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January 07, 2004
MWSF Keynote
In yesterday’s MacWorld San Francisco keynote, Mr. Jobs announced a number of exciting things:
- Dual G5 XServes in a 1U form factor
- iPod mini
- and iLife ’04 with GarageBand
I’m probably most excited about GarageBand. At work, I have tremendously talented audio freaks that I get to work with, but on my personal projects, I notice that my audio doesn’t hold up to my visuals. There’s been software out there similar to GarageBand for a while, but nothing that I’ve been comfortable enough with to drop dollars on. John Gruber talks up GarageBand over at Daring Fireball.
Apparently, the only free download part to the new version of iLife is iTunes. That is somewhat disappointing because I use iPhoto so much that it would be nice to just be able to download the new version. Adding insult to injury: I ordered a PowerBook a week ago that won’t have the new iLife with it. Still, this will probably be the best $50 I spend on Mac stuff this year. iDVD 4 looks great, iMovie looks almost usable now, iTunes is still good, iPhoto is worth more than $50 itself, and GarageBand is a nice addition to the group — lack of and “i” notwithstanding.
iPod mini is a disappointment. For me, the size wasn’t what excited me about the rumors of a smaller iPod — it was the supposed $100–$150 price tag. Having a small, cheap firewire drive with the “cool” factor of an iPod would be great. I don’t need to spend $250 on one though. I can get a refurb’ed 5GB for less than $200 that will do the trick. Dominey also a little dissappointed with the iPod mini. And Jason Fried at SVN rebutts.
G5 Xserves are pretty cool…um…I mean, hot. The effort Apple has made to accomodate heavy-duty computing needs with the new XServes and XServe RAIDs is amazing. The new 90nm PPC 970 chips in them indicate looming speed bumps for the G5 towers too.
UPDATE: Gruber rants about people complaining that the iPod mini is overpriced, saying that it is supposed to be smaller, and smaller typically costs more. This is true — smaller typically does cost more since it is more difficult to produce. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t be disappointed. I think a lot of people have a view similar to mine — that they simply can’t justify spending that much on a music player, regardless of cool factor. We were hoping that Apple would perhaps trim down the features and cost more than the size. I can’t say that I’m surprised with the iPod mini though. Apple has rarely gone the route of compromising user experience for the sake of cost. I’ll just have to save my pennies, I guess.
Posted by paullheureux at January 7, 2004 03:12 PM