What will Apple announce at WWDC06? There will no doubt be some surprises, but here are some well known inevitabilities, some reasonable possibilities for new apps, new UI, and new hardware, and a few commonly repeated ideas that – sorry – have no chance!
Known Inevitabilities
First and most obviously, Apple will finish features previewed or suggested in Tiger. Here’s a list of things that are known:
Quartz 2D Extreme will provide hardware accelerated 2D drawing, speeding the display of everything on the screen. Apple already delivered 3D acceleration, but had only finished Quartz 2D, the basic replacement to Classic Mac QuickDraw, in Tiger. By offloading more drawing functions to the graphics card, performance increases overall.
Resolution independence enables users to set a resolution multiplier to make windows and icons appear larger or smaller at the same resolution. This feature allows use of higher resolution screens with denser pixels, without making the interface items too small.
Apple included initial elements of Resolution independence in Tiger, but didn’t expose the technology for users. The Quartz Debug app included in Tiger’s Developer Tools includes a preview for testing purposes.
This is different than simply bumping up the size of text or window controls; it requires support from developers, because much of the custom UI in an app is based on bitmap graphics, not vectors. Resolution independence would be easier to pull off if Apple also announces an increased use of vectors to draw icons and interface elements. Think: Vectorized NIBs. Read more…
Contributed by: Daniel Eran, RoughlyDrafted
Disclaimer: this post has nothing to do with the Mac or Apple, I just found it hilarious.
Stephen Colbert did a segment on his show last night about how easy it is to edit Wikipedia.
Watch:
Not being able to resist, I checked out the Wikipedia entries for The Colbert Report (currently protected from editing until disputes have been resolved) and Elephant (displaying a “stable” version).
Then I saw this post by the Tawker who is the person that blocked Colbert:
In all, we ended up protecting 20 elephant related pages (I’m not listing them all here, I only have so much disk space , my stats for the the anti vandalism bots show 250 or so elephant related pages reverts. Most were, you guessed it, the fact that the population tripled – way too many times (repetition my friend).
No one likes the prospect of the end of summer and there’s just something about start of August that says “one last month” before the summer begins to fade and it’s time to get serious again.
One of my favorite things about the fall is, well, NFL football, But until kickoff on 07 September I live for the sound of Velcro being torn open and the smell of fresh Cordura Nylon in the air.
The start of August can only mean one thing – that it’s time for PowerPage Bag Blowout 2006.
Whether you’re a slick corporate raider, hipster student or just a stinky hippy in a van, we’ve got something for everyone this year. Although I really like the concept of Bag Week (think Shark…) one week isn’t enough time to cover all the great new luggage that’s available for notebook computer totage. So now that it’s August I’ll be peppering the site with fresh reviews of some crazy new bags from your favorite vendors.
(If there’s something special that shouldn’t be looked over during Bag Month, let me know and I’ll do everything I can to have it included.)
Me, I’m a simple dude. When at home I keep my pimped MacBook Pro in a wooden crate and when I’m on the road I kick it with a homemade MacBook Pro sleeve made out of foam core and duct tape. Cha! So what do you, fair PowerPage reader, carry your precious cargo in? Chime in using the comments below. FWIW I’ve turned off all authentication (read: no registration) on comments, so have at it, but please behave!
(Foam core diddy courtesy of Lifehacker, wooden box contributed by Calvin Tomm.)
I just received my .Mac retail kit in the mail today. After doing some research into .Mac and reading some articles I thought that I would give it a try for one year to see what I think. As a part of my experience I am going to write some additional articles for the PowerPage.
I paid CAD$99 (US$87.25) for .Mac from Best Buy here in Canada. It retails for CAN$139 on Apple’s Canadian Store, CAN$119 at Amazon.ca, and US$79.99 (CAN$90.76) at Amazon.com (Canadians cannot buy items from Amazon.com, only Amazon.ca, which at this point is just a books-music-movies-software store). My first complaint (already?) is that .Mac is more expensive in Canada than it is in the US for essentially the same service. .Mac’s retail price in Canada is CAN$26 more than it is in the US. Should I end up having to pay the full CAN$139 to renew my .Mac membership next year, it will most certainly be a factor in my continued use of the service. Then again, I may be addicted by then. The Canadian price should be lowered to be comparable to the US price. I only bought .Mac at this time because it was on sale at Best Buy for $40 off the retail price.
I decided to try .Mac because I wanted remote access to “stuff” that I use on a regular basis. I liked the idea of a my address book online (read: still no cell phone), my 469 bookmarks online, a home page or web page, the iDisk, Backup, and some other items. I suppose there are other sites that provide these services for free but I wanted a full Apple-based kind of service. I like what Apple does with most things and I usually find the end-user experience quite satisfying. I am highly critical of end-user experiences in all things. I have had past experience with programming and systems analysis when I was in school, but I am still very much an “effective and efficient systems” connoisseur. It is just the way that my mind functions. I am naturally drawn to Apple because of the simplicity.
I will update my .Mac experience after one week and then every few months after that until my subscription comes up for renewal. Stay ituned.
Contributed by: SCULLEY
Two and a half years ago, I wrote an article presenting how Apple should move their Flat Panel iMac into the future: plop three inches of Mac on the back of a Cinema Display and call it the new iMac. I also presented why the alternatives made no sense. As it turned out, I was spot on.
Apple did exactly what I predicted: they dumped the igloo iMac and released a computer integrated into a slightly thicker version of their display as its successor. Since Ive, Jobs and company are all no doubt anxiously awaiting my next new idea for a new Mac product category, I’ll get right into presenting what it is, and why the world needs (drumroll please)… the Xserve mini. Read more…
Contributed by: Daniel Eran, RoughlyDrafted
In The Apple Market Share Myth, I demonstrated how overall market share numbers can be used to suggest ideas that have no basis in reality. Here, I’ll look at the slippery aspect of numbers, prove that a quality share of the market can be better than a larger market share, and then compare how the definition of a market is critically important in determining how useful market share numbers are. In particular, I’ll look at the iPod’s market share. Read more…
Contributed by: Daniel Eran, RoughlyDrafted
Here in part two, I’ll consider five examples that prove that intellectual property, while offering some new challenges, still obeys the same market laws of supply and demand. Along the way, I’ll also prove why the market has rejected digital media rentals. Read more…
Contributed by: Daniel Eran, RoughlyDrafted
Market share is often used in spreading FUD. It has been used against Apple’s Macintosh since its introduction over twenty years ago. Professional nay-sayers have long insisted that the Mac’s limited market share would prevent it from benefiting from the hardware economies of scale that were driving PCs cheaper, as well as the widespread software development forces that were introducing a wide range of diverse PC applications.
Ironically, those making the biggest stink about Apple’s historically low share of the overall PC market have started attacking the iPod’s majority share of the music player market. They gleefully preach the imminent demise of the iPod because its reported market share fell to 75% of all music devices. If market share is so critically important, why aren’t the same analysts advising people to march out and buy the market leading iPod? Read more…
Contributed by: Daniel Eran, RoughlyDrafted
Think Secret reported yesterday they had “learned exclusively” of a surprise announcement at Apple’s WWDC: iTunes would begin renting movies.
Of course, they didn’t exclusively learn anything; if such an effort was really underway, a lot of involved people would also have to know about it! Perhaps they meant to say they were “exclusively reporting” the idea. Then again, by reporting it, it prevents it from being a WWDC surprise, so there are multiple problems with their story.
Despite that, there is a general perception among industry analysts that Apple, by showing up late to the subscription rental party, faces the threat of losing their majority ownership of online media sales. We’ll have to wait a few weeks to find out if Think Secret invented their rumor, or if it is based on any real information, but the underlying myth of the holy grail of media subscription rentals can be taken apart right now. Read more…
Contributed by: Daniel Eran, RoughlyDrafted
The iPod turns five years old this fall, and is due for its annual revamping. Apple keeps a tight lid on future plans, but here’s a look at three designs for Generation 6 iPods, along with three software features I’d like to see Apple deliver.
Apple has done a pretty good job in balancing the iPod’s features and simple usability. In some cases, they’ve withheld features that would unnecessarily complicate the device. Beyond the obvious demands for things like longer battery life and larger displays, there are a few nagging issues that I’d like to see addressed in the iPod software. Read more…
Contributed by: Daniel Eran, RoughlyDrafted
What will Apple announce at WWDC06? There will no doubt be some surprises, but here are some well known inevitabilities, some reasonable possibilities for new apps, new UI, and new hardware, and a few commonly repeated ideas that – sorry – have no chance!
, my stats for the the anti vandalism bots show 250 or so elephant related pages reverts. Most were, you guessed it, the fact that the population tripled – way too many times (repetition my friend).
No one likes the prospect of the end of summer and there’s just something about start of August that says “one last month” before the summer begins to fade and it’s time to get serious again.
I just received my .Mac retail kit in the mail today. After doing some research into .Mac and reading some articles I thought that I would give it a try for one year to see what I think. As a part of my experience I am going to write some additional articles for the PowerPage.
