QotD: WWDC Keynote 2006
Posted August 7th, 2006 @ 08:37pm by Erik J. Barzeski
Question: What was your favorite thing about WWDC 2006's keynote?
My Answer: I'll update my own answer after I've watched the thing. I forgot about it until now and, as can be expected, the stream is still painful to watch.
Update: I still haven't watched the keynote (and likely won't until tomorrow). I love iChat screen sharing. I love Time Machine. I love Spaces. I love the new developer tools.
Mail getting RSS doesn't change anything (it won't be good for managing more than a few feeds, just as Safari wasn't).
I don't like the ship date (but I kind of expected it). I don't like that there's only one tower.
You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.
Donate Life
Posted 07 Aug 2006 at 9:41pm #
Incidentally, I priced out the Mac Pro I'd like and it came to $5k. Ouch.
Posted 08 Aug 2006 at 1:17am #
the Dashcode thing seems interesting...
I keep hoping for a Mac to counter the Mac Pro... for people who love/need/are irrationally addicted to expandability, but dont need the top of the line workhorse or are on closer to a iMac budget (and already have a nice LCD)
A "Mac" to counter the MacPro might be a confusing moniker, though, but i still would love to see it, and it sort of seems like there may be room in the lineup so that it wouldn't get TOO crowded. (single Dual-Core chips, considered a "lowend" mac pro, but considerably cheaper. Only really useful for people who WISH they could afford the MacPro but just can't, and wouldn't really use all that power anyway. if done right, it would hardly cannibalize Pro sales.)
I'm also hoping for apple LCDs to start shipping with built in iSights (seems logical).
Posted 08 Aug 2006 at 3:43am #
Holy smokes Eric; only $5k..... you went the conservative route.
I wanted to see what the best would be and selected everything. A whopping $17K for a fully loaded Mac Pro; including 30" monitor.
Well I can dream can't I. LOL
Never happen unless I somehow miraculously win the lottery.
Posted 08 Aug 2006 at 5:57am #
Xcode 3 for sure. It's the application suite I use the most, so any enhancement is welcome.
And the Intel transition coming to an end. MacOS X Server for Intel is here, and that's a very good news! Time to replace my old server, a PowerMac G4 2x533, with something faster, smaller, less power hungry, less noisy... a Mac mini with MacOS X Server 🙂
What else? Hum. Spaces. Virtual desktops made right as far as I can tell. I never used these facilities (Linux or MacOS X) because of the UI mostly. Exposé on steroids is seems.
Posted 08 Aug 2006 at 10:52am #
I was impressed with the new (useful!) toys they've added to Leopard. Time Machine looks especially impressive, and it adds a way to visualize that "fourth" dimension, time, on the computer. It'll be neat.
As an up and coming student developer, I look forward to XCode 3 and the new Obj-C improvements.
I hope Leopard makes it out a few weeks before Vista. How much you want to bet Microsoft kicks the OS out the door early just to try and disrupt the "OMG OS X is amazing!" PR?
Posted 08 Aug 2006 at 11:02am #
It was always a guess of mine that user switching, and now spaces, might somehow be tied into a virtualization scheme of somesort, for using Windows if you choose. I don't want the time of a reboot, as much as just being able to switch to a Windows desktop (rather than working on a desktop in a window. Spaces makes working in both OS simultaneously slightly more sensible.
And it isn't only one Mac Pro, its umpty million, depending on your BTO receipt. I am confused if the bottom model will have two optical drive bays, because they still show a single slot in some of the images, there may actually be TWO cases. I think I would opt for 2 optical drives, 4 gig ram minimum. But the specs on the base model seem still nice to me, at least the price. And I have never liked being one cllick away from buying just to price a system, I will not be buying until after Leopard is released anyway.
Another grey area, having not done the research-- will you have to ASK for 64 bit as a BTO option?
Posted 08 Aug 2006 at 2:24pm #
Bud, there's only one case for all of the Mac Pro combinations. So all Mac Pros will have two optical drive bays, four hard drive bays, etc. Not sure if I understand your question about 64-bit. All Mac Pros ship with Intel Xeon 5100 series processors which are 64-bit chips as well as dual 64-bit frontside buses. There's no way to get a Mac Pro system that isn't 64-bit.
Posted 08 Aug 2006 at 11:31pm #
Finally was able to sit down this evening and watching the Keynote. All very good stuff. Time Machine is going to be a big deal in the long run. My backup process consists of spoofing .Mac services to use Backup and the occasional full copy of my home directory onto another disk. Not exactly trustworthy and reliable.
The iChat Screen Sharing is going to be awesome. Finally, no more asking my parents (g/f, g/f's parents, etc etc) to describe what they see on the screen and attempting to debug what's wrong with the computer over the phone.
Now just to find two and a half grand to get a nice new Mac Pro. My Sawtooth (Dual 450s) is starting to show it's age. Especially now that I've got it hooked up to a Dell 2405 FPW...