I want two things from MacWorld:
There are reports of a leaked Steve Jobs keynote flying around. If they’re true, I’m excited.
In July of 2000, Apple released the Power Mac G4 Cube, a powerful work of art. Originally running Mac OS 9, it held up well with iterations of OS X. In October of 2007, Apple released Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Although one was created seven years after the other, I believe they were meant to be together. This weekend, I spent upwards of ten hours trying to get Leopard to run on a G4 Cube.
If you own a Macintosh, or have ever been in an Apple retail store, you’ve likely seen Photo Booth.app. It’s a small application that lets users take some quick pictures of themselves using the iSight camera that’s built into their Mac. The quality of the images isn’t wonderful; the application produces 640px by 480px fuzzy JPEGs. (Here’s an example image. Two external hard drives with a chemistry hipster PDA.)
I love the Mac for many reasons. The design is impeccable, the operating system is stable and feature-rich, and the developer community is strong. Despite all this, I think that Photo Booth has sold more Macs than any true merit of the platform. When I walk around an Apple retail store, I see kids playing with Photo Booth. When I’m browsing Facebook, I find images from Photo Booth.
Although I sound somewhat critical of Photo Booth, I use it daily. It turns my MacBook Pro into a sophisticated mirror. It’s remarkable that such a simple tool is now so pervasive.
The Leopard launch was awesome. I had a great time, and got six t-shirts!
Today, my final day at the Academy (more on that later), I bought in my MacBook Pro to show off OS X to all of the PC lovers. I met resistance everywhere, even from the most intelligent students. While we were outside during lunch, one proclaimed:
Macs are so cheap, they only have one button mouses!
Before combatting the deeper issue here, there are two mistakes I must point out. The plural of mouse is mice. Also, Macs most definitely aren’t cheep.
I promptly whipped out my MacBook Pro and showed them how my trackpad works. I opened TextEdit, and typed a few words. I double clicked on one of those words, highlighting it. Then, I held down two fingers on the trackpad and clicked, evoking a contextual menu. For those of you who don’t know, a contextual menu is the expected response to a right click.
I don’t need two buttons. It’s simplified design.
Of course, I couldn’t sway any opinions. To quote Barack Obama:
Values are faithfully applied to the facts before us, while ideology overrides whatever facts call theory into question.
It’s official, the one and only Steve Jobs will be gracing us with his presence next week at an Apple event, specifically about the Macintosh. It’s nice to know that Apple still makes computers. I’m tired of hearing about the over-hyped, albeit, amazing iPhone. I’d like something new about the Mac.
My prediction? I think we’ll see a new iMac, iWork ’08, and some cool detail about Leopard. There might even be one more thing. I await anxiously, because there’s nothing more entertaining than a Stevenote.