Future of this Blog

As you’ve noticed, I’ve totally neglected this blog. This is because I have found it too difficult to keep up a blog solely about Apple news. Instead, I have recently opted to make a blog about my life in general.

You can find it at http://thejameswilson.com

So what does this mean for this blog? Well, I’m going to use it for one purpose only. I will use this blog after each and every Apple event or announcement. Between those events, don’t expect anything new to be posted. If something is posted, be very surprised! So don’t be sad! I’ll be posting soon after WWDC! In the mean time, get your daily dose of me here.

James

MacWorld Keynote: Final Thoughts

The Future

This year is not going to be an easy year for any company, what ever their industry. With the economic downturn (take a drink) affecting everyone and everything, Apple has had to adjust itself accordingly.

What we saw today was Apple’s response to what is happening with the rest of the market. Things are slowing down and now is not the time to be bringing out anything revolutionary and financially risky. What we saw today were improvements on existing products and upgrades that had already been planned and organized long before the global meltdown (take another drink). What we saw was Apple’s last keynote at MacWorld, a move to save money as well as to control their media cycle.

For example, Apple would not be planning to make a niche device like the Apple TV any time in the near future. The products we see now are the same products we will see for a while to come. This is not saying that they will not be upgraded, that’s a given, it just means that no brand new products will come along for a while unless they had already been planned and matured before the economy took a tumble (drink).

It’s not a major claim, but I think we will see Apple work on it’s core products and that’s about it. We’ll have to wait to see if I’m wrong.

The Coverage

I was slightly disappointed by the coverage of the keynote this year. Things seamed to just grind to a halt half way through the presentation.

It started with the MacRumors live blog being shut down after hackers broke in and started planting porn all over it. That was early on in the coverage and was very disappointing because MacRumors had the best implementation of all the major blog sites. They had auto updating feeds (not just a page that refreshed every 30 seconds) which would have been fantastic throughout the keynote.

Gdgt and Gizmodo has auto refreshing pages which would have been fine in the place of MacRumors. But it was not to be the case. Gizmodo started tripping over itself and crashing, no good. Then everyone rushed to Gdgt, causing that to crash. As time went on Gdgt’s auto refresh inteval got longer, changing from 30 seconds to 60 seconds until it eventually decided that it wasn’t going to auto refresh. Oh well.

My frantic search for information brought me to two Ustream feeds, which were closed down half way through the presentation. All of this happened less than half way through the keynote. My only saving grace turned out to be Twitter. @jalada made this incredibly useful website devoted to the #macworld and #mwsf09 Twitter hash tags. The page was auto updating in front of my eyes with comments from people left, right and center. It wasn’t ideal, but it worked.

So, where do you turn to when all the traditional forms of online media (that’s an oxymoron) crash? Twitter!

Code Name: Brick

After rumors a few weeks ago that a German store had received new MacBook Pros, we now have 9to5 Mac and MacRumors reporting that they have strong evidence that a new line of MacBooks (not the Pros) that could be arriving as soon as October 14! Supposedly, the tip off comes from the same supplier in Asia who let the world know about the ‘Rainbow iPod Nanos’.

It is rumored to be code named ‘Brick’. What is interesting about this is what the name may illude to. While some are speculating it refers to the form factor (I hope not, I thought we were past the brick laptop stage) Macenstein are saying it may refer to something else. They are deciphering it as a Windows killer, literally saying this about it: “After all, how do you break “Windows”? You throw a brick through them!”

But what would break the Microsoft market share? To answer this question, we have to look at what has probably constricted Apple’s market share until now. The answer is the price point. If you compare them, a PC could cost $200 less than a similarly spec’d MacBook. If Apple dropped the price of the MacBook to around $1000, they would be in an excellent position to make an agressive push into the market.

While this would be fantastic (I want to buy a MacBook for university), it could mean massive changes to the walled garden Mac users currently live in. In my opinion, Apple products are only as good as they are because they only have a 7% market share. Apple know their market very well and know what they want. Should millions of people join the market, they might have to diversify what they do for the Mac, moving it ever closer to Windows. I don’t want a product that doesn’t work like I want it to. Windows only has a bad name because Microsoft have to deal with the fact that 1 billion computers running Windows turn on every day and not all of those will work the way they’re supposed to. Apple will have to deal with this as well should their market share grow dramatically (but logically it won’t grow enough to threaten Windows).

On a personal point, Macs are only cool because on 7% of people have one! Lets face the facts, we have Macs because we are egotistical, competitive and want to say “Look at me, I have a Mac and you don’t because you can’t afford one.” Macs are cool because it is an exclusive club and that is something that we are protective of! If Macs evolve to take over 90% of the market, I would switch to Windows (should it improve) just to stay cool and say “Look at me, I have a PC and you don’t.”

Dear Apple,

Don’t change =)

3 Days to Go

Three days out from the now announced Apple iPod Event the rumors are starting to become settled and more concrete. Here is a round up of the new products you can expect from Apple on September 9th (if the rumors turn out the be true, which they will):

New iPod Touches and Nanos (New iPod Classic?):

This rumors is a given considering the FCC released their dimensions earlier this week.

The iPod Touchshould be getting a face lift to be more in line with the new iPhone 3g and the iPod Nano will receive the curved treatment (luckily the screen won’t be curved judging from the images.) Details here and here.

iTunes 8:

Being a completely new update there are going to be quite a few new features. Here is a list from Kevin Rose’s blog post:

iTunes 8 includes Genius, which makes playlists from songs in your library that go great together. Genius also includes Genius sidebar, which recommends music from the iTunes Store that you don’t already have.

With iTunes 8, browse your artists and albums visually with the new Grid view; download your favorite TV shows in HD quality from the iTunes Store; sync your media with iPod nano (4th generation), iPod classic (2nd generation), and iPod touch (2nd generation); and enjoy a stunning new music visualizer.

There is the mention of the 2^nd generation iPod Classic! But it’s probably just a face lift.

What isn’t mentioned in Kevin Rose’s post is the rumored inclusion of a new visualizer from Robert Hodgin. The visualizer is called Magnetosphere and looks awesome! This rumor came up after Hodgin removed the free download from his website saying that he had sold the rights to Magnetosphere to a 3rd party. Later on, Kevin Rose confirmed that Magnetosphere was the visualizer he saw in a build of iTunes 8. More info here.

It all seems to be coming together in the land of Apple. Watch out for all this stuff on September 9th!

Screencasting

 

Recently I have had to start doing screencasts (a video of you computer screen’s output) and with so many programs out there, which did I choose?. Looking around I came across the usual suspects of Screenflow (USD$99.99) and Snapz Pro ($69). These are renowned as excellent applications but what I didn’t like was the price. Being a student it’s pretty obvious why.

 

I then searched further down the list and came to two programs: iShowU (USD$20) and Screenflick ($29).

These programs are quite similar. Both have a similar feature list (although Screenflick had a few extra niceties) and a similar price tag. What made up my mind is quite simple; the user experience. While iShowU is a series of lists, Screenflick is modualed into four sections: Screen, Audio, Keyboard, Mouse. It presents to you the options in a clear way making it seam less daunting. A useful feature that iShowU lacks but Screenflick has raw footage capture. iShowU compresses you video as you record, making the framerate drop dramatically during recording. Screenflick compresses after you record and allows you to choose the compression settings after you have filmed.

What swayed me was the polish of Screenflick. The Cocoaness of it is very apparent from the use of a Quicklook style preview pane. It’s fast, easy and beautiful! For budget screencast applications, Screenflick has my vote.