Linked List: August 7, 2007

Tuesday, 7 August 2007

New iMac Commercial 

Just three words in the whole ad: “The new iMac”.

Sort of Like Lab Notes, but Without Any Structure and With Cursing 

I’m thinking out loud on Twitter while exploring iLife and iWork.

SproutCore and Web Gallery 

Bill Humphries:

The .Mac Web Gallery announced this morning was our team’s secret project these past few months. To build this, we used a JavaScript MVC framework, SproutCore, that Charles Jolley, another member of our team, started before coming to Apple.

According to Cabel Sasser, the Carousel feature is Flash, the rest is AJAX. And the gallery.js JavaScript file is 10,000 lines and weighs 408 KB. (Great for EDGE!)

iMovie ’08 

iMovie ’08 looks like it alone is worth the price of admission to iLife ’08. I totally believe Jobs’s story that it’s a complete re-write. The old iMovie was a good app, as a sort of stripped-down consumer-level Final Cut — but it still wasn’t any good for just putting clips together in a few minutes. The new iMovie looks like something that will make dealing with video as easy and quick — or nearly so — as dealing with photos.

Update: The downside for me and my PowerBook — although unsurprising — is that iMovie ’08 requires a G5 or Intel processor; G4s need not apply. Totally reasonable.

New Mac Mini 

Jobs hates the Mini, so it got neither a mention during the event (until the Q&A) nor a press release, but Apple did refresh it today. 1.83 or 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, still starting at $599.

As for why Jobs hates it, think about his comments during the event making fun of Dell machines because of the all the cables you need to hook them up to displays and webcams. That all applies equally to the Mini.

Numbers 

This is a total ground-up re-imagining of what a “spreadsheet” app is. The fundamental element is not the spreadsheet; it’s a canvas on which you can place elements, which elements can be tables (which are spreadsheets), charts, and graphics.

Look at the “Intelligent Tables” features. What Numbers really is is a way for people to create their own table-based software. Numbers might be as much a new Hypercard as it is a new Excel.

The Dumbest Question I’ve Ever Heard 

Peter Cohen, Macworld:

One question that came from the audience wondered why Apple doesn’t participate in the “Intel Inside” program, in which PC manufacturers affix the well-known labels to their computers.

“We like our own stickers better,” Jobs said. “Don’t get me wrong. We love working with Intel. We’re proud to ship Intel products in Macs. They’re screamers, and combined with our OS, we’ve tuned them well. It’s just that everyone knows we use Intel processors. We’d rather not tell them about the product that’s inside the box.”

Jobs offers a rare chance for a public Q&A and someone asks why they don’t booger up their computers with horrid stickers? Will someone please tell me who asked this question so I can name him jackass of the week?

Also, a great quote from Jobs, regarding why Apple doesn’t go after low-end market share in the PC market:

“But there’s some stuff in our industry that we wouldn’t be proud to ship. And we just can’t do it. We can’t ship junk. There are thresholds we can’t cross because of who we are.”

iWork ’08 

Pages ’08 includes Word-compatible change tracking. Keynote has been way better than PowerPoint ever since it shipped. (Keynote might be the best desktop app in the world, in my opinion — it’s quite obvious that it’s Jobs’s personal favorite.) And, now, finally, Numbers: “the spreadsheet for the rest of us”.

Translation: Microsoft, go fuck yourselves. This is the “bring it on” release of iWork.

Online photo sharing via iPhoto 08 and .Mac. Impressive design and animation — really puts the smackdown on Flickr in terms of look-and-feel. I’m guessing it’s all AJAX, no Flash. (Via Ryan Irelan.)

Macworld Live Apple Event Coverage 

No photos like Engadget, but they’re writing in full sentences.

iLife ’08: iPhoto is being taken “to a whole new level”.

Engadget Liveblog Coverage of Apple Special Event 

So far, new iMacs (aluminum and glass, very thin), new keyboard (as leaked a few weeks ago, with dedicated function keys for Exposé and other features). 24-inch for $1799, 20-inch for $1499 or $1199. Up to 4 GB of RAM. All models available today.

iPhoneNES 

Open source NES emulator for iPhones; very cool hack, but I can’t help but suspect the touch screen isn’t going to work well for the controls.

Charles Miller on Fake Steve 

Charles Miller:

Two days ago, Fake Steve Jobs existed in a narrative vacuum. The only point of reference we had to connect him to the real world was the real Steve, and that’s part of what made the character work. You couldn’t see the man behind the curtain, so everything he said was naturally part of the fiction. The anonymity was part of the performance.

Study: Food in McDonald’s Wrapper Tastes Better to Kids 

CNN:

Even carrots, milk and apple juice tasted better to the kids when they were wrapped in the familiar packaging of the Golden Arches.

The study had youngsters sample identical McDonald’s foods in name-brand and unmarked wrappers. The unmarked foods always lost the taste test.

“You see a McDonald’s label and kids start salivating,” said Diane Levin, a childhood development specialist who campaigns against advertising to kids. She had no role in the research.

This is just sick. But unsurprising.

A Wine Guru for the YouTube Era 

First Time, then Conan O’Brien. Now Slate wine columnist Mike Steinberger profiles Wine Library TV’s Gary Vaynerchuk:

Behind all the gags, Vaynerchuk is conveying the essential truth about wine: It is an immensely rewarding hobby, but it is also a complicated one, and there is no quick-and-dirty method of mastering it. His singular genius is to have found a way, employing modern technology and a pop-culture sensibility, to give wine a more accessible sheen while actually presenting it in all its daunting intricacy.

(And continuing with the all-Vaynerchuk-all-the-time theme, Gary’s brother A.J. found an odd scrolling bug in the iPhone Photos app.)