You maniacs, you blew it up!
So Apple made it's big MacWorld announcements today, and I'm pretty much in awe of just about everything they announced. So I'm pretty much going to rant/rave about them, and I'm putting it in a cut, because I'm a nice guy like that.
Mac mini
People have been predicting this one for a little while now, and I understand some sights are facing lawsuits for leaking it. But the Mac mini still amazes me. It's smaller and better than I had imagined it might be. I had been thinking it might be something the size of my old IIsi or something similar and inexpensive; this thing is TINY and inexpensive. If I had money to burn, I might pick one up to use as a Mac development workstation.
The only complaint I can make is it's not a G5, but I suppose if Apple is pushing out a new G4 box, they're not going to totally ditch their old 32-bit processors yet.
I'm also appalled by some hidden costs. Upgrading to a gig of RAM costs $425, almost as much as the box itself. I'm wondering if that RAM is built in or if it'd be cheaper to buy from Crucial.
iWork
I heard about this on Slashdot ahead of time too, and am actually a little disappointed. I remember seeing an article by Robert Cringley predicting something like this, and I had sort of expected Apple to push out an entire office suite, not just throw things out one at a time.
Then again, Pages doesn't look too shabby. If my college sells a cheap copy for students, I'd consider picking it up to check it out.
iPod Shuffle
This thing looks awesome, and the price seems pretty good too. Like a nifty low-end iPod. If I didn't already own an iPod, I'd probably pick this guy up instead of one of the standard ones, especially since I tend to just listen to one or two albums for a while over and over, meaning my ton of storage on my iPod is mostly stuff I haven't listened to in a long time, and I'm constantly shuffling old stuff off and a new album of the week on.
I wish it look flash memory cards though, it'd be nice to put my own SD or CF card in there.
iLife
This is a standard update, though I think it's pretty cool that Apple is throwing Spotlight capabilities into iPhoto. The folder hierarchies also sounds nice.
What I hope they do though, is make iPhoto FASTER so that it's actually usable.
None of the other updates sound particularly interesting (I downloaded the iTunes one, since it showed up on Software Update, but haven't goofed around with it much yet).
Interestingly enough, I don't particularly plan on buying much of anything announced, but the fact that there's so much new slick stuff out there has got me wanting to make new stuff of my own. Good for Apple. It's always nice seeing the new things that make you want to do that yourself.
What I really want to see from Apple though, and I imagine I may never come to light, is support for C# outside of mono. If Apple could interface Carbon with C# Forms, things could be really awesome. I really like what I'm seeing of C# so far.
Then again, Java is pretty much turning into C#. But there's no Java 1.5 support until Tiger, I think >_<
Then again, if Apple did that, they'd have to make XCode better too, that also felt clunky, and some compile errors I received were less than helpful, and I had to end up going command line for projects.
Anyhow, that's that. I'm also a bit frustrated that I may not be able to go to the Amateur Radio classes I wanted to check out this quarter. Though I may have an idea for a workaround there.
Mac mini
People have been predicting this one for a little while now, and I understand some sights are facing lawsuits for leaking it. But the Mac mini still amazes me. It's smaller and better than I had imagined it might be. I had been thinking it might be something the size of my old IIsi or something similar and inexpensive; this thing is TINY and inexpensive. If I had money to burn, I might pick one up to use as a Mac development workstation.
The only complaint I can make is it's not a G5, but I suppose if Apple is pushing out a new G4 box, they're not going to totally ditch their old 32-bit processors yet.
I'm also appalled by some hidden costs. Upgrading to a gig of RAM costs $425, almost as much as the box itself. I'm wondering if that RAM is built in or if it'd be cheaper to buy from Crucial.
iWork
I heard about this on Slashdot ahead of time too, and am actually a little disappointed. I remember seeing an article by Robert Cringley predicting something like this, and I had sort of expected Apple to push out an entire office suite, not just throw things out one at a time.
Then again, Pages doesn't look too shabby. If my college sells a cheap copy for students, I'd consider picking it up to check it out.
iPod Shuffle
This thing looks awesome, and the price seems pretty good too. Like a nifty low-end iPod. If I didn't already own an iPod, I'd probably pick this guy up instead of one of the standard ones, especially since I tend to just listen to one or two albums for a while over and over, meaning my ton of storage on my iPod is mostly stuff I haven't listened to in a long time, and I'm constantly shuffling old stuff off and a new album of the week on.
I wish it look flash memory cards though, it'd be nice to put my own SD or CF card in there.
iLife
This is a standard update, though I think it's pretty cool that Apple is throwing Spotlight capabilities into iPhoto. The folder hierarchies also sounds nice.
What I hope they do though, is make iPhoto FASTER so that it's actually usable.
None of the other updates sound particularly interesting (I downloaded the iTunes one, since it showed up on Software Update, but haven't goofed around with it much yet).
Interestingly enough, I don't particularly plan on buying much of anything announced, but the fact that there's so much new slick stuff out there has got me wanting to make new stuff of my own. Good for Apple. It's always nice seeing the new things that make you want to do that yourself.
What I really want to see from Apple though, and I imagine I may never come to light, is support for C# outside of mono. If Apple could interface Carbon with C# Forms, things could be really awesome. I really like what I'm seeing of C# so far.
Then again, Java is pretty much turning into C#. But there's no Java 1.5 support until Tiger, I think >_<
Then again, if Apple did that, they'd have to make XCode better too, that also felt clunky, and some compile errors I received were less than helpful, and I had to end up going command line for projects.
Anyhow, that's that. I'm also a bit frustrated that I may not be able to go to the Amateur Radio classes I wanted to check out this quarter. Though I may have an idea for a workaround there.