So, another Steve Jobs/Apple keynote over and the hype of the advance pundits leaves one feeling a might let down. This is the first keynote that I can recall that sparked mainstream news coverage in advance. I was watching my local news station this morning and they gave Steve & Co., at least 30 seconds of air time in anticipation (admittedly of things iPhone). I can remember when introduction of machines that would go on to become incredibly successful (the phrase ‘insanely great’ wafted through my memory for a second) didn’t rate coverage outside of technology media as recently as two years ago. It only took Apple 30 years to achieve this.
On the upside, I am writing this on Safari for Windows and so far am very impressed. The anti aliasing is finer than FireFox and the screen-render speed is somewhere in the vicinity of where Steve claimed it would be — blazingly fast. Colour me pleased with it thus far. I really like the little things that you note, such as the browse button behaviour and better indication (an icon and title) that the file you uploaded is linked to. These are nice touches. I was always hoping that the folks at the Omni Group would port their browser (or any of their other exceptional products) to Windows. Safari thus far seems very graceful and polished, if a little less than standard…but with the wide chasm between FireFox and IE 7, where are standards? The lack of borders on the window and the reduced screen real estate are a pleasure — ironically as these are the exact features that I don’t feel when I use it under OSX. If anything, OSX feels like it takes up too much room for the infrastructure, leaving nut as much for the actually focus of the work.
I don’t blame Steve Jobs, he has a wonderful stage presence and I always do look forward to an hour or so of fine entertainment (a stage show for geeks I suppose). Its rather similar to watching the series finale of a beloved TV show and having the video and audio just snap to nullity ;-) Major lack of shock twice in the space of 24 hours. Truthfully, am not so disappointed in either. The Sopranos held me rapt for the last 5–10 minutes just hanging on for crack of a gunshot, and kudos to David Chase for a brilliant series and a suitably open-ending. As for Steve Jobs and Apple, this was a WWDC keynote and it should and did focus on Leopard. Things look very solid and the visual baubles (aka the new finder) do look intriguing. We’ll have to wait and play and see if they turn into useful additions. I will admit to not being a big dashboard widgeteer or even really using Exposé that much. Like Beryl, they are one form of expressions of the developers art, but then so is compact, efficient code that lets me do what I need to do easily and efficiently.
As to the iPhone portion of the keynote…I am sure enough will be said by others out there.
I am writing this more to reaffirm that I can still be held in thrall by an Apple keynote and there some of the religion still burns deep inside. Catch the replays at Apple’s WWDC site.