No Regrets (Whew!)
I have to admit that I was a little worried before Steve's MacWorld keynote that he was going to announce something that made me smack my head in regret, but happily it didn't happen. The move to Intel is happening as predicted, and the MacBook is nice (as hoped) and the Intel iMac was a surprise, but since I just bought a machine with the same power (and better graphics) for half the price, I'm not at all regretting my switch back to Windows at all. Thank goodness!
The iWeb/iLife stuff is cool, though I don't think the blogging and photo stuff is that significant for anyone besides very new people the blogging world. It's not like people are going to give up TypePad or WordPress and Flickr for a .Mac blog any time soon. I do like Apple's embracing Podcasting - both video and audio - and think the new tools in GarageBand are great. That was one of my complaints about the Mac, that because I'm not a musician, GarageBand didn't do much for me. But the Podcast studio editing stuff and one click posting would be very cool.
But there's nothing that made me flip out with regret. No Set Top Box, no enhancements to Front Row, No iPhone (where the hell is it!??), no Intel Mac Mini, etc. Actually, Because of CES' focus on video I was really expecting some sort of Apple-oriented Media Extender to be announced, but it didn't happen, either. So really, I'm quite happy. I would've been really tweaked if his Steveness had announced somehing indescribably cool.
Whew! :-)
-Russ