Aral Balkan

Well, no new MacBook Pro announcements at the keynote :( Oh well, I really don't mind getting one of the new Core Duos -- Merom would've been great but is definitely not a deal-breaker. Some of the Leopard features that were mentioned sound very interesting.

One thing that caught my eye was the vastly improved accessibility features. The transcript at MacRumors mentioned, for example, that the voiceovers sound completely human.

The improvements to the widget development process with Web Clip sound fun too.

I'm not sure if I'll be using Mail when I switch (I'll probably stay on with Thunderbird) so I wasn't too interested in the eye candy they previewed for that.

Time Machine definitely has privacy concerns (which I don't believe were addressed at all during the keynote) but I can definitely see the advantage of having automatic backup built into the system.

Some of the new features have me wondering if Apple is starting to move into new areas of competition with Adobe. For example, Dashcode is being billed as "a great visual editor for HTML and CSS." Further: "We also ship with a rich parts library with search buttons and a JavaScript source editor and a full Javascript debugger."

In a similar vein, there's Core Animation:

Core animation lets you dramatically increase the production values of your application. Lets you take a scene and decostruct it into layers. Text, images, video, OpenGL. You specify a start state, goal state and key frames optionally. Core Animation will automate the whole animation.

Is Apple jumping on to the RIA bandwagon to challenge the likes of Flex and the Microsoft's will-be-ready-any-year-now WPF and WPF/e?

The improvements to iChat were interesting and left me wondering how (and if) it would affect Adobe Breeze. I couldn't believe that Apple included the green screen-without-a-green screen feature in it though as it doesn't look good at all. There's a very visible fringe around the person. I wouldn't have expected that from such a shiny, design-conscious company. That must be giving Steve Jobs headaches at night.

You can find a comprehensive blog post on the WWDC '06 keynote, with pictures, on Engadget.

[Update] You can get a sneak peek at Leopard on Apple's web site.

Comments

• Are we sure they aren't purposely inserting the outline to the greenscreen feature?

  by Scott Janousek on 2006-08-07 19:47:58

• "I’m not sure if I’ll be using Mail when I switch (I’ll probably stay on with Thunderbird) so I wasn’t too interested in the eye candy they previewed for that." But... but... it has stationary now!!! How cool is that?

  by Keith Peters on 2006-08-07 20:38:32

• iChat can do screen share, app share, recording, etc. so I would say its moving in on Breeze. A lot easier to maintain and use I'd be willing to bet. For smaller things. About the green screen thing - I'm sure thats for kids, etc. "Hey look at me, I'm on the moon!" - and I wonder if that is an older video on the website, or perhaps that edge is there on purpose just to keep spoofing down. Overall, the new Mac Pros look great, I hope to pick one of those up soon. BTO... many choices ;)

  by Eric Dolecki on 2006-08-07 20:54:53

• Time Machine, only Apply could get away with and interface like that in a commercial operating system. In that it's incredibly intuitive, and glossed with just enough eye candy, if micro$oft attempted something like that could you image what it would look like?! Spaces is an interesting addition too, it's like an Uber app switcher, now you just load up a space with Parallels and away you go ;-) I like the fact that they're clearly ramping up to hit micro$oft hard before Vista ships, cheaper hardwear and funky OS features are just the sort of thing that tempts converters like you Aral.

  by Jolyon on 2006-08-08 09:15:19

• huh... you've always blazed the Mac and now your switching all of a sudden?

  by Tink on 2006-08-08 13:13:45

• Hey, Tink: Prior to the Intel macs, I really wasn't that interested in paying extra for a slower machine that didn't run everything I needed. Now that Macs are as fast as PCs (if not faster) and now that I can run Parallels and have OS X, Linux and Windows all on one machine, it makes complete sense. So, basically, "the Mac" I'm getting isn't "the Mac" I was unimpressed with earlier. It's a much different machine and, today, having a Mac makes the most sense for me as a developer.

  by aral on 2006-08-08 13:23:15