or, Why the Mac community just pronounced a collective "Meh"…
Before I begin, let me say that if there is one that haunts me day and night (or, at least when I'm in the process of writing these journal logs), it is the capitalization of titles. As you can see in the title above, I've basically just given up and used the standard 'Title Case' format in which each word, regardless of bloodline and upbringing, is capitalized. Of course, I hated doing that because 'an' and 'at' were clearly undeserving of this privilege, being common article and preposition respectively. I know it sounds rather like a made-up caste system of words, but don't judge me too harshly.
WWDC06 may hold some promise still as far as some minor announcements are concerned, but, for most people, the "show's over" and there's "nothing to see here". Now, as most people would tell you (or you could just gauge by Apple's constantly falling stock), nothing groundbreaking was introduced or announced at yesterday's keynote. In fact, the keynote itself wasn't the usual excitement filled event, unless you count that single incident where orgasm-equivalent applause erupted as Steve Jobs showed off the new, sexy Macintosh voice that can talk faster than Superman. Of course, Apple had never promised (or, by precedent, hinted) that the WWDC06 keynote would be anything else. A few days ago I did some peripheral research regarding the WWDC keynotes in the past and WWDC06 continues that trend. Far from announcing anything like a new iPod or an Apple-branded cellular phone, Apple hasn't ever even mentioned iPod statistics at WWDC. It is not the focus of the event! Apple has also never introduced any iMacs or iBooks at WWDC for exactly the same reason. If I refer to my own entry on Impulsive Highlighters from August 6, you will find that Apple has historically (if four years can be termed as such) almost always (a) previewed the upcoming version of Mac OS X and (b) released a relevant product such as Xcode or new Power Macs or made momentous announcements such as the switch to different OS or CPU architectures.
Thus, it was folly to expect more. In fact, I think that exactly the right amount of stuff was presented at the keynote. In my opinion, Apple's policy of releasing products as they're ready is very good. This means that if the new iMacs are ready in September, there's no point in waiting till Macworld 2007 to announce them. Conversely, although WWDCs and Macworlds will carry less product announcements, they will still have some important announcements as something that was ready in mid-July could be easily postponed till the beginning of August and thus they will remain as great conferences - I would personally have given anything but the $1600 required to visit the tradeshow. Perhaps a few months of slave labour at 1, Infinite Loop.
The only part where the keynote went seriously wrong, in my opinion, was the order of things. Certainly, this could have been done in a more exciting way. I say, introduce Leopard first, starting with the most boring feature (admittedly, 64-bit), going on to Mail (or skipping it because of the boredom it induced), then onto Dashboard, iChat somewhere in the middle and Time Machine in the end, which would have ended the demo with a big, hearty applause. The text-to-speech comparison could have been omitted, in my opinion. It did not give me the same orgasmic pleasure that the WWDC audience was obviously demonstrating. The Xserve would then be introduced, and Xcode 3's top-notch compiling performance on a cluster of Xserves demonstrated. As the "One More Thing", the new Mac Pros would be introduced. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but does this not look like a seriously better way to have presented the keynote?
Anyway, my dear Apple Acolytes, be not disheartened by the lukewarm keynote. Rejoice in the updated MacBook Pros, iMacs, MacBooks, Mac minis, and the new iPods (my prediction is September-October, same time frame as last year) that are yet to come this year.
Before I begin, let me say that if there is one that haunts me day and night (or, at least when I'm in the process of writing these journal logs), it is the capitalization of titles. As you can see in the title above, I've basically just given up and used the standard 'Title Case' format in which each word, regardless of bloodline and upbringing, is capitalized. Of course, I hated doing that because 'an' and 'at' were clearly undeserving of this privilege, being common article and preposition respectively. I know it sounds rather like a made-up caste system of words, but don't judge me too harshly.
WWDC06 may hold some promise still as far as some minor announcements are concerned, but, for most people, the "show's over" and there's "nothing to see here". Now, as most people would tell you (or you could just gauge by Apple's constantly falling stock), nothing groundbreaking was introduced or announced at yesterday's keynote. In fact, the keynote itself wasn't the usual excitement filled event, unless you count that single incident where orgasm-equivalent applause erupted as Steve Jobs showed off the new, sexy Macintosh voice that can talk faster than Superman. Of course, Apple had never promised (or, by precedent, hinted) that the WWDC06 keynote would be anything else. A few days ago I did some peripheral research regarding the WWDC keynotes in the past and WWDC06 continues that trend. Far from announcing anything like a new iPod or an Apple-branded cellular phone, Apple hasn't ever even mentioned iPod statistics at WWDC. It is not the focus of the event! Apple has also never introduced any iMacs or iBooks at WWDC for exactly the same reason. If I refer to my own entry on Impulsive Highlighters from August 6, you will find that Apple has historically (if four years can be termed as such) almost always (a) previewed the upcoming version of Mac OS X and (b) released a relevant product such as Xcode or new Power Macs or made momentous announcements such as the switch to different OS or CPU architectures.
Thus, it was folly to expect more. In fact, I think that exactly the right amount of stuff was presented at the keynote. In my opinion, Apple's policy of releasing products as they're ready is very good. This means that if the new iMacs are ready in September, there's no point in waiting till Macworld 2007 to announce them. Conversely, although WWDCs and Macworlds will carry less product announcements, they will still have some important announcements as something that was ready in mid-July could be easily postponed till the beginning of August and thus they will remain as great conferences - I would personally have given anything but the $1600 required to visit the tradeshow. Perhaps a few months of slave labour at 1, Infinite Loop.
The only part where the keynote went seriously wrong, in my opinion, was the order of things. Certainly, this could have been done in a more exciting way. I say, introduce Leopard first, starting with the most boring feature (admittedly, 64-bit), going on to Mail (or skipping it because of the boredom it induced), then onto Dashboard, iChat somewhere in the middle and Time Machine in the end, which would have ended the demo with a big, hearty applause. The text-to-speech comparison could have been omitted, in my opinion. It did not give me the same orgasmic pleasure that the WWDC audience was obviously demonstrating. The Xserve would then be introduced, and Xcode 3's top-notch compiling performance on a cluster of Xserves demonstrated. As the "One More Thing", the new Mac Pros would be introduced. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but does this not look like a seriously better way to have presented the keynote?
Anyway, my dear Apple Acolytes, be not disheartened by the lukewarm keynote. Rejoice in the updated MacBook Pros, iMacs, MacBooks, Mac minis, and the new iPods (my prediction is September-October, same time frame as last year) that are yet to come this year.
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