Applemorphic

For this week’s Friday Software Spotlight, here are a few product announcements from the week’s Macworld.

• Microsoft is releasing Mac Office 2008 later in 2007. This next version of the office suite will be a universal binary and sports some major user interface changes, which you can get a taste of through an eWeek slideshow. The UI still features a row of buttons across the top, but then there is a web/tab style navigation and sub-navigation scheme for key features.
• Virtualization continues to make headlines. Parallels introduced a new beta of their Desktop for Mac solution, and Crossover Mac 6.0 was released by CodeWeavers. Parallels runs a full copy of Windows inside your Mac (and can run your BootCamp Windows volume), while Crossover runs specific applications within the Mac without the need for Windows.
• Now Software pre-announced their integrated successor to Now Up-to-Date and Now Contact. Codenamed Nighthawk, the software is due for delivery later this year, and from the screenshots looks pretty good. But if it won’t sync with the iPhone…
• Adobe previewed Photoshop CS3 for Mac and reintroduced Premier for the Mac as well.

Of course, there’s much, much more. Check out Macworld Magazine’s reports for announcements, reviews and analysis, and VersionTracker for lists of software releases.

Reports are coming in from all over the web with additional details about the iPhone, too many such reports to link them here. You’ve probably already seen them, but from my perspective, here are some of the highlights that weren’t obvious in Tuesday’s announcement.

• As far as we can tell, the iPhone system is closed, meaning you get to use the software that Apple provides for it.  Its hard to imagine Apple making the iPhone widget-friendly and not allowing users to install widgets of their choice (among other software).
• The iPhone is not Microsoft friendly. As of today, it apparently cannot read or write MS Office files, sync with Outlook, or connect to an Exchange server unless that server supports IMAP or POP.
• iTunes songs cannot be set as ringtones.
• The screen appears resistant to smudges, or at least they don’t impact viewing (they seem to be more obvious when the phone is off).
• Like other iPods, the battery is not user-replaceable.

I expect all but the last of these to change at some point in the future. After Apple actually gets this thing produced in volume and into the field, and now that they can openly develop solutions for it, things will evolve rapidly.

I’m still wagging my tongue over the new Apple iPhone, and hoping that fingerprints are as easy to remove as my saliva. But I’m starting to think about the possibilities for this little device that I doubt there are published answers for, or anyone who can talk about them if they have the knowledge.

• Bluetooth: Apple released its own diminutive Bluetooth wireless headset, so we know that works. But what about their Bluetooth keyboard and mouse? Unless the company has specifically disabled these devices, they should work as input methods, since the iPhone runs on Mac OS X.
• Video: The iPhone also has an iPod connector for syncing with desktop Macs and PCs. iPods currently support video out through their dock, which the iPhone will also have. Does this mean that the iPhone will also support video out, at least for photos and videos? And if only for those objects, surely some hacker could create video out for the entire device…
• Bluetooth/Video Combination: The natural conclusion, then, is that it may very well be possible to use an iPhone as a ultra tiny little Mac, complete with keyboard, mouse and monitor. Disconnect them, and take it on the road for all the touchscreen goodness described at today’s keynote.

Which leads me to also wonder if someone will modify an iPhone to allow iTunes “squirting” as the Zune does…     Stay tuned…

EDITED WITH UPDATED INFORMATION

The Apple iPhone that is what Apple is calling it, according to CNBC which said they expected a trademark license with Cisco to be completed by today. But its also the “true” video iPod, as its a full-screen device with no keyboard; instead it uses a proprietary touchscreen input called multi-touch. And it runs on Mac OS X.

The bottom line: the Apple iPhone will be available in June from Cingular only in two versions: a 4GB version for $499 and an 8GB version for $599. These are premium prices, especially given that they require two-year contracts. By comparison, a new Treo will cost $200-300, and the current cost of new iPod Nanos in the same capacities are $199 and $249 for the 4GB and 8GB models, respectively. So if the iPhone replaces your phone and nano, its not much of a premium to pay for the features packed into the device.

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The iTV has a new name: Apple TV, using the Apple logo. In addition to the features announced last year, it has a 40GB hard drive and can stream or copy files from up to 5 iTunes clients (Mac or PC). The interface appears to have evolved very nicely. Shipping in February. Order today.

TUAW has a quick list of features for the upcoming OmniFocus software designed specifically for Getting Things Done, including a hard-to-read photograph of the user interface. If the list is right, I’m disappointed that syncing with portable devices is handled through iCal, but otherwise, the software appears simple and intuitive, and has nice features like support for QuickSilver. If my predictions are right that OS-level syncing will come to Leopard and Apple will release a mobile phone/iPod/PDA, the sync issue might be moot, but its otherwise a deal-killer for me.

John Gruber’s Daring Fireball is perhaps my favorite website about Apple-related stuff. John is a great writer, and his views are well considered and presented. And I love the design of his site. He’s posted a couple of juicy tidbits:

• His own Macworld predictions
• A note that the Web UI for .Mac’s iDisk (link is to the DF homepage) is now full of Web 2.0 AJAX goodness (I missed this too)

I’m glad to see that Apple has started to re-engineer the user experience for its .Mac applications (first Mail, now iDisk).

BusinessWeek online has a new special report up called “The Apple Economy.” Articles cover its influence on other companies, its success in corporate markets, and its relationships with partners, among others.

Now Software is announcing a successor to Now Up-to-date and Contact, codenamed Nighthawk. From the single page on their website, it looks like Now has improved its user interface significantly from prior versions. The three features that stand out to me are the hierarchical outline of tasks, the ability to sync across multiple devices and tabs. The first two are critical for me. Will this or another application replace iCal and Address Book for you?

So I’m one of the offenders Jason was referring to. At least I didn’t have to manually replace all my instances of “MacWorld” with “Macworld.” Instead, I downloaded this simple but effective plugin for WordPress (that’s a capital “P”, Jason) that allowed me to search and replace every instance in every post. It took a total of about 1.5 minutes to search for the plugin on Google, download it, uncompress it, upload it to my WordPress installation, activate it, and execute the command. Cool.

As we approach the 24-hour countdown to Macworld 2007, I was wondering whether I’d actually be able to purchase my iTV tomorrow, and if so, when it would arrive. My guess is that it will be available for order and will ship either immediately or by the end of the month. (I realize I said I was done with Macworld 2007 predictions, but what’s a guy to do? I’m an Apple fanatic. It’s my drug of choice.)

I also got to thinking… when Apple CEO Steve Jobs pre-announced the iTV, he said it would be compatible with the Apple Remote. You know the one. It looks like an original iPod shuffle in size and design, and has only six buttons. It ships with the newest Mac laptops, iMacs, Mac minis, and is configured to run Front Row out of the box (it can be modified to run other applications as well). It can control an iPod through an iPod dock with infrared sensor, as well.

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Okay. I’ve made my own predictions (here and here), and I’ve reported on those of others here, here and here. Now, Sunday morning before Tuesday’s Macworld 2007 Keynote, I’m done with predictions. But I’m not done dreaming. Besides, Apple is being even more proactive and obvious with their hype machine, given that the Keynote is now 2 hours instead of 1-1.5, and the Apple homepage dramatically promotes what is to come in 2007. Here’s what I’d like to see, which is all within easy reach of the fruity one and it’s mercurial leader, though far from likely, at least in the near future.

Mac OS X Embedded: A lite version of the OS for embedded applications. The new OS would be made available only through Apple’s own products and carefully selected strategic relationships. For example, Mac OS X Embedded would be bundled on future generations of the iPod, the iTV, and an Apple mobile phone, as well as in certain car-based systems (dockable iPod, iTunes head-end, music through stereo, video through rear-seat displays, etc.).

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According to ThinkSecret, iWork 2007 will be released at Macworld 2007, and it will include a new spreadsheet module called Charts or Numbers. My experience is that ThinkSecret’s predictions get more and more accurate as Macworld approaches, even if no new real information is available to the public, so there might be something to this. Their post even includes images of the icon and UI, though stating that there is no way to tell at what stage in the application’s development they were created. The screenshot would be very easy to fake using existing iWork applications. It is interesting to note that Styles are shown below the Sheets, looking very much like Keynote’s slide master and slides sections.

True or false? We’ll know soon enough!

A post over at TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog, for the acronymically challenged), highlights a new widget called CharacterPal, which allows you to find glyphs and other special characters with relative ease. It reminded me of a Classic Mac OS utility I used called PopChar, so I shuffled on over to The Google to see if it still existed, and if so, if it was updated for Mac OS X. It does, and it was.

PopChar is a menu bar utility, but the menu item lives in the far upper left-hand corner of the screen, to the top and left of the Apple menu. When you click the relatively unobtrusive P icon, the PopChar window appears, allowing you to select the character you wish to insert into the active application. This “&” was inserted in this way: while typing this blog entry in Firefox, I simply clicked on the P, clicked the “insert HTML button,” and clicked the ampersand in the main window. PopChar disappeared, and the HTML code for the ampersand was in my post. The next time I invoked the utility, PopChar remembered all of my most recent selections, including that I wanted to insert the HTML code for the character.
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Crazy Apple Rumors Site (CARS) appears to have the ultimate inside scoop on what to expect during Monday’s keynote. If true, this could dash the hopes of millions of Apple fans around the world.