More Keynote predictions

AppleTV -

Once iTunes is updated, software updates to support subscriptions will ripple to AppleTV. If a subscription service is announced, aTV will never get Netflix support (note: netflix having its own troubles with networks and Starz deal)

Faster processor, larger hard drive, more RAM, blu-ray nice but probably won’t happen (It should though).

iPhone OS 4.0 as described by others. Expanded multi-function (tablet will be multi-function), interface changes, better home screen navigation.

iLife ’010 predictions for Keynote

Okay, with just 30 minutes before the start of the Keynote, here are just a few of my hoped for predictions. After the event, we’ll see how well my predictions held up. Let’s start with iLife:

All applications to support tablet/multi-touch

iPhoto -

Photomerge panorama

Add type to photos

Selective replace color

Select/Magic wand tool

Faster

iWeb -

iCal widget – embed iCal calendars in iWeb (fully customized, day, week, month views)

Twitter widget

Full social network integration

iWeb library file with multi-computer editing. Edit your site anywhere.

iMovie -

more themes, transitions, sounds.

Improved editing tools

Multi-track audio with timeline views

iDVD -

Interface changes

support for smaller screen sizes and resolutions

iTunes extras support

iTunes -

Support for subscriptions

Garageband -

Major interface changes

iTunes LP support

MobileMe -

Social networking features expanded

Send notes/comments (flick) to Friends/family either as a stand alone app or as part of iChat.

Faster iDisk

Not just good enough

Thank goodness Apple is around to keep things interesting in the computer world. There just isn’t any other company able to generate the kind of excitement Apple can. Why is that? One of my theories is that other companies strive to be “just good enough” where Apple strives to be “insanely great!” What would the world be like if companies and people took the attitude that mediocre or “just good enough” wasn’t good enough, where exceptional becomes the norm? That’s the world I want to live in. That’s the world I’ll try to make for myself.

Macintosh Poetry

I just had to share this link with you. Perhaps it will give you inspiration too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/technology/personaltech/22sfbriefs.html?scp=1&sq=beat%20poet&st=cse

Additions & enhancements to iWork

While I love Apple hardware upgrades and product announcements I really get excited for the software updates and new programs.  An incrementally faster iMac, MacBook or Mac Pro is nice, but the excitement value for me lasts about 5 minutes. It’s only when Apple introduces a totally new product or adds radically new technology to the existing products that my excitement attention rises another 10 or 15 minutes longer. After that, without a corresponding update in software, it still does the same thing it did 15 minutes ago. The iSlate/iPad/iWhatchamacallit should hold me interested for a good 30 or 60 minutes or so. After that, what really gets my juices bubbling is what it does.

That’s why I am really hoping for (and predicting) an iWork ’10 announcement on the 27th.

Since Apple discontinued AppleWorks oh so many years ago (officially, Aug. 15, 2007) and iWork came to replace its core features of word processing (Pages), spreadsheets (Numbers) and presentation (Keynote) we are still missing a few of Appleworks lesser but important features: draw, paint and database. Bento, it could be argued, is a replacement for the database function of Appleworks but in my mind, I still like the “Filemaker lite” database in Appleworks over Bento. Also, Apple Addressbook integrates very well with iWork for doing mail merge.

That leaves the draw and paint modules of Appleworks.

I’ve always maintained, based on nothing more than “faith” that Apple would expand the applications included in the iWork bundle. As they improved the core features of iWork the first application added to the package was Keynote. It is just a matter of time before they fold more programs into the bundle as they add functionality to the existing apps. A “MacPaint/MacDraw” application is a very naturally addition to round out iWork.

This may very well be the perfect time to introduce “MacPaint/Paint.” In fact, let’s just call it Paint. That name fits well with Pages, Numbers, & Keynote.

A Paint app would be a perfect companion application for a touch enabled Apple Tablet. So many paint functions could be controlled through a direct interaction between the artists fingers and hands on a touch tablet. Especially if you add pressure sensitivity to the mix. As an artist myself (www.portraitsinpaint.com) I can see how a touch screen could be used to mix paint (or hues), move paint (finger paint) and apply paint (spray can and brushes). I could “reach” into my selection of virtual brushes and, using my finger as this virtual brush, paint directly onto my digital canvas. I could select a #2 soft sable filbert brush and paint with that. I could reach back into my supply of brushes and select a wide fan brush and soften or feather the back ground I was painting. The application would simulate brushes, supports (paper, canvas, gesso on hardwood) and media (oil, acrylics, conte crayon, pastels, etc.) in much the way Painter does today. Heck, maybe it will be a touch version of Painter Lite. For me, that would be a little more awesomeness from Apple.

And that’s why I think the graphic on the Jan. 27th invite hints at such a possibility.

iSlate prediction

After my review of Kindle for the PC I began to wonder if the Mac version was delayed pending the release of the Apple Tablet. As a portal to Amazon.com a Kindle app for the Slate makes more sense than a desktop app. Better make it killer though!

Found video footage

I found these VHS video cassettes while cleaning my office and digitized them so I could share them with you. They are from 1984 when Apple produced sales and marketing videos for their authorized dealers.

I am hoping Apple, Inc. will let me share them with you as I feel they are important historically and also give you a sense of the pride the original Macintosh designers had for the creation of something very special and world changing.

Here are the YouTube links:

http://www.youtube.com/user/DanzArtZ#p/u/1/gKxWxFnA_fo

http://www.youtube.com/user/DanzArtZ#p/u/0/OIXBODrBMdg

http://www.youtube.com/user/DanzArtZ#p/u/2/bwXSNyINfsc

The Making of 1984 contains the original Super Bowl Ad, an interview with Ridley Scott about the production of the commercial, and behind the scenes video of cast and crew. Very interesting.

The Story of Macintosh is the first introduction to the Macintosh 128K and features comments by some of the original designers including very young Burrell Smith, Bill Atkinson, Mike Murray, Andy Hertzfeld with closing remarks by Steve Jobs.

It also has comments from some of the software giants of the time: Fred Gibbons of PFS software, Mitch Kapor of Lotus Development and Bill Gates of Microsoft. I had to chuckle a bit when a very young Bill Gates states that Microsoft Macintosh software will account for 50% of Microsoft sales.

The video also plays as a tutorial for how to use a Mac and demos MacWrite and MacPaint. This was at a time when the Mac had ONE 400k floppy disk that contained the Operating System, MacWrite, MacPaint and the files you created! 400K! That’s not even half a mega-byte!

My favorite part of the video though, is at about 1:10 into the first part when Andy Hertzfeld says “We were just trying to make something great and I think we did!” The smile and look in his eyes shows how excited and proud he is of what they created.

It is also the sense you get at the end of the video in part 2 when Steve Jobs talks about the Mac too.

These people really did change the world.

Thank you guys. I know you’ve made my world a better place for the vision you had.

Kindle for PC review

While Amazon has announced that a Macintosh version of the Kindle reader software will be available sometime soon (say, a demo with Apple on Jan. 27th and the rumored Slate) I thought I’d give you my impressions of the version available for Windows now.

The Kindle PC software is very simplistic in form and function. In fact, except for archiving and reading books you’ve purchased through the Kindle store there really isn’t much in the way of customization you can do with this app. eBooks are presented rather unimaginatively in a grid showing the cover art of each book. You can choose to arrange your books by Title, Author or most recent. If you read your books on an actual Kindle or using the Kindle app on the iPhone, WhisperSync will sync and keep track of your bookmarks, annotations and any text you’ve highlighted. That I really like. I really enjoy reading books using either the Kindle, Stanza or eReader app on the iPhone and while the experience of reading on my laptop isn’t bad, I find myself wishing I could rotate my MacBook around 90 degrees in portrait mode the way I do on my phone. This desire to rotate my laptop is a compelling argument  to consider an eBook reader or Slate. Especially if the device is light enough to comfortably hold with one hand.

The software has two tabs in the upper right to choose between your Home page (books you have in progress) and Archived books. The three sort tabs make up the middle top part of the screen. Finally, a “Shop in Kindle Store” web link, resync and Menu button are the only other controls. The Menu button does very little at this point other than putting in your account information and managing your Kindle account through a link that opens a web browser window to Amazon.com.

When you are reading a book, you can change the size of type, go forward and back in the book, bookmark a page or goto a specific location. Finally, a button will show or hide bookmarks, notes, highlights or a combination of the three. That’s it!

You can not invert the color of the page of night time reading like you can on the iPhone app (turn the text white on a black page). You can not change the way your home page looks. It’s a pretty boring white background page. Most surprisingly, you can’t even highlight or make annotations in the PC app, something the iPhone application does quite nicely! You can’t change the size of the book previews, change the background page or set any other preference you might think of. It would be nice if the Home page supported a cover flow page view and brief synopsis of by each book. Social network features would be nice to have. These could be pulled directly from the Amazon store, Twitter and Facebook.

To be fair, the app is still in beta and I am sure Amazon will address these short comings in future software updates. I’m surprised that the Kindle app for both the PC and the iPhone don’t have a built-in dictionary the way the Stanza application does. Well, we can hope that that will come sooner than later.

(stay tuned for a review of Stanza and the Kindle app for iPhone)

AppleTV updates coming?

Apple is rumored (http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/12/possible-apple-tv-subscription-service-faces-uphill-battle.ars) to be in negotiations with at least two TV networks (Disney & CBS) to include a subscription based service to the iTunes offerings. Assuming this to be true then implies that an iTunes update is forth coming too. Additionally, we can also expect an AppleTV software update to support TV subscriptions from iTunes. I believe that an iTunes and AppleTV update will be part of the January 27th Apple announcement and that the rumored Tablet/Slate product will include software that will allow it to serve as a wireless remote to control AppleTV. Think of this Remote app on the Slate as a much expanded version of the application already available on the iPhone/iPod Touch but with cover flow and a more refined interface and search/browse feature.

some Apple slate/tablet thoughts

While the picture above may be an interesting illustration or mockup of the proposed Apple Slate I think the interface will be a cross between OS X and features of the iPhone.

I have speculated that OS X, as a modular, modern operating system, can scale across a wide variety of hardware platforms in ways that are more difficult for other operating systems. The iPhone OS and the AppleTV OS are all variants of the OS X that we use on our desktop and laptop Macs. In the case of the former devices, Apple uses the elements appropriate to those devices. It doesn’t just wedge the OS to make it fit the device they want it to run on. Menu bars, windows and folders, mouse and keyboard controls aren’t always the appropriate way to control a device that you can use with one hand or that can hang on the wall and be viewed from 10’ away.

A device like the iPhone may use applications that look more like “widgets” or “desk accessories” than stand alone applications that we use on our Macs. Scale the screen by 2 or 3 times and you can pull the iPhone apps up along with it and some of the elements of the desktop and laptop down. Add to it certain technological developments that aren’t very useful to a stationary computer that sits on a desk – motion sensors, accelerometers, tactile feedback, multi-touch and, like the iPhone, you have the makings of a very interesting device.

Apples advantage, one of many in fact, is that it controls (most of) the whole widget. It designs both the hardware and the software and does an extremely good job of integrating those things. Any other company must rely on either Microsoft, Linux or some other “open source” OS and applications that they have very little control over. It some cases, while they tout this as a virtue, you find they begin to try to exert more control and become less “open” as they struggle to control the device they created.

The control Apple currently lacks, however, is one we are all in some ways in thrall to. That is the wireless delivery of the internet to whatever device you choose to carry. While Apple consistently gets high marks from consumer reports and any number of polls, when it comes to wireless service on the iPhone, as delivered by AT&T, it is the service provider that tarnishes Apples image. This was made manifest when Motorola produced the ROKR and probably was a very big contributing factor to Apple proceeding with iPhone development.

Two and a half years later and I can believe that Apple and most of their users don’t like having their hands, fingers and thumbs tied to AT&T. I know I don’t. Like the experience with Motorola, that relationship was an interesting experience and one presumably soon to end or to change in radically new ways. The experience of using the internet on the iPhone, the initial lack of MMS, still no video streaming and tethering all conspire to limit the device in ways out of Apples control.

In the end, a part of me wonders what would happen if Apple (and the more radical side of me thinks a partnership with at least Google) decided to embark on the creation and implementation of a new nationwide high speed wireless network to compete against the likes of AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Qwest, Cox, Comcast et. al? What if they gave it away for free with the purchase of any Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch, or Apple branded device with wireless capabilities built in? Or sold as an extension of a now curiously appropriately named product called MobileMe?

That would certainly shake things up even more than the iSlate will.