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.
Stressed about the “one more thing” that will be announced this Monday, June 9 at the Worldwide Developers Conference? Fear not. We have a round-up of rumors, damned lies, and fun games to play while you’re waiting for the next big thing.
Snow Leopard strays from PPC. This one was first featured at TUAW.com, but the Cult of Mac guys really touch on what a change Mac users have seen from the days of OS 8 and 9 to now. In short, “The Mac is dead. Long live OS X.”
From .Mac to MobileMe. John Gruber did some snooping and found the new domain names Apple registered. People have been bitching about .Mac for years (I had it for a year, and it was…eh), so this could be pretty exciting.
WWDC banner pictures. That’s right. They’re up, and the speculation is flying. OS X iPhone, anyone?
Newton 2.0. This one has been like Lazarus. A new MessagePad in the form of a Mac tablet? Supposedly, there’s a 50/50 chance. But we’ll see. After all, Apple is shopping for handwriting engineers.
I’ve decided not to participate in any of the live blogging feeds or constant refreshing of Apple news sites. I’m going to wait until the Quicktime video is released (which I watch faithfully anyway), just so it can all feel new and “just announced” to me. Should be fun.
Leander Kahney’s profile on Bill Atkinson, the original designer of Apple’s super-cool program HyperCard, has some folks feeling nostalgic for easy programming and cards arranged in stacks.
Which is cool. Stories about companies keeping inventory and invoicing duties on HyperCard – still to this day – remind us that old-school Apple is still usable and practical.
lets you put text, drawings, pictures and sound into a stack of smart cards. Add buttons to navigate, fields to collect data and scripts to bring your project alive with the tap of a pen. NewtCard is a Hypercard-like environment for Newton devices.
I’ve only played around with HyperCard on my Mac SE, but it seems HyperCard was an earlier version of HTML forms. In fact, Atkinson laments that his hyper-creation didn’t involve networking, or else it could’ve become the first (hyper)Web.
“Support is definitely limited,” George Henne of NS Basic says. “Still making NewtCard available makes absolutely no sense commercially, but it’s one of our favorite products of all time.”
A hundred bucks seems like a steep price for something to play around with on your Newt, but what the hey – HyperCard still has paying fans. Why not for MessagePad users?
Even better? NS Basic is offering a package deal: NewtCard AND NS Basic/CE for $99.95. Order it here.
“Please understand that it’s been years since we looked at the code,” Henne told the Newtontalk list. “We’ll do the best we can to help with support, but our memories are limited.”
I like how the creator uses the Newton to speak with the audience. Also a cool demo of the wifi capabilities of the MessagePad 2000 – complete with Apple sticker.
I’ll tackle the wifi project when I nab a 2100 sometime this summer, but in the meantime you can learn how to send a fax with your Newton.
For a guy that was no fan of social networking sites Myspace or Facebook – or computers in general, once upon a time – Brian Floe sure thinks along those lines.
Floe is the creator of MyAppleSpace.com, a growing social site dedicated to Apple fans.
Why not just create a “Mac Lovers” group on Facebook?
“Why not just buy a PC and put an Apple sticker on it?” Floe says. “Mac users especially always want the next big thing, not the second best thing. We have high standards.”
Good point. That’s why Floe says MyAppleSpace is “a little space for the rest of us.”
iPhone, iPod, Mac or even AppleTV users now have a common home to explore the everything Apple, share experiences, network with other users, create usergroups within the community, create their own profile with their own private blog, upload Apple related video, photos and even music.
MyAppleSpace is pretty simple to start out. It has some customization features (my profile is “Bondi”) and the ability to comment and blog and share videos. All pretty standard stuff. I created a group called “Newton Users” (nach), and it was a snap. Now we’ll see if anyone joins.
Because that’s the power of social networks: the bigger, the better. But an Apple-themed site can stay just small enough to be comfy and familiar.
Check it out, and join my Newton group. I’ll see you on MyAppleSpace.
This time, our green friend made Wired.com’s “Lamest Fetish Items” list. Gear lust gone bad? Says Wired: “Most misunderstood gadget ever? Or biggest flop? Both.”
Flop this. Newton seems to appear on every list ever made by a technology-based site, for good or ill.
Enough’s enough already, folks. We know the MessagePad was both cool for the time and a big commercial flop. We get it.
