Thoughts from WWDC (2013)

WWDC is wrapped.  Apple games us some bits and pieces and we all know what their new gameplan is.  I am going to cover the things that I found meaningful and interesting.

iWork
Documents, spreadsheets, presentations, graphs.... all at your fingertips... all the time.  This is the combination of a full Microsoft Office suite and Google Drive.  While Google Drive has many Google Docs features, they are not the same high-quality stuff you expect from Microsoft Office.  This actually looks like a HUGE productivity boost to iOS.  While I am not a big Apple fan, this looks GREAT.  Hopefully this will light a fire under everyone else to push for this kind of thing... in the cloud.


iTunes Radio
At first I kept hearing about how this was going to compete with Spotify.  It isn't.  This is a Pandora rip-off.  You get to hear "stations".  Sometimes those stations can even play exclusive music before it is heard anywhere else!  This means that Apple has ripped off Pandora AND started paying record companies tons of dough.  Nice.  This thing looks like a joke.  If nothing else you get to ditch downloading an app because now you have it.  However, since Spotify will let you listen to whatever in the hell you want, whenever in the hell you want... you'll probably still want to download it.  I am thoroughly disappointed, but not surprised.


Airport Extreme/Time Capsule
Guess what.  I'm actually excited.  I have long been captivated by the way that Apple has managed the Airports.  This year.... I might actually want to get one.  I won't be able to afford it until NEXT YEAR, but I still want one, now!  For 200 bucks, I can wait.  The new Airports rock the super fast 1.3Gb speeds flying through the air at roughly 450Mb in three separate streams.  This also leads to increased range, which is GREAT.  This is actually going to be an upgrade over N+.  Woo!  It has the standard bells and whistles like dual-band and backward compatibility.  The ability to plug up an external drive and share it over the network isn't new, either, but it sure is nice.

The new Time Capsule is the same thing, but this year it is sporting 2 and 3GB models.  This doesn't help us old PC users out much, but it is great for Mac users.  These drives are set to automagically back up their laptops and desktops to this fancy little space.  Time Machine isn't offered on another platform, so not everyone can take advantage of the Time Capsule.  At 300 and 400 dollars... did you really want to?  How much is laziness worth to you?


iOS7
I don't even know what in the fuck this is.  It's like they took a bunch of stuff from other mobile OSs and... I don't know.  Right now it is a Frankenstein mess.  It should be cleaned up, shortly.  I sure as hell hope so.  Considering how likely they are to redesign the iPhone for this year, you better hope you fix this up in hopes to push phones out of the door of you are in big fucking trouble.  I will have plenty more to say about this as the months move and it gets closer to release.  Until then... wow, what the fuck.