I did better this year than last; my guesses last year were pretty far off. My prediction accuracy was roughly 85% this time. I’m not sure if that means that I’m getting better at this game, or that this year’s Macworld Expo Stevenote was just more predictable. (Even if the ladder is true, i wasn’t disappointed.)
Let’s see how it breaks down:
Predictions that were correct*
* or correct enough.
Things i correctly predicted would happen:
- New MacBook (”MacBook Air”)
- Wireless Time Machine Backups: Yes (sort of… we don’t know yet if the Time Capsule has the exclusive privilege to back up over the network)
- iTunes Movie Rentals
- AppleTV update (though more was introduced than i expected)
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Last minute predictions:
New MacBook (“MacBook Air”): Yes
I’m not sure about the name, but i DO think that we’ll see a much smaller MacBook.
Mac Tablet: No
I really don’t think there is a market for this yet.
New Newton: No
How would this be (significantly) different than the iPhone / iPod Touch? It seems to me that, especially once we have an SDK, the Second Coming of the Newton is already a reality.
Mac Pro Minitower: No
As much as i’d like to see this… (and i might even think it possible other than that you can still get a quad core base model MacPro for $2299) I just don’t see it happening this year. Maybe when they puch the Mac Pro up to a base model starting at $3,000 they’ll have some room for a minitower, but then why not just offer cheaper base-model MacPros?
Other Yes Predictions:
Wireless Time Machine Backups / iTunes Movie Rentals / AppleTV update (to support the previous, possibly with a few other bells and whistles) / Updated Displays / 10.5.2
Other No Predictions:
3G iPhone / 2nd Gen iPhone (though we may see a 16GB model) / Wireless Syncing for iPod and iTunes / iMac-shaped Laptop Docking Station (though we may see a dock of some sort, it certainly won’t be in the shape of an iMac.)
We’ll see tomorrow!
Back in April of last year, John Gruber posted and article called “When ‘Smart’ Cut/Copy/Paste Attacks”
I noticed that most NSTextView-based apps now use a rather annoying “smart” C/C/P implementation.
(view his article for an example of the behavior that Gruber called infuriating.)
Well here we are, 19-ish months later, and it looks like in OS X 10.5 Apple has acknowledged the odd behavior (as well as accepted that it might be irritating to some people) and made it optional. In TextEdit (and i assume most other NSText View-based apps) the context menu now has a “Substitutions” sub-menu, whose first option is “Smart Copy/Paste.”
Simply deselect “Smart Copy/Paste” and the odd c/c/p behavior disappears. Cut Copy and Paste are once again “dumb” and simply “do exactly what you expect them to.”
Whether it should or should not be on by default is the next question i suppose.
I’m not sure if I’m alone on this one, but the close / minimize / maximize buttons in leopard totally disgust me.
There is just something about them… I’m having a hard time putting my finger on it exactly, but i know i don’t like them.
The 10.4 buttons were a bit more subtle, and these new ones seem to be just a bit too cartoony, over saturated and somewhat blurry… they look out of place to me.
(note: the 10.4 example above is actually just iTunes in 10.5, which retained the 10.4 look until the iTunes 7.5 update.)
Anyone else cringe just a little every time you see those buttons?
Yes, the wifi equipped iPod Touch is finally here. With it comes a drastic price drop for the 8gb iPhone ($200 less), as well as the discontinuation of the 4gb iPhone model (which is available from Apple “while supplies last” for only $299, which is incredible.)
We also have all new Nanos that play video, new colors for the shuffle, redesigned “iPod classics” (formerly just “iPods”) with much higher capacity at the same price, and so on and so forth.
We have a nice list of new things to be excited about, but you can get all that juicy info either from Apple, or from the 10,000 blogs and news sites around the web that will surely be abuzz. I’m more interested in some of the random side issues that these announcements bring up, and other little distractions and possibilities:
- Where’s the White?
- iPod Touch phone?
- Games? Applications? Bueller?
- iPhone versus iPod Touch?
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