I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
Another thing that happened when I was away was the special Steve presentation where he announced the new iMacs, iLife and iWork.
You can watch it here.
Thoughts that came to mind
- The statement that all that most people need is an all-in-one and that laptops are all-in-ones. I tend to agree and it’s interesting that we don’t see many PC all-in-ones here. I stopped caring about machine spec’s a couple of years ago. It’s all about the screen. All screens should just have a computer. Mind you, I need portability as well and there is still much too stuff locked into a machine to put a separate iMac on the kitchen bench. So the new iMac looked nice but didn’t spin my wheels. I’m waiting for what they do with their smaller MacBooks. I really want a small MacBook, with a Flash Disk and video card to drive a 30″ monitor(s).
- They threw away the old iMovie. I like that when Apple saw a better model they had the courage to throw their old investment away and go with the new flavour. That’s courageous.
- Increasing tie-ins with Google (Googles Schimdt is on Apples Board). iMovie will now export directly to YouTube (now owned by Google). iWeb plays nicely with Google Maps and Adsense! Surprisingly Safari 3 is not there yet with Gmail.
- Pages, the word processor, now has a more traditional (meaning Microsoft Word like) editing view. Numbers looks like a gorgeous spreadsheet for light weight, presentation-biased spreadsheets). Looks to be a lot of effort to work with Microsoft Office documents. This is very interesting as Apple needs Microsoft to keep investing in Mac Office and Microsoft needs ‘just enough’ competition (partly why MS invested in Apple in the late 90’s). As a mixed Mac and PC company it’s too hard to consider different productivity packages so Microsoft Office (PC and Mac) is the default.
- So what’s missing next? Well, the big barrier to Apple adoption is an email client application for the huge number of potential users that need first class access to corporate email. Microsoft has delayed MacOffice 2008 (until, well, 2008 which frustrates MacIntel users who have to endure the poor performance caused by the Rossetta thunking hit) and is steadfastly refusing to comment on what Entourage 2008 is. Is it a real MAPI client or a slicker version of the flawed OWA access version? Exchange functionality in Mail.app in Leopard is also still a bit vague. Is it more than IMAP?
So a bit there but nothing earth shattering. I hope iPhoto is better than the last version (that is just awful) so I’ll get iLife and being Numbers curious I’ll grab iWork as well.
I’m really waiting for Leopard, new MacBook and widePod. Then it might get exciting again.
blog
I had held off on getting iWork until they came out with a spreadsheet and now that they have done I have got this and at the same time updated my iLife (I skipped the last version). My thoughts:
- Keynote is just awesome. I created a presentation in less time and looking far better than what I can in Powerpoint (I am somewhat design challenged)
- iMovie is a complete rewrite and I’m not sure I like it. I think it will be good for getting things up on YouTube, etc. but not for producing longer videos. I think I will stick to the old version or upgrade to Final Cut Express. I can see that it will probably be better for the entry level user but not me personally.
- iPhoto is a lot better than the older version. The speed is a lot faster and the editing just seems a lot smoother.
- iWeb seems like a great tool for creating nice looking websites. Any company could use the built in templates and come up with a website far nicer than most of the corporate sites on the web at the moment.
All around a nice update by Apple. I don’t need anything more than iWork for my ‘Office’ duties and they are a hell of a lot nicer than Office for Mac.
Rod,
1 With synching across machines, an iMac on the kitchen bench is perfect.
We use a mixture of IMAP for e-mail, .Mac to sync settings (and yes, I know we don’t actually need .Mac, the work around is on my to-do) and ChronoSync to synchronize the desktop, with an account for each member of the family, and Sony’s PuppySuite to enable biometric login.
It gets the most frequent use of any computer in the house, although not the most intense use. It’s where everyone checks their e-mail and calendars in the morning, and when they first walk into the house…
Come stay and I’ll show you…
5 If you REALLY need access to corporate e-mail beyond what Mail.app provides (and it’s pretty good; I use because one of the universities I teach at is an all-Microsoft environment), such as macros and everything else, just run Parallels…
All the best
Michael
We’ve never managed to get mail.app working with Exchange. If you can link to a step by step we’d appreciate it.
But it still will be clunky as you then have Exchange split across various client apps. i.e. what happens with iCal?
>Well, the big barrier to Apple adoption is an email client application for the
>huge number of potential users that need first class access to corporate email
Lotus Notes is available on OS X (has been for awhile now) - Notes 8 looks like being an awesome app. All the Notes mail, database and application functionality works the same whether you’re on a Mac or Windows too.
Cheers,
Raj.