| 2006 - a year of reflection for Apple | | Date Created: 24 Jan, 2006, 03:58 PM |
 Did you catch the Steve Jobs Keynote January 10?
I did, and probably you did too, if you're visiting here. Or at least, you heard or read about it in the mainstream media or many of the blogs and news sites.
Because this was another year when the Keynote was not 'cast live (sending many attending bloggers to use their EVDO-equipped Powerbooks to blog live), I decided to treat it as if it was live.
My fondest memory of a Keynote by the way was the 2003 'note which was the final one I saw live at something like 4am local. Remember, Melbourne in January has entered Dalight Savings Time, meaning we are 19 hours ahead of San Francisco.
So subtract 5 hours, and go to the next day gives you our local time for its commencement this year: 4am Wednesday, January 11.
2003 was the year not one but two Powerbooks were released after some commentators had assured their audience there would be no new Powerbooks! I recorded that show on my VCR via my Powerbook's s-video out.
My other favourite is the 2001 Keynote, which showed OS X 10.1 (as I recall), and introduced Safari, and Keynote. Oh, and one more thing - the Titanium Powerbook, whose form factor lives on in the MacBook Pro.
So, denied a live coverage by Steve, I took matters into my own hands: I avoided all mention of the keynote until after I had a chance to see it as if live via the Quicktime stream in its entirety. Fortunately, Apple took pity and commenced the streaming a few hours after the live show was over, such that I was watching it by about 10am local.
Now that meant ignoring the emails from my local Mac user group's discussion list over on Yahoo, for which I am V-P, such that my absence worried one or two souls! Their expectation was that when they awoke, they would have seen my almost live email uploading pseudo-blog style, starting at 4AM.
Ah, but that wasn't to be, as I didn't enter the email conversation until almost midday.
And now two weeks later, I still haven't blogged about it - until now.
And it's not really the main point of this blog entry.
It seems to me that between last year's keynote coverage and this year's, two things have happened: Firstly, the coverage was hyped by all manner of media, from mainstream, through podcasts, through blogs, email lists, usergroups, and internet news sites.
And, secondly, with the failure of CES in Las Vegas the previous week to excite, many turned their attention to its one noticable usual absentee, Apple, for direction as to what will excite consumers in 2006. Quelle irony, huh?
Frankly, I was fatigued by it all. Even now, I'm listening to a Steve Gillmor podcast made just yesterday, discussing the process of the Keynote as well as the content, i.e., new products and services. It's why I value Gillmor's podcasts over so many others, even those who maintain they are Mac-specific. I'll let them remain nameless.
This was a very different, more reflective Keynote. A mature Keynote, if you will, one with less hype and bluster and "oh my gosh - they'll never catch us now!" There was one wow factor - the MacBook Pro, if the response of the curiously disinterested audience was anything to go by...
I think keeping the same form factor for the pro notebook and the iMac is Apple's way of saying it's business as usual no matter what chip resides on the motherboard, just get used to it. Later in the year, the iBook which I predict will be superslim yet robust enough for the education market will be 2006's next wow factor for Apple.
The other stuff shown by Steve will take time to percolate through because it really was aimed at your consumer end-user. Here I speak of iLife 06, which was a huge improvement including a humongous 670MB iWeb application or set of applications. Plus the long-predicted upgrading of Garageband to a podcast-creation tool, intertwined with the deathly slow .Mac service. If you think it's slow in the US, try it in Australia.
All that said, it was a time for Mac users to reflect on their favourite consumer electronics and computer company. The Keynote almost begged us to do so.
And the biggest hint that Apple itself is in the midst of self-reflection comes from two sources, one metaphorical and the other direct.
Here's the direct source:
|
|
In a previous blog entry prior to Macworld where I asked Mac enthusiasts to remain calm in the face of the CES juggernaut, I suggested two things would happen in the keynote: that Steve would talk about recent retail efforts of Apple in terms of its profits and sales volumes; and that Steve would mention that 2006 was the thirtieth anniversary of Apple's founding.
The first suggestion was a no-brainer given this is how it's been the last few keynotes, and not just those of Macworld, but also product releases of which there were several such special events in 2005.
The suggestion that Steve would mention the Apple's anniversary was much more a guess, albeit an educated one from watching Apple and Steve Jobs for many years.
It's also on my mind as I've been part of a working group bringing a temporary exhibition together at my state's Museum, which will feature Apple products to help illustrate the history of the PC.
So I've been particularly interested in looking once more at Apple's history, and my Knowledge Management studies last year also helped me look at its influence on current technologies. This has been helped by writing some of the museum's product descriptions of Apple's wares, and how they made a difference.
So I've been in reflective mood.
Steve is known to not wish to visit history and to move on, pushing past product and personal failures which have been well documented.
Steve's placing of the 1976 picture of he and Steve Wozniak, and referring not to April 1 but April Fools Day as the anniversary date is unusual and highly reflective on its own. That photo was included almost as a one more, one more thing.
What does it suggest? That perhaps Steve having turned 50, and survived a cancer scare, and now presiding over yet another huge shift in Apple's direction (OS 9 -> OS X; PowerPC -> Intel) is allowing himself a few moments in 2006 to reflect on where Apple is heading. And surely where others will try to follow.
Some things overtook him in 2005, namely podcasting. A year ago, Steve introduced the iPod Shuffle, which I blogged about this time last year took many by surprise because its lack of visual readout made locating podcasting a difficult listening experience. Both Adam Curry and Doc Searls lamented Apple's poor form in not recognising Podcasting.
I asserted that the Shuffle was an iPod with training wheels, marketed as the cheapest form of entry to the world of legal downloads for a generation who couldn't afford a hard drive iPod - yet. And who had learnt to take what they wanted via Kazaa and Morpheus and other p2p apps. This corresponded too with Apple introducing gifting and the purchase of iTMS cards such that those without a credit card could also play in the music store.
But I also said that even in January 2005, enough stories about podcasting were appearing in mainstream media making it hard for Jobs not to know of its existence. And in mid-year, with the release of iTunes 4.9, that awareness became public in a further keynote, fulfulling another prediction I made in January, 2005: that when Apple was ready, it would take podcasting by the throat.
iTunes 4.9 was more of a tap on the carotid, enough to wake some people from a stupor that Apple didn't care about podcasting.
And at that point, we started predicting that Garageband would sooner or later become a podcasting platform, and .Mac would become a one-click operation for publishing podcasts. Now we have that vision in spades, in the form of Garageband and iWeb.
For a version 1.0 product, iWeb must be scaring a lot of people. Yes, it's one-click; yes, it integrates with iLife, and yes, it has some gorgeous professional templates. Some have said that we'll get bored with the templates, but hey, have you seen the Blogger websites lately? They all look alike. Big deal. I go to a blog for its content and links, not its appearance. As long as I can access the content with minimal confusion or visual noise, that's enough.
Are there other sources of evidence of Apple's reflectiveness in 2006?
Sure.
They started for those of us keen to see the Keynote application updated to version 2, after Apple appeared to have orphaned the application by updating it with only minor bug fixes.
I blogged in 2004 how Steve introduced new transitions during the U2 iPod release in San Jose, and sure enough, in January 2005, Keynote 2 was released with major improvements including the new transitions we had seen.
In 2005, we saw the same with more new transitions and effects demoed during the iPod nano release.
I blogged about it here in the full expectation history would repeat itself, and Keynote 3 would be released for the next Macworld.
Notice the reflections incorporated in the effects shown.
|
|
But of course, this reflection was not the first demoed by Steve, was it?
No, we were first introduced to the new reflective design attitude in iChatAV, when we learnt that this simple little chat app. would bring true videoconferencing to the masses (as long as they read the fine print, and whoever initiated the conference was on a G5).
That "bring it to the masses" philosophy has been extended now to include the iMac G5 (and Intel iMac) and the MacBook Pro with their built-in iSights. I seriously doubt Apple will not include it in the iBook Intel-based replacement due in the next few months.
|
 Each time Steve has demoed iChatAV (and the last time was when he introduced the iMac G5 update with built-in iSight in October 2005), the reflective presence of the four conference attendees has drawn gasps from the audience. Indeed, when Steve first demoed iChatAV, he made a particular point of stating that Apple would do videoconferencing with its usual flair for being different, and he specifically referred to the reflections, as you can see (left).
|
And now in 2006, it seems reflections are a design meme for Apple.
It even has a Keynote 3 transition called Reflection, which I have previously referred to as a "slide around corner". This picture from the iPod nano release shows the transition, but in reality the reflections of the images are quite pronounced. |
And in his January 2006 Keynote as well as his iPod 5G keynote where he showed the new features of the iMac G5, we see even more use of reflections. Indeed, in his brief introduction of iWork 06, specifically refers to its incorporation into Keynote and Pages. |
More evidence of reflection being the design flavour of the year comes in the form of Front Row, where the cycling apps making up the media part of iLife shows the apps reflections as they rotate front and centre. Here's their illustration showing the Intel powered iMac during the 2006 Macworld Keynote |
And we ought not be surprised the newest iLife app, iWeb, also allows for you to switch on reflections as if to give greater depth and gravitas to your webpage.
Here's one I created for some Australian Red Cross work I'll soon be undertaking, in preparation for the Commonwealth Games here in Melbourne in March. |
 |
 Now, some user groups are already preparing for the April 1, 2006, 30th anniversary celebrations for Apple, by releasing T-shirts at the "Thank you Steve" website.
Must get one of these for myself to ride in, but notice the T-shirts illustration.
Yep, someone else has noted the reflections meme, and incorporated it into its celebration of Apple in 2006. |
So, what does it all mean?
Listening to and reading about Macworld confirms what I wrote last year in this blog. 2006 will be a very big year for Apple. While its use of reflections might itself reflect a "favour of the month" design meme, or better to show off its Core Video capabilities, it also hints at a year of self-reflection on Apple's part, as reflected in Steve's use of that 1976 picture to end his 2006 Keynote.
Nothing Steve does or says in a Keynote is accidental. We know how much effort he puts into his Keynotes from the writings of Mike Evangelist and his Writer's Block Live blog, as well as the dramatised film version of "Pirates of Silicon Valley".
True to his "worldy asceticism", nothing is wasted in a Jobs' Keynote, and this is why so many see his Keynote's as models of presentations skills.
Sooner or later, we'll get to see how it is that the reflection meme has arisen in Apple's design paradigm, since it seems so ubiquitous currently. Perhaps Steve in 2006 is in a reflective mode, literally and metaphorically.
With all the rumours swirling about a sale of Pixar, he has a lot to reflect on now, especially how all eyes from so many domains of the technology and entertainment industries are upon him.
|
|
|
|
