WWDC 2006

Most anticipated event in the Mac Calendar has started again this year. And Steve Jobs has delivered his Keynote. Here’s how I felt about it.

[EDIT: Notice that I'm not going into too much detail as I just feel like having a little rant. It's really early in the morning and I'm not feeling good.]

1) Mac Pro. Good stuff, I’m sure it’s a fine machine. Dual optical drive bays, good. Four HD slots, good. Still only 1Gb RAM as the standard configuration, not good. Who in their right mind would every consider having anything less than 2Gb on these machines (4Gb is the minimum in my opinion)? As the benchmarks have show, this for many tasks is more important than having lots of processor speed, which often is left spare as RAM gets over worked. But, I guess, as Apple advertises it as the ‘most configurable Mac ever’, the consumer must be left with an option to spend £1600 and still get a slow machine.

2) 10.5. Time Machine, good. All the other little improvements, good. Spaces, sounds cool. I just hope they let you have different Docks for different profiles. This would be cool ‘cos at the moment I’ve got about 40 apps in there and I can’t tell which one is which since they’re so small and I hate the magnification effect, it’s stupid and useless.

Where is the finder overhaul?

They still have over half a year to finish this before the expected release in the Spring 07, so they better get on with it and not just give us few almost-must-have features and leave rest of it like it is and has been for years. Blaah.

3) Cinema Displays, bad. Bad. Bad. Why is the 20″ not true HD yet? I know I know, it’s only 30 pixels short but still, IT IS NOT HD YET! Price drop, good but bad. Let’s take the 23″ model. It’s $999, in the US, which is £523. That’s one bloody great price I’ll buy one! No! You won’t. It’s £779 in the UK store! If we factor in the US sales tax, which in NYC is 8%, if I remember correctly, we’ll get £564. Take the original $999 and add UK VAT, you get £614! Over £150 more than the US price! Why!? (It does make me feel a bit better to find that it is around £639 in the UK Edu Store.)

Ok, it’s not all bad at all. It’s actually really good. It’s just that everytime before this event everybody gears up to see so much new and amazing stuff that when it never actually comes one might be a bit disappointed. Good that we don’t have to expect anything to happen at Apple Expo Paris, we might be positively supriced.

[edit: added links]

I’m off,

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