I've refrained from posting my thoughts on these new products while I wrap my head around Steve's goals. It's time I added my feelings to the blogosphere.
Mac Mini. 2" tall. 256MB standard. Slow. Painfully slow. Fully tricked out (though still slow) it's $1200, but the base box is $499. Disclaimer: I *hate* the iMac/eMacs. These products are made for the people that could care less about performance. A 10 second wait for an app to open is no... big... deal... Me, give me the one that instantly turns on and apps instantly fire up ready for use. To me the computer is enabling technology. If my beautiful mind has to wait one extra cycle... than my time is wasted. Curiously enough, a coworker (who incidently works for MCS) told me today that he's considering dropping $500 for this little box. A little Mac envy maybe? Whatever his reasons, this box would be perfect for my Mom. Slow doesn't bother her like it does me... and as long as you don't have iTunes, several task widgets and 3 Firefox windows running (with like 15 open tabs) - it should be perfect.
iPod Shuffle. This is an inexpensive thumbdrive that can play music. You won't be able to tell what you're playing because there's no screen... so it's best for the workout, or while driving (Podcast driving). Stupid as a primary music player, but perfect as a thumb-drive or a second music player.
iLife 05'. The only thing I care about is iPhoto 5 which finally adds folders and management of pics by date. iMovie HD doesn't help me because I can't make DVDs of my favorite TV shows (either in snippets or in their entirety). GarageBand 2 does nothing for me... I'm not going to make music any time soon (my music is C# code). iDVD is pretty useless as well because my PowerBook (with the superdrive) can't even make a usable CD, and if can't use iMovie to suck in DVDs from my DVD recorder what's the point? That leaves iTunes which is free. So can someone please tell me why I'm paying $79 for iPhoto... if it's just going to be bundled for free in OS X 10.4 Tiger?
iWork. Pages? Give me a break. I'm happy with Word / Office 2004 (props to MacBU). Keynote? I'm not writing presentations at home for myself. Besides, I have PowerPoint even if I wanted to (which I don't). Next.
This is all cool, but where's the G5 PowerBook with a kick-ass display like the Dell Inspiron wide-screen UXGA? Where's Tiger with spotlight and dashboard? Release them already! Tiger almost gives us what OS X 10.0 should have given. Too bad even Tiger doesn't address the horribly inconsistent UI. Though Windows XP gives you painfully few options to change the window dressing, at least the windows all look the same - they... are... consistent... Open different apps in OS X and you will see different UI frames (not content mind you). On one the lower right hand corner handle *is* the edge of the screen, on another you've got a brushed-metal rounded corner *around* the corner handle. On one you have the brushed metal title bar, on another you get some white thing. I don't get it. But apparently the predominantly artist community of the Mac-heads don't care.. because I'm the only one saying this. Go figure. If it wasn't for shapeshifter... I would go back to skinning my PC to look like an apple. Heh.
posted @ Thursday, January 13, 2005 11:21 PM