It’s that time again. The Mighty Steve has delivered his opening keynote for Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, and unveiled Apple’s latest raft of products. All, erm, three of them?
As anyone who knows me will tell you, I’m a big fan of Apple. I use an iPod. My home PC is now a Mac Mini. There’s something about their products, applications, and philosophy that just appeals to me. I use Windows all day at work; OS X is a nice antidote for that when I come home.
So what do I make of these three products? Perhaps more importantly, in the case of Apple’s new hardware, does it matter? These products aren’t aimed at me. The Mac Pro is an awesome looking machine, with a fantastic spec, but I don’t want one. I’ve just relegated my Dell workstation to file server-dom, so why would I spend the best part of £2000 on a machine that I’ll not drive to its fullest potential? Yeah, I’d like one, but this machine doesn’t put my credit card in jeopardy.
The Xserve is the same story: It’s not for me, I’m not supposed to be interested, and I’m not. But if someone offered me one, I’d take it.
So, well done Apple — your migration to Intel is complete, and you’ve got two very nice looking high spec products to offer to those that need it.
The third product is far more interesting for me, though. The Leopard features on display are things I’ll be using when the product ships. And yet it’s interesting to see that many features weren’t on display. By the sound of it - and despite their tongue-in-cheek digs at Microsoft - Apple is quite annoyed that Microsoft has stolen many of its ideas for Vista. As a result, it sounds like they don’t want to unveil a whole new set of innovations before Vista has shipped.
Or maybe it’s the opposite of that — maybe Apple wants to wait until Vista’s launched, and steal Microsoft’s ideas this time? I doubt it, but who knows? One thing is for sure, Apple’s bravado and taunting of the Beast of Redmond is certain to annoy more than a few people, and draw the collective attentions of faithful Windows users, for better or for worse.
Article comments
1 - Cameron Graham
Interesting take. I also am not the targeted user for the Mac Pro and XServes, but I am very exciting about Leopard.
Mail Templates looks great. I can think of more than a few times that I've had to manually attach a bunch of photos to an email to show relatives after a trip or compose a generic thank you email. Now with Templates I can just pull one up, drag a few photos and I'm done - plus it looks great.
Spotlight is also really intriguing. As it is, I use it everyday multiple times. I hardly even organize things any more because of how easy it is to pull them up with Spotlight. The new one they previewed sounds like it will not only improve Spotlight into a great App Launcher but make searching other peoples computers easy. Numerous times I've needed a file off someone else's computer (or a photo) and had to have them email it to me or use a USB stick. Now I can just do a quick Spotlight search and I'm done. Oh, and I bet it will work with PC's.
So overall, I wasn't letdown or disappointed. I didn't buy into the insane rumors either (you know, video ipod, iphone, movie rentals, upgraded MacBook Pros, etc.) so I wasn't expecting so much. With the new Text-To-Speech, Mail, iChat, Spaces, and iCal previews I'm pretty happy.
2 - Daniel Woolstencroft
I hear you Cameron - it's certainly a nice set of upgrades, and I don't think any fan of OS X will feel let down.
I'm not sold on Mail Templates yet, but that's the thing with Apple - they have a knack of adding features that leave you wondering how you ever coped without!
3 - Ken Edwards
The use of Woodcrest over Conroe was a little bit of a suprise, but I see why they went with it.
I have a feeling they will wait to release info on new iPods until later. This is a developer conference, after all.