Macworld San Francisco 2005
Posted by Pierre Igot in: MacintoshJanuary 11th, 2005 • 8:49 am
Wow. This must be the first expo on record where all the rumours are confirmed true :).
iPod shuffle — Not for me (I want to be in control of what music I listen to), but I imagine there is a definite market for a super-small iPod with absolutely no mechanical parts. Looks super-sleek as usual.
Mac mini — Let’s just say I definitely know people who will be interested… It’s small and cheap, yet it’s a Mac. Sounds good to me. Don’t know if it’ll be the model that causes an upward surge in Apple’s computer market share — but it sounds like an excellent entry-level offering. And who knows? Maybe in six months we’ll have an “AV” version that functions as a multimedia center in the living room!
iLife ’05 — No big surprises here, but the GarageBand 2 improvements are quite exciting for me. (I have been spending tons of time creating music with GarageBand in the past six months or so. I might even post some of it some day.) iPhoto 5 is finally hierarchical. I wonder if Mac OS X’s Address Book is next :).
And finally…
iWork ’05 — Not sure about the ” ’05 ” part… I wasn’t aware of the existence of an ’04 version. But who cares? Apple has just launched a word processor. This is beyond exciting. Of course, I have to see it and use it and see how it goes before reaching any kind of conclusion about it. But finally Microsoft Word has some competition — from someone with enough clout and resources to actually have a chance to pull it off! I don’t expect the 1.0 release to meet all my needs. But if Apple is serious about this and fixes bugs and brings improvements on a regular basis once the program is launched, then maybe, just maybe, I will be able to put the crapware known as Microsoft Office in the trash!
This is indeed something that would be a significant difference in my computing life. It’s not going to happen overnight. But now, all of a sudden, it becomes a very real possibility.
Wow.
January 11th, 2005 at Jan 11, 05 | 9:17 pm
i spent a good 20 minutes playing with pages. the *two* thing in word that pages doesn’t have and i care about are autocorrect, and grammer checking.
I guess I’ll just have to learn to hold shift when I press “I” ;)
January 12th, 2005 at Jan 12, 05 | 12:18 am
AutoCorrect? I use Spell Catcher for this. It’s miles ahead of Word’s feature — and it works everywhere.
Grammar checking? Lord… Are there actually people who find this feature useful? Word’s grammar checker knows about as much about grammar and style as a Grade 2 student.
If these are the only two features missing, I’m even more excited! :)
January 12th, 2005 at Jan 12, 05 | 7:51 pm
i’m sure other people care about other features in word, but thats where i stand…
any idea what happened to grammarian? (it was the grammar version of spell catcher back before they were published by cassidy and green – remember Thunder 7?) i used to use both
January 13th, 2005 at Jan 13, 05 | 12:00 am
Grammarian was not related to Spell Catcher, even though they both used to be published by C&G. The guy went solo at some point. I don’t know what’s happened to the product. Have never used it. (I don’t believe today’s software is smart enough to handle something as complex as grammar issues intelligently.)