Musings from The Software Underground

Well, I feel like I'm a kid on Christmas morning, and I've got the glow of having opened a lot of great presents. Of course these presents will cost ME but that's OK.

Apple's Macworld keynote was all about one thing really: iPhone. I must say, I'm impressed, and I want one. I already have Cingular so this isn't a problem for me. The fluid, changeable user interface is absolutely beautiful. It's completely touch enabled, with lots of subtle but meaningful animations. When you look at the UI, I think you may be looking at the direction the Leopard look and feel is moving in, even though we haven't been shown anything. I think you will see these colors and textures show up to finally replace Aqua, and I'm excited for it.

If you go to Apple.com you can see lots of movies of the new iPhone UI in action. It looks like streamlined apps and widgets really. Music and video look look awesome. The screen appears like it's amazing to look at. It's a widescreen video iPod, as rumored.

The phone features look really cool and easy to use. It's so much better than any phone I've seen. With big, clear buttons and an interface that changes to accomodate phone actions, you can easily call people from your list, even conference call people. Beautiful interface to my address book, SMS that is essentially iChat for the phone and a really nicely iPhoto integrated camera, and a real user interface to my voicemail? Wow.

The internet device apps look easy and functional. Mail looks simple but usable. Safari also looks nicely minimal, though honestly it remains to be seen if browsing the web on the iPhone is any better than any other handheld device. My HOPE is that a lot of Mac sites build stylesheets for the phone, so at least the Mac web will be easy to use. If you're at home, browsing and networking traffic will use your WiFi connection, instead of using Cingular bandwidth. Browsing from the couch just got easier. Maps, well that has the possibility to be awesome. Beautiful Google maps and satellite images in your hand wherever you are? Wow. The widgets look neat as well, but my big question is "will we Mac developers be able to build new apps and widgets for this thing?" I have ideas already, I'd love to be able to make them happen. 3rd party apps for this device would be killer. We'll have to see. It's OS X after all... Please Apple, let us develop for the iPhone.

Next up is Apple TV. I want this too, even if it is really just as I'd feared, essentially an Airport Express for video with internal storage. The Apple TV does output 720p, which is HD, so it looks like they did indeed upgrade the video from the store, assuming you can buy your movies in this res (why not?). I still hope they add recording at some point, but it looks like that's not in the cards.

Not mentioned but also released, was the new Airport Extreme. Stephan pointed this out in his reactions blog post. It is not only WAY faster, but it now looks like Apple TV or the Mac mini, and in addition to doing wireless printing, you can now also add wireless storage, creating a shared NAS drive. This alone is worth the upgrade I think.

So yes, Jobs unveiled the iPhone (called, surprising the iPhone) and the Apple TV. Neither of these were real surprises. What WAS a surprise was the lack of information on ANYTHING else. No Leopard, no iWork. I thought these were a given and I know I'm not alone. I guess WWDC will be "The Show" for Leopard again maybe, I'm not sure.

Even though we didn't get to see everything we expected, I can still say... it's a great time to be a Mac geek. :)

Labels: Musings