Ok so I know this blog’s been neglected for quite some time. I just can’t find the time or bother to blog much nowadays. The typical day involves 8 to 5.30 work before coming home with barely a few hours to myself. Fridays have never seemed so blissful in my entire life.

Rant…

Anyway, recently got a new laptop, the ASUS G51Jx. Brilliant gaming machine, absolutely terrible computer. I won’t bother ranting much about it here, maybe I’ll post the review I wrote for another site here soon, but until then let’s just say I am sorely regretting getting this machine. Mainly because I could have probably gotten an equally powerful desktop for maybe two thirds the price, and more importantly one that has a BIGGER SCREEN.

1920 by 1080 on a 15 inch screen is way too much. Text is all painfully small for my eyes, and I gotta toggle everything to zoom in. But there are some apps that simply won’t let me enlarge the text (e.g. Steam) and I gotta suffer by squinting at everything it throws on screen.

The solution to this all? Get an iPad for web-surfing.

The iPad was stupid…

The perfect solution IMO, though a thoroughly annoying one for me. When the iPad first launch I was firmly in the camp of what’s-Apple-doing-it’s-just-a-larger-iPod-Touch. In recent weeks, I’ve played around with the iPad twice at Apple stores, and now desperately want one.

Mind you, it’s not just me. For the first time ever, you actually gotta queue up at Apple stores just to play around with one of their products on display. Maybe you’re saying, “Sure, Singaporeans love to queue anyway”. For once though, Singaporeans aren’t just flocking to try the iPad out. At the store in Funan, while I was playing around with the iPad (after having waited for at least 5 minutes), iPads were literally FLYING off shelves. Every single person in the store seemed to be leaving with an iPad in hand. And the majority of them obviously weren’t hardcore Apple fans or anything that would fall for anything Steve Jobs introduced. Most of the people I saw were pretty damn old. You know, the kind who can’t tell a USB port from a rectangular hole. Or the type who couldn’t tell the differenc between a Mac or a PC.

Perhaps that’s what’s so enticing about the iPad. It’s simplicity. The iPod Touch gives off the impression of being a tech-gadget. A small, handy device for the tech-savy, maybe because it resembles mobile phones so much. And older people tend to be intimidated even by their mobile phones. The iPad on the other hand feels like a simplified notebook. A really simplified notebook at that. Why? Because it has a screen comparable to that of a laptop. Sometimes, that’s all you need to do for the tech-illiterate to think it’s really a better version of those complicated laptops.

Apple knows what it’s doing

I guess it doesn’t matter how stupid an Apple product sounds on paper. Fact of the matter is that Apple knows what it’s doing. The tech-savy crowd can scream all they want about how the iPad is a joke, but the fact remains that it appeals to the average consumers in ways no other device has ever done before. Heck, after playing with it for about 10 minutes, I already want one, and I used to think Apple had taken a step in the wrong direction by creating a big iPod Touch.

This goes to show that for all the knowledge we geeks have about technology, we have no idea what really resonates with the majority of people.

In the past, I at least had the glimmer of hope of “Maybe I can get one of these!” But being in NS now means there’s absolutely no way I can get an iPhone. No way am I going all Frankenstein on it and plucking out the camera, especially not when it can now even record HD video (720p, 30fps on a mobile phone camera!). I’m just going to have to sit on the sidelines patiently, watching as everyone else snatches up one of these. I’m going to have to sit through another new iPhone announcement next year (assuming Apple keeps to its current trend of refreshing the iPhone hardware every year) without being able to actually own one of them. One thing’s for sure though, my next phone is going to be an iPhone.

As for the announcement itself, I have to say this 1.5 hour long keynote is probably the most entertaining one in recent times. Packed with pretty meatty announcements (thought there was that lull in between of inviting developers up on stage at one point), it sure was entertaining when Jobs essentially went “TURN OFF ALL YOUR WIFI, NOW!!!” Poor live-bloggers.

However, this occasion’s “One More Thing…” sure was disappointing, especially compared to the announcements that preceded it.

Now I’ve watched some Apple keynotes that date back to the 1990s (wow we’re actually in the ’10s) and Steve Jobs’ “One More Thing…” announcements back then were usually mind blowing to say the least. Or at least they were genuinely exciting or intriguing. This time though, their “One More Thing” turned out to be nothing more than video calling.

Seriously? Video calling? My SE Z610i from 4 years ago could do that. Sure, the iPhone 4 does it better. But 4 years on it had jolly well do a better job. Even worse, Jobs didn’t even bother trying to show off any hidden features of video calling. All the iPhone did was simply that, video calling, and nothing more. Yet the way he sold it was as if video calling was something completely new to the world, which it is obviously isn’t. I’m still mystified as to why they decided to market video calling (and seriously, calling it FaceTime doesn’t make it cool) as something that’s “revolutionary”.

Apart from that though, some of the stuff is pretty revolutionary IMO. Can’t wait for 2 years later when I can finally actually get an iPhone. Oh wells.

Can you imagine this on your wrist at all times! The possibilities for a device like this are endless. Using it as a phone would be awesome, just for the sake of being able to talk to your watch. Of course I’d never do that, at least not in public, you’d look like a complete idiot talking to your wrist. Though it’d be quite cool to be able to make calls using a watch which was paired with a bluetooth headset!

Oh but of course, LG has already demoed a watch that doubles as a phone as well. Multiple times at that. No, I’m not kidding. Of course, in typical LG fashion, it is extremely clunky. You gotta navigate through all the menus via 3 small buttons that are squeezed onto the side of the watch-phone. Ridiculous if you ask me.

When is someone going to create a touchscreen-watch-phone? Hopefully it’s done by Apple though. Most other companies would just completely screw up the user interface and make it clunky till the point where it’s almost useless. Say what you will about Apple, but they sure do know how to design amazing user interfaces.

Actually, I just googled “touchscreen watch” and it seems like such a device has existed since 2002. Doesn’t seem as appealing as the idea of having an iPhone on your wrist though. *shrugs*

Oh and in case anyone reading till this point is still confused, the above image is a mock-up…

… unfortunately

Oh well, it seems like iPads still won’t be coming to Singapore anytime in the near future yet. According to the press release, the only Asian country getting an iPad any time soon is going to be Japan. Seems like I won’t get to see iPads all over Singapore yet.

Not that I intend to buy one in the near future. Still, my opinion of the iPad has done a 180 degree turn. When it was first announced, I scoffed along with everyone else, labelling it a large iPhone and nothing else. But now that it’s finally released and you see some of the Apps that are available for it. Damn… mind-blowing to say the least. Or at least my mind was blown. Now if I had about $800 spare cash, I’d almost definitely get one. That is if it ever comes to Singapore.

Still, it’s funny how there are some push-cart shops in shopping malls that are already selling silicon cases for the iPad. Regardless of the fact that I can probably count the number of imported iPads floating around Singapore right now on one hand.

One thing’s for sure, if I ever get an iPad, I’m not gonna uglify it by putting a silicon case on it.

To me, this is Apple’s stupidest/dumbest/lousiest/crappiest/most idiotic product in its 32 years of existence.

No controls = only Apple’s earbuds

This, to me, is the epitome of stupidity. You don’t allow your consumers to use their own preferred earphones because you decide to take away ALL THE CONTROLS, COMPLETELY.

The very fact that the iPod Shuffle is lacking this “feature” makes it completely inferior to every single other MP3 player on the market, both past and present.

Do they really think customers will be attracted to buying something which has no controls and which you can only use with Apple’s earbuds? For people like me whose ears just won’t earbuds to stick to them without falling out every 5 seconds, it’s impossible for me to use the new iPod shuffle. The fact that they’re probably going to release an adapter that adds a remote doesn’t help things because

• I hate using remotes, they’re just clumsy and gimmicky
• I HAVE TO PAY FOR IT

Think about it, I have to pay to be able to control my MP3 player, and not to mention in a way which I detest.

It’s smaller… WTF?

Seriously, did they think the previous iPod Shuffle was not small enough? To me the previous iPod Shuffle was pretty darn good, it was just the right size, felt solid enough, and had a clip. All you could ask for was more capacity, which Apple could add over time.

But come on, was there really a need to make it smaller? What’s the point, are people really going to get all excited over it because it’s like 1 or 2 cm smaller? I certainly don’t need it.

I don’t want someone talking in my ear

Basically, Apple came up with this “brilliant” idea that a robotic voice would read to you the title of your song. I used to own a shuffle and l-o-v-e-d it, and it never had this feature, because it’s completely unnecessary. The original tagline for the iPod Shuffle was “Life is Random”, which was perfect. The whole point was that you didn’t know/bother about what the title of the song was, you just enjoyed whatever music that started randomly playing.

There was never the thought going through my head that “damn, I wish I knew what this song was”, more often than not I already did because the songs I put in my Shuffle were all my top-rated songs which I listened to constantly.

All in all, I really don’t see the point in this new “VoiceOver” feature.

Imagine this conversation…

Customer: Oh this is interesting, what’s this?

Apple guy: This is our new iPod Shuffle!

Customer: Oh I see… wait there aren’t any buttons?

Apple guy: Yup, that’s right!

Customer: So it has a touch screen or something?

Apple guy: Nope!

Customer: Then how do you control it?

Apple guy: Using Apple’s earphones!

Customer: Oh, then what if I want to use it with my own headphones? How do I control it then?

Apple guy: You can’t!

Customer: You’re joking right?

Apple guy: No! What’s wrong?! Look! It’s SMALLER!

All in all…

Apple’s going down the drain if they continue to produce products like this. Honestly, when I first saw the story about how the new iPod Shuffle has no buttons, I thought it was an Onion article.

Oh the horror when I found out it wasn’t…

So I booted up my computer early this morning, hoping to hear about some great new stuff Apple was going to introduce, considering how this was going to be their last year and they’d want to go out with a big bang. At first, things seemed pretty cool, but I realised how boring the whole keynote was going to be halfway through.

Phill’s first and last Macworld keynote

Before I get into the keynote though, there’s one thing I want to say about Phil Schiller. In every single Macworld keynote in the past, Steve Jobs has always been the one to give the keynote. No matter how big or small the new products were, every single Mac fan couldn’t wait to watch Steve Jobs unveil it. So it was quite surprising that he wasn’t going to be doing it this year, instead handing it over to Phil Schiller. I have to say, the first few minutes Phil stepped on stage and began talking about how successful Apple stores all over the world were doing, he seemed, of all things, nervous, even as the crowd applauded his every announcement. I suddenly realised the reason why this small emotion was so starking, because this never happened with Steve Jobs. Steve basked in the audience’s applause, encouraged by it, and you could almost see his face glow with glee everytime the crowd applauded. It almost seemed like the same smugness and glow that he had at 1984′s Macworld when he introduced the first ever Macintosh. Alas, things were different with Phil. You could just tell he was a much more humble person on stage, accepting the crowd’s applause, but not exactly basking in it like Jobs usually does. After a few minutes though, he no longer had much of a problem of “stage fright” and did a pretty good job on stage.

As for the keynote itself? Here’re roughly a list of things Apple introduced:

• iLife ’09
  • iPhoto ’09 has new features like face recognition and support for geotagging so you can organise photos according to where you take them
  • iMovie ’09 builds upon last year’s (terrible) version of iMovie, adding new features that’ll hopefully make it a more robust movie editing software (hopefully as good as iMovie ’06).
  • Instructional videos in Garageband that teach you how to play instruments. Extra $5 videos are sold where various artists teach you how to play simplified versions of their songs.
  • Apparently updated versions of iDVD and iWeb as well, but were not covered in keynote
• iWork ’09
  • Pages has a new fullscreen view (ala WriteRoom), ability to sync tables with Numbers, so when you edit the table in Numbers, it will update the same one in Pages as well, dynamic outline feature similar to the sidebar you’d see in Microsoft Powerpoint and Keynote
  • Keynote has new transitions, plus “Magic Move”, which is really cool. You set up your 2 slides, and Keynote automatically transitions them for you using advanced transitions that wouldn’t be possible manually. Some new themes and charts, etc.
  • Keynote Remote, an application for iPod Touch/iPhones. Control slides via Wifi, advance slides by swiping, can even view next slide/presenter notes.
  • Numbers has new formulas/functions for more advanced users, table categories to organise tables by a certain column, etc.
• iWork.com
  • an online portal that’s in beta stage for now. Users can upload documents and have others collaborate on the same document by sending them emails. Sound familiar? (I’ll get to that in a moment)
• 17″ Macbook Pro
  • Unibody, plus all the standard stuff you’d expect in a Macbook Pro now. 3 USB ports, one Firewire 800 port. Up to 2.93 Intel Core 2 Duo, up to 8GB RAM, GeForce 9600M GT graphics card, etc.
  • The biggest thing? 8 hour battery life. Yeah, EIGHT hours.
• iTunes
  • Songs now priced at $0.69, $0.99, $1.29. Obviously, older songs are going to be priced at $0.69 while new releases at $1.29.
  • All songs eventually going to be DRM-free (Hooray!), must pay to “upgrade” them and remove DRM (rip-off).
  • Download songs through 3G on iPhone

And… that’s it. Zero hardware updates, no earth shattering announcements (except perhaps 8 hours battery life). The most interesting things were probably the 8 hour battery life, Keynote Remote and iPhoto’s nifty new features. If your more interesting announcements are your very first announcement and an iPhone app that you cover for 2 minutes, you know your keynote is boring.

It seems like the market agreed as well, seeing as how Apple’s stock dipped slightly immediately following the keynote, which is to be expected I guess, considering how lackluster their FINAL keynote at Macworld was. The biggest announcement was probably the 8 hour battery life, which is really something to boast about. Hopefully this will force other laptop manufacturors to research batteries which have longer battery lives.

Other than that, the rest of the keynote was pretty lackluster. But 2 announcements really stand out as major letdowns: iWork.com and DRM free music.

Pay for Google Documents?

Honestly, I can’t imagine how many people will be willing to actually PAY for iWork.com. Phill stated that it’s currently free as it’s in open beta, but apparently it’s going to become a paid service when it’s out of beta, which is just stupid. Why? Because Google Documents has been offering the same service for ages now, for free. Sure, you can’t leave comments, and don’t have a “chatbox” in the sidebar with Google Documents, but that’s hardly a big deal, knowing how Apple will charge some exorbidant  fee for iWork eventually. Not to mention you can actually EDIT the documens (within the browser as well) using Google Docs while you can only leave notes/comments for others in iWork.com. And am I really the only one who noticed that you can’t even scroll through the whole document in iWork.com? You have to select the individual pages in the sidebar and thus can only view one page at a time. The only way to see the next page is to click on it in the sidebar instead of simply scrolling down. What kind of UI design is that?!

Pay to do what you want with YOUR music?

As for the new DRM free music, it’s really a waste of time. According to Apple, people who shop on the iTunes store have to PAY more just to get rid of DRM? Meaning they have to pay more just so that they can do whatever they want with a file they’ve already bought? What kind of logic is that?! Furthermore, many users’ libraries aren’t small, and at 30 cents per song (just to “upgrade” them), it amounts to a few hundred dollars for some users to get rid of the annoying DRM. Why we users have to pay more just to do what we want with a song is beyond me.

All in all, it’s sad to see Apple go out on a low note at their last ever Macworld keynote. We were all really expecting something more. Alas, it seems we’ll have to wait awhile longer for major annoucements. It’s just such a shame that Apple’s final Macworld keynote will go down in history as one of its most boring and disappointing ones.

And on a random note, seems like the Silent Keynote campaign was a  complete failure, considering how the crowd cheered at every small announcement.

What’s even more surprising is that it seems like Steve Jobs won’t be the one giving this final keynote, instead he’s handing the torch down to Phil Schiller, Senior VP of Worldwide Product Marketing, and also a familiar face at many of Apple’s Keynotes, frequently helping out in certain segments. Still, Phil probably won’t be able to conjure up the same RDF (reality distortion field) that Jobs is a master at, the keynote just won’t be the same without Steve Jobs himself.

Still, the fact that Phil Schiller is giving the keynote isn’t as big of a deal as the fact that Apple will no longer be present at Macworld Expos any longer. You really have to wonder how long Macworld will continue to last in this case, since plenty of people pay the exorbitant entry fees just so they can watch Apple’s keynote. It’s probably the most exciting part of the entire Expo, watching Steve Jobs introduce his latest and greatest products under his RDF.

Also, one really has to wonder why in the world did Apple decide to stop attending these Macworld events. According to the press release:

Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.

To me, these excuses really sound like what they are: excuses. And they’re lame attempts at trying to justify why Apple won’t be appearing at trade shows any more. Just because they have more means to reach its customers doesn’t mean that by doing so through Macworld keynotes is any less effective. In fact, introduction of new products through other means besides keynotes probably won’t have big of an impact, as the suspense leading up to the keynote and the final revelation of the product is probably the most exciting part of it all. New products which were introduced through press releases or their website have never gotten me as excited as those that were introduced at an Apple Keynote, they’re just so much more exciting to watch.

There has to be some underlying reason as to why Apple has decided to take this step. Maybe they’re really being affected by the recent economic crisis? Which is really not that impossible, considering how they’ve decided to keep their prices at such a high level when most people obviously can’t afford them. Or maybe the rumours of Steve Jobs’ failing health (which he debunked in one of his keynotes) some time ago are actually true? The rest of us will never know the actual reason, but let’s just hope Apple will continue making such a lasting impression on the personal computer market for a long time to come.

Source: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/12/16macworld.html