Apple evolves
10 January 2007
I hate to admit it, but I was sitting on my sofa last night watching the textual reports from MacRumors.com coming in on the MacWorld Keynote. I started watching it at work at 5.15pm (the GMT when the keynote started), left work around 5.40pm and got home just after 6.15pm. In that time, Steve had unveiled the iPhone.
I frantically scrolled back down the page to see exactly how he’d unveiled it — it wasn’t the ‘One More Thing’ that I thought it would — it came right after the Apple TV announcement. I have to admit, I was 50/50 as to whether Apple would ever release a phone — they’re a computer company, right? — but they broke the mould when they released the iPod, and we knew the iTV/Apple TV box was coming so perhaps it’s not that surprising that they’re branching out into telecommunications.
I’ve yet to watch the keynote cast — there’s a lunchtime task — but from what I’ve seen on Apple’s site the iPhone appears just great. Their engineers have spent a lot of time working on the interface and interaction methods, figuring out what the phone should do (and what it should not do) and how it should do it. First impressions are that Steve’s right — current smart phones do not appear so smart now. I know that when it’s released (apparently by Q4 2007 in Europe) I shall want one.
So I guess it’s not surprising that ‘Apple Computer Inc.’ is no more. Long live ‘Apple Inc.’!
Amongst the furore, I wonder what’s happening with Leopard? Cabel Sasser has an interesting piece on a new patent filed by Apple for an interface creation tool — perhaps a resolution independent interface? Who knows. Hopefully we’ll be double-wowed by Leopard when it’s announced.