MacWorld 2005 Thoughts and Purchases
January 11th, 2005
Indie-ware
- Delicious Library continues to improve. They would be wise to advertise the MacWorld sale price of $30 and the upgrade pricing ($22.44 for me since I already had a Chronopath Library license) on their website!
- TextWrangler 2.0 is free. Thanks, BareBones!
- I saved $10 on MacJournal.
Apple
The new, previously unannounced products are cool and all, but I’m still most looking forward to 10.4 itself, particularly because of Spotlight. Don’t miss the Spotlight Technology Preview PDF (1.3MB).
- Pages looks nice. It does look more like a middleweight page layout program than a word processor. I’ll have to use it to see how well it works as the later. Word (even 2004) is among the most maddening applications I have ever used; terrible performance combined with strange interface behavior and frustrating “helpful” formatting features.
- iPhoto 5 looks much more polished. The ability to search should have been in the first release! I’m curious as to what changes have been made to the importation process, which currently doesn’t allow you to import only specific photos.
- I have roughly zero interest in the iPod shuffle. Here is one reason why:
Another reason being that my 1st generation 10GB is still going strong, roughly three years after purchase.
- I’d wondered about the 10.4 menu bar. The initial design (still visible on the Mac OS X page when hovering over the Spotlight link) led me to believe that the Apple and Spotlight menus would finally leverage Fitts’ Law by giving them infinite depth, but apparently not. Perhaps they found that it would cause confusion with Exposé corner triggers.
- The new Mail buttons are gross. I understand that they are trying to more clearly group related functions, but they are fugly. They also prevent users from placing buttons exactly how they want them. For example, I frequently use Reply, but rarely use Reply to All or Forward. I don’t want buttons I don’t use on my toolbar!
- The Mac mini has decent specs at a price point equal to or less than the top-end iPod. If my conversation with my Windows XP lovin’ friend Nick is any indicator, this will help expand Apple’s marketshare.
On An Unrelated Note…
Seth Nickell has posted his thoughts about design and the effect of excessive focus on usability on it. The post is related to his latest GNOME Journal article, “The Experimental Culture“.
Actually, it seems that clicking in the corners still brings up the menus, even though they’re about twenty pixels shy of the corner.
Thanks for the info, Ben. Is there a rollover effect to visually imply that they work that way?
Personally? Love the newer menu bar design, despise the Mail menu buttons. You can be sure I’ll be doing everything in my power to fight those monstrosities (not that I have any power). I can’t believe they made it into the keynote.
As for Spotlight, I spent a very fun day demoing it to people. My favorite thing to do is do a search for “Hello World,” then open TextEdit, type “Hello World” and save the document. I never get sick of seeing the newly saved document appear immediately in the search results.
Sounds like a good day to me, Buzz! I’ll have to get to a MacWorld at some point.
Monstrosities is the right word. Good gravy, they are hideous. Good luck in your battle against their inclusion in the final.
Hm, I sorta like the mail buttons. I don’t like (have never liked) the current icons in mail. they look too OS9 to me.
And clicking in the corners only works if you click then let go and move to the left quickly in Panther.
Personally, I *HATE* those new Mail buttons… bleh!…it would be terrible if those icons met some sort of unfortunate accident… ; )
The current ‘free-floating’ icons-as-buttons used throughout the system are much better, and more flexible when changing the theme (unofficially, I know.)
As for the changes to the Apple and Spotlight menus, I actually really liked the old style, and the new, lower key Spotlight, looks kinda disappointing, but I’ll get used to it (using a Tiger theme probably hasn’t helped in getting attached to the old style!)
Aside from all of that, Dan, thanks for the tip on Library — I hadn’t thought to check around for Macworld specials, and decided to jump onboard. Even though they’ll be charging for the 2.0 upgrade, I figured I might as well get it now.
You’re absolutely right that iPhoto should have had search from the beginning, I’ve been using an unofficial search plugin from Ken Ferry who also produces the excellent Keyword Assistant (auto-complete for keywords), and ‘type-ahead-select’ for Mail.