Apple's October 20th 2010 updates and why I'm not impressed

Yesterday, Apple had a press conference where they announced some updates and new stuff. I'm going to go over them and give my opinions on each of them in my post.


iLife '11

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iLife '11 will be included with all new Macs. It also had a price decrease for the upgrade from $79 to $49 so I guess that's good, but it does require Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Although I guess anyone who doesn't have Snow Leopard wouldn't be getting iLife '11 (or they have PowerPC-based Mac). Anyway, on to the app updates.

iPhoto '11 got a few new upgrades. It now has a full-screen mode which doesn't seem to be anything major and should have been included as a free update. A lot of iPhoto and FaceBook users might be happy to hear that it now has FaceBook integration. You can post photos and comments and see comments made by other people. The rest of the iPhoto updates appear to include easier emailing, new slideshow effects, and new printed products.

iMovie '11's upgrades include new audio and video effects, new themes, and new templates. It also includes face detection.

Garageband '11 brings... stuff. I've never used Garageband, and I have no idea what the descriptions are talking about, so I'll just say it brings more interactive tutorials.

iWeb and iDVD are also included in iLife '11, although they have received no major upgrades.

Note for people who care: iLife '11 is 32-bit not 64-bit. I know this doesn't really matter, but every little bit matters. 64-bit would probably be nice to see in iMovie to speed up movie compilations.

FaceTime for Mac

Apple has announced FaceTime for Mac, which is compatible with FaceTime for iPhone and iPod touch. FaceTime for Mac requires Mac OS X Leopard and is currently in Beta. FaceTime is Apple's new video chatting service that they launched alongside the iPhone 4.

In my opinion, Skype is currently better. FaceTime is only for video calls, no options for solely audio calls or even text chats. FaceTime doesn't have a Windows client and seeing as they're Apple, they won't develop a Linux client. Skype supports text chats, audio calls, video calls, screen sharing, and they support many platforms such as Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android, iOS, Symbian, Maemo, TVs, and more. I wouldn't be surprised if Skype soon supported video calling in their iPhone app. Anyway, just my opinion. FaceTime probably works fine for now.

Oh, there's also a major security hole in the FaceTime for Mac app (Fixed). The app gives easy access to not only viewing, but changing your password and security question (and the rest of the account info), as long as someone is at your computer.

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion

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Mac OS X Lion is the name of the upcoming release of Mac OS X. Listed below are some of the new features of Mac OS X Lion.

The Mac App Store. I think this deserves its own blog post.

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Launchpad. This is a new interface to launch apps, designed to look similar to the home screen in iOS. Mac OS X Snow Leopard currently offers similar functionality using stacks. I have an "Applications" stack in my dock, but the main difference is that the order isn't customizable. I can only sort my stack by "name", "date added", "date modified", "date created", and "kind".

Full-screen apps. Umm........ REALLY???!!! I guess it's okay that they're universally adding support for full-screen to get that little extra bit of screen real estate, but you don't advertise that as a ground-breaking feature at a press conference and/or preview event. It... it just doesn't make sense!

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Mission Control. Maybe I'm missing something here, but hasn't Mac OS X had this feature since late 2003?

Yes. Yes it has, they just changed the layout a bit.

And... that's it about Mac OS X Lion.

New MacBook Air

The new MacBook Air was announced with some changes and an 11.6" sibling to join alongside the 13.3" model. There are four models. All models include 2GB 1066Mhz DDR3 RAM, and the 13.3" models have an SD card slot. The included RAM can be upgraded to 4GB for a price.

11.6" glossy display with 1366x768 resolution, 1.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, 64GB flash storage.
11.6" glossy display with 1366x768 resolution, 1.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo (upgradable to 1.6Ghz), 128GB flash storage.
13.3" glossy display with 1440x900 resolution, 1.86Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, 128GB flash storage.
13.3" glossy display with 1440x900 resolution, 1.86Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo (upgradable to 2.13Ghz), 256GB flash storage.

Like with the previous models, the RAM is soldered to the motherboard, so if you want 4GB of RAM, you need to configure it online before buying the computer. The interesting thing about the new MacBook Air computers is that they don't use a conventional hard drive or even a solid state drive. Instead, they use flash memory. But unlike how SSDs use the same form factor and ports as a hard drive, the new MacBook air uses flash memory on a proprietary "card" in the computer.

Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against using an SSD in a computer if one is willing to pay for it. SSDs have their advantages, they're pretty fast and have no moving parts, but they're pricey. Because of the type of flash memory used, it's nearly impossible to upgrade. That's assuming that you can open up the case since the computer uses really funky security torx screws.

I like the idea of having flash memory as the primary storage (technically secondary storage if anyone wants to correct me with technical info), it definitely has its price. Personally, I think that a powerful computer plus netbook combo is better. You'd get your choice of raw computing power, or battery life.

EDIT: I realized that I forgot to mention that the MacBook Air no longer uses a matte (anti-glare) display. There are three kinds of computer displays. Matte (anti-glare), glossy, and what I call a mirror (extremely glossy). Since all other Macs these days use a mirror, I'm going to assume that the new MacBook Air does as well.

So out of all that, I think the only thing that is somewhat exciting is the App Store.



*   Image taken from apple.ca
** Image taken from apple.ca