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Apple Computer Inc. Now Apple Inc.

Apple Inc. iPhoneIt certainly has been a big afternoon/morning (depending on where you live) for Apple. Finally the iPhone sees the light of day and my god was it worth the weight, more information on the Apple TV (iTV) and all the usual fanfare.

I wasn’t expecting the keynote to end without the usual iLife and iWork Updates (though it does save my wallet) I was already and prepared to shell out for it. I can only imagine that some sort of update will be coming with Leopard to entice me, not that I Really need that much enticing.

Apple Inc. Well done, you still manage to prove the rumors right about something but wrong about the actual hardware itself and also have put to bed the most recurring rumor ever.

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What of Web 2.0?

It seems the web is becoming more and more obsessed with the new terms that pop-up everywhere ‘web 2.0’ , ‘AJAX’ , ‘Rails’. Sometimes with little thought to what they actually mean to what is going on. Its all well and good providing a nice looking site to sit on but unless you have the content to work with it you may struggle getting the site off the ground.

What about web standard and accessibility, I know this site isn’t perfect but I am always working on making it better for everybody to access (whether they will or not is neither here not there). Simple things like putting alt tags in images(at this moment only two images are missing this on the entire site) and titles in links can make a lot of difference, and if you design websites for a living it should be second nature. For me I have to work at although the developing side of things is getting a lot easier (so practice really does make perfect)

So I was talking about web 2.0, so back on topic. I think on the whole far too much on how people judge sites is now based on where are the fancy effects and wheres the 2.0 features (I have fallen pray to this with jacktams.co.uk) but it would be quite easy to go way overboard and just make it horrible to use, which leads nicely onto MySpace.

If you read deeper into my archives you will probably see my dislike for MySpace and it isn’t because of what its for, but the way its done, everything seems to be half baked and saturated with ads (another pet hate) and instead of focusing on what they are good at and making that even better and easier to grasp (then reducing the ads) they diversify. We should have already learned from the likes of Sony that going out and trying to become everything to everybody doesn’t work specializing on what you have got and your good at wins in the end.

Technologies are rapidly converging and creating new forms of media podcasting for example, the iPod is only 5years old, and video blogging even blogging, then you have blogging from a phone, PDA, just ringing a number and posting, but mistakes made the first time around (i.e. web 1.0) could happen all over again, if we don’t start including the fixes now.

AJAX and web 2.0 aren’t the be all and end all, good specialized and accessible content will always win, and a good design may come second to that and AJAX etc are just the icing on the cake.

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Apple’s (Product) Red

iPod Nano RedSo Apple have a new (Product) Red Nano, and there has been an uproar against the miniscule $10 apple is giving per iPod, without me getting ranting and annoying.

Where would the campaign be without Apple, fair enough it is a small amount but Apple is Cool and also everywhere, if you haven’t got an ipod your nobody, so the upshot of that being free advertising. Its like FCUK putting slogans on the front of t-shirts that you need to read twice to make sure what they actual say. Red iPod, does good and also gives the publicity it needs to get more companies on board, in short never think one sided about these things.

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iTunes 7 has landed

iTunes LogoApple dropped the latest version of iTunes today, and guess what it is better than what it says on the tin. Video support is now flawless and the overall UI is much more refined and very much like the look of a Pro App. All you information is stored in a much more structured and easy to use manner and iPod integration is just cool and gives all the information you need in one window.

There are also improvement to downloads, an extra tab will pop-up showing what is downloading and what size it is, it little things like this that make the whole app run a lot smoother and noticeably faster than iTunes 6. At some point it would be nice to get some Bit Torrent support in the mix.

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How Long Can Apple Keep this Up??

Apple LogoI am a Mac user and as with any other mac user i swear by them and love every minute of using them (apart from when i break unix) but apple can no longer keep up the hype and rumor mongering that i read every day – it just simply isn’t possible.

What other company can you think of that people get all excited because there might be the off chance that a processor in a laptop may just change. As much as Apple is a market leader it cannot keep generating this much hype. On the one hand it is good at generating publicity but this publicity can be a double edged sword, Apple only has to release one bad product and it will be in trouble. Take the iPod for example if there were a new iPod to come out tomorrow and all the units didn’t work would you be put off buying another iPod for your collection??

I don’t like being negative like this and a really do hope apples success continues but at some point something has to change.