Mac Universe: Is No News Really Good News?

It’s not that there’s nothing happening in the Mac universe right now. There is. There’s not much on the surface, fully visible, which means all the good news must be just below the surface. Is it good news or bad news?

Living the life of a Mac pundit (and Mac user; they’re not always the same) is an elevator existence. It has it’s ups and downs.

The ups? There’s always something happening in the Mac universe that’s not to scale. See, if the Mac only has about 4-percent of the computer market, how come the news ‘buzz’ seems like 50-percent?

Yes, it’s less than 50-percent. As I said, it ‘seems’ like that.

Case in point: About 18 months ago Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that HP (remember them? The folks who ‘Invent’) would sell iPods. Media pundits said it was a great coup for Apple.

The word everywhere was that HP would sell more iPods than Apple (big brand name, great distribution, trust from Windows users, blah, blah…). Then it was six months before they sold any.

Even when HP sold an iPod, Apple was busy selling 11 iPods. Now HP is calling it quits and won’t sell anymore iPods.

The news channels (someone is ‘channeling’ this stuff, I’m sure of it) say HP is planning to ‘Invent’ their own music player. Somehow, that’s not as much news as what Steve announced 18 months ago.

Business Week magazine says there won’t be a video iPod. How is this news? There won’t be an iPod sized iMac, either. An iPod is too small for video. If Apple remains true to form and decides to continue to ‘Think Different’ then there won’t be a video iPod.

But there might be something different that does video.

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a quiet news item. Slashdot says it’s embedded in the OS X kernel (heart of Mac OS X) for Intel-based Macs.

What’s that mean? Depends. Click Here to read what some Mac360 readers think it means and why. For most of us, it won’t matter much.

Someone has decided that Windows Vista (used to be Windows Longhorn until the smell got so bad…) isn’t really news these days so no one is talking much about it.

I did find out what “Vista” really means. Virus Infected, Spyware, Trojans, Adware. Probably. It seems as if everyone wants a piece of Longhorn’s, uh, er, Vista’s hide.

A news release (if it’s a release, is it really ‘news?’) Monday said Intuit will release a new version of Quicken for Mac in a few days. This will be the 2006 version. At least Mac users get a new one each year. This one is to integrate into .Mac.

Oh, that brings up a question. Are you a .Mac user? If you don’t know what .Mac is, just let me know ‘No.’ If you are a .Mac user, let me know ‘Why?’ I ask because I keep waiting for something REALLY worthwhile to show up in the .Mac package and it’s not there. Yet.

In other news, Podcasting is hot. So hot that about 85-percent of Americans have no clue what it is. The other 15-percent think it has something to do with iPods.

Apple’s planning to open an Apple Store in Tokyo. Again. See? I’m grasping at straws in the bottom of the barrel.

That said, how about news of the future? James Stoup at AppleMatters has a nice article on news of the future.

“What’s Next In The iLife Suite?”

That’s a great question and the article is good reading. How about ‘Animator?’ Basic animation in the style of Pixar. There’s ‘iBrush.’ A cross between Photoshop, Illustrator, and Corel Draw. Adobe would love it if Apple added that to iLife.

There’s also ‘SiteBuilder.’ Stoup thinks it’ll be an easy to use web site creator. The web page creation metaphor is changing, thanks to applications such as Rapidweaver. Apple needs another iLife application that appeals to a broader audience.

Macworld 2006 is mere months away, so it’s likely we’ll see an addition to a number of Apple-developed applications. Look for something new in iLife. I’m expecting a spreadsheet called ‘Numbers’ to show up in iWork, alongside Pages and Keynote.

What say you? What application would you like to see Apple develop next for iLife or iWork? Share your thoughts and inside knowledge and click the Comments link below. Or, to check out what everyone in the forums has to say, Click Here.