MacWorld Thoughts
MacWorld San Francisco 2005
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last week, or if you’re not a Mac Geek, you’ve probably heard about the things that Mr. Jobs unveiled during his keynote speech this past Tuesday. I’d like to take a moment or two to discuss my reactions to the new products.
h2. The iPod shuffle
I have to admit, I did not see this coming. I tended to agree with John Gruber when he said:
bq. I just don’t see no screen at all as a feasible design. Without a graphical interface, the only thing left would be an audio interface — some sort of text-to-speech output to read menu items, playlist titles, and so forth through the earphones. This seems like a recipe for a frustrating experience, trying to locate a specific song that isn’t a few spots away from the one you’re currently listening to.
bq. Part of the reason the original iPod was so successful at the outset is that its display was larger than most other competing players. I just don’t see how you could get an even vaguely decent experience without any display at all. If I’m wrong, it’d certainly be a bold decision on Apple’s part
I just didn’t see an iPod without a display as a workable design. Like Gruber, though, I had assumed that a flash based iPod would essentially be a scaled down iPod mini (a mini mini if you will). Designing the iPod shuffle to be random and only random is, if nothing else, an unexpected approach. I have my qualms about it, but I don’t believe they will matter to 90% of people out there, for two reasons.
It’s an iPod.
It’s cheap.
The fact that it is an iPod guarantees it mass sales these days. iPods are cool, the latest status symbol. I work in computer retail and right now as many people that walk in and say “Do you have MP3 players?” walk in and say “Do you have iPods?” (It’s worth noting that many who walk in asking about MP3 players walk out with iPods, too.)
The fact that it’s priced better than just about any other flash based player on the market right now, well, speaks for itself.
Apple now has all corners of the music player market covered: high end (iPod, iPod Photo), mid range (iPod mini) and low end (iPod shuffle). The only things I am left to wonder is ow long until everyone has an iPod of some sort, and what happens then? More specifically, what happens in 18 to 24 months when the batteries on all those iPods Apple sold last quarter start to go south?
h2. iWork
Keynote 2 and Pages. Fantastic with a side of gravy. I’ve been using Keynote since it came out for two reasons: It’s easier than PowerPoint, and it makes better looking presentations. With Keynote 2, they’ve added the only feature that PowerPoint had that attracted me (Presenter Tools), and it looks like they’ve implemented it a little less cluttered (read: better). In other words, I get to have my cake and eat it, too.
Pages, for me, is just icing on that cake. If it does what it does as easy and as well as Apple says it does, I will probably use it a lot. I will probably be unable to stop using MS Word entirely, and I am honestly not sure I’d want to yet, but Pages is the first app in a long time that makes me think I might be able to, and that is a good thing.
Both of these apps are good for one more reason: They’ll force Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit to figure out some cool new features for the next versions of Word and PowerPoint.
iWork is missing a spreadsheet application, but this doesn’t bother me mainly because Excel is so entrenched that it would probably prove difficult to replace. Also, if Apple wrote a spreadsheet application, that might make Microsoft re-think their position with Office: Mac, and regardless of your current opinion of Microsoft, that would be a very bad thing.
h2. iLife ‘05 and Final Cut Express HD
I don’t use iMovie a lot, nor iDVD, but the addition of HD support makes it all the more attractive. More importantly, the fact that iDVD can now encode a disk image is superb, as I am the type of person that would need to burn more than one copy of whatever home movie DVDs I make. Since I use iMovie and iDVD so infrequently, you can imagine how much I use Final Cut Express. GarageBand, while interesting, has never been an app that I am interested in. I think it’s cool, but I’ll likely never use it. iTunes 4.7 is the version I am using now. Fancy that.
iPhoto 5 I am excited about for two reasons: RAW support, and importing movies. The fact that it supports RAW is amazing, as most of the apps that come with cameras capable of shooting in RAW format are kind of lame, at least by comparison. The only things that I have to ask (and as of right now I can’t find answers to) are:
Does it support the new Adobe RAW format?
What video formats does it support besides MPEG-4?
Steve Jobs was really excited about MPEG-4 playback in iTunes during the keynote, but what about all those low end cameras that capture video in .avi format? Will those videos download, too? MPEG-4 is all well and good, but at the moment there are far, far more cameras that take .avi files, and I’d be willing to bet it will stay that way for some time.
h2. The Mac mini
I can’t decide if I will ever buy a Mac mini, but I am glad it is around. You know why? I won’t have to hear the “why doesn’t Apple make a low end Mac?” question any more. I think it is a cool little machine, except because it comes sans keyboard and mouse I can see some people reacting badly if they are planning on it as a first time purchase (“What do you mean I have to buy a keyboard and mouse?” they’ll ask).
As a machine for existing users, either Mac or PC, I think it is fucking brilliant. Especially since I know a few people already who are planning on picking them up along with a USB KVM switch for use a second machine. The best part is that all of these people I know are Windows users, and they are excited about owning a Mac.
The only question that remains is whether these people will like their Mac mini enough to switch entirely.
h2. Final Thoughts
I don’t really know what else to say. It’s been a while since Apple had a MacWorld where they introduced so many big things at once, or at least so many important things. Steve Jobs looked good, especially after going through the whole cancer thing late last year.
All in all it was a good show, and the outlook for the year is pretty good.
