Keynote Video: Apple Introduces the iMac

Who wants to watch old stuff? 0o

You would be SHOCKED Viper!

The 2007 Macworld keynote was less than exciting? Did you accidentally switch the CES and Macworld keynote feeds or something?

Simone – It was an hour and a half tribute to the iPhone, which I must say that many web critics such as myself are not excited about.

That’s not the point. I don’t want or need an iPhone either — I don’t want or need a cell phone. But the technology in that tiny little device was amazing, and the interface that they designed for that device was also similarly amazing. I want to touch one and use it and see all the intricate details about it, even though I won’t buy one. I wanted to break open the glass cases at Macworld — it was Apple’s headliner product for the show, and there were only two of them shown throughout Macworld! The iPhone shows where Apple is heading with their technology, and it shows that they haven’t lost their ability to reinvent a class of products that are pretty much universally crappy.

While the iPhone may, for now, the technology inside it doesn’t live in a glass case. You can practically see the next generation of iPods based on what Apple showed on the iPhone. Who knows? Some of this technology may even bleed over to the Mac side of things.

But to call it “less than exciting” is kind of laughable and so, so, so short-sighted.

Well Simone – time will tell, my thought process is that the non removable battery and unrealistic battery claims will certainly HURT the product (Not to mention if the device is supposed to be so internet dependent it only supports EDGE?!).

I don’t care how beautiful the UI is, how many things it can do, and how much storage it has. If the device can’t stay powered on for a FULL day it is worthless to me.

I had an opportunity to speak with many industry insiders at CES and we are all in a skeptical wait and see approach.

I will give it major kudos for the design and the effort, but there was a REASON it was behind glass – It is far from finished and I think many of the claims at Macworld may prove to be untrue.

Macworld is a chance for Apple to tell the world (and shockingly the world listens) the direction the company is heading in and I am SCARED that they just chose to say they are about about Cellphones. 10.5 will be a HUGE advancement in modern computing and it was ignored. iLife the single most usable and productive software suites ever created next to MSFT office? Ignored! I don’t care much about “speed bump” announcements, the hardware offering that Apple has is competitively priced. But what about driving in the idea that these machines has the ability to run EVERY modern OS?

Getting back to point, to spend over an about a cellphone when you have MILLIONS of people listening is, yes, a less then exciting event!

I’m not sure how the iPhone as a total package be viewed truly “exciting” either. As far as Apple is telling us, 3rd party applications will be difficult to nonexistent to make. That is where the exciting features are usually created. You are locked into cingular. Granted, I understand this from the voicemail technology standpoint — you would require the service provider to create this type of voicemail viewing on the iPhone. But its not exciting. The touch interface is very exciting, but overall, there are big limitations and stipulations that need to be overcome before I get excited about this phone.

NEWS FLASH: Mac OS X Leopard is just about as far off as the iPhone. Apple didn’t announce a release date, which means that it’s probably going to be later rather than sooner. But I don’t hear you saying, “Oh, I’ll bet many of the claims made at WWDC regarding Leopard will prove to be untrue.”

Yes, the iPhone is 6 months away. Yes, things will change. But anything that is not set in stone at this point has not been announced. That’s why there are still so many questions regarding the iPhone. But Apple wanted to introduce it to the world, rather than letting the FCC have that honor, as Jobs said.

Again, why don’t I hear you saying that Leopard will backtrack on some of the features that have already been announced? Leopard is just as much vaporware as the iPhone is.

By the way, I am excited about Leopard too, and I am a bit disappointed that Leopard didn’t even get a mention at Macworld at all. (Maybe it’s because, oh… I don’t know… it’s NOT READY TO SHIP YET?) But to call the keynote unexciting is kind of ridiculous. Anything that preceded or followed the iPhone announcement would have been dwarfed by the iPhone, something that has been rumored for probably as long as the iPhone has been in development.

By the way: iLife ’07. That would be soooo exciting. iPhoto can now handle 20 gazillion photos instead of 25,000! OMG! iWork ’07: now with spreadsheets, something that everyone likes to do in their spare time! iPod/iPhone with removable battery: something that 70 million iPod owners don’t actually care about and only one or two pundits/bloggers do. So exciting. Oh, yes, touting the Mac’s ability to run every modern OS, something WHICH THEY HAVE BEEN ABLE TO DO FOR HALF A YEAR NOW. Why would Apple want to tout something like that at the keynote? People are waiting for Apple to release NEW products, not tout old ones!

And then you link to the iMac introduction video. To play devil’s advocate, how was that more exciting than the iPhone keynote? Wait, wait, COLORED PLASTICS OMG! Or, wait, I know, it’s the perfect internet machine because it comes with a 33.6 kbps modem — oh, wait, the state-of-the-art at that time was 56 kbps. Oh, I know, its connectivity must have been great! Oh, wait, it basically dumped all of Apple’s current IO products without any warning and made peripheral manufacturers rush to make ones compatible with the iMac, making it hard to find floppy/zip drives compatible with the iMac until a few months after it was actually shipping to the public. Oh, yeah, and by the way, the iMac was also pre-announced months before it was shipping.

Your definition of “exciting” is… “interesting”.

Oh, by the way? All the “industry insiders” of which you speak were also in a “skeptical wait and see approach” with regards to the iPod when it was released in 2001.

How did that turn out for those “industry insiders”?

You posted this video before a few months ago (or longer)

Nope, I can guarantee that. We posted the iPod launch.

Simone –

You make an excellent discussion, please always fell welcomed here. I enjoy the insight and eloquent counterpoints.

The iMac was exciting: it was a mac made for the masses, featuring everything you needed to get started in computing. USB is and was a much better solution than ADB or SCSI.
Whereas the iPhone gets continually less exciting, and it hasn’t even been put into production. Ars just talked about more features being locked (http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/1/15/6632). You can have the coolest interface in the world, but if you are locked out of doing what you want because of contract agreements for something you are paying good money for, this makes me unexcited.