Blogger was down when i was ready to blog. And this is the second time i am trying to blog something today, and let us hope it works. Watched the Apple iNote by Steve Jobs yesterday and it was all so exciting. An Article in der Spiegel today is filled with bitter irony, the journalist was basically not able to connect to the server and just wrote this article about it, oh and about the new iMac, which looks like a blob. The article also gave some insight into his family life but tried so hard to balance both sides of the force again. This forced objectivity is so transparent, so obvious, so sad. And sometimes it is a cover for plain lack of knowledge. There was a product review in Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung when I was in Germany, and it went on and on about the iBook. The Author might have seen the iBook, and might have touched it, but he certainly did not use it. The only positive features he could find in the computer were the *clever mechanism to put both mouse buttons under one cover* (There is no second mouse button), and the firewall interface. (Firewire?). New York one today announced that Apple is the company that decided to abandon innovation and just focus on the design of computers. Oh boy. I do sound like somebody who has an apple tattoo somewhere, don¹t I?
I thought the iMac design was a joke at first, but now it feels more and more comforting to know that there is somebody out there who also believes in the dissapearance of computers. Computers will just become more and more integrated into whatever we do anyway, and they will less and less be obviously computers. The screen of the new iMac just floats over the table. The computer itself is just a clevely designed stand. The modular design will allow apple to finally increase the screen size of the iMac, without redesigning the whole package. If 17" Monitors become cheaper, there will be a 17" iMac, then one with 21" and so on. The base itself is only a space limiter, but not a technology limiter. All in all, the new iMac is a good idea. And a new step in design. Remember all the translucent crap that just exploded all over the market place after the release of the original iMac? All the semi translucent watches, calculators, radios, even Karim Rashid¹s new chessgame is in some ways just an aftershock of this tranlucent plastic epoch. Not only is the CTR dead, but so it JelloPlastic. Except for the osX interface, still filled with throbbing jello buttons. But these are eventually on their way out as well.
Why does not anybody write about iPhoto? Is this a marketing channel that just went undetected under the radar yesterday? This Application which is basically a clever storefront is going to change so much, once people understand, that it is possible now, to publish Coffee Table books, right out of bed, or even from the bathroom. I am so excited about iPhoto. It is a consumer product, but what a great consumer product it is! I was able to just throw some pictures on it and it cleverly sorted them behind the scenes, recognizing that there were separate rolls of film from which the pictures came. Then i was able to just group the pictures into galleries, just like playlists, something we learned from iTunes. And with some simplest clicks was it possible to just publish a little online Gallery, including slideshow and all. A December day at the Louvre It took 15 Minutes to do this. THis does not mean anything really, and time should never be a factor when it comes to quality of things, but it was a pleasant experience. (It was fun). So then there is this "book" button. And not only does the software allow me to use several templates to arrange the images. It also groups the images intelligently, so outside shots with not so much detail appear on one page, some detailed close up shot gets a whole page. This is work of a desiger; a designer is supposed to help to develop this kind of drama that turns content into a great story. Now this is done with a free software.
There are some more details that just prepare us for some new fluidity in operating systems. There is a feature in iPhoto which allows to seemlessly zoom into pictures and which cleverly knows what pictures to zoom on. And when adding comments, to a photograph, the software just seemlessly zooms to the textfield. This is what the user cares about this second, so this is what should matter most. I think there is more ahead of us than we thought there is. Computers will slowly turn into invisible software running environments. Software will pay more attention to what we want to do. And we will be able to expand our world a bit more and seamlessly by being able to publish in more and more convenient ways from the comfort of our chair, or bed, or starbucks.
I am so certain that all of the above will sound really funny in a week. It will be hillarious in a year, and will then progressivly get funnier and funnier.
Just like one of the first reactions to the phone: "Every city should have one". (And I can not find who¹s quote it is.)