Daryl Baxter.

Mountain Lion.

Today the latest version of Mac OS X is released. 10.8, the first version i’ve missed out on in 6 years, and also the one that is driving further down the path of the coming iOS/Mac OS X Fusion.

Reading the reviews, from The Verge to Daring Fireball, to All Things D, the general concensus is that:

• Cheaper Price
• Faster
• Airplay Mirroring.
• Full iCloud integration
• Twitter and soon Facebook baked into the OS
• No better reason for spending $20 or £14.

As the updates are now on a yearly cycle as iOS has been since its original release, one has to wonder just what 10.9 will unveil, a further fusion, possibly a Maps app on Mac OS X?

Its hard to believe that when 10.5 Leopard was in the making, it had to be delayed by 6 months just so engineers could be transferred to concentrate on having the iPhone launch on time. 5 years on, and a yearly release for both OS’ they can do with ease.

Looking ahead to see what may be on 10.9 apart from a possible dedicated Maps app, it’s too hard to say. But right now, Apple definitely has the understanding that on a PC, the function of a keyboard and mouse is always primary. If its changed too much for a one size fits all scenario (Windows 8) then there’ll be more alienation than attraction to the platform.

It may be a 0.1 release, but in 10 years since 10.0, Windows 8 seems to be the turning point of where the consumer will be able to realise what is the better, elegant, faster, more cared for OS in the PC age.

And you don’t need me to type out what the answer is.

Netflix and their bemusing past year.

A great read of how Netflix did a severe trip up one year tomorrow, and is only now starting to recover.

“I messed up,” Hastings wrote. “I owe everyone an explanation. It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming, and the price changes… In hindsight, I slid into arrogance based upon past success. We have done very well for a long time by steadily improving our service, without doing much CEO communication.

I remember reading about Quickster, and then how it only took around a fortnight that they completely binned the idea. Crazy.

Source.

Surface.

This video sums up everything i felt about Monday’s event.

Also to quote one man from the above video:

If you see a stylus, they blew it.

WWDC: How Right/Wrong was i?

iOS 6

• Maps

The obvious one, looks stunning. When the 3D mode was being manipulated on the iPad, i was blown away.

• Facebook Integration

Looks great. I can definitely see use for this on Safari and Photos.

• Unified Bar on Safari, as to how it looks on Mountain Lion

One feature that i hoped to see, but its still the same. Except ‘Google’ is now ‘Search’..

• Baidu Search

As with Mountain Lion, the assault into China is being built upon in iOS 6. Better language support and yes, Baidu search.

• Widgets

 It wasn’t meant to be. But then i think, this is in a way, built into Siri. So why have this in the Notification Center? Although a shortcut for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth would have been nice.

• Siri API

No API, but Siri is improved. Looking for Football results, i can definitely see this being used in the UK. Except for me.

• Siri Maps outside USA

This hope of mine turned out to be true. Tests have proved that asking for the nearest restaurant, hotel, bar, comes up with UK places. I wonder if the new ‘Maps’ had a hand in this being enabled?

• Weather Icon changes to location of the phone at last. If you’re in Lincoln, it shows Rain. If in Spain, a Sun.

A minor change i was hoping to see.

• Communication between apps. No filesystem, but just better app communication.

Nothing. Slightly disappointing.

• Maybe, a refreshed UI throughout.

Not completely, but there are some re-arrangements and a dynamic status bar colour change which took a while for me to get used to.

From what I’ve seen previously, the features are mostly common sense, i.e, what is the next update that people actually want? When Mountain Lion was announced, iOS 6 features are probably being shown on the 10.8 section on the Apple site. The ‘Do Not Disturb’ notification option perhaps, and more powerful Mail options?

Do Not Disturb was to be true, and looks to be really useful. The amount of times i’ve been woken up by a text message, even when it’s set to silent.. A useful feature to be carried over.

Mail has VIP and, pull to refresh, a feature i’ve been wanting since i first used Tweetie.

Mountain Lion

• Siri Dictation

This turned out to be true, which works across all applications.

• Release Date & Price

July for £13.99 . Cheaper than how Lion was, although this is more of a tune up release as to how Snow Leopard was.

Apple TV

• Regarding the new Apple TV OS, there was a new UI only in March, it would be completely nonsensical to me. So i think, perhaps the UI will remain, but an additional option will appear in an update for ‘Apps’.

This is one that i knew i should have trusted my instincts on, and instead i was half convinced by the news sites and a couple of friends. Although airplay is there, and is successfully being copied by Wii U and Xbox Smart Glass, everything will be unveiled on this soon.

One More Thing…

The Retina Macbook Pro.

I’ve yet to see one as i’m now back in Lincoln and there isn’t an official Apple Store which would have one in as there would be in London, but i’ll be keeping an eye in the local electronic shops.

It looks stunning. It’s the next level of the Macbook Air, carrying on from what was started 3 years ago. Once i actually have a go on one, a post will be written of it.

All in all, with iOS, at first i was admittedly a bit disappointed, with a ‘is that it?’ attitude.

But i realised, when iOS 5 was released, I was unsure of how it could be improved upon drastically when everything could be used with ease.

iOS 6 is a tune up, a ‘Mountain Lion’ of iOS if you wish. The little things such as the status bar blending into the app being displayed is welcome, while Maps looks to be incredible, especially with the 3D and turn by turn features.

WWDC: Predictions.

Under a day to go before the main event, and everything thats been seen on the web, i thought i’d do a list of what i’m expecting/hoping to see:

iOS 6

• Maps
• Facebook Integration
• Unified Bar on Safari, as to how it looks on Mountain Lion
• Baidu Search
• Widgets
• Siri API
• Siri Maps outside USA
• Weather Icon changes to location of the phone at last. If you’re in Lincoln, it shows Rain. If in Spain, a Sun.
• Communication between apps. No filesystem, but just better app communication.
• Maybe, a refreshed UI throughout.

From what I’ve seen previously, the features are mostly common sense, i.e, what is the next update that people actually want? When Mountain Lion was announced, iOS 6 features are probably being shown on the 10.8 section on the Apple site. The ‘Do Not Disturb’ notification option perhaps, and more powerful Mail options?

Mountain Lion

• Siri Dictation
• Release Date & Price

Apple TV

• Regarding the new Apple TV OS, there was a new UI only in March, it would be completely nonsensical to me. So i think, perhaps the UI will remain, but an additional option will appear in an update for ‘Apps’.

The next post will be how right or wrong i was based on this :)

Looking forward to 6PM tomorrow!

Twitter Bird Takes Flight.

Twitter had announced its change of logo, to this.

Starting today you’ll begin to notice a simplified Twitter bird. From now on, this bird will be the universally recognizable symbol of Twitter. (Twitter is the bird, the bird is Twitter.) There’s no longer a need for text, bubbled typefaces, or a lowercase “t” to represent Twitter.

The bird is a worldwide known logo, so it does make sense.

Source.

The big 3 at E3.

Only Last of Us and Star Wars 1313 looked to be ones i’d happily play, whereas the Vita seems to be wanting to be led behind a shed and silenced by a shotgun.

Even though the seventh generation of consoles are undoubtably coming next year, it would have been nice to have seen more of an effort to close this generation up.

Internet Explorer on Xbox as an announcement at E3, there aren’t enough words to fathom how that’s appealing and why it’d be worth mentioning at the keynote.

I understand it’s the last year before the dawn of the next console generation, but I’m not sure if it was in Sony and Microsoft’s best interest to completely hide their cards. But even with a forfeit to Nintendo, the WiiU failed to excite on stage, though that could change after launch.

Source.

The Postmortem of Palm.

A brilliant article into the makings of webOS and the Palm Pre, and its subsequent downfall.

Source.

And indeed, the January event did blow minds: both the hardware and software put smiles on the faces of a spellbound capacity crowd in a ballroom at the Venetian hotel, a stalwart for big CES announcements every year. “This is a huge win for Palm. People are stoked,” our own Joshua Topolsky wrote in his Engadget liveblog. There was some confusion and disappointment that Sprint — a smaller carrier that used CDMA — had the exclusive, and the vague “first half of 2009” release window was a cause for concern. Negative comments about webOS or the Pre themselves, though, were hard to come by.

Topolsky and I were ushered into a small meeting room just minutes after the press conference where we had a half hour to play with the Pre. It was rough around the edges (both literally and figuratively), but it felt nearly as convincing as what Matias Duarte had just demonstrated before a packed room; it felt like Palm had essentially all the parts in place to ship a solid product.

When i worked in the phone shop, we was given the stock of the Palm Pre and the display models. I had the opportunity to use it a couple days before launch, and as this was before multitasking in the iPhone, it’s key marketing was the fact that it could do this, and also with the ‘card’ feature, which was really unique.

I also liked the fact that you could use the ‘Konami Code’ on it to enable the developer (unofficial add on) mode, which me and the guru got a kick out of.

All phone models and their tables were moved to make space for the Palm Pre section, set up over a long day i remember right before launch.

The launch came on a Friday, and 5 people must have come in for it.

The subsequent months where no major updates to the software arrived. When multitasking arrived on the iPhone in June, the stock was already gathering cobwebs. When the Palm Pre 2 eventually arrived, it was a meagre update that had a different way it slid up to reveal the keyboard, and the camera was only slightly upgraded, and with video.

It was a real shame, especially by the time iOS 4 had landed.

Staffers we spoke to took a more positive view, though, and one summed it up particularly well: “You ever see 24 Hour Party People? You know the scene at the end where they’re playing Happy Mondays’ Hallelujah and Tony Wilson is standing over the hacienda and he’s like, ‘well, it’s all over — we have to shut down. Take the turntables, take the barstools, let a thousand haciendas bloom’? Well, that’s what this is like. It’s that there are still people there, but a lot of people left, and they’re bringing the spirit with them. A thousand webOSes will bloom, I hope.”

Now in 2012, its already such a different place with smartphones, and Blackberry has more of a chance succeeding than’Open webOS’, and that’s a tragedy.