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iPod Shuffle, Mac Mini, iLife '05, iWork
A number of announcements from the Mac World keynote this afternoon.
The iPod Shuffle is pack-of-gum sized, no screen, weighs less than an ounce. Ships today, $99 for the half gig, $149 for a gig.
The Mac Mini is the headless iMac... 6x6x2.5 with all the expected plugs, starting at $499.
Lot's of tiger bits, spotlight, virtual folders in Mail.app. iLife '05 will ship Jan 22. iPhoto gets folders and video support. iMovie supports HD. GarageBand gets 8 channel recording. iWork includes Keynote 2, and 'Pages' the new word processor and ships the same day as iLife.
Nice. These types of things at these pricepoints are the types of things that can change the world - every kid & teenager could end up with one, using their Mom & Dad's hand-me-down Keyboard/Video/Mouse.
Well now that's it's true...damn, even I might buy one!
I'm begining to get the feeling that Steve Jobs might be trying to reposition Apple. Hardware is a mugs game, after all. We all know what happened the last time Apple tried to licence the Mac to clone builders..but what if they tried it now?
It seems to me that over the last two or three years Apple has been working to reposition itself from a hardware company to a more diverse place, where the OS and the services it offers (E.g. iTunes) are what matters more than the hardware. The $499 Mac would seem to enforce that point. The idea is obviously to try and penetrate into the mid range market; make the Mac an everymans computer. If they can do it, and if they can increase their market share, they would certainly seem to have enough room to manovour and licence the Mac to clone builders again..
There will be a lot of bitching about the new iPod not having a screen. However I say that apple has done it once again. You have to understand the market for the new iPod, it is not meant to hold your entire music folder, its not meant to go with you on long drives.
The new iPod is for the runners, for the people who take it with them to the gym, etc. These are people who wouldn't be navigating songs anyway, they just toss on a playlist, hit shuffle and go. This is exactly what the new ipod does, with only 200 songs, you don't really need to select your songs.
If you want a display, if you want to hold other stuff, this iPod isn't for you, get the other ones. If you just want to listen to music while you work out, then this is exactly what you want.
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
And yes, Mac mini will take advantage of your two-button USB mouse with scroll-wheel and your favorite USB keyboard. Just plug them in.
Since you supply the mouse and keyboard, they've essentially nipped that perennial argument in the bud.
The box is - get this - smaller than the standard iPod box.
That's what they'll complain about. No mouse sold with the computer. Cheap-ass Apple, expecting me to already have a USB mouse... oh, wait...
I like how Apple suggests on their Macmini page that programmers should get one and a KVM switch, and put it on top of their PC.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Disclaimer: I am a developer for Mac OS X OpenOffice.org and a founder of the NeoOffice project.
Just the fact that you can import and export doesn't exactly mean it's 100% compatible. Heck, even Office v.X/2004 isn't 100% compatible with Windows Office generated files. One of the strengths of OpenOffice.org and NeoOffice is the accuracy of their import and export filters.
I wouldn't suspect Pages would be successful converting Word documents that have embedded Excel spreadsheets and charts those that go trapesing off to do database queries with macros. I suspect Pages would convert them to tatters.
While Pages may be sufficient for doing the basics of letter writing and entry-level document preparation, many of the more complex business level documents still will require Microsoft Office or an equivalent alternative. Office may be bloatware, but that doesn't prevent people from finding a way to use all of those features and then complaining when they don't work in another product. That makes true document compatibility a difficult task that can't fully be addrsesed by a word processing application alone.
ed
After selling 10 million iPods (jesus christmas!) I don't think they are moving away from hardware.
What I see more focus on hardware design, the exact opposite of the clone fiasco. They are getting, and supporting, higher margins on their hardware because of their design engineering. No other MP3 player looks or feels as good as the iPod. The Mini looks looks like another homerun, their first small form factor PC and its uniquely Apple and great looking.
Apple's focus has shifted to perfecting the Human-Computer interface. This is what it was all about originally. They are focusing on the look and feel of products, both hardware and software.
Get the details right, and they will come.
Spencer Ogden
Somewhat overpriced, but note that the Mini has a Radeon graphics processor and 32 MB of dedicated graphics RAM.
I'll just about guarantee you that the Gateway (by the way, ick!) you linked to has a crappy video processor and shared RAM for graphics.
What I wanna know is, how soon until I can run Linux on this baby and use it for a way-cool MythTV frontend?
Want to share your documents online? Please, for crying out loud, write your documents in HTML and make them actually work on the web instead of uploading a bunch of junk in binary file formats.
I think you are mistaking the point. If you want to share your documents online, in general PDF is a great format. For example, if you want to distribute a newsletter via e-mail, PDF is a good way to go. If you want to send out marketing info, PDF is a good way to go. It is standard, exact, and a single file. Doc is not standard, and may or may not be readable on your platform, and implies to people that they need to buy products from MS. Doc files also are extra large and may include way too much information about what is on your hard-drive. HTML is great for hosting a file for the Web (note this is not the same as the internet, it is a subset), but it is a crappy way to e-mail things, and is not easy to print. If you have any images, or multiple pages, you end up with a slew of files for a single document.
In any case, Pages supports export to PDF and HTML so if a person was planning on hosting something as a web page, it should not be hard to make an HTML version. I get a little upset whenever I see the bad reputation PDF has. Every time I open one on a Windows machine, I remember why this is the case. It is because Acrobat reader is a dog-slow piece of crap, that will bring a Windows box to a crawl while trying to load and scroll. On OS X PDFs are great, and finding one in a web page is not annoying. They download in the background, scroll just fine, and do not make your machine go catatonic for 10 minutes while all you want to do is read a few pages.
There are two reasons that Apple doesn't ship two-button mice - one is simplicity for beginning users, the other is that it forces lazy developers to expose functionality in the UI and NOT just bury it in a contextual menu. Windows drives me batty because features are commonly implemented that way.
As Jobs noted, the iPod Mini took a nice chunk out of the Flash MP3 player market and thus the Shuffle is meant to take the remainder (low end). However, if the Shuffle were to have a screen (and thus be fully functional) it would almost certainly eat into Mini sales. Thus, the lack of screen is not only a design (elegant) and engineering (fewer parts) triumph, but also a marketing coup (increase marketshare without cannabalizing sales). Impressive.
It's all so beautiful...[sniff].
Okay, the new Mac Mini is going to be perfect for my mother. It's certainly going onto the "iWant List".
iLife 05 and iWork I'm going to put on order today (if I can get through to the Apple Store -- that's for /.'ing Apple everyone ;) ).
Damn. I had prepared myself this morning to find out that maybe one of the rumours was true, but all of the major rumours turned out to be true. Joy oh joy! It's like having another Christmas all over again :).
Please allow me to point one last thing out: to all of those here (and elsewhere) who complained that Macs were too expensive, it's now time to put up or shut up. Buy the new Mac Mini, or never speak of the purported high cost of Apple hardware again.
Yaz.
I know, I've been putting off buying a mac for quite some time, this makes it much harder to just say no.
i use linux and windows oh god how can i have an opinion
A bold move?
OS X has never been limitd to a 1 button mouse. IN fact, every mac user I've seen who uses a mouse uses a typical multi-button optical mouse, or other exotic device. Almost nobody uses the stock 1 button mouse.
The only reason it's even mentioned here is because apple doens't supply peripherals with the mini.
You plug in a two button mouse, and it behaves as you would expect, it's not a "kludge" or anything like that. THis is nothing new, macs haven't been limited to one button mice since along, long time ago.
Disclaimer: I am a developer of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X and a founder of the NeoOffice project
No, the new iWork is definitely not a replacement for the old AppleWorks/ClarisWorks suite. AppleWorks really did try to do a "kitchen sink" approach as well as give you the flexibilty to embed one type of document in another. I really suspect their decision to focus on word processing is very good from a market driven perspective.
Most people tend to want to be able to write simple letters on their computer. TextEdit could do this, of course, and for simple tasks I do know people who use it. The next class of users is advanced home and entry-level business personnel. Think of the kind of people that want to make a flyer advertising a store event or the people making a newsletter for their little league. These are the exact target audience for Pages.
Pages comes with 40 templates that are customizable in the sense you can add in your own graphics easily to creat new templates (I think...). This makes it easy to create newsletters, corporate letterhead, and the like. The transparency allows for easy watermarking of documents.
Pages will also probably be sufficient for opening most Word documents generated by these similar types of users, home or small business users who have Word pre-installed on their Windows box and use the DOC format to e-mail their newsletters as attachments. In that respect it's great to have a similar pre-installed option available on the Mac that can support that market segment.
Whether they will target spreadsheets and database connectivity in the future is still up for speculation. After all, even Claris killed its own standalone spreadsheet application (Resolve) by selling it off to C&G. For users who want an integrated suite full featured spreadsheets, charting, macros, database connectivity and the like, there's only a few remainingplayers in the Mac market: Microsoft Office, NeoOffice/J (OpenOffice.org, but without the X11), ThinkFree, and Mariner. I don't think Apple's about to compete with Microsoft Office anytime soon as they use Office to help sell the platform. The death of AppleWorks now leaves us open source guys as one of the remaining strongest office suite competitors on the platform.
ed
If you'd ever been on a phone call with your grandmother trying to explain the difference between the right and the left mouse button, you'll know...APPLE WAS NOT WRONG.
The one-button mouse is a good default. The fact that they support a richer interface for the people that want one is great.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
The Mac Mini is aimed clearly at PC users looking to switch, but featurewise it is a disappointment.
It has OS X and is an affordable Apple computer. That is all it needs to succeed in the market Apple is shooting for.
The fact that I can't carry a few spare AAA batteries
... Extend the playback time of your iPod shuffle with the Battery Pack, powered by two AAA batteries..."
..." ...Closed systems ... gouge me on a replacement battery ... doesn't play OGGs...
Ahem.
"
Won't work as a plain ole' USB thumb device
Ahem.
"... Store files along with your music
Nobody. In. The. Target. Market. Gives. A. Flying. Fuck.
Should I keep going?
Well, you haven't actually started yet, so please.
The great thing about Pages is that it sounds like InDesign for the rest of us - that is, something that can serve as a simple page layout program.
Word is not well suited to exact placement of anything really, and if the UI is really good it could win over a lot of people that traditionally have bought things like Print Shop Pro.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Who in their right mind buys memory from an OEM? Don't get on Apple's case about expensive memory, because it's true in the PC world too! Whether it's Dell, Sony, IBM, whoever - you're almost always better off dollarwise to buy your system with the least available memory, then buy the upgrade from someone else. With the exception of the occasional special deal, this has been true for as long as I can remember.
Of course, this begs the question: does the mini allow user upgrades? Can't check because the Apple site isn't responding at the moment, but that little box looks to be shut tighter than a virgin's iPod.
Note that machine comes with a CD-ROM. The CDRW/DVD drive is an extra $50. The apple is still more expensive, but comes with the mac iLife programs, which are worth the price to many people.
All of the points you got wrong are related to who is going to buy this in droves - people have have PC's who like iPods and are tired of the PC world.
In that world, the computer might be a little old - and slowed further by virus/spyware that have crept in. This computer will seem like a rocket.
Plus of course it's like 1/10 the size of a clunky Dell box, a plus for anyone.
The firewire port is also not a "slight win" for anyone that likes to play with video, which is all parents in the US.
It's a box for people that want to buy a computer without having to worry about a computer. It's for people who like iPods and wonder what else Apple can do. Shortly it may well be anyone looking for a high-end DVD player and PVR. It's basically a computer for anyone that has not got a PC yet, or wants something different - dare I say a PC for the rest of us?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Look at all the icons in your system tray. Take an inventory of all the functions that are available with the right click, and then all the things that happen with a left click. I've been using computers for 20 years, and I not infrequently have to try both.
This is poor, poor design. Yes, it's poor design by the coders, but it's abetted by the availability of a right mouse button. Too many UI designers use that as a crutch. Don't know where a function should go? Sure, put it in a contextual menu.
With the Mac, all contextual menus are optional. I simply don't use them very much. I use middle-click for new tabs in Safari, and I like the scroll wheel, but neither of those features are critical to making the operating system function.
Try to run Windows without a right mouse button. It's possible, but MUCH harder.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Good points!
My favorite windows UI quirk is how every application out there seems to duplicate every menu item in an icon stop. Because, yeah, it really helps me to see a thousand little indecipherable icons that have commands that also show up in the menu.
Oh-- and let's not forget how you restart a PC (not that you have to do it much)! Click "start." Select "shut down." Now select "restart." Yeah, I would have found that.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
Many people find the hold-down-one-button paradigm to be easier to learn and use than multiple buttons. Other people find having multiple buttons easier to learn than multiple actions with the same button. Curse Apple for trying to make their computers useful to both kinds of users!
The thing that struck me while reading about iWork Pages was that they're really emphasizing the "great design, real easy" aspect of it, same as iLife always has. MS Word is about making great business documents; Pages is about making great-looking newsletters.
Additionally, Apple's got a long way to go before they can overtake MS in the business environment. Spreadsheets are mainly a business tool. Not much room in an Excel document for photos or sophisticated one-click text wrapping. (Yes, I know some people abuse Excel for documents it was never meant to process.) Home users who aren't bring their work home with them don't have much use for spreadsheets. Some, sure, but not much.
I don't think Apple is marketing iWork as an MS Office replacement--yet. There's too much functionality there for Apple to try and match it, and much of it is business-only. What they can do is take Office, pick out the multimedia-heavy apps, and make them prettier and easier to use.
You (like every other person on the web that has compared prices) is mitigating the cost of iLife on the PC. If you're going to compare them across the board, you need to find matches for iMovie, iDVD and Garageband for the PC. I've done the comparison and found that comparable products for Windows will set you back an additional $250 - $300.
So in reality, the price difference is $222.86 (conservative) in favor of the Mac mini.