WWDC wishlist
It's coming up on WWDC time, which means that it's time to start wishing for cool new stuff from Apple. What do I want?
iPhone games. Yes, I saw the demos at the SDK announcement. Now I want ship dates, preferably ones of the form "xx June 2008". Icing on the cake would be a couple available for free via Software Update.
Ultra-ultra portable laptop. The MacBook Air is nifty enough, but not so nifty that I dumped my MacBook Pro. For its size and battery life, it's still not enough for me to move. Now I look at the eeePC with its 7-inch screen and 8 GB hard drive and think that it's the coolest thing on the market right now. I'd love to see Apple do some awesome things in this area of hardware. I don't care how thin an ultraportable is. If you're going to expect me to still have a second machine (which, at least for my office use, means that I'm going to have to purchase a new desktop too, since my MBP is my primary machine), then I want my ultraportable to really be ultraportable: really lightweight, really tiny. The MBA doesn't meet that yet.
Mac Pro Mini. I've been whinging about this for years, isn't it time for Apple to give in and stop my incessant whinging? I love the iMac for specific purposes (and I'd consider getting one for my primary work machine if the previous wishlist item were to come to fruition), but not for all of them. And I love the Mac Mini (I've got one at home and one in the office), but it’s a pretty limited beast too. I don't need a Mac Pro for most of what I do (no matter how much I’ve been trying to convince my new manager that I need one plus a pair of 30-inch displays). So I want something in the middle, a headless iMac. Or, you know, you could just call it a Mac.
Laptop docks. I've currently got four cables running out of my laptop: power, USB hub, Ethernet, DVI. Oh, and I've got a USB dongle hanging off the side of my monitor too. It's a hassle to have to unplug everything when I leave my office and plug it all back in. I really do want a dock. At least once per week, one of my cables from my newly-unplugged MBP falls behind my desk, and I get to crawl around back there to thread it back up to where it belongs. Its really annoying. I would care about this less if I could have the aforementioned real ultra-ultra portable laptop and a new desktop, of course.
Tipsy preview. We haven't heard a codename for the version of OS X after Leopard, so I've made the executive decision to name it after my own cat. I know that Leopard hasn't been out for that long, but let's start hearing some early thoughts about what's coming down the pipe. With such a great namesake, the next version can't help but rock.