This morning’s keynote by Jobs at MWNY drew more outrage from the Mac community than just about any keynote in recent memory. But before I get into the why’s and wherefores of the furnace of Mac fury that has been unleashed on the message boards in recent hours, I’ll give a brief rundown of the high points of the keynote. Note that I didn’t watch the keynote, but I did follow the live updates atMacObserverand in the Ars Forum:
- 17″ widescreen iMacs: We all knew they were coming, but I for one didn’t know they’d be widescreen. They look nice, if you dig the iLamp design.
- Bigger, better iPod: Up to 20 GB of storage, official support for calendar and contacts, and Windows support via MusicMatch.
- iCal: A collaborative calendaring app for OS X. *Yawn*
- iSync: Now this, I like. iSync is a SyncML-based solution that lets you sync contacts and calendar info among a variety of devices, including the Mac (of course), a Palm handheld, various GPRS mobile phones, the iPod, and Apple’s upcoming iPDA… oh, waitaminute, Jobs didn’t announce a PDA. But he did showcase everything else that would go along with one, which in addition to iCal and iSync includes…
- …Inkwell: We already knew about this from the previous MacWorld, but I mention it because I thought this quote from the MacObserver coverage was interesting: “[Jobs is] talking Inkwell now, said that the Newton Group was still at Apple and doing very exciting things. Quickly skipped over that, however, and moved on to Rendezvous…” I don’t believe that Apple will get back into “traditional” PDAs, but some kind of pen-based, PDA-like device would certainly fit well with the way that their particular vision of the whole “post-PC,” “digital hub” thing is shaping up. It wouldn’t be a “traditional” PDA, though; it would more along the lines of the iPod, but maybe with a color screen and/or Airport capabilities. It could be that the iPod itself will steadily morph into a more full-featured PDA with pen input, a better screen, etc.
- QuickTime 6: MPEG-4 viewing and authoring for the masses, now available on the Mac.
- Various Finder improvements: The search box, spring-loaded folders, multithreading, and other goodness that OS X users have been clamoring for have finally arrived.
- iTunes 3: Automatic P2P music sharing via Rendezvous. I have seen the future of music “piracy” and it looks a lot like the whole homosexual “tea room” phenomenon: nervous, well-groomed males meeting up at WLAN hotspots in public parks to hook up with strangers for a little anonymous file-swapping, all punctuated by periodic police raids.
