Opinion

There are a lot of good reasons for Apple to end the keynotes. But why end attending? Steve Jobs has said "We do the equivalent of a Macworld Expo every day at each of our Apple retail stores." (I am giving this from memory, so it is not likely to be word perfect) From Apple's point of view this may be true, but from the attendee perspective Macworld Expos are so much more.

Macworld Expo is not going to end just because Apple won't be here. I don't know how much longer it will be around, and there are certainly enough arguments to predict doom for any trade show, but I think that Paul Kent and his staff are more than capable of changing Macworld Expo to reflect the needs of the community.

I am going to Macworld Expo 2009, and I am going to have a wonderful time.

I don’t know about you, but I’m about ready to file 2008 under “L” for “Let Us Never Speak of This Again,” before padlocking the file cabinet and heading on into 2009 with nary a glance in the rear view mirror. But before I can do that, let’s put a final stamp on the past year with a look at the top 10 stories that hit the Mac market in 2008, a grand and glorious tradition that dates all the way back to last year.

Stories are ranked 10 to one in ascending order of importance, based on a number of factors including the overall impact on the Mac market and Mac users as well as the potential to influence events deep into the coming year. The 10 entries were selected by a panel of me, following a lengthy debate between me and the voices in my head. This is one man’s opinion, in other words—if you think that I overlooked, overemphasized, or overrated a Mac-related happening, feel free to let me know about it in the comments.

Let’s begin the countdown, shall we?

Steve Jobs needs to take a page from Fidel Castro's book and give a speech. A big long one. At the Macworld conference next week.

But Jobs' people say there will be no Jobs at Macworld 2009. And the last thing the public relations folks at Apple want you to think is that the move has anything to do with Jobs' health. Which is why they won't say a thing about his condition. The longstanding company line? ''Steve's health is a private matter.''

Actually, it isn't.

My health is a private matter. Your health is a private matter. Steve Jobs' health is not a private matter. Steve Jobs' health is Apple's health. When Jobs, a pancreatic cancer survivor, shows up gaunt in public or acknowledges that he is not going to show up in public at all, the company's stock dives.

If you’re a sports or press Photographer who does only basic image editing, but need to sort through large amounts of images quickly, then Aperture is a no brainer. It excels in this area and is much better than Lightroom for these tasks.

If you are a Landscape or Artistic Photographer, then you may be better off with Lightroom. Its editing capabilities will probably appeal to you more than Apertures. Similarly, Amateurs who like to tinker with their images might be better served by Lightroom.

Just to throw a spanner in the works though, there is a third option.

Apple announced that they had bad news, good news, and worse news: The bad news: For the first time since he returned to Apple, Steve Jobs would not be delivering the keynote address at Macworld Expo in January.

The worse news: this would be the last year that Apple would even be exhibiting at Macworld Expo at all. Later, they would retract the compliment about the shirt, sheepishly admitting that they felt like they needed to say something nice, just to make the moment a little less awkward.

This is big stuff.

In 2007 the Best BigCo went to Facebook, due to the launch and subsequent impact of its development platform. This year we've chosen Apple, which almost single-handedly brought the Mobile Web to life in 2008.

Apple has revolutionized two major industries in recent years, using Web technology: first music with iTunes/iPod, then mobile phones with iPhone. The iTunes/iPod success story started a number of years ago and, no surprise, this year it continued its dominance of online music. But it's the iPhone story which really tipped the scales for Apple in 2008 - and we think it made Apple a true Internet powerhouse.

The iPhone was first launched in January 2007 and in last year's awards we gave Apple an 'Honorable Mention' for it, noting that it was the biggest product launch of 2007 and a catalyst for a lot of new Mobile Web development activity. However it wasn't until 2008 that the iPhone truely reached a mainstream audience, when the new 3G iPhone was announced in June and then launched to much acclaim in July.

For many years now everybody (including us) has been predicting that the next year will be the one that the Mobile Web breaks through. Well finally, 2008 was that year - and it's in large part due to the Apple iPhone and the blossoming of 10,000 apps.

Dear Apple,

Just because you're old enough to issue a press release doesn't mean you're too old to listen to some common sense from your mother. What's this I hear about how you don't plan to come to Macworld Expo in 2010?

I've been reading about it in the tech tabloids, and I'm shocked, just shocked, to hear that you've let the suits take over - you were so Bohemian as a child, so free-spirited.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's marvelous that every Apple employee can afford a pony, and I'm very proud of your Macs and iPods and that new iPhone thing, but you need to act your age.

It’s amazing. Even without the benefit of iCal or blogs, the ancient Mayans managed to come within a hair’s breadth of correctly predicting the end of the world.

It came not in December of 2012, but a mere four years earlier. Yesterday, in fact, when Apple announced that Steve Jobs would not deliver the keynote speech at the 2009 Macworld Conference and Expo, and that the conference would be Apple’s last as a participant.

Amidst the great wailing and gnashing of teeth, were predictions across the Mac web that the Expo was doomed.

And maybe it is.

There are many words that characterize Apple under the second reign of Steve Jobs: resurgent, exciting, innovative, successful. I'd add one more to that list: fearless.

Though painful and jarring in the short term, these kinds of moves are a big part of what makes Apple great. While other companies are paralyzed with indecision, or cling relentlessly to what has worked in the past, or are seduced by sentimentality, Apple is busy murdering its darlings. Though such dramatic moves often appear foolhardy to its more cautious competitors, Apple usually has the last laugh, working through the initial pain to find itself in a much better position down the road—a winning position.

The prosaic reasons for Apple's abandonment of the Expo have been well expressed by others. The more poetic explanation is just as important. Who dares wins. I will miss the Expo, but I look forward to an even better future without it.

Monday’s release of OS X 10.5.6 included a number of updates that fix bugs, improve security, and in some cases, add new (or bring back) functionality to the Mac operating system. Apple detailed many of these changes in its official release notes.

Another interesting tidbit revealed by Apple is greatly improved synching of bookmarks, contacts, and calendar changes—regardless of where you make changes, those changes should propagate to all devices within a minute. In the past, updates from the computer to an iPhone, for instance, could take quite a while. Being able to update information on any source device and have those changes propagate quickly and automatically is a welcome addition to OS X’s capabilities.

Beyond what Apple told us about, however, there are more changes—with an update approaching 200MB in size, that’s to be expected

...The Windows world is so rife with viruses, adware, spyware, and other varieties of malware, it’s a commonly held belief that all computers are susceptible to these kinds of cooties and one would be a fool to operate a computer without some kind of prophylactic utility. This belief is manifest in Windows users who move to the Mac and immediately purchase antivirus software in the belief that it’s a necessary part of owning a computer.

The hedge for those of us in the recommendation business is that while there may not be viable virus threats now, there could be one day. In order for us to cover our respective patoots, we must follow up our “Nah, you don’t really need antivirus software” suggestion with “—at the moment, but someday you might” and then we weasel and waffle in anticipation of the day when The Bad Thing Appears and the villagers appear at our gates with blazing torches and the more rustic form of pitchfork.

And by care I mean that it’s worth your while to learn the difference between the various cooties that some people too-broadly define as viruses.

Dear Steve,

As an iPhone developer who’s been in the App Store since its launch, I’m starting to see a trend that concerns me: developers are lowering prices to the lowest possible level in order to get favorable placement in iTunes. This proliferation of 99¢ “ringtone apps” is affecting our product development.

Unlike a lot of other developers, I’m not going to give you suggestions on what to do about this: you and your team are perfectly capable of dealing with it on your own terms. Rather, I’d like to give you some insight into how these ringtone apps are affecting my business.

Our products are a joy to use: as you well know, customers are willing to pay a premium for a quality products. This quality comes at a cost—which we’re willing to incur. The issue is then getting people to see that our $2.99 product really is worth three times the price of a 99¢ piece of crapware.

The results of TidBITS' annual call for gift ideas and subsequent reader ratings of those ideas are in! TidBITS has exported the numbers, massaged the text file into import-ready shape, and browbeat Numbers into analyzing the data so they can bring you the list of gifts that TidBITS readers really care about, either to give or to receive. Where possible, TidBITS has let submitters describe why they think a particular item would make a good gift.

Although there are a slew of music-streaming services across the Web, they're not created equal. But if you find the right service to match your music style, you'll quickly realize that finding the best song for a particular occasion isn't as hard as it once was.

If you were to ask me what my favorite week of the year is, the answer may shock you. It's not Christmas, my birthday, or any kind of vacation. My favorite week of the year is whatever week in January upon which Macworld Expo falls. Seriously! Yes it's incredibly (frighteningly?) geeky but let me give you a few reasons why!

Earlier this week, Washington Post blogger Brian Krebs stunned the computing world with the revelation that Apple had quietly been recommending anti-virus software for users of Mac OS X. This news flew in the face of popular wisdom (and Apple advertising), which holds that only Windows users need fear malware and other online attacks. But the shock didn't last long. Apple quickly went into spin-control mode, claiming that the online Knowledge Base article in question was out of date and that Macs were indeed perfectly safe out of the box.

Apple enthusiasts breathed a sigh of relief, while detractors grumbled various opinions, the gist of which amounted to "pride goeth before a fall." So who's right? Is Mac OS X the impenetrable fortress that Apple makes it out to be, or is it really a lurking malware death trap?

First things first: Sit down. Take a deep breath. Pour another cup of coffee. The answer lies somewhere in the middle.

Just hours after I posted my WTF report (for "where's the feature," of course) on the iPhone 3G with version 2.1 software, Apple released the 2.2 update. I figured I ought to go through my post and see if any of the things I mentioned were addressed in the update.

But the short summary is: not much has changed. The new 2.2 software, as described on Apple's main page for iPhone updates, is mostly about internal quality.

Apple describes only four areas of new features for US users: an improved Google Maps application, direct downloading of podcasts from the iTunes Store, the ability to turn off auto-correction when typing, and using the Home button to return to the first Home screen from other Home screens.

The annual American tradition of Black Friday shopping madness, with its irresistible deals and steep discounts for those willing to brave the crowds of the local shopping malls, has come and gone, but the rest of the mad shopping season is still going strong. These days, however, thanks to the wonder of the Internet, we can all experience the hustle and bustle of the mall from the comfort of our own homes. And to help keep your shopping experience authentic, there's no shortage of cheats and thieves ready to yank your painstakingly chosen gifts right out of the virtual trunk of your Web browser, along with your credit card number.

In the spirit of safe and happy holidays, TidBITS presents our top tips for safe online shopping.

Apple's browser offers anti-phishing and anti-malware capabilities. But is it doing it privately? And do you care?

If you're using Safari, and have obediently updated it to version 3.2, then you may have noticed that it now includes an anti-phishing system: if you go to a website that's reckoned to be phishy, you'll get a warning dialog that tells you "The website you are visiting has been reported as a 'phishing' website" or that "The website you are visiting appears to contain malware."

Now an in-depth analysis by the Mac Weekly Journal, and reprinted by Macworld says that this anti-spoofing system raises privacy concerns. The MWJ folks aren't happy.

MacMania: A Geek’s Second Favorite Activity

We spend a lot of time with our MacBooks on this cruise. A close second for favorite geek toy is the camera. I think there are a few reasons for this:

1) A good portion of the conference is devoted to photography-related subjects. Lesa King has given several sessions on how to take the best pictures and then make them even better in Photoshop. Josamir King has introduced us to the finer points of iPhoto, iMovie and Aperture. Randal Schwartz’s talk “How to Handle 1000 Photos a Day (and Publish 300 of Them)” was especially welcome after spending a day in Egypt at the Pyramids and camel-riding.

2) The subject matter is captivating. The desert light. The colorful food. The infinite number of geometric angles of the ship itself.

3) There’s so much geek fun to be had in Photoshop.

I’m one of the more modest photographers with my Canon Powershot. According to iPhoto, I’ve only taken 407 photo since I left on this trip. You can check out the good ones at Flickr in my MacMania group, and find others by searching on the tag #macmania8.

Here’s a little sample of what I’m talking about.

One year ago today, Mac OS X 10.5 (aka Leopard) hit the streets. One of the main sales pitches for Leopard concerned its 300-plus new features, and certainly, there are quite a few winners amongst that bunch. A year later, I can’t imagine using OS X without my always-present always-updated Time Machine backups, easy access to Wikipedia entries in Dictionary, and the oh-so-useful screen sharing.

But perhaps more so than any other OS X release, Leopard brought forth its share of bugs, features missing from the prior version, and features that still make me scratch my head and wonder just what the Apple engineers were thinking.

We’re now one full year into the 10.5 life cycle, but there are still a number of issues that really should have been addressed by now—and yet, they’re still with us, annoying me on a regular basis.

So what are these issues that I keep running into? Some are things that you could do in prior versions of the Mac OS; others are new features in 10.5 that don’t seem to have been very well thought out. Based on that definition, then, here’s my personal Leopard Hall of Shame issues list—presented in reverse order, from least to most annoying.

The iPhone is already pushing hard into the realm of what would have been science fiction 20 years ago, but with the release of the Google Earth iPhone app, it gets even closer. Could you have imagined using a handheld device to view an aerial photo of the Woolworth Building in Manhattan, and then tapping a tiny icon to read an encyclopedia article about it? That, and more, is now possible.

For those who may have not seen it, Google Earth is a cross-platform Mac and Windows application that lets you view any location on the planet, zooming in to see satellite and aerial imagery. On top of the primary view you can layer other map-related information, such as roads, weather, geo-located photos, and even cloud cover. You can also find businesses and get directions, just like in Google Maps on the Web.

When Apple redesigned its laptops earlier this month, most of the attention, including mine, was focused on the entry-level MacBook. That was because of its popularity, and because Apple managed to make over the machine in a way that added some oomph and lots of style while actually making it thinner and lighter and preserving battery life. But what about the MacBook’s big brother, the 15 inch MacBook Pro, a powerful, if pricey, laptop favored by many power users? My verdict on the Pro’s makeover isn’t nearly as favorable, because there were more tradeoffs.

My bottom line on the new MacBook Pro is that it still provides a satisfying upgrade for power users willing to spend the money to move up from the MacBook or from a less powerful, or similarly powerful, Windows machine running the inferior Vista or XP operating systems.

There are many good criticisms of Apple to be made. The company is arrogant. It is unresponsive to consumer wishes. It exploits open source. It is manipulative, secretive and uncompromising, with staff and customers alike.

It is also hugely successful, by dint of creating outstanding products sold through outstanding marketing, putting quality and usability at a premium in a market that often appears to forget about such virtues altogether. Yesterday's quarterly figures demonstrate how well that works.

By plausible analysis, in just 15 months the iPhone has become Apple's leading source of revenue — despite strong growth from both computer and iPod divisions. In the same 15 months, or two years if you count the unusually early disclosure of the device before launch, there has been no coherent response from the competition.

I've been using programs like Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, and Corel Paint Shop Pro for so many years that I sometimes have trouble remembering what photography was like before the digital age. But none of those programs have ever felt like a truly natural part of the photo process to me. When I see something I want to tweak, adjust, composite, or fix, I'll open a program like Photoshop, load the image, and do my work. When I'm done, I close Photoshop and move on. In that sense, my photo editor is sort of like an auto repair shop that I pull my car into; it gets the job done, but I don't leave my car there all the time.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom--particularly the new Lightroom 2--feels more like my living room. I am happy to stay there all the time, viewing and organize my photos from within its comfortable and logical interface.

You might wonder how Lightroom is different from more traditional photo editors like Photoshop. You can read PC World's complete review for details, but this week I thought I'll focus on the five aspects of this program that will interest any serious photographer. Adobe offers a free 30-day trial so you can see if the program is right for you.

Steve Jobs may not be sure how much the economic slump will hurt Apple, but he's clear on this: It won't be as bad as pessimists predict. And for the first time in eight years, he got on an analyst conference call to discuss quarterly results to make sure the point wasn't lost on anyone.

"We may get buffeted by the waves a bit, but we'll be fine," Jobs said on the call, following the release of Apple's fiscal fourth-quarter results. Evidence of the buffeting may already be showing up. Apple reported $7.9 billion in sales, below the average estimate of analysts, which had come in at $8.05 billion. As for the fiscal first quarter, which includes the all-important holiday selling season, Apple forecast sales of $9 billion to $10 billion, more than $500 million less than analysts were expecting. Per-share earnings will come in at $1.06 to $1.35, at least 30% below the consensus estimate. CFO Peter Oppenheimer said the company was being "prudent" in light of the uncertain economy.

But in the immediate aftermath of the results, it was Jobs' comments about Apple being "fine" that carried most weight with investors. Apple shares, which had slumped more than 7% in regular trading, surged $12.84, or more than 14%, to 104.32 in extended trading after the results were released.

Chances are you’ve seen Bob Staake’s work at some point. Besides contributing to more than 40 books as author, artist, or both, Staake’s also done illustrations for clients as diverse as The New York Times and Anheuser Busch. His work has graced everything from advertisements and games to Hallmark greeting cards and the cover of The New Yorker.

And he’s done it all with a piece of software that’s almost 15 years old.

In September 1994, when Photoshop 3.0 was released, the world was a very different place. The World Series had been cancelled due to a labor dispute; George W. Bush had just been elected Governor of Texas; and Netscape Navigator, one of the first graphical web browsers, wasn’t due to be released for another three months. And the idea of digital art was still in its infancy.

"In 1995, I was interviewing other illustrators for a book called The Complete Book of Humorous Art," says Staake. "I was amazed at how many of them claimed they were working 'digitally'—but in actuality most had only dabbled in computers." Not long after, Staake was looking for something that would let him scan in his pen and ink drawings and color them in on the computer. An art director friend who owned a Power Macintosh 7100, one of the first PowerPC-based Macs, told him that Adobe Photoshop was just what he was looking for. “Sounded good to me,” says Staake, who ended up purchasing a 7100 as well, “so I have been working in Adobe Photoshop 3.0 ever since.”

When Apple Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in January 2007, even he might not have realized how soon it would become a huge part of Apple's business.

The rampant success of the iPhone has forced Apple and its financial watchers to re-evaluate the value of the company. Saying that Apple's iPhone business "had become too big to ignore," Apple CEO Steve Jobs made a rare appearance on the company's earnings conference call earlier on Tuesday to explain just how much money the iPhone is dumping into Apple's coffers. For the first time, the company used supplemental financial details to give some color on the contribution that the iPhone could be making to Apple's bottom line if iPhone sales were handled like Mac sales, and the numbers are astonishing.

The iPhone now accounts for 39 percent of Apple's business, having generated $4.6 billion in revenue on sales of 6.9 million units during the quarter. (Apple TV revenue is lumped in with that number, but let's be real: iPhone sales account for the vast, vast majority of that figure.) Those numbers, however, are not included as part of Apple's official quarterly results because of the way the company chooses to account for the sale of each iPhone; Apple reported just $806 million in iPhone and Apple TV revenue for its fourth quarter in accordance with GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles).

So what gives? In order to explain, please permit me to wade through some boring-but-necessary Accounting 101 review.

One thing Apple knows is what it does. Apple designs and produces very nice things. All this hubbub over low-cost laptops is outside the realm of what makes Apple Apple.

There has long been, especially in the business press, a strong bias towards encouraging Apple to act like a “normal” computer company. Remember when it was common for analysts to call for Apple to break itself apart into separate software and hardware companies? Or for Apple to obtain a license for Windows and make “well-designed” Windows PCs. Or for Apple to sell licenses for Mac OS X to Dell?

Other PC makers fight viciously over pricing because it’s the only factor on which they can differentiate. Few of them bother trying to make better computers — most just build bland, junky wrappers around Intel’s reference chipsets. (Notable exceptions in the laptop space include Sony and Lenovo.) None can offer better software because they all ship the same version of Windows. They’re stuck with Vista. They all seem, for whatever reason, incapable of producing Apple-level marketing and advertising. And none of them who’ve tried have been able to do their own retail stores successfully. Price is all they have.

Nothing is much of a secret about Apple events these days.

Turns out, a high percentage of the rumors and leaked images of the notebooks announced Tuesday were right on target: The price drop, the aluminum casing across the entire product line, the new unibody construction process, the black bezeled displays were all mentioned on Apple rumor sites and gadget blogs before CEO Steve Jobs took the stage Tuesday.

But, as would be expected, several of the most widely circulated pieces of speculation proved false. In brief comments after his keynote speech, Jobs did something he doesn't usually do, and clarified what isn't on his company's immediate notebook road map. Three of them are some of the most oft-repeated rumors of future Apple products. Here's why touch screens, Blu-ray, and Netbooks are not what Apple has in store for us anytime soon.