Nick from The MacTips Podcast is first in line for the keynote. As of 8:30PM, he was still the only person in line, and he was already there for most of the day.
First in line for the keynote
Macintosh
My Macworld predictions
Here are my predictions for Macworld 2009:
- Snow Leopard If it isn’t released, Apple will at least announce a release date. Apple *may* add some user features to make it an attractive update.
- iLife and/or iWork updates I don’t believe that iMovie will be moved online, although it may be able to take advantage of other computers on the network for rendering using XGrid. I think there will be an online version of iWork similar to Google Docs. Applications like iMovie & iDVD will most likely take advantage of Snow Leopard features such as using the GPU to speed up rendering.
- Mac Mini There will most likely be a new Mac Mini, with a lot of the technology introduced in the new MacBook line. It will almost certainly use DisplayPort instead of DVI. It might provide easy access for hard drive & RAM upgrades like the new MacBook & MacBook Pro, although that may be just my wishful thinking.
- iMac Minor update, probably a speed bump or quad-core processor and adding DisplayPort instead of mini DVI. No design change.
- Mac Pro May also receive a speed bump, new processor (16-core maybe), DisplayPort.
- MacBook Line A Unibody 17″ MacBook Pro?
- AppleTV Possibly new software with official support for Hulu and/or Netflix streaming.
- iPhone New software. If there is an iPhone Nano, it will be a stripped down model which probably won’t allow you to install additional applications from the app store at a much lower price ($99?).
Going to Macworld
I’m getting ready to leave for San Francisco in a few hours. I’ll be spending much of the day traveling. I’m bringing my MacBook and my D90 with an 18-105mm VR and a 50mm f/1.8 lens. I decided not to bring the 55-200mm and my SB-600.
I’ll be covering Macworld Expo at MacMegasite and I will attempt to post live keynote updates at http://macmegasite.com/macworld, provided I can get internet access during the keynote. If that isn’t possible, I’ll attempt to post updates from my iPhone.
Macworld Photowalk
I’m setting up a photowalk for the Monday before Macworld, probably starting around 2PM. We’ll meet near Moscone center, probably in front of the registration area. There should be some great locations to photograph, including Yerba Buena Garden, Powell Street cable cars, and the Union Square area. If it goes late, we can probably start working our way towards 21st Amendment for the Macworld Monday Tweetup.
My take on the Steve Jobs health rumors
Webomatica nails it:
Because Apple has managed other, daunting transitions expertly, I fully expect them to manage a “post-Jobs” transition with equal skill. Have a little faith, people. This is Steve Jobs we’re talking about, the stereotypical control-freak. There’s no way in heck he’d leave something like this up to chance.
I have no inside information, but just based on publicly available information, I don’t believe Steve Jobs is dying. Apple would be in big trouble with the SEC if they were holding back information or lying about his health.
I do believe Steve Jobs is planning to retire in the next year. He may make the announcement at Macworld Expo and pass the torch to Phil Schiller, Tim Cook, or someone else. I’m sure he has a transition plan in place, which he has most likely been planning for the last few years. If you watch any of his keynotes from the last two years, you’ll see that he has gradually started bringing other executives into the spotlight and giving them a chance to do parts of the presentation. This year’s Macworld is merely the final step in that transition.
Retiring doesn’t necessarily mean Steve Jobs is having health problems. It’s common for people who have had a health scare, like his pancreatic cancer surgery, to reevaluate their priorities and want to take time to pursue other interests.
Some people have suggested Steve Wozniak as Jobs’ replacement, which is a bad idea on several levels. Woz is a brilliant engineer who will always come up with amazing hardware & software solutions, but, like many engineers, he probably wouldn’t be happy in a management role. Woz also doesn’t share Jobs’ obsession over form & function – he’d rather work on nitty gritty implementation details than absolutely perfect usability. Woz is a left brain thinker vs. Jobs’ right brain. The leader of Apple needs to be a visionary like Jobs, not necessarily a brilliant engineer, although he does need brilliant engineers working for him to make his vision into reality.
End of an era
As you’ve probably heard, Apple announced today that this will be their last appearance at Macworld Expo and Steve Jobs won’t deliver the keynote address. Although Apple wasn’t an official sponsor of Macworld Expo, the event revolved around their announcements. This doesn’t mean that Macworld Expo will end, but I really don’t expect it to continue without them. Most likely the show will die in a few years, like the east coast Macworld Expo did after Apple stopped exhibiting there.
The timing of Macworld Expo soon after New Years was probably bad for Apple, since it meant they had to time their major announcements for January and miss the holiday shopping season.
TidBITS offers some good perspective on the announcement.
I already have my tickets & hotel reservation for Macworld Expo, so I’m still going and I’ll savor what will most likely be the last one I’ll attend. I probably won’t get up at 4AM to line up for the keynote, though.
I went to my first Macworld Expo in 1988, after I moved to Los Angeles, since it was a quick & inexpensive trip.
During Macworld Expo 1991, I got the news on the last day of the show that my father died and I walked around in shock the rest of the day before flying back to New York the following day.
After I left the west coast, I stopped going until a few years ago. Last year was one of the biggest shows, but this year was already showing signs of being a disappointment with Adobe and several other companies pulling out.
New Blog Editor
Blogo is a very intriguing new blog editor with some very unique features, including a built-in Twitter client. It has a very nice rich text editing mode as well as a HTML mode.
Unfortunately the user interface is a lot more cluttered than MarsEdit and, at least for a long-time MarsEdit user, a lot less intuitive.
I really like the built-in Twitter client, but the editor looks un-Mac-like. I also find that switching between rich text & HTML modes inserts some extraneous tags. At least for now, I’m sticking with MarsEdit because it looks a lot more Mac-like and feels a lot smoother.
I started this post in Blogo but ended up using MarsEdit after it messed up the embedded images.
Adding more books to Coda
Coda is my favorite web development environment on the Mac, combining a syntax-aware editor, a visual CSS editor, and an FTP client that can sync local changes to the web server. Until I read this item at Dra Studio, I had no idea you could add custom books to Coda.
Adding books to Coda is very simple – simply click the ‘+‘ button at the bottom of the Books page and enter the book title, main URL, and a search URL. You can find URLs for some useful books to add at Dra Studio & SitePoint.
I find the WordPress documentation (codex.wordpress.org) especially useful when working on WordPress plugins or themes.
Separated at birth?
Classics, the new book reading application for the iPhone bears a striking resemblance to Delicious Library.
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MacBook Dual Monitor Setup
I find the new MacBook’s 1280×800 display a little too small to work with comfortably, so I got a new Samsung 22″ monitor, which can display 1680×1050. Aperture & Photoshop are so much nicer on the big screen, and it gives me a lot more room to work in XCode and Interface Builder. Parallels will even let me run a virtual machine in full-screen on one monitor while I work in Mac OS X on the other screen.
