Check out this post by Gizmodo, showing off part of Apple’s display at WWDC:
Apple stationed a little bit of eye candy in the Moscone Center lobby: a 5x4 matrix of Cinema Display monitors, set adorned with thousands iPhone app icons. The twist? Whenever someone purchases the app, it pulsates.
Apparently it’s not quite real-time, but the effect is extremely slick. Grouping the icons by their approximate colors creates a subtle gradient, which is a nice touch.
A few days ago, John Gruber wrote:
Also, in Mac news, I’d bet a small amount on a refresh to Apple’s notebook lineup, with a branding change where the “MacBook Pro” designation is used for all aluminum models,and just plain non-Pro “MacBook” is used for plastic models.
Gruber was right. The new 13-inch based notebooks both have backlit keyboards and FireWire 800 ports. The 15-inch got a new display panel, but lost its ExpressCard/34 Slot. All of the machines are faster, built-in batteries (like the 17-inch model) and all 3 sport lower prices.
Jolicloud, a new Linux-based OS out for a select group of netbooks, generated some buzz after screenshots of the interface were leaked a few months ago.
The OS looks great, and ties in to web services easier and better than probably any other OS out there. TechCrunch took it for a test spin:
Even when you run Jolicloud for the first time, everything is quite visual, making it easy to navigate even when you’re not familiar with all the buttons and processes. Compare it to switching from Windows Mobile 6 on your smartphone to the iPhone OS: it’s incredibly easy to get used to, and it’s just a better general user experience, particularly if you use a lot of web applications.
These days, it’s just a matter of time before new gadgets get taken apart for their guts to be shown to the world. Here’s what the inside of the Palm Pre looks like. Pretty.
Wired has put together a slideshow of Palm’s best - and worst - products.
Gizmodo seems to think that the company’s new WebOS is a diamond, the Pre’s hardware is the rough:
Think of it like this. The software is agile, smart and capable. The hardware, on the other hand, is a liability. If Palm can get someone else to design and build their hardware—someone who has hands and can feel what a phone is like when physically used, that phone might just be one of the best phones on the market.
It’s really not good. My hands aren’t that big (I can type faster than you could ever dream on a BlackBerry, iPhone or E71) and my thumb literally takes up 3 or 4 keys on the keyboard. There’s less space in between each key than say, a BlackBerry Curve 8300 keyboard, and the texture takes some time to get used to. It’s a rubberized coating kind of like the Centro and Treo Pro, and while the keys are a bit harder (better), the coating could possibly get irritating as usage increases. It’s really such an important area that couldn’t afford to be messed with and we’ll admit it… we’re a little let down. You’re going after the big guns here, and this is kind of disappointing.
The Titanium PowerBook was the first notebook from Apple to feature the G4 processor.
At 1-inch thick, sporting a 15-inch widescreen display and wrapped in metal, the notebook caught everyone by surprise. The design is proving timeless. The Unibody MacBook and MacBook Pros are built like the Titanium - a thin plate on the bottom with all the insides built into the top case. Not to mention the black keyboard being back in style.
Looks like it may give Tweetie a run for its money.
Perhaps the best thing I’ve read on the Jobs/Woz relationship, written by John Siracusa:
By all accounts, Steve Jobs is no engineer. He was never a programming maven like Bill, nor was he a hardware wiz like Woz. On his own, Jobs could not create much of anything. But that’s not his superpower.
Though a good critic can influence the community of creators, in the end, he does not create anything himself. But take that critic and put him in charge of the creators. Make him, let’s say, the founder, CEO, and spiritual leader of several thousand of the most talented engineers and artists in the computer industry. What might happen then?
The video is set in 2011.
May 4 - 8 is ’Roid Week 2009. My contributions will be collected here.