Apple blows its load

[Asher]

Explain

[DaShi]

You can at least surf Chinese porn on a mac.

[Berzerker]

Well, the big dev conference was today in SF. The big news really seems to be that Apple is getting semi-serious about gaining market share, with new Macbook Pros coming in at $300 less than their predecessor models. The 15-in has 7-hour battery life and all have added SD card slots.

The new iPhone 3GS was announced, basically with all the predicted features. Has 3 MP camera with video, motion camera, audio. Same price points as previous version (199/299), but double the memory. The existing 3G will stick around and be dropped to $99. (This is a key time for iPhone, since the original 2-year ATT contracts for early adopters are about to run out.)

There was also something about MS Exchange support for the Mail and Calendar functions, so they're definitely trying to be more enterprise-friendly.

The new OSX, Snow Leopard, is scheduled for September. $29 -- again, looking for market share.

I'm told there were also multiple on-stage demo failures of new apps.

No appearance by Jobs.

OK, back to work now...

does apple produce software/OS for people with regular PCs? If I build a computer would apple be an option?

[-Jrabbit]

Nope. They don't like your kind.

[notyoueither]

He could try a Hackintosh

[SlowwHand]

You can at least surf Chinese porn on a mac.

A HUGE selling point.

[Zopperoni]

I've never needed the ExpressCard.

Maybe they know their audience?

Professional videographers who shoot w/ the Sony XD cams would love to have an ExpressCard slot, because the camera records on ExpressCard.

[Asher]

The ExpressCard is more useful in other ways though...like adding eSATA Support, which is very sorely lacking for what purports to be a professional laptop.

[Zopperoni]

O definitely, mate, I was just referring to a real-life example I encountered while meeting a production company.

ExpressCard is the future

[Kuciwalker]

One of the new features in Snow Leopard:

"Signal strength indicators in the Airport menu (so you can choose the Wi-Fi network with the best signal)."

[Asher]

Apple, always innovating.

If they spent less time being childish nerd-bullies to MS they may actually start making good software again. As it is right now they can barely keep their head above the water in OS development.

Rumour has it the competent OS X devs got diverted from Snow Leopard to iPhone development. That's why Snow Leopard is taking so long and has so few substantive features. The rumoured big changes either got cut completely or downscaled significantly, eg Marble (new UI) is gone and Grand Central Dispatch doesn't support OpenCL (which is where it'd be most useful!). Instead all we get is Apple's attempt to feature parity with Windows XP like hardware accelerated media players, wireless signal strength identifiers, 64-bit support, and multithreaded system applications.

[Ben Kenobi]

Apple is just now getting that?

Wow.

I just wish that Vista and Windows 7 wasn't that expensive to buy.

[onodera]

Explain

The guy (it's an official MS video, mind you) flicks his fingers across the screen, and the photo in the official MS viewer program rotates clockwise. Yes, it rotates after he performs the gesture. WTF? My box is many times more powerful than an iPhone, why does a picture in an iPhone "stick" to the fingers as soon as they touch the screen, so it feels like you are manipulating the photo itself, not performing a mouse gesture, why doesn't it work like that in 7?
I can understand why it would work that way in legacy apps that are simply spammed with WM_BLAH, but why doesn't a program that is supposed to showcase the feature behave like it should?

[Asher]

Not sure what you're talking about. I've not seen the video, nor do I care to look it up.

I've used Windows 7 touchscreen devices at my last firm and they updated in realtime, a bit more responsive than it is on the iPhone.

[Wiglaf]

Why is no one talking about the new feature where your iPhone can connect to your computer box and provide it with internet access anywhere? Along with the copy/paste and the GPS features that is pretty groundbreaking.