Typically when you insert a disc to upgrade Mac OS you need to reboot to the disc for the installation process to begin. This means that during the entire upgrade process (even though this process gets shorter and shorter with each update) you’d be effectively without a computer. The upgrade to Lion, it would seem, doesn’t require this step. The update happens just like any other installation process. However, you’ll still need to reboot when the upgrade process is complete.

Notable, but not as notable as not having to reboot at all.

“So amid all the hype and hoopla and chest-bumping yesterday we kind of, um, overlooked something. The new MacBooks. There are three of them. We had them at Moscone, ready to go. And I just spaced it.”

If only Daniel Lyons was the real Steve Jobs.

Source: Holy crap, we forgot to announce the new MacBooks!.

He sums up his thoughts of the lower-cost iPhone 3G, and the iPhone SDK, this way:

“The physical phone is not the story. A year from now, the iPhone 3G will be replaced by another new model. The platform is the story. Platforms have staying power, and, once entrenched, are very hard to displace.”

Again, many of you might be thinking that this is obvious.  But don’t be surprised if some of the “journalists” out there completely miss the point with today’s announcements.  I can just hear the “Apple was afraid it wouldn’t sell enough iPhones so they lowered the price” headlines hitting the presses right now.

Source: Daring Fireball: Twice as Fast, Half the Price.

Today I find myself in the same state as I was yesterday, still wishing.

Apple’s Keynote did, in fact, reassure me that I will be able to check off a few items on my list, however. It looks like we’ll get a search in the contacts application.  Twitterrific on the iPhone, has been confirmed by Apple, in a round-about sort of way (see screenshot).  And games!  Apple made it a point to show that games run very well on the iPhone.

Although not confirmed, we can assume that we’ll get a few of the applications that I wanted on the iPhone through third party applications within the first few months of the App Store launching.

All-in-all I’m happy with everything that Apple announced today.  The iPhone 3G seems like a very welcomed update to the current iPhone, and at a price point no one can sneeze at.  Mobile Me will be huge for Apple and .Mac has needed an update for a very long time.  And of course all of the iPhone software updates and third party applications are going to be a game-changer in the mobile market.

You probably know what I’m going to say next.  I wish Steve said “One more thing”.  But he didn’t.  If he did, I would have wanted to see a new Macbook Pro.  I am not sure how long I can hold out before picking one up.

I’m going to start with something that we know we’ll get, iPhone software.  Since getting my iPhone nearly one year ago I’ve been more than happy with it.  But I’m ready for Apple to support, and even encourage, third party applications to be built for the iPhone.  On Monday we should get a pretty good glimpse of how this will work and, perhaps, even know an exact date when third party applications will be available to download and install on the iPhone through Apple’s iTunes store.

First, I’m going to cover my wishes for updates to the existing iPhone software.

• Mobile Mail is in need of a pretty thorough update.  I manage two email addresses on the iPhone.  One for personal, and one for work.  The Mobile Mail application, using IMAP, does this pretty well – but sometimes the iPhone chokes a little.  I’d like to see speed improvements, easier flagging for following up on my Mac, and searching mail messages.
• Mobile Safari will probably get a decent upgrade, as regards its rendering speed and hopefully cache.  The iPhone has a fairly large hard drive, and I have yet to see the reason Mobile Safari doesn’t use it to store the Web pages you visit in a cache.  Reloading pages over and over and over on EDGE is frustrating.
• The address book, or phone contacts, is also in need of a search function.  The alphabet slider on the side, for those of us with hundreds of contacts on our phone, doesn’t make things too much easier.  I’d also like to see better bluetooth support here to sync contacts and/or send contact information to a friend’s iPhone.
• The calendar application needs to do a better job with multiple calendars.  I would like to have all of my calendars on the iPhone, but also be able to add new events to any of those calendars instead of just one.  Sending these events to other attendees, either via email or bluetooth, would also be nice.
• The iPhone’s camera is decent quality, but I wouldn’t mind a brightness slider, or even some effects, for when taking photos. I also wouldn’t mind being able to delete all of the photos on the iPhone with a tap or two.  Being able to tell, on the iPhone, when a photo was taken would be a major plus.

Are any of these things too much to ask for?  I don’t think so.  Next, I’m going to focus on third party applications that I’d like to see.

• Sharing.  Just an application that would let me share anything on my iPhone with another iPhone.  Contacts, photos, documents? Why not?
• Bonjour messaging!  Any iPhone within range?  I’d like to be able to “chat” with that iPhone by sending messages, links, photos, etc. to it.  That’d be fun.
• Media Browser. I’ve finally setup a shared hard drive on my Airport Express at home with photos, music, and video.  Being able to access this media on the iPhone when home, would be nice.
• Twitterrific, on the iPhone. Enough said.
• A simple “to do list” application.
• Games! I know a lot of people are waiting for these, and I am too in a way, but I know that my battery is going to suffer for it.

Are any of these too much to ask for?  I don’t think so either.  Sometimes though I start to think about some of the crazy ideas for iPhone applications like controllers, a way to view my computer screen at home remotely, interactive applications based on location, and other hair-brained ideas.  The possibilities seems endless, but I don’t want to get my hopes up.  I’d rather be pleasantly surprised.

And last, I’d like to just quickly state that I’m in the market for a new laptop.  My wife’s laptop, which I gave to her when I upgraded to this black Macbook over two years ago, is on its last legs.  My black Macbook, however, is running perfectly.  So I’m planning on giving her my black Macbook when I upgrade to, whatever comes next out of Cupertino.  I’m leaning towards a Macbook Pro, but I’m waiting to see if anything happens at WWDC first.

Are you ready for tomorrow?  What are you waiting to see?

]]> http://cdevroe.com/notes/wwdc08-wishes/feed/ 3 http://cdevroe.com/notes/wwdc07-keynote/ http://cdevroe.com/notes/wwdc07-keynote/#comments Wed, 13 Jun 2007 14:34:56 +0000 Colin Devroe http://cdevroe.com/notes/wwdc07-keynote/

MeToday: June 11, 2007

So I’ve been catching some flack over my MeToday photo that, more or less, described my feelings towards the WWDC Keynote on Monday. Perhaps I’m overreacting, perhaps I’m being a little overly critical, or maybe I just needed more sleep, but the fact remains — I am not alone in my thinking that this latest Keynote wasn’t what we all thought it would be.

If you haven’t watched the Keynote, or weren’t fixated on the coverage during it, I suggest you watch it and then come back and read this post – because I’m not going to recap what Steve Jobs covered, but more cover what I think was sorely missing which lead to my disappointment. If you’d like my thoughts on what was announced, I suggest reading Michael Heilemann‘s “WWDC 07 fallout” post which nearly reiterates my thoughts on the what was announced during the Keynote.

That which went missing

The days leading up to any keynote by Apple’s CEO are always filled with rumors of new products or services that Apple will announce. These generally range from iPods that will do your laundry to cloaks that make you invisible like Harry Potter. Though Harry made an appearance in this keynote – no cloaks were added to the Apple Store. A lot of times this rumor-mongering builds up the expectation to such a level that, no matter what Apple introduces, those expectations are ultimately let down. However, I do not want anyone to believe that I “expected the unexpected” and was thus let down by the contents of the keynote. On the contrary, I think nearly everything that was mentioned in the keynote was, in a word, great — but I definitely feel a few things were missing from the keynote and that is why I reacted the way that I did.

Ok, so there was one rumor that, in the end, let me down. The iPhone SDK isn’t really an SDK at all – which only lets me down from a “user” perspective since my Cocoa-foo is lacking to say the least. No, I don’t want to build Cocoa apps for the iPhone – but I know a few developers who I would have loved to have the opportunity to do so. Yes, I like the fact that Apple is providing hooks into the iPhone’s core system via OS X services that can be “called” via the Web. Yes, I will build a few “iPhone applications” for my own personal use – but there is something I’m not happy about. Speed, responsiveness, and local caching on the iPhone will all become a factor with having 3rd party web apps be the only way that the iPhone can be developed for. Most of my time is spent near wifi (by necessity currently) but when I’m accessing the web over AT&T’s network I imagine that my mobile version of NetNewsWire is going to suck. Google Gears for iPhone plz?

Where was the latest version of iLife? While watching the keynote during MacWorld in January I was sitting on the edge of my seat, waiting for Steve to announce iLife 07 and give a preview of the enhancements made to, what has become, my most used suite of applications on any platform. Nothing. Surely another opportunity to let us iLife-faithful know what is in store for the next versions of the applications wouldn’t slip by. Obviously, iLife 07 is destined to become Leopard-only (which I’m fine with) – and perhaps the keynote had a “bigger agenda” for this conference, but even announcing that an update is coming might have quenched my thirst.

One might argue that WWDC is not the platform for announcing consumer products but rather is focused on showing off features that developers would find most interesting and valuable. Good argument. But that doesn’t mean that Steve couldn’t show how iLife takes advantage of the new Core Animation API in Leopard to allow a much richer experience when sorting your photos in iPhoto, or how iMovie can burn HD DVDs (or something). Of course I could argue the point further that the new movie listing Dashboard widget being released in Leopard (oh thank God this was a top-ten feature of Leopard, gives me a lot of faith in the other 290+ features) is much more a consumer product than a developer one.

I also wanted to see updates to .Mac since Steve Jobs mentioned at D5 All Things Digital that we should expect updates to this service soon. No, he didn’t say that they’d be announced at WWDC – but still. .Mac is falling behind and really needs a shot in the arm. I’ve only used 60 day trials of .Mac – but I did like being able to use it during those times. However, with free and better alternatives available – there is almost no reason to use .Mac besides greater system-level integration. I’d love to see a partnership between Google and Apple on integrating .Mac with Google’s offerings. Having close ties with Google Docs, Maps, Gmail, and several other Google services inside of Leopard – via .Mac somehow – would be great to see. Obviously it would save Apple the need to reinvent the wheel – and with Google’s open APIs it wouldn’t be that hard for Apple to put some really slick interfaces ontop of these great services (like they did for Maps on the iPhone). Perhaps this is wishful thinking since Apple makes a fair amount of cash from .Mac subscriptions – but I’d also love to see .Mac go free as another pull to switch to the Macintosh and have the best system level integration with web services on any operating system.

Something new! In January Steve mentioned that they had to keep wraps over a few of the Leopard features because they didn’t want Redmond’s photo copiers to start early. Fair enough. But he couldn’t have been talking about Stacks or the movie widget, was he? Obviously Time Machine and Core Animation are Leopard’s most notable features (from my perspective). I’m sure there are a ton of advancements under-the-hood being that Leopard has been in active development for 21 months! And maybe, just maybe, we won’t know of the best features until we install it – but I really thought Steven built-up the expectations there a bit and never really came through with anything bigger than what he had mentioned in January. This isn’t to say that I’m not just as excited to update my operating system as I was in January, just that I thought there was going to be “one more thing” worth noting about Leopard.

So to recap. I’m pretty happy with what was shown in the keynote. I’m just a little disappointed with what I thought was missing in it.

Usually if I do not eat well my exercise routine makes up for it. As I’ve seen in previous weigh ins I won’t normally gain even though I decided to eat a bunch of food. However, when I don’t workout and I eat like crap – this generally leads to me gaining a few pounds. A no-brainer, I know.

So this week I’m up 5 pounds from last week, weighing in at 190.00 pounds. At first I was mad, almost disgusted, with myself. But, after waiting a day I see my levels are already beginning to balance out and it is nothing to get mad about since as long as I focus on getting my diet and exercise back on track – I’ll be just fine in a few days.

Ebbs and flows happen on diets and usually they can be calculated, but even when they can’t, I’ve learned to keep my head up and focus on the next goal. Keep moving forward.

Here’s to a great weigh in this coming Tuesday. Oh, and it will be the start of WWDC so there will be two reasons to be excited!

“This week, I see a ton of articles saying WWDC 2006 is a disappointment, and even speculating that maybe Steve Jobs is sick.

I simply don’t have words for this. Leopard is still three quarters away. There’s a LOT of work to do, yet. At the keynote, everybody got a sneak-peak at some of the features Apple is working on. If they were finished, they would, you know, ship it.

WWDC is a developer conference. Aimed at developers. Who develop software. Those of us who are developers are freaking amazed at all the great stuff that’s in Leopard. Guess what, we can’t talk about it. So, you’re going to see a lot of opinions from people who aren’t here and have only an uninformed opinion.

On the other hand, if it was just the announced products that disappointed you, well, I’m not sure what you expected. Apple is a computer company, and they unveiled a machine that runs blazingly fast and is $1,000 less than a similarly equipped Dell. This doesn’t make people happy? Seriously? What’s it take? I mean, you can equip this baby with a quad-SLI video card, install Boot Camp, and play Doom at 80 billion fps for way cheaper than you could on Sunday. Doom! Doom!

Yes, Steve didn’t announce any new consumer products. Here at the developer conference. Wow. What a shocker. I really expected Slash and/or Edge to come out and sing us a song and announce a new iPod bundle, or at least give me a close shave. (Seriously, “Edge?”)” — Wil Shipley

Update – I was rereading a few pages from the latest edition of Macworld magazine (one that every Macophile should be subscribed to), and I noticed a few things that I thought interesting.

Pg. 18 under the heading “10 Wishes for Leopard” there were some things at WWDC that the editors of Macworld were pretty close to outright predicting.

#4. Built-In Launcher – Scott Forstall (Apple’s VP of User Experience) mentioned that Spotlight would be better at launching applications than were used to in Tiger. I found this direct quote from Macworld to be interesting, and perhaps it is the way Apple has decided to tackle this: “Apple should create a new launcher shortcut key, and have it access a restricted version of the Spotlight index that looks only for file names.”. You could read that as ‘Apple should create a way for Spotlight to only search for applications’. Perhaps they have.

#6. Restore More – To quote Macworld editor only being referred to as CB (which could be Christopher Breen): “…I would like to see Apple implement a system restore feature in OS X. This would “rewind” your computer to points where it was happy and stable.” Well CB, I’m sure you’ll be happy in the Spring of 2007 and if Time Machine is as nice as it seems, so will I.

#10. Expand iChat – This update to Leopard may seem like a no brainer, but I think we were all surprised to see Apple reveal iChat theatre and the ability to control someone else’s computer via iChat. These were features that not many people (or anyone for that matter) saw coming. Macworld editor JS (perhaps this is Jason Snell) added something else I thought would have been nice to see in Leopard: “…to be able to save audio- and video-chat files”. I too desire this ability. Text message logging is a feature I adore and use everyday. To have that for audio and video conversations would be equally as useful for me.

All-in-all Macworld magazine did a pretty good job with their wishes. Did any of your wishes come true?

[tags]wwdc, apple, macintosh, world wide developers conference, time machine, ichat, macworld magazine[/tags]