Juan Peso

NUMBERS

Numbers are still amazing and still climbing. Next.

iBooks

Check back. I don’t have a copy yet. Continuous scrolling is looking reeeeaaaally nice though. iBooks Author 1.0 made me wish I was back in school, 2.0 seems like it’s going to magnify that feeling. (Update) My iPad is en route from the repair facility, but having used iBooks on my iPhone I like the update. Scrolling mode works way better for the iPhone than book mode although that is purely based on preference. What really made me happy was that I could share. To me that’s the point of reading a good book. Read it, learn from it, and then share it. You can share highlights and quotes or the iBookstore link. It’s great. The one thing I don’t like is the purchased collection. I keep my books and collections well organized and I hate having a useless collection that I can’t remove. If I want a book back, I’ll retrieve it from the purchased section in the iBookstore and place it in whatever collection I want it in. Luckily this can be turned off though in the iBooks settings. Lastly, I’m really happy that I can FINALLY rename PDFs right from within iBooks.

13-inch Retina MacBook Pro

Same jazz that went into the 15-inch. Progress is a never ending march forward. I feel like the MacBook Air days of not being Retina are obviously numbered and it’s only a matter of time before we see a wipeout of the current MacBook Pros that don’t have Retina.

Mac Mini

I think they should drop the mini part of the Mac Mini name. The only thing mini about it is the machines physical footprint. This thing can take 16GB of RAM. The PowerBook G4 I purchased only 6 years ago could only support 2GB and that was a significant amount for a Mac at that time. This machine in my mind went from being a machine that Mac lovers would tell their friends “Macs aren’t that expensive. You can buy one for just $500,” to a serious machine that is significantly above and beyond anything a first time or low experience computer user would need and problem even some midlevel users.

iMac

To be honest this is what blew me away the most today. I feel like the thinest edge of the computer itself is thinner than the stand it’s on. I know the majority of the tech writers and heavy tech enthusiasts will bemoan the fusion drive, but let’s face the reality that the average person had no idea this already existed elsewhere or even really understand what it means. All they know is it’s some new/fancy/shiny, and will mean better performance, and of course will feel faster than any machine they were currently using because when doesn’t a new machine feel fresh and super fast? Lastly, I loved that they junked the optical drive in this thing. On the laptops it’s one thing, but I waited for the iMac to lose the optical drive before acknowledging that it’s official and all Macs with an exception to the Mac Pro (and who knows there) are loosing the optical drive and they aren’t coming back.

4th Generation iPad

A nice incremental upgrade. Amazing processor in this thing. That’s about it. Good times. I think it was interesting though that when the iPad first came out, every new release was treated like a brand new iPhone with lines and fanfare and critics panned it as just a large iPod Touch. Apple seems to have treated this 4th generation iPad update as an incremental update similar to an incremental Mac update. It made me feel like Apple is now treating the iPad 9.7-inch more like a Mac (professional, business, content creation, no sacrifices) and the new 7.9-inch, while still being as serious, more of a consuming/mobile device similar to an iPhone.

iPad Mini

So I botched the whole let’s-not-call-it-a-mini-thing, but who cares. A great new smaller iPad to add some depth to the category. No Retina screen, but we all know Apple will get to it. Price a little high, but you know this damn thing is going to sell like crazy. I’m kind of iPad Mini’d out to the point where, again, the iMac was what blew my mind today. I think this will be a great category for Apple that they will continue to improve and I’m sure the price will go down over time. Cool Smart Cover Mini by the way. I know I use my full size Smart Cover all the time.

iTunes 11

What the hell Apple? Just release it already.

Overall

The future is clear. Education is going to become a clearer focus than it already has been. The iPad family has welcomed a new member. Retina is coming to everything and it’s only a matter of time. Someone start digging the grave for the optical drive right next to the grave for the floppy disk. Hard drives aren’t disappearing to the cloud. The Macs aren’t just side products to experiment with. Event presentations are getting stale and repetitive, but the company and the products are not.