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8 aug. 2007

August 2007 Jobsnote

@apple@

I’m getting quite tired of being disappointed by Jobs keynotes now, so you’ll have to excuse me if I sound grouchy at times. This is what it looks like nowadays when Apple promises a Mac-only keynote: they pretty much stuck to the promise, but it managed to be even more boring than the last few presentations.

 

@apple@

Unimaginative as it was, I liked the latest rumored iMac redesign (which was just a slightly thicker Cinema Display). Sure, the aluminum and black does work, and it’s kinda classy, but… it doesn’t really make sense — the rounded black bezel around the screen feels kinda random, just like the juxtaposition of different materials on the iPhone. Has Jonathan Ive lost his edge? Or have Jobs and Ive grown tired with the whole zen esthetic? You better get ready for chrome spinners on the next Mac Pro design — wait, where was that, by the way, and how about Cinema Displays?

Watching the ad, though (and what kind of an ad is that?), I have to admit that the new design might grow on me pretty fast. Just look at how outdated it makes the classic OS X desktop look: that’s a pretty good sign.

Firewire 800 is cool. Glossy screen is not. Wired disses the video card.

 

@apple@

The new keyboards look much better than they did in the leaked pictures, as you might expect. Nevermind that the more expensive model loses its numeric keypad just as Apple introduces Numbers (it kinda makes sense for the wireless keyboard to be smaller so you can leave it on your coffee table, but if they’re going to have two form factors they might as well let you choose the number of keys independently — many people use a wireless keyboard on their desktop, just to reduce clutter), what really confuses me is that the special keys have been moved around, just as seen on the previously leaked pictures. What is the point of moving Dashboard and Exposé from the right-hand to the left-hand side?

I just realized, though: moving the Exposé and Dashboard functionality to the “fn” level (I assume OS X will allow you to choose whether F-keys are active or inactive by default, like it does on a laptop) actually makes more room for software functions on F9-F11.

Except for the fact that power users, who usually keep the F-keys active because their applications need them, now have Exposé hidden behind” fn.” Oh, wait, they’ve got multi-button mice, too, so it doesn’t really matter after all.

Ah, and there’s only one Exposé key. While F9 and F10 can easily be merged (try pressing F9, then Tab), you might wonder where F11 went. That is, if you forgot that you aren’t supposed to use the desktop anymore once you upgrade to Leopard. (I’m sure there have been internal builds at some point with the desktop icons completely disabled, and some engineers have had to fight for them.)

I realize that I didn’t mention it when the new keyboard was originally leaked, so I’ll say it now: I didn’t like the old keyboard’s feel, and it was one of the most inefficiently designed computer peripherals ever — my mini’s keyboard is filthy, and as far as I’m concerned it’s just uncleanable. The new keyboard should be much, much easier to keep clean. And the design nicely complements the mini, too. I think I want to buy a wireless one.

 

@apple@

I haven’t looked much at iPhoto, because unless it somehow integrates with Photsohop it will never be the right solution for me, but the new iMovie is looking good: I’m currently exploring the idea of possibly doing some kind of stuff or other with a camcorder, and it’s been immediately apparent to me that the program lacked a common iPhoto-like library for organizing all your movie clips.

The .Mac galleries are nice enough (I really don’t like the black header), and seem to fail very inelegantly without Javascript (the progress spinner just never stops). They do work in Explorer 6, though, after you’ve dismissed the warning message advising you upgrade to Safari. Or Firefox. Or Explorer 7 if you have to.

Considering how the galleries disregard the most basic accessibility rules, I don’t expect iWeb’08 to fix blog permalinks, but it’s nice (in a creepy monopoly kind of way) that they integrated AdSense.

 

@apple@

Photo upload was apparently activated automagically on iPhones in the wild. I doubt that it was an “over-the-air” activation, so it must have been scheduled for a specific time; you can now expect Apple bloggers to try changing their system date by a few months every time the iPhone firmware is updated.

 

@apple@

I can’t say I care about Numbers (or Keynote or Pages, for that matter). I guess it’s a good thing, along with Pages’s new word processor mode — I’ve had to launch NeoOffice once in a while, and it’s always been pretty painful.

 

@apple@

And the “One More Thing” was a Q&A… where Steve Jobs actually answered the “why don’t you have Intel Inside stickers” question instead of crucifying the moron who asked that. Well, I guess he counted on bloggers for that.

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