Opinions - page 27

Japanese photographer Isamu Sanada is no stranger to the enticing realm of Apple mockups, and the whole netbook idea just refuses to die, so it should come as no suprise to see this one, a kind of interesting tri-fold take on the idea.

What do you think? Should Apple spend bandwidth going in such a direction, or is the iPhone/iPod Touch really the end of the story when it comes to an Apple netbook?

Given a recent assessment by pro photographer Rob Galbraith that puts Apple’s MacBook Pro display behind the Lenovo Think Pad and the Dell Mini 9 in color accuracy, Apple may want to take a closer look at what’s already in the line-up before going for new product dollars.

Formerly very appreciative of Apple’s display properties from the perspective of a demanding visual artist, Galbraith says of the new high-end Apple laptop, “in ambient light environments which induce screen reflections, the late-2008 MacBook Pro 15 inch’s glossy screen moves deep into the not acceptable category.”

Via DVICE

Here are two iPhone home screens. On the left, my iPhone home screen from a few months ago. Everything normal.

On the right, my iPhone home screen from yesterday. And something weird has happened.

An additional line has been added to the status bar at the top, pushing all the app icons closer together. It displays only the characters “O2” – the name of my British network provider. Which is already displayed, of course, in the main part of the status bar. What, as they say, the frak?

This is a page from The Magazine, an ezine-in-an-app that’s now available on the App Store for a dollar.

By itself, it’s not much to write home about in my opinion. The presentation is amateurish and the content not terribly interesting. And there simply isn’t very much of it. Not my kind of magazine at all, frankly.

But what’s more interesting is the concept of a mag-as-an-app.

Image © 2009 Nik Fletcher

This post is really more about Macworld, the trade show and conference, than it is about the device that spawned it. But for 24 of Mac’s 25 years, the two have gone hand-in-hand.

While indications seem clear the Mac and Apple are both healthy and vital at 25, with years of relevance and innovation ahead despite whatever rough patches the economy may present in the near term, the fate of what has been for many years the Apple community’s most anticipated event is very much up in the air.

Of course the entire world is aware by now Apple decided to make 2009 its final appearance at the huge trade show held the first week or so of January at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. The smart money immediately proclaimed Apple’s move to quit Macworld spelled doom for the event.

Rumors swirled during this year’s show that Apple itself might be moving next year to the larger, far more ambitious International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held in Las Vegas right around the same time as Macworld.

Just this week, iLounge announced plans to fund a high-profile unified pavilion area for iPod and iPhone products at CES in 2010.

Blogger John Gruber penned Friday a misty paean to the City and the Expo, one of the smarter, more comprehensive assessments of the overall picture I’ve yet seen.

Gruber and I agree on a couple of points worth noting: as he wrote,

1) “There is nothing else like Macworld Expo, and if it fades away, there will be nothing to take its place.” With Apple gone, Macworld will be different and if it is to survive, it will have to be different in a way that keeps it vital and active for the diverse mix of large and small exhibitors that make up a healthy event; and

2) The great majority of exhibitors who make up Macworld, 90 percent of whose products are not available at the Apple Store, want the conference and expo to survive, but almost to a one they confirmed to me, as I walked the floor at this year’s conference (and to Gruber as well), – they will wait and see who else is going to stay on board.

This week a quiet campaign began, led by the community of Mac-o-philes who most definitely want to see Macworld survive and prosper. IDG, the event promoter, has agreed to give anyone who pre-registers now for next year’s event, January 4 – 8, 2010, a free Expo pass. Not buy one get one free, just register now and go for free.

IDG has also placed a big SUGGESTION BOX graphic on the front page of the website, a mailto: link the IDG PR representative I spoke with assures me the promoter will pay close attention to for feedback from attendees and exhibitors alike.

It may well be true that Apple no longer has a need for Macworld, that its growing chain of Retail Stores and increasing market awareness make it a bad business decision to spend millions of dollars to be the anchor tenant at the sprawling event.

For the hundreds of other businesses who’ve come to rely on Macworld as an opportunity to get their products in front of and tell their stories to thousands of people over four days in San Francisco, the stakes are very different.

Mac Wind – The Apple Netbook from Sascha Pallenberg on Vimeo.

Here’s an informative video by Sascha Pallenberg, conducting a brief interview with a chap who’s got OS X Leopard running on his MSI Wind netbook.

I’ve heard a lot about OS X on the Wind, but this is the first chance I’ve had to actually see it in action. And I confess, I’m impressed. OK, it’s taken this guy a little bit of hacking around to get the machine working smoothly like this (with all the extras like wifi, webcam, and volume controls working properly) – but the end result looks worth the hassle.

Wall Street greeted Barack Obama’s inauguration as the 44th president of the US by shedding more than 5% of its total value Tuesday. Some might interpret the market action as a vote of no confidence in the new administration, others likely view the dip as an indication of challenges ahead for the US economy and still others would say the market for stocks acts as any market with excess inventory on hand – by putting things on sale.

The sale price for shares of Apple (AAPL) closed Tuesday at $78.20, the cheapest price the stock has seen in over two years, more than 60% off its all-time high of $200, set in December 2007. One of the most widely followed Apple analysts, Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray affirmed a price target of $235 for Apple stock as recently as December and today’s price action, coming just one trading session prior to the company’s quarterly earnings announcement, would seem to be Wall Street’s equivalent of a one-day red tag sale.

So what do you think? Is Wall Street giving potential Apple shareholders a gift, or is it trying to unload damaged goods while it still can? Can a guy like Munster, who follows in minute detail every financial move the company makes, who reports, often with uncanny precision, what Apple’s revenue and profit numbers will look like before they are announced to the public, can he seriously set a price target 200% above the stock’s current value?

What I know is that a year ago, after the market had knocked AAPL down from $200 to about $140, I wished I had some money to put into the stock, because I loved the company and its products, and I thought its prospects for the future were great. I know that six months ago, when the iPhone 3G came out and the AppStore launched with the stock trading at $175, I wished I had some money to put into the stock for the very same reasons.

Today, I know I’m kind of glad I don’t have any money to put into the stock because I still love the company and its products, and I still believe its prospects for the future are great, but it seems sometimes that’s not enough to make money in the stock market.

Right, what have we got this week? First there’s Listen. Maybe the name iShell was already taken. So what does it do? You pick a shell and hold it up to your ear, then “close your eyes, take a deep breath, and relax. You’ll feel the weight of the world lift off your shoulders.”

I’ve spent a week or so playing around with the beta release of Picasa for Mac, and here are some thoughts.

• – It’s FAST. It does a superb job of pulling in your iPhoto collection in no time at all. Scrolling through it all is much faster than similar scrolling in iPhoto itself.

• – It’s considerate. It makes a point of co-existing with iPhoto, and asks nicely for your permission before making a copy of an image that’s being edited. As a consequence, it means people can try Picasa out without worrying about damage to their iPhoto database.

• – It finds your photos without fuss. Start it up, and it pokes around in all the usual places (and any other places you instruct it to poke in), looking for new pictures. These then get neatly added to the archive.

• – It does things my mum will love. The collages, the integration with Picasa Web Albums – these are features I have little interest in myself, but my mum (who has never got on well with iPhoto) will love them.

• – I like the the color searches (as shown in the photo above). Ask it to find “red” stuff and it will. Great for collages, photo books, or artistic projects.

Naturally, as with any beta, there are going to be some teething problems. One bug I’ve noticed is that right-clicking on an image and selecting “Move to (named) album” doesn’t work. And Picasa does seem to take a loooooong time to look through the images already on the camera, and decide if they are duplicates or not. But it does get there in the end.

Beta status or not, Picasa offers a decent alternative for photo management for people who don’t want to spend the kind of money required for Aperture or Lightroom.

Image via Flickr, used with permission

Steve Jobs is in a no-win situation right now. Either he’s healthy and he keeps coming to work every day and the question on everyone’s mind remains, “is Steve really healthy?” or, he’s not healthy and he takes some time to go get better, and the question on everyone’s mind remains, “how long is Steve going to live?” In either case, Apple is deprived of the singular focus of its driving force; in either case no one stops wondering about his health.

Many hope beyond hope that Jobs will regain his health and his drive and his focus, that he will return to Apple this summer, or sometime, and lead the company to many more years of innovating and producing products that “put a ding in the universe.”

Some believe his decision Wednesday to absent himself from the day-to-day operations at Apple signals the beginning of the end, that he is taking time to spend with his family and to prepare for his inevitable death coming sooner rather than later. And many wish him all the peace and comfort he can find in the love of those closest to him if such should indeed be the case.

What’s certain is there will be oceans of ink poured into writing about Steve Jobs and the unique place he has made for himself in his life and times. Whether he dies tomorrow or lives another twenty, thirty, fifty years, he has assured for himself a legacy of renown unlike anyone of his generation.

He’s been called a tyrant and a diva, a rock star and a king – and such superlatives are not out of proportion to the impact he has made on the way people live, not only in contemporary times, but on the way people will live long after he is gone.

I saw on Wednesday a piece about Jobs, written by music industry analyst Bob Lefsetz, who laments his feeling Jobs’ demise is imminent, saying his death “will be like the loss of Lennon. We will feel collectively that we’ve lost something that can’t be replaced.” And I have no doubt many will feel that way.

But the fact is, music didn’t die with the passing of John Lennon, as sad and incomprehensible as his death was, and as big and unfixable a hole as there seemed to be in his absence. His work lives on, for one thing, but also his example and his influence continue to inspire songwriters and musicians a generation later. The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus, ironically, had a prominent place just a week ago at Macworld, where Jobs’ presence was so sorely missed.

The day Steve Jobs dies may seem, as Lefsetz wrote, “like one of those great teen songs, where the lover dies and the singer just can’t move on.” But, like Lennon, his work will also live on. His example and his influence will continue to inspire people in many walks of life, I daresay, for generations to come. And that is something to be happy about.

Photo: James Merithew/Wired.com

While I was researching Inside Steve’s Brain, I read everything I could lay my hands on about Steve Jobs, including just about every book and magazine article published in the last couple of decades. One of the most striking things was how many times Jobs mentioned death as the driving force in his life.

Over and over Jobs said he was driven to make an impact before his time ran out.

It was such a recurrent theme, I thought of devoting an entire chapter to the subject in the book. Jobs had an obsession with death to rival Emily Dickinson’s.

Even in his twenties, Jobs obsessed about death. He told former Apple CEO John Sculley he was convinced he would live a very short life and urgently needed to have an impact before he died. Sculley thought this was why he was so driven and ambitious, according to Sculley’s autobiography. Of course, Jobs lived much longer than he suspected.

Best known perhaps, are Jobs comments during his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life,” he said. “Because almost everything all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”

It’s comments like this that makes me pessimistic about today’s news that Jobs is stepping aside, even if he claims it is only temporary.

For the last four decades, since Jobs cofounded Apple in his bedroom, he’s worked like a horse — rising early, taking short vacations, avoiding parties and sacrificing holidays to prepare for Macworld.

Work and family — that’s all he does.

I think he’s now focusing on his family.

I hope it’s not the case, but I suspect Jobs will not return to Apple.

Today’s announcement makes me think he’s focusing on “what’s truly important” — his family.

Ian Betteridge is a brave man. Not only is he a Mac user who has switched to Ubuntu running on Dell hardware, he’s also decided to say so in public.

Some of you may recognize his name: for some years, he was a writer for, and then editor of, the UK version of MacUser magazine.

Why did he do it? Partly because of price, partly because he cares about open software running on open platforms. Apple, he says, is a long way from open and seems to be closing things ever tighter as time goes on. (See also his follow-up post detailing the apps he’s chosen to use on Linux.)

What really caught my eye, though, was one of Ian’s asides. Half way through his post, he predicts that “sooner or later”, the “development ecosystem will increasingly come to resemble that of the iPhone, and for much the same reasons”.

In other words, there will be an App Store for OS X software. An App Store that Apple will keep just as tight control over. Only apps that met with Apple’s approval would be cleared for distribution, and only apps distributed in that manner would actually run.

A bold prediction indeed. A fair one, though? And does the Better World of free software tempt you to switch to Ubuntu (or any other *nix variant)? What do you think?

(Disclaimers: I sometimes contribute articles to MacUser UK; and I know Ian Betteridge personally, have enjoyed a chat and a pint with him, and consider him a lovely chap.)

OK so the name isn’t quite as snappy as Quicksilver, but the intent is very similar. And at least one of the developers is exactly the same.

Google’s new Quick Search Box for Mac was coded in part by Alcor, aka Nicholas Jitkoff, aka the guy who created Quicksilver and made keyboard-centric launchers the big hit they are today (on pretty much every platform, not just OS X).

This beta release is a good start. It doesn’t spend ages cataloguing your hard disk (at least, not in an intrusive, tie-your-Mac-up-for-minutes sort of way). And the architecture is designed for expansion; more features can be plugged in via, um, plugins.

Note that this is NOT the same as the Google Desktop Search app that you might have played with a while back. Desktop Search used the same Command+Command shortcut but made much greater demands on your system (at least, that’s how I remember it – it lasted about a day on my machine before I removed it, dissatisfied to put it mildly). I’m not very clear right now whether or not Quick Search Box is a replacement for Desktop Search, although I suspect that is the case, or will be in the medium to long term.

The only thing that the older Desktop Search product has got going for it is that it will run on Tiger, whereas the newer app is Leopard-only.

There’s a way to go yet. This new beast crashes, twice in the time it’s taken me to write these words. But hey, if Alcor’s in charge I have high hopes. High hopes indeed.

Apple’s Board of Directors is opposing a shareholder initiative to require the company to produce a Corporate Responsibility Report (CSR) detailing Apple’s approach to greenhouse gases, toxins, recycling, and more, according to a report at Environmental Leader.

A shareholder group called “As You Sow,” co-sponsored by the Green Century Equity Fund, reasons that many of Apple’s direct competitors, including Dell, IBM, and HP, already publish CSR reports, as do over 2,700 other public companies. Apple’s board, however, has issued a proxy filing asking shareholders to vote against the resolution, saying publication would be an unnecessary expense and would “produce little added value.”

Apple publishes a Supplier Responsibility report and environmental policies on its website, in spite of which As You Sow and a number of less organized parties have pressured Apple to do more official reporting.

News Monday that CES attendance figures for 2009 are down 22% comes as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the big picture in the past six months..

In the wake of Apple’s decision to abandon Macworld, and despite rumors the Cupertino computer maker will join the big consumer electronics circus in Las Vegas next year, the fact remains the global economy is in a tailspin.

It says here expecting corporations to continue sinking major investment into expensive trade show PR going forward is a bad bet.

Which is not to say that innovation will come to a halt, or that producers of technology and electronic gadgetry are about to vanish from the landscape.

In the spirit of the relative dispersal of brick and mortar distribution outlets for any number of goods among an increasing web of online marketing vehicles, this writer believes it only makes sense that in a contracting economy, chances are the standard-bearers of communication and computing and entertainment will soon focus marketing budgets less on trying to woo live bodies to vast acreages of real-time exhibition space and more on leveraging the enticements of Web 2.0 and unified communications capabilities to rely on drawing eyeballs and attention to virtual marketing platforms.

In the coming year, look for fewer big-time confabs and more small-town events. Fewer shows at the Garden and more online specials.

It’s a brave new marketing world. Think different.

Image © 2009 Nik Fletcher

Despite nearly universal appraisals among the Apple press calling it “underwhelming” and “disappointing” and “lackluster,” Macworld 2009 proved to be a worthwhile and successful venture for many less well-known exhibitors, whose continuing support may determine the expo’s future viability.

I hit the floor for the final day of Macworld 2009 fully expecting to find an arena filled with weary exhibitors staring at empty aisles, counting the hours until they could pack up their booths and say goodbye, perhaps for the final time, to this seminal conference and expo dedicated to all things Mac and more.

Instead, the floors in both halls appeared to me to have as many people walking around, crowding into interesting demos and learning exhibitions as on any other day this week. Such interest is not traditionally shown on the final day at large industry trade shows such as Macworld, and may be even more notable in the case that that other big consumer electronics event got into full swing a day ago, several hundred miles away in Las Vegas.

Official attendance figures were not yet available for this year’s event according to a spokesperson in the Sales office for conference promoter/organizer IDG, but the participation of both attendees and exhibitors has been “in line with expectations” given uncertainties in the larger economy, and factoring in disappointment surrounding Apple’s decision to quit the event after 2009.

Follow me after the jump for the thoughts and impressions of several exhibitors whose enthusiasm may point to a less dire future for Macworld than some seem to expect.

Macworld announced its 10 Best of Show picks for 2009 Wednesday afternoon, reinforcing the uninspired pall Apple’s looming withdrawal has cast over this year’s entire event.

From the hundreds of thousands of feet of floorspace taken up by Conference exhibitors at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, Macworld editors’ only significant hardware find was the Windows Home Media Server from HP.

My purpose here is not to pick apart each official choice, or even to come up with my personal alternative Best of Show picks – though give me another couple of days to walk the Expo floor and I might. I aim only to point out that when your top hardware pick at a trade show dedicated to Apple and Macintosh-oriented computing is a device that requires a Windows-based PC for initial installation, it’s cause for a little existential self-reflection.

Macworld did ferret out one item at the show that looks quite promising in my view – a Bluetooth Web Cam from ecamm network. To be available by spring 2009 at an MSRP of $150, the ecamm BT-1 streams 640×480 H.264 video and 48 kHz AAC stereo audio from up to 30 feet away from a paired Mac.

Your Mac has a built-in web cam you say? Well, with the BT-1 and its mini flexible tripod, you get the freedom to adjust the position, pan, and tilt of your web cam imagery. It’s also mountable on any standard camera tripod to give you further flexibility in filming. You and the editors of Macworld seem to have forgotten that old slogan Apple rode to the success from which it now abandons the Macworld Conference and Expo:

Think Different.

Fart Studio: “Your all-in-one flatulence solution!” Oh, I see: you get to COMPOSE your fart sounds. Some people might call that feature creep.

Meow: it … meeows.

And finally, True Flirt. The developers say: “This might actually get you a date!”. Hmm. Might.

There are is two one great new features in iWeb 09 that went unannounced in yesterday’s keynote, both of which transforms it, in my opinion, from a waste of disk space into a potentially useful tool.

The two changes are is:

→ iWeb can now handle multiple web sites simultaneously; you simply flick from one to another in the sidebar

→ iWeb now lets you publish to any (S)FTP server, rather than tying you in to Mobile Me or restricting you to publishing to a local folder

There have been a few instances in recent years when I’ve briefly toyed with the idea of using iWeb for basic web projects, only to reject it seconds later because of these two this flaws. With iLife 09 installed, I’m going to revisit those projects and think again.

UPDATE: I am an idiot.

Today’s was the first MacWorld keynote I’ve missed in three years, and I have to say, I really didn’t miss anything. But then again, it was quite clear Apple was making a half-hearted showing as it was, revealing none of the products people are most excited about <cough>Mac mini</cough> and announcing several products that are either predictable, uninspiring, or just plain obnoxious toward consumers. Is anyone excited about variable iTunes song pricing who doesn’t work for a record label? Anyone? Or how about the “Indiana Jones” effect for iMovie 09 so you can have a fake plane fly over a fake globe to represent travel? This was worth gathering the world’s technology media?

It’s probably for the best that Steve Jobs didn’t show.

But all of the above was apparent to anyone watching. What was left implicit, though it was communicated loud and clear, is the fact that Apple now has to put its money where its mouth is, having dismissed MacWorld’s trade show atmosphere, and put together some truly special product launch events very quickly. The biggest advantage to not making the first Tuesday of January the holy grail of Apple announcements is that Apple can announce products when they’re ready and as it suits them, instead of forcing stuff to be ready ahead of time for MacWorld (and to beat out the CES news cycle). In other words, Apple should let the rest of the month pass, and then make a major hardware introduction on every Tuesday in February, culminating in a press event on the last Tuesday of the month to unveil the much-anticipated new Mac mini (and with the 32-gig iPhone coming somewhere beforehand).

At the end of the day, Apple is probably logically right that MacWorld doesn’t make sense for them anymore. I think it’s ungrateful, given how much the enthusiast community saved Apple during the mid-’90s, but it probably is the right thing from a business standpoint. But it also feels like they deliberately left a lot out of today’s announcements, as if to emphasize their rejection of the trade show model. It just felt cheap, you know?

The media and the public trickled onto the Macworld exhibit floor in the wake of Phil Schiller’s Keynote speech Tuesday in San Francisco with a collective yawn, casting a sad and listless pall over Apple’s final year at the seminal trade show dedicated to Mac and Macintosh innovation. Gone was the excitement generated in recent years by the introduction of revolutionary new products such as iPod and iPhone. Gone was the sense that Steve Jobs contagious’ enthusiasm and obsessive secrecy could somehow reward us with ever more new, beautiful, elegantly designed products that would change our relationship to technology and with each other.

Instead, Schiller left the Apple community pondering battery life and notebook aftermarket resale values, wondering how a little face paint and eye shadow applied to iWork and iLife is going to drive increasing revenue to One Infinite Loop between the end of Macworld on Thursday and the next Cupertino Town Hall event sometime later this year.

One the surface of things, a mood that I might liken to one in a household where the divorce has been agreed to but not yet finalized, is curiously appropriate to the uncertain economic horizon each and every one of the hundreds of Macworld exhibitors – as well as, of course, the show’s anchor tenant – is facing.

Sure it would have been exhilarating for Phil Schiller to have whipped out a thoroughbred upgrade to the Mac mini today, or a revamped Apple TV that might challenge the assumptions of what an interface between the office and the living room could look like. But I talked to several long time Mac addicts on the floor this afternoon, who confided they were relieved not to be tempted by any groundbreaking hardware innovations from Apple – because big ticket expenditures of every stripe are on hold until further notice.

In its way, then, Apple proved it still has the pulse of its audience well in hand – why offer revolutionary new products that would require hundreds or thousands of dollars in new investment (not to mention the huge investment in manufacturing required to roll out new hardware) when the company can let its legions of loyal consumers who have already bought Macs and iMacs over the years try on new software outfits at $50 – $80 a pop? Lean times may be coming for everyone but by golly you can spend your downtime learning how to play guitar with John Fogarty and marvel at the face recognition amazements of new iPhoto software.

Some of the busier booths on the exhibit floor this afternoon were ones hawking accessory items costing well under $100. Big gear manufacturers with shiny new products costing in the hundreds and thousands of dollars, not so much. And the reps of a couple of those exhibitors told me some of the newest stuff they have at the show are just prototypes, with no big production commitments coming into place until the economy and consumer spending shows signs of taking an upturn.

Compared to recent years, Day 1 attendance was significantly lower, something I could tell in the sparse lines at the concession stands and in the reliability of the WiFi connections available throughout the hall. But fewer people were here today because Steve Jobs was not here today. Tomorrow, when you’d expect the attendees interested in Macworld regardless of Steve Jobs’ presence, we’ll get a better idea of just how deflated the Mac community is over Apple’s final Macworld appearance and a sense of how much air has gone out of what was until pretty recently a high-flying market for computer technology.

For me, the most interesting part of that keynote was the stuff about batteries. I think it’s safe to predict that similar long-life, non-replacable custom batteries will be appearing in the smaller Apple notebook computers in coming months.

Apple’s gone to great lengths to push this battery idea. Witness the expensively-produced video on the MacBook Pro page, that spends a lot of time explaining why it had to be this way. This shows that Apple expected some backlash.

The negative feelings on this issue runs deeper, though, thanks to a problem that’s industry-wide, not just confined to Infinite Loop.

Later today, a computer industry trade show will open in the San Francisco area.

Many thousands of computer users, software developers and IT professionals will be attending.

At some point, a senior executive from one of the better-known computer companies will stand up on stage and say a few words about forthcoming products and services.

The audience may get a little excited at this point.

Next up: Dave with the sport headlines.

“Dear Apple Community,”

→ Dear asshole bloggers,

“For the first time in a decade, I’m getting to spend the holiday season with my family, rather than intensely preparing for a Macworld keynote.

“Unfortunately, my decision to have Phil deliver the Macworld keynote set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed.”

→ You journalists are assholes too.

Ladies and gentlemen!

Take your seats! Blow your noses! Switch off your iPhones! The time is drawing near for the annual Exposition Of Wonder And Amazement that is: Macworld Expo!

Pray cease your wild applause, ladies and gentlemen. We are gathered to celebrate the ending of Another Round Of Mostly Incorrect Rumors, and to cheer on our Leader, His Lordship Steve of Jobs, as he fails to take the Stage of Reality Distortion and instead leaves the task to his minion, Phil “Igor” Schiller.

But before we embark on this journey of discovery, let us enjoy a few brief moments of quiet and calm. Let us take this opportunity to revel in some of the rumors and gossips that have slaked our thirst for actual Apple product news in recent weeks:

• iWork as a cloud app? I don’t think so. Well, iMovie then. Whaaaa? I can really see my ISP going crazy happy about people editing movie files over their pipes. More crazy than happy, though.
• iPhoto as an iPhone app? My iPhone crashes often enough as it is…
• How about a Red iPhone? I fear not with that font, dear friends, not with that font
• Updated Mac minis? Yes! Yes please!

Iiiiiin short: lots of waffle and claptrap. Some of it might even turn out to be true. Or so vague in the first instance that even the slightest mention of a product will validate the rumor.

Even though Steve won’t be on stage (which, as Leander has pointed out, isn’t necessarily a bad thing), the advice this year is the same as the advice every other year: sit back, relax, spend Tuesday with your loved ones, and worry about the keynote later. You can be sure that it will be summarized on one or two web sites. We might even mention it here.

Oh, and don’t buy any new Macs between now and tomorrow. But you knew that already.

(Picture: trialsanderrors, under CC License.)

I probably shouldn’t be saying this on a Mac site, but reputation be damned: I’m quite interested to see Windows 7. Let me explain why. (Hang on while I put on my flame-proof jacket. There.)

THING THE FIRST: I want a netbook. I want a cheap, tiny, low-power little computer that does text editing and web browsing. Something I can chuck in my bag and forget about, but be sure it’ll be there as and when I need it. I don’t want to play games on it. I don’t want to mess with my photos on it. I don’t want to make phone calls on it. It doesn’t need a lot of disk space. But it does need a keyboard.

THING THE SECOND: I cannot afford to buy a MacBook Air. And anyway, it doesn’t offer the battery life I’m looking for.

THING THE THIRD: I don’t think Apple’s going to be producing a netbook like this any time soon.

THING THE FOURTH: But I wish they would.

THING THE FIFTH: Windows 7 is on the way, it’ll run on netbooks, and – this is the important bit – I think it’s the first version of Windows that I might have a chance of getting on with.

Why?

Because it, ahem, borrows rather a lot of ideas from Mac OS X.

Let’s see now: it removes unnecessary icons from the Desktop. It makes the Task Bar more Dock-like. It adds a system-wide search box to the Start Menu, from which you can launch apps, open files, access preferences (sorry, options), much in the manner of the Spotlight menu.

What’s more, reports tell us that Windows 7 is less bloated than Vista, runs on more humble spec machines, is somewhat more secure, and runs faster too.

So, in summary: this is the first version of Windows I’ve seen that I’ve seriously considered actually using. And until Apple finds that string of DNA that enables it to make cheap, low-power computers, it will remain an option I’ll consider.

Or maybe I should just get a Linux-based netbook (and optionally install OS X on it regardless) and save myself the bother.

(Picture used under CC license: thanks to adKinn.)