Bye bye white iPod?
iMacs go aluminium, iPhone already out… pretty obvious what the next iPod’s going to look like, isn’t it?
Quick notes on the Apple keynote: iMacs are pretty but there’s a bit of a price jump there (cheapest iMac yesterday was £679, now it’s $200 more in the US. UK prices aren’t up as I type this); iWork seems to have taken a big leap forward and will make hay while MS Office languishes in delay hell; iWeb’s new features seem to be Google, Google and Google although its new support for personal domains falls into the about-bloody-time too category; it’ll be interesting to see how the new keyboard feels, because it looks like an RSI disaster area; big leap forward in iMovie, iPhoto looks a bit better and .mac gets a long overdue upgrade; reports of Mac Mini’s death premature; iMacs going aluminium is yet another sign that the white iPod’s going to be replaced with something like the iPhone.
As for the Q&A: no questions about Fake Steve Jobs? Sheesh.
19 Responses to “Bye bye white iPod?”
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mupwangle on August 7th, 2007
Two things about the new macs – the new GPUs are directx 10 compatible (for dual-booting folks) and the new memory configurations come with twin slots but with a single SODIMM, so if you upgrade like me you don’t end up with a 512mb chip lying about. Also it’ll take 4Gb memory but that’s only good for leopard or vista 64bit.
Gary on August 7th, 2007
Ah, that’s interesting.
Price increase isn’t as bad as it could have been: £799. I think it’s a shame there’s no 17-inch any more though – that and a 12-inch MacBook Pro are gaps in the line-up, I reckon.
Mac Minis have Core 2 Duos now.
iWork 08 could be a disaster for Microsoft’s MacBU, I think. Just as MS announces its delay, the new version of Pages pops up with support for Word 2007 files. My copy of Office doesn’t do that – the (beta) file converter seems to work one time out of every ten. It’s frustrating because I need Word for work – a lot of the book stuff I do is heavy on the document collaboration and reviewing stuff – but I’m getting mildly irritated by running it in emulation.
Gary on August 7th, 2007
Actually, looking at the pages on Apple.com pages can import (and presumably save) Word document reviewing stuff. If it does live word count too (and doesn’t crawl) I’d consider switching. Off to try the demo.
Gary on August 7th, 2007
It’s not bad. Live word count in the Inspector, but – a deal-breaker for me – I can’t find a way to set the default image import behaviour as inline rather than floating images (if anyone can find a way, please let me know – the set as default image style option doesn’t seem to make those changes). Sounds like a minor niggle but dragging images into word docs at specific points in the text is something I do dozens of times every day.
Seems a *lot* quicker than the previous version (playing around on a powerbook G4 just now).
Squander Two on August 8th, 2007
What a disappointment: they redesign the iMac yet inexplicably decide to keep the horrifically ugly foot. Yuk.
> it’ll be interesting to see how the new keyboard feels
By the way, Controllermate is absolute class — though it takes a while to figure out how the hell it works — and enables you to set up PC keyboards to work properly with Macs.
mupwangle on August 8th, 2007
>>I think it’s a shame there’s no 17-inch any more though
Have you actually used a 17″ widescreen monitor? It is far too little in this day and age.
>>Word for work – a lot of the book stuff I do is heavy on the document collaboration and reviewing stuff – but I’m getting mildly irritated by running it in emulation.
Have you tried parallels yet? I was mucking about with it and Word 2002 seems to run pretty quickly under virtualisation (obviously starting up takes a bit)
There is also a free beta of VMWare fusion doing the rounds too.
>>What a disappointment: they redesign the iMac yet inexplicably decide to keep the horrifically ugly foot. Yuk.
I thought that the redesign wasn’t up to much in general. They look better off than on now.
Gary on August 8th, 2007
Have you actually used a 17″ widescreen monitor?
Yep, there’s one in the laptop.
Parallels and VMWare are all right, yeah, but I’m quite happy with Remote Desktop Connection. Or just powering up the Vista laptop, or switching monitor #2 to the PC instead of the Mac. Dual booting and virtualisation are pretty pointless when there’s a PC sitting there.
mupwangle on August 8th, 2007
>.Yep, there’s one in the laptop.
And that is your only monitor? Answer honestly here. ;-)
>>Dual booting and virtualisation are pretty pointless when there’s a PC sitting there.
Yeah, but you are entirely responsible for Glasgow’s carbon footprint. (That PC+Xbox360)
Tony Kiernan on August 8th, 2007
>>I thought that the redesign wasn’t up to much in general.
OK, I understand that bit. (I like it. And, I’ve never really given the foot any thought. Suppose it might be ugly, but it’s inobtrusive enough.)
>>They look better off than on now.
Not being one of those netpicking tossers, but that I can’t make head nor tails of. Howver, I’m intrigued as to what you could possible mean. (Although, I suspect it might be similar to a Sue Lawley play telescope.)
Gary on August 8th, 2007
> And that is your only monitor? Answer honestly here.
No, it’s hooked into a 21-inch. But that’s because I use twin screens for working. When I’m arsing around on the internet I’m quite happy with the 15″ powerbook.
Tony Kiernan on August 8th, 2007
As a bit of an aside; I’ve just bought my first Windows machine. Not only that, but it’s a semi-tablet too. I feel kinda dirty.
mupwangle on August 8th, 2007
>>but that I can’t make head nor tails of.
They’ve made the screen all nice and shiny with a black border round it. When it if off it looks OK. When you switch it on it has a horrid black border around the screen.
I prefer the old one.
Squander Two on August 8th, 2007
> I prefer the old one.
I prefer the first ones.
> Not being one of those netpicking tossers
I think I’d have to call my union rep if you were.
mupwangle on August 8th, 2007
>>I prefer the first ones.
The original CRT ones? They wouldn’t fit on my desk. I’ve even got used to the chin on the current one. You have to be careful upgrading memory on it as it tends to fall out when you undo the screws.
On that note – anyone looking for a 512Mb SODIMM PC2-5300 (The sort in current macbooks and imacs) as I have a surplus one. Only dropped once. (See above)
Squander Two on August 8th, 2007
> The original CRT ones?
Yes, though the dome with a screen on a stick was pretty good too.
> They wouldn’t fit on my desk.
You should see my desk. Just finished building it a few weeks ago. Eight feet long. Cower, mortals!
mupwangle on August 8th, 2007
My desk isn’t as big as that – but the bit for the monitor is only a bit bigger than a keyboard.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mupwangle/268380998/
Gary on August 8th, 2007
I’ve written about iWork/Office at Tech.co.uk, btw.
Stephen on August 9th, 2007
I went to the Apple Store in Brent Cross a little while ago to see the new iMacs. It took a major act of will to walk out without one. They are really, really amazing. And the new keyboard is very cool.
I also played with Numbers, the new spreadsheet part of iWork. Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant. For anyone who’s spent ages trying to make Excel spreadsheets look half-decent, or has been snookered by adding rows or columns that mess up other parts of your sheet, it’s a revelation.
mupwangle on August 9th, 2007
Having now seen various pictures (non-publicity ones) I think they are nicer than I first thought. Still not enough of a difference to make me want one though. Mine’ll do.