MWSF 2005: The Lows

Because I'm a pessimist, I'll present my disappointments with the Steve Jobs keynote first:

• Price of iLife '05 raised to $79 - The only app that I want out of there is iPhoto. Paying $50 for it last year was ok, because I wanted to play with Garage Band. But $80? That's a little tougher to swallow.
• No eMac update - Now that we have the Mac mini (which looks awesome), what is the point of the eMac?
• No PowerBook update - Just because the G5 isn't ready for the PowerBook yet, doesn't mean that there is no way for Apple to innovate with the PowerBook line. Here is a list of things that I just brainstormed: biometric security, higher-resolution displays, better audio-out quality, higher capacity batteries, improved Bluetooth, bringing the 12" up to parity with the rest of the PowerBook line, and doing a subnotebook again.
• Still no firm ship date for Tiger - What's up with that?
• iPhoto doesn't appear to have better "tagging" support - Jobs spent a lot of time showing off Spotlight, and how it scan index and search through the metadata attached to photos. Well, currently, adding metadata to photo in iPhoto sucks. And it doesn't appear to be any better in iPhoto 5.
• No .Mac updates - I'm still waiting for the "killer feature" makes me give Apple more money. Blogging is an obvious one to go after -- how can Microsoft be all over it while it isn't even on Apple's radar?
• No 5Gb iPod mini

Most of these are minor quibbles -- the good far outweighed the bad at this year's keynote. And I'll discuss the good in the next post.

-Andy.