maybe QS can already do this.

Network View/Back to My Mac

I'm all for making my files available to me everywhere and having fast network browsing. But I have two problems with this idea. First, you need to keep your freaking machines ON all the time to take advantage of this. Maybe you can't even let them sleep. What a waste of electricity! The second problem is that it seems you'll need a .Mac account to make use of it. Is this a way for Apple to push its much maligned internet service? I think we need to get away from .Mac, not become more dependent on it.

Coverflow for File Browsing

Yuck! I don't use coverflow now with iTunes. Seeing an Album's cover doesn't make me want to play a song from it. So why would I want to use coverflow with the finder? Flipping through file icons or previews isn't really an efficient way to get at my files. Sure, their may be times I want to browse stuff, but mostly I know what I want.

Quick Look

Sounds like a nice way to browse the content of files you browse with coverflow. And certainly for images it could be very useful if you don't want to look through a host of thumbnails. But I would bet not all apps will be adequately supported for QuickLook.

64 Bit

So... will this work on all Macs? I somehow think you'll need a fast Intel machine to really take advantage of it. We'll have to see how it actually works.

iChat

C'mon Steve. The rest of the world (>93%) is using either Skype or MSN for chatting, particularly video chats. That's a lot of 'heartwarming' opportunity lost by iChat users. This means despite how nice iChat is, I can't use it to do vid chats with my Mom or most of my family. So, despite the holograms and so forth - the focus needs to be on true interoperability - not features.

WebClip and Dashboard

Again, I rarely use Dashboard. It's a memory hog and doesn't sit on my desktop unless I install some doodad that lets me do so. In fact the most common Widget I use is "Stop Dashboard".

How about fixing the problems with processor load before bloating this feature? The ability to clip part of a web page and have it dynamically update as a widget sounds nice. But I can't imagine it would be useful to me during the work day.

Boot Camp

Wow - having Boot Camp built in sounds nice. But I didn't really understand the part about how Parallels and vmWare are both excellent alternatives. Seems like Apple's move puts them in a spot. What we really need is a BootCamp for Windows laptops so I can use MacOS on them.

Hmmm....

TimeMachine

We saw this the last time, and it looks very useful. I still question the HD and RAM assets you'll need to have available to use it effectively.

Spaces

Also saw this last time - a 'Virtual Desktops' ability for OSX. If you didn't use the shareware/freeware versions of this now, you won't use Spaces later.

Safari on Windows

Ummm... why? Apple can't even make Safari work effectively on a Mac. I mean, I can't blog on Blogger with Safari now, or use our university's online content services (e.g., Moodle, WebTycho). Why would porting this experience to Windows users be a selling point? This kind of pisses me off, as Apple hasn't taken care of its own flock yet. Yes, Safari is great for many things and has fantastic feature. I really like the way it handles RSS feeds. But if it can't handle secure access points now,  I don't want to see Apple waste time on making it available for Windows users. Pointless exercise.

OK - there's my slant. Hopefully I've spurred folks to look differently at Steve's reality distortion event.