Wednesday, October 20, 2010

First impression after the "Back to the Mac" keynote on OSX 10.7 "Lion" and the new Macbook Air

So I just watched Steve Jobs' keynote from the "Back to the Mac" thing and it looks like they are not so much returning to the mac, but trying to force a marriage between the juvenile iOS devices and the more mature OSX platform; resulting in something that just seems icky.
So you will be able to run iOS apps on your full sized mac in fullscreen mode -- just like you can with apps written in the flash-player.
You can download things from an app store, just like everything else on the internet. They also debuted their new OSX app store, which looks suspiciously like their app listing website that has been available on apple.com for the past few years.
My biggest concern, however, returning to the iOS apps on a fullsize computer, is the touch/graphics interactivity that seemed unaddressed. You will be able to interact with an app via the multi-touch touchpad, but the app will be on your screen, inches away from where your hands are, on the touchpad (which has an entirely different aspect ratio from the display).
It seems like they didn't quite think that one through, and I don't plan on upgrading to 10.7.
The only thing that is cool that was announced this morning is the 1440x900px display on the macbook air. I currently use a 13.3" macbook as my everyday computer and the only complaints I have about it are the onboard intel graphics (which have been upgraded to NVidia on all mac notebooks) and the cramped display; 1280x800 just isn't enough to do anything righteously.
One more thing about the macbook air is the onboard flash memory. I am all for solid-state memory, I think it is the way of the future, but they have, not only abandoned the standard (again), but, in fusing their flash-memory to the motherboard they have prohibited upgrading.
If you buy a macbook air, you'd better get the one you want from the beginning, because you can never upgrade anything about it. They are now an entirely disposable product. Apple finally made a netbook, 3 years late and 3x more expensive than everyone else'.
Really, in lieu of a 11.6" macbook air, I would opt for a 12" Asus EeePC

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