Apple

Exchange Server for the Rest of Us?

After Apple's unveiling of MobileMe, touted as Exchange for the rest of us, I started wondering about the possibility of a potentially much more disruptive angle that Apple could take with the service(s).  What if Apple included all of the backend bits that power MobileMe into the next or some future version of Mac OS X Server?  What if any organization could roll out push email, contact and calendar to their entire workforce for only $999?  What if an organization could offer the same kick-ass web-based mail, address book and calendar applications that MobileMe users will have access to?  How many small and medium business would drop Windows and Exchange in a heartbeat to switch to OS X Server with these features?

WWDC Predictions Recap

Time to see how I did with my WWDC 2008 predictions.  Here goes:

3G iPhone

     Prediction: Although most "experts" seem to think this is a foregone conclusion, I can actually envision a reality where SJ does not give us new iPhone.  For some reason, I just have this feeling that it's not going to happen.  However, where there's smoke there's fire and there's an awful lot of smoke on this one.  If I had to bet my house on it, I'd say it will happen, but I won't be surprised at all if it doesn't.

     Result:  The longer the keynote went on the more confident I was getting that we were not going to be blessed with the iPhone 3G.  Ultimately, Steve gave everyone what they expected.  I sort of hedged my bets in my prediction.  I guess this one is a toss up.

Mac OS X 10.6 Preview  

     Prediction: Several stories popped up in the last couple weeks about the possible unveiling of Leopard's successor.  Early reports indicated that no new features would be included, but rather that it would focus on optimization and drop PowerPC support.  I think this sounds pretty plausible, but I'm going to do the rumor mill one better:  I think Apple will announce that they're taking Darwin—the open source core of OS X—to the next level.  When I say next level I mean run on generic X86 hardware.  I'm not saying that they're going to start selling OS X for any old PC, but I think they've seen enough interest from the "scene" to be willing to meet half way.  This one is crazy and has no chance of happening, but if it does you heard it here first.

     Result:  Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" was indeed introduced, but little was shared with the world.  Details have started to leak out a bit, but for the most part, we don't know a whole lot about it.  Of course, if they would have made as bold a move as I had predicted, word would have surely leaked by now.  I guess this one is a toss up, too.

.Mac Refresh  

     Prediction: This really needs to happen if not tomorrow then as soon as humanly possible.  Over the air syncing for iPhones should be the absolute minimum update to the service.  If not, subscribers are going to drop .Mac really fast.  I'd love to see a whole lot more, but, frankly, the service has never gotten the full attention of Apple at any time during its life and I'm afraid that's not going to change...yet.  Hope I'm wrong on this one.

     Result:  Sure enough, Apple came through with a complete rebranding of .Mac named MobileMe.  Over the air syncing for iPhones, Macs and PCs was part of the announcement, just like I had hoped.  Honestly, it was more than I thought we would get.  I can't wait for the service to be rolled out.  I'll say I nailed this one.

Mystery Device  

     Prediction: Isn't this a rumor before every Stevenote?  Uber-portable Macs have been predicted for almost as long as I've been alive.  While I can see a hardware refresh or two, I can't see a completely new device announcement tomorrow; not at WWDC.  Now, Macworld in January is a different story...

     Result:  No mystery device, as predicted.  I fully expect something to be announced at MacWorld in January.  I was right about this, but it was an easy call.

All in all, the keynote went about as I expected.  I'm really excited about iPhone 3G and MobileMe and the AppStore.  This summer should be a good one for Mac fan boys.

WWDC 2008 Predictions

Image via Wikipedia

It's time for the obligatory "predictions-on-the-eve-of-a-big-Apple-event" post.  Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference gets started tomorrow morning and the interwebs has been buzzing for some time now about Steve Job's keynote to kick things off.  Rumors have been flying furiously for weeks now about a new iPhone with 3G capabilities to complement the new iPhone 2.0 software already unveiled in March.  All of the usual suspects have weighed in with their predictions; some more aggressive than others.  Here are my predictions for tomorrow's big event:

3G iPhone:  Although most "experts" seem to think this is a foregone conclusion, I can actually envision a reality where SJ does not give us new iPhone.  For some reason, I just have this feeling that it's not going to happen.  However, where there's smoke there's fire and there's an awful lot of smoke on this one.  If I had to bet my house on it, I'd say it will happen, but I won't be surprised at all if it doesn't.

Mac OS X 10.6 Preview:  Several stories popped up in the last couple weeks about the possible unveiling of Leopard's successor.  Early reports indicated that no new features would be included, but rather that it would focus on optimization and drop PowerPC support.  I think this sounds pretty plausible, but I'm going to do the rumor mill one better:  I think Apple will announce that they're taking Darwin—the open source core of OS X—to the next level.  When I say next level I mean run on generic X86 hardware.  I'm not saying that they're going to start selling OS X for any old PC, but I think they've seen enough interest from the "scene" to be willing to meet half way.  This one is crazy and has no chance of happening, but if it does you heard it here first.

.Mac Refresh:  This really needs to happen if not tomorrow then as soon as humanly possible.  Over the air syncing for iPhones should be the absolute minimum update to the service.  If not, subscribers are going to drop .Mac really fast.  I'd love to see a whole lot more, but, frankly, the service has never gotten the full attention of Apple at any time during its life and I'm afraid that's not going to change...yet.  Hope I'm wrong on this one.

Mystery Device:  Isn't this a rumor before every Stevenote?  Uber-portable Macs have been predicted for almost as long as I've been alive.  While I can see a hardware refresh or two, I can't see a completely new device announcement tomorrow; not at WWDC.  Now, Macworld in January is a different story...

Leopard Reaction

I was fortunate enough to snag a copy of Leopard on Friday. After a quick (less than 30 minutes if I recall correctly) upgrade I was up and running. My initial thoughts are that this is one bad operating system and by bad I mean really good. Below are just a few of the things that have stuck out to me over the first 24 hours with it.First, boot and shutdown times seem to have halved on my 1.6 Ghz Core2Duo-based Mini. It's very noticeably faster.Almost every application seems to load faster. The Apple apps seem to load a lot faster (read almost instantly) I've heard people say, after every OS X upgrade, that they felt like they had a hardware upgrade. I've never noticed enough improvement in performance in previous upgrades to agree with that sentiment, but Leopard really does feel like a hardware upgrade.The new Mail rocks, especially with my newly IMAP'ed Gmail accounts. The new stationery won't get used by me any time soon, but my wife will be flooding friends' and family's inboxes with HTML mails as soon as she finds out about it. Quite frankly, Apple needs her to find that feature, and features like it, useful more than it does me.Time Machine is very cool and not just because of it's innovative user interface. This feature will save my wife someday and she won't be able to tell enough people about it when it does. Again, not so much useful to me as it is the "average user", but that's a good thing for Apple.System Preferences seem to be much more streamlined. Case in point is the sharing module. Much better grouping of like objects in System Prefs in Leopard.Safari seems to have had its issues ironed out. I've been using the beta of 3 since it's public release and it's always been plenty fast. Now it's plenty fast and stable. I haven't had a chance to use web clippings yet, but I hope to soon. From what I've read, it works just as advertised.Dock stacks work for me more than I thought they would. I especially like it when viewing the Applications folder I keep in my dock.Finder is eleventy billion times better than it's been in previous version of OS X. Network browsing is better and doesn't completely bog down your machine. CoverFlow can come in really handy, especially for designers like me. QuickLook is really nice, too. Those two features alone will save me a ton of time going forward.The thing that's most impressed me is the fact that I have not had a single application fail on me in Leopard. I wish I could have said the same thing after my first experience with Windows XP to Vista upgrade.That's it for now, but I'm sure I'll post more observations as they come. Bottom line is Leopard is definitely worth the price of admission. If you were on the fence about upgrading, get off of it and go the store to pick up your copy.