Steve’s Bounty

I refreshed my browser endlessly on MacMerc and the rest all PST-morning, and though the first hour of Steve’s keynote was a little slow (to read about), I think I join the happy throng of Mac zealots elated with Apple’s MacWorld San Fransisco announcents this morning. Spoiler predictions and rumors aside, it’s a great crop of toys. My takes:

• iPod Shuffle – cute as a button, perfect for the gym or people more into singles and hits than the exhaustive record-mongering that’s got my 40GB iPod bursting at the seams. I don’t know that I’d buy one, but at $99 for the 512MB and $150 for the 1GB it’s almost worth it just to have a stylish Apple-made thumbdrive.

• iLife ’05 – no comment, really. Video is totally not my thing, so I’ve got no comment about iMovie. Never more than poked around the thing. GarageBand is fun, but it’s not how I like to make digital music. I use iPhoto now and again, and that looks like it’s got some shiny new newness. Not gonna shell out for it, but iLife looks good on the whole.

• iWork – I’ve enjoyed using Keynote, but it needed some work, and it looks like it got it. As for Pages, I almost never fire up a full-blown word processor anymore, but it looks gorgeous, like MS Office got InDesign’s supermodel step-sister knocked up at some champagne -soaked house party in Beverly Hills it managed to crash (‘cos seriously, who’s inviting Office?). I almost wish I needed to do, y’know, word processing, just to give it a spin. Maybe I’ll do up a fake invitation to a baby shower and send it to everyone I don’t like.

• Mac mini – Sure, we heard it was coming, but that doesn’t make it any less hott [sic]. Well, the skimpy RAM and tiny hard drive almost does, but the economics of the specs are understandable. And sure, it could’ve been the iTivo king hell set-top media convergence box. While we’re at it, it’s puzzling that Apple didn’t introduce a more affordable display, as I can see some potential buyers aghast at Apple’s own display prices and irked at having to go from their local Apple Store to the CompUSA down the road to get a cheap off-brand 17" LCD. But at the end of that littany of minor complaints: c’mon. This thing is busted sweet. $499! Never again will I have to endure some asshat jibing a well-meaning Mac evangelist with “well, uh, sure they work well and stuff, but, uh, they’re too expensive! Yeah! Snob!” And let me probably not be the first to say: an armful of these + Xgrid + Xcode = best distributed homebrew pr0n scraper e-var. Or, y’know, crunching numbers to cure cancer. That too.

I hope the market takes to these like they have to the iPod, and that this is a banner year for Apple. Awesome job, guys n’ gals.