Apple fanboy facts

[BarcelonAl]

Yeah the new iTouch looks nice, just got to wait for mine to blow up...sadly not looking that likely at the moment! Cursed Apple quality standards!

[Mike]

Beatles released on iTunes. They have 9 albums in the top 40 and about 20-25 songs in the top 100. Amazing really, EMI must be pleased, it will be making a dent in their massive debt.

[Mike]

Steve Jobs has taken another leave of absence on medical grounds. He will be helped in the day to day running of the company by the very capable Tim Cook. Apple shares have reduced by 6% on the news. That is a shame, I hope that he is okay because his previous illnesses have included pancreatic cancer and a liver transplant. Obviously he is very important to the company and he has been recognised as the CEO of the decade.

Get well soon Steve!

[Mike]

New iMac's released. Faster processors, same styling - HD facetime camera for all us iPhone users to marvel at! Not really a surprise given the fact it has been widely reported that there have been stock shortages of the current (now previous) model.

[Mike]

WWDC 2011 announcements.

No new iphone announced but there has been an announcement on the new operating system 'Lion' (I wonder when they will run out of big cats?!), iOS 5 with some amazing features and iCloud. They seem to have been sweeping up a lot of niggles with the iOS software in this release. I like the excitement of a new Apple announcement and today had all the hallmarks of a good one.

iCloud is like iTunes on the web, combined with contacts, mail etc and it is all FREE. See ya my expensive MobileMe account (that will save me a good wad every year).

One of the best features of the iCloud is that you can 'match' your existing iTunes library to the cloud. This means that iTunes will scan your existing songs and allow you to 'upgrade' all your ripped music to their online service. It is a most cunning strategy. I wonder if the music labels see this as a method of legitimising a massive load of music. The flat fee of $25 per year will allow you to lease these songs (don't know what happens when you stop paying!). It could be a massive success. I also don't know if this is $25 per person either. Do we have to pay for each family member or can we share an account?! All interesting questions, I will keep you all posted once the more in depth analysis hits from places like MacWorld.

Lion is always going to be eclipsed by the more profitable iOS and iTunes but it is still worthy of a mention. Full screen apps, autosave through out the whole system, versioning to make sure you can keep all your edits without having to worry about the filing system etc. These are very very good systems, I hope my mac can cope with the update, it has been through 2 different operating systems so far without problems but that must have to end at some point. I wonder what type of Mac I will have to buy next, this one is now about 4 years old but not really showing its age yet. One day it will just 'pop' I guess - keep those backups ready!

Updated with more links to good articles.

[Mike]

Lion updates. Especially like the version tracking and autosaving. Nice touches there to make computer use even easier. I wonder how many of the developers will use this functionality from the box (I am looking at you Microsoft Office).

[Mike]

Cupertino City Council have received an application for a 12,000 person super campus on the old Hewlett Packard site in Cupertino. Steve Jobs did two major presentations in two days running and both were entertaining and well ordered. The rumour is that the British Architect Norman Foster will be the Architect for the buildings - quality. Wired Magazine has a short article on the subject. The source for this information appears to be a spanish paper so I don't know if this is true or not. Norman Foster's website does not appear to have any news on this project yet but that might be a deliberate thing.

I was very impressed by Steve Job's presentation. Like the Apple keynotes he has a very clear style of enphasising the benefits of his proposal. For Apple products it is the ease of use and amazing quality, for the campus it was very similar. His headline was benefit, benefit, benefit. More trees, more landscaping, less carparking, more energy efficiency, less building footprint etc. I will have to remember this for my presentation at work.

[Mike]

MacRumours has a report that iWeb (Apple website creation software) will be dropped on the release of their new iCloud service. Apparently this was confirmed by Steve Jobs himself.

I hope this is not true otherwise I will need to re-format all my websites again! I wonder which bit of software I wil use next?! Wordpress and Concrete5 I guess would be good starts. Any other ideas?