Two Slashes

Back on Monday I was making predictions about what would come out of this week’s Macworld and CES expos. Now that the keynotes have been delivered, the products introduced, and the reviews, well…posted, I guess, I might as well explain what I liked and didn’t like about what I heard through the grapevine and saw posted to the various tech news outlets.

First up, matching the beginning of the week, I might as well start with Macworld. Now, as I’ve said on too many other occasions to count, I’m not Apple’s biggest fan. I do respect the innovation and design they’ve brought to the table, but given how I’ve grown up with technology, they’re just not the fit for me. Nevertheless, I did (for once) pay at least some attention to what was coming out of Moscone Center.

If you’ll recall my predictions, I hoped that there would be a mention of the Mac Mini, AppleTV, or even a hint about Snow Leopard (once again, that’s OS X v10.6 for you IBM-compatibles). Three strikes, I’m out – I wasn’t even close on any of these mentions. However, I also asked for – and received – an announcement about the iPhone, though I was sorely disappointed that it was only to announce iTunes was going mobile, something that should have happened a long time ago and that (based on reviews) shouldn’t be a deciding factor in anyone getting a newfangled iPhone or iPod Touch.

What I didn’t even think about (which is to my eternal shame given the how-to I need to fix) was Apple’s iWork, and to hear mention of the new online aspect of it makes me wonder whether Google needs to go the extra mile with Google Docs to stay relevant. However, given that I haven’t used iWork.com yet, I’ll likely reserve judgment until I have that opportunity.

Apple isn’t the only company I have a certain dispassion for. Against my better judgment, I ended up watching the greater portion of the Microsoft keynote streamed live. (It’s alright, I’ll take a moment to allow you to throw things at me.)

While I was expecting mentions of Windows and Xbox, I wasn’t expecting them to turn a keynote into a combination concert/multi-person comic act. My first bout of laughter came when they made a brief reference to the forgotten Seinfeld commercials of last year. (Not only does anyone who happened to miss those commercials probably not get the reference, they probably felt Ballmer and Co. a little dumb for allowing such an out-of-the-way remark to display during their presentation.) Also noteworthy in causing me to fall out of my chair was the lower-third displayed during an Xbox 360 demo for Kodu (a game development platform-thing they’re planning on releasing soon), which they invited an “actual 12-year-old girl” to participate in. (I feel sorry for Sparrow – if that’s her name – and all the ridicule she’s probably getting, but the fact that a multibillion corporation needed to instantiate that they didn’t have an actor “playing” a preteen is definitely high on the list of unnecessary clarifications.) As far as musical accompaniment goes, they also could have found a better musical number than Tripod, one who didn’t seem to drag on and on.

Not all of Microsoft’s presentation was a stand-up act, though. I was more than pleased to hear that a new (Flash-compatible!) version of Pocket IE was going to be released sometime soon, though the also-mentioned “Netflix for Windows Mobile” definitely left me questioning whether such a waste of time was necessary.

Anyway, to continue with my lack of prediction skill, I also had questions about this Zii platform. It turns out that Zii is simply a media-oriented system-on-a-chip, touted as having power equivalent to that of a supercomputer. I think I’ll pass on the comparison, because for that to be true I must be carrying around the equivalent of a small cluster in my jeans pocket in the form of a mobile phone.

Palm really came though with their just-announced Palm pre. (They don’t capitalize ‘pre’for whatever reason. I’ll also add that I think Nova was a better name, almost like Revolution was for the Nintendo Wii.) While the mockups were true to their word of the phone being a vertically-aligned slider (*BLECH*), the new OS is more than enough to make me at least consider it, should one find its way to a GSM network. The giant charging “podium” has me concerned, though, and makes me think that this phone was designed moreso to show up Apple than it was to be a phone, but that’s probably a minor gripe in the scheme of things.

Other than Microsoft, Apple, Creative, and Palm, I’m still not really too interested with this week’s events. Oh well – there’s always next year. Maybe I’ll develop some more enthusiasm by then.

(Some images shamelessly stolen from Engadget. Thanks, guys.)