Newton Poetry

Lots going on at the WWDC 2008 keynote, which I finally streamed and watched with much joy. Watch it yourself to see all the action, clapping, and skinnier Steve Jobs.

In the meantime, a few thoughts:

• iPod is now a great name. Some folks made fun of the name “iPod” when it was first released. What’s so “pod” about music, after all? But now it fits perfectly. With the iPod Touch, the “pod” become the mobile computing platform – a place to get your e-mail, web, games, and – yes – music. The iPod is now a “pod” for your mobile computing platform.
• “We’ve learned so much.” Here, Jobs displays some real humbleness. .Mac kind of sucked. MobileMe is an improvement of sorts. And Apple admits they had things to learn. That’s great.
• $199? That’s all me. But because I’m such a big fan of the white Apple products (iPod, iBook, everything), I may splurge and grab the 16 GB version. No 32 GB iPhone? That does stink.
• Wait for the Snow Leopard. I wished for a refurbished iMac with Leopard, but now I may just wait until Snow Leopard is released. Why not? “Improved” is always a good word when OSes are concerned. And waiting has seemed to pay off for me so far.
• Chinese character recognizer hack? I can see it happening. Use the handwriting recognition app for Chinese characters and hack it so it will recognize English characters. Boom – a Newton-like HWR emulator. And Jobs was right in the keynote: the lack of plastic keys or a physical stylus actually plays in the multi-language-supported iPhone’s and iPod Touch’s favor.

Now I have to wait until July 11 (or maybe a day or two after, depending on lines and in-store activation), but oh well. This is what I’ve been waiting for. A true successor to the Newton has been born.

Behold: iPhone 3G