John’s Blog

3 things i think now, a day after MacWorld:

1) Steve is as good at what he does as Tiger Woods is at golf. Best ever. Nobody else close. (Same goes for Jonathan Ive, I suspect.) In the keynote, everything was pitch perfect. He completely knew his audience. The reality distortion field was amazing.

2) The iphone is important but not revolutionary in impact. Don’t misunderstand. I’ll likely buy one and be happy about it. (Although the fact that it’s a closed system is a bad misstep, I think. Same misstep Steve generally makes on 1.0 products, so it’ll probably get fixed eventually. Also, it’s not gonna run OS X. Maybe the kernel, maybe some UI bits & pieces. But not OS X like anyone knows OS X.) I think that the iphone will change how people think phones should work, yes, and raise the bar on design. But it’s too much money to have a massive impact, and I think they’ll use flash memory capacities & pricing to keep their margins & price points healthy. I also have a sense, from the time I’ve been spending on Mozilla stuff in Asia, that it’s going to look like a quirky American device from that side of the ocean. It’s not a global product at all. I’ll probably line up to buy one, though. Good move for Cingular. Wonder how much they paid for the right. (As an aside, I’m *really* interested in finding out how much the devices will actually cost to make. I’m betting somewhere close to $1k.)

Oh, and also, i suspect that it’s a closed system for the moment because it’s not really done as an OS. Kinda the same reason that all the demos were either in Steve’s hands or under glass. I have the sense that it’s a pretty long way from ready. I’m betting on Thanksgiving.

3) I don’t know about their apple TV thingy. Works great if you only get your content by buying it through iTunes. I, um, acquire mine in a variety of different ways. Can’t use it with the appleTV. Only marginally useful at the moment. But the UI is great. I think I’ll get one when people figure out how to either (1) import more comprehensive stuff into iTunes so it can stream to the appleTV or (2) spoof an iTunes server to effect the same.

and a bonus thought (since Kathy’s out at class and I have a couple of minutes):

I’m pretty dispirited about the OS & software message, which is this: maybe we’ll do some more of that computer stuff sometime. Who knows. Nothing interesting to tell you about it, like if we’re ever going to fix our blogging platform (.mac) or give you a spreadsheet that works in real time (excel on Rosetta is painful). You’ll know about it sometime in the future, maybe, if we ever decide it’s interesting enough to talk about. For now, shinier work over here to keep our attention on.

But we’ll see. Maybe they’ll announce all the software stuff tomorrow. Maybe they won’t.

Also, didn’t Apple used to make, um, what’s that word….oh, right: computers?? The only time anyone mentioned a computer was when Steve talked about taking it out of their name.