Sandvox, Macworld'n stuff...

Okay, cat's outta the bag: At Macworld Apple announced a new Intel iMac plus an Intel-based Powerbook (renamed MacBook Pro ... are we back in the 90ies again??? And why the change? They were happily called Powerbooks way back when they still had 68030 Motorolas...). The iMac was kinda obvious, but the Powerbook surprised me a little.

My thoughts were that the Pro line was last to be updated, because Intel doesn't have suitable 64-bit CPUs ready yet. Since the G5 is 64-bit, the Pro line would have to be downgraded. Of course, I overlooked that the Powerbook was still stuck with a G4, so it isn't a downgrade there. And the iMac, being consumer-centric, doesn't really need 64-bit addressing and maths to reach its target audience, so it's actually desirable to keep the scientists from buying iMacs.

Both have an iSight built in and, in a move that was leaked a day before MacWorld by an accidental server update, will include a new app called iWeb as part of iLife '06. iLife is a web publishing app with support for blogs, podcasts, picture pages etc... sort of the "iDVD of the web"... not sure if I'd compare it to Pages, it doesn't seem quite as flexible.

At this point, my heartfelt condolences go out to the Karelia folks, who for the second time picked a market Apple was headed for: Their app Sandvox (public beta available) is pretty much described by the term "iWeb". Though there's still hope: Sandvox is already open for extensions because it allows inserting raw HTML in places. So, I'm hoping it will find its niche in the Pro market that Apple hopefully isn't interested in (*knocking on wood*).

Well, I guess I'm happy: By the time Ruth buys her next Mac, she'll probably be able to get a Rev B Intel iMac, and two companies were smart enough to create a web site editor that deserves the name and isn't just a steroid-crazed text editor. And Apple proved again that they're way smarter than I am, which is good because it means I'll be able to keep messing with Macs in the foreseeable future ...

Which is not to say I don't like XP, but it's still second place right now. Especially the system setup stuff is still way backwards. Let's see what Vista does to that...

Reader Comments: (RSS Feed)

Matt Ronge writes: Yea, it's very unfortunate for Karelia. At this point I think they need to gear up and add more advanced features. The feature set they have right now is aimed at the same market as iWeb which isn't going to work out for Karelia.

Or E-Mail Uli privately.