The beat goes on...

Today Apple announced Intel Mac mini's, an iPod boombox (yawn), and a really expensive leather case that is a glorified version of their free plastic one (included with all the new iPods). TUAW has tons of coverage.

So friggin' what? Well, the WSJ mentions these are evolutionary, not revolutionary. Well duh! Apple is going to keep a steady drumroll of new product announcements and wingdings going throughout this year. I would dare say 2006-2007 will be a banner year for Apple in at least one regard: new product announcements. I am still haunted by Leander Kahney's mention of something "really cool" sometime in this time frame... The Intel Mac mini isn't that thing.

Think about this: each year we'll see revs of almost all software made by Apple-- iApps and certain Pro apps. The OS will see a rev within 18 months I'm sure. And now we've got the whole Universal deal. The transition to Intel will mean "new" products, which aren't really new.

But the big thing is that Vista will be dropping out of the sky any day now, and Apple wants to keep the focus on Cupertino, and how this crazy little company keeps coming out with cool doodads AND easy software. Makes sense right? Give 'em the old razzle dazzle...

All the while Microsoft will be confusing customers with a half dozen versions of Vista. However, their developers will have some kick-ass tools. AND many of these tools will enable apps that merely need IE7 to run, hardly a problem, right? Right?

Oh, one last prediction: Vista Starter will be $49 retail, probably damn next to nothing OEM.

Proof of laziness

Want proof mainstream media doesn't eat what it kills? Take the recent barrage of news stories on MySpace. It's evil, it's scary, your teen daughter has cheesecake pics on there with pedophiles asking her for an address...

Yet amidst all this, no mention of many of the unique features (one story caught the true evolution, from friends to music to friends and music). But really absent: no mention of the crappy user experience. Not even as a side joke. What, these reporters weren't getting any "Sorry this profile has been disabled for maintenance" or "MySpace is totally hosed right now, bugger off." I find this hard to believe. If these guys had really used MySpace, for any length of appreciable time, they would have realized that's a joke everyone on there shares-- lots of downtime.

And yet we still go, because it's where all our friends are. Like that smelly dive we all used to go to back in college. It was run down, but it was ours. I'm a little old to be saying that about MySpace.