l-dopa

…any thoughts?

• iPod FM Radio Tuner: Griffin Technology has been making pretty much this exact same product for a while now. The only aspect of Apple’s design that even seems slightly innovative is the on-screen radio interface, which is certainly snazzy, but not novel. What would be novel is if Apple would open up the iPod to allow third-party developers to develop software modules (like the iPod stopwatch, the dinky games, etc.) for it. Griffin’s iTrip for the iPod Nano seems to use some kind of embedded tuner software module for sound out, so it’s certainly possible.
• iLife ‘06: iMovie and iDVD seem to have received negligible improvenings, the iPhoto update seems pretty good, and they’ve stopped pretending that including iTunes is a feature; but it really looks like they pissed all over GarageBand in order to shoehorn it into a podcasting tool. I couldn’t find a single new feature — or any enhancements to existing features — that would be of any interest whatsoever to musicians. Which is too bad, because I really, really like GarageBand, I think it’s one of the better products Apple has ever developed. It’s really quite nice at multi-track recording and getting out of the way while it does so.
• iWork ‘06: Nice try, but they need a spreadsheet. This is a point release at best, not an $80 upgrade.
• Photocasting/iWeb: Gawd, I wish they’d stop pimping .Mac, but with 1 million subscribers, that equals $100 million per/yr, which means: .Mac isn’t going away anytime soon. .Mac subscribers could already publish their photos with a screen saver, but “photocasting” them might be incrementally more elegant. Hopefully it works with NetNewsWire et. al. And: iWeb looks pretty decent, if somewhat redundant.
• Intel iMac: This is a lovely package, but I can’t help to think that if they had held off a couple months ago when they updated the iMac with the iSight camera and the FrontRow software, there would have been far more impact. But you always need “new” products for Christmas, I guess.
• Intel MacBook: Lovely, and of course, I want one, but I’m not sure I want a 1.0 design like this. Where’s S-Video? Where’s Firewire 800? Where’s dual-layer DVD burning? Those features are in the existing PowerBook line, and are conspicuously missing from the new MacBook. Yeah, to make up, it has a nifty IR remote, but I don’t need a remote for watching movies on a 15″ screen — I’m probably not going to be that far away. And don’t even get me started about the name. That’s the worst product name Apple’s come up with since vingle.

In a word: meh. This is the first MacWorld Keynote in a while that has left me somewhat cold. I can’t help think that most of these innovations are marketing innovations rather than technological innovations, and I usually give Apple more credit with their designs than that. But hey! the stock should continue to shoot through the roof, so let’s all buy more, as I am optimistic that there will be more and better goodies while 2006 unfolds.

~jeff