Tiger Or iLife 05 In January?

[AmigoMac]

a web page editor with .mac templates should come in januar, it's the best way you can edit the pages while offline... freeway is damn expensive for a non-savvy user and apple can do it far easier...

Again my vote is for Tiger latest in april... with next revision of iMacs...

 

[dicklacara]

I had in mind a "Lite" version of Dreamweaver, a web design software "for dummies" , with a Mac/iLife touch .

Sadly, I think that:
iPhotoshop=war with Adobe
iWeb=war with Macromedia

Is Apple's army ready to turn allies into enemies?

Who knows...

I don't necessarily agree that Apple needs to turn allies into enemies -- I hope they don't.

I think that the original version of .Mac (remember iTools) was supposed to evolve into something like what people on this list are calling iWeb. But, until recently (this year) there was was no way to create a useful iWeb package -- If there were, I suspect it would already be included in iLife.

One of the problems with the iWeb concept is that there is a lot of knowledge required and intracate details to put together the component parts and administer a a web site.

There was a whole lot of stuff to be done before you could write and serve that first "Hello World!" web page.

Another consideration is the actual creation of the data, content, format and programs that comprise a particular web site.

With iTunes & iPhoto, you just insert a CD or plug in your Camera and the application sucks in your data and organizes it for you -- you really don't need to do anything, up front, to start using these apps.

This plug-and-play approach was not practical with a web site.

But, technologies , they are a'convergin'...

Licensing issues aside, today, it is technically possible to distribute an iWeb package containing everything you need, all pre-installed & ready to run.

1) The user inserts a CD or downloads the iWeb package.
2) The user double-clicks the iWeb icon.

That's it! (Someone said "there IS no step 3")

A browser window opens, pointed at the user's web site (initially setup with the same defaults used when OS X was installed).

There likely would be Blog, Photo Album, A/V Album and Filer (db) apps.

A customization wizard would start and allow you to populate the data in the various apps by selecting iTunes playlists, iPhoto albums, etc.

That's the plug-and-play part -- you can do this today.

So, you've got your basic site running and now you want to roll-your-own apps (or maybe just modify the supplied apps).

I assume that all of the supplied apps are skinnable and there is an admin function that provides basic customization.

I assume that the supplied apps are provided as well-documented source.

To actually progam, you need an editor, a SQL Client, some docs/tutorials and examples.

Oh, and you need a programming language, or languages. These, too, are on the CD or download.

This combination of tools can be packaged as an integrated set called an IDE.

Say that Macromedia includes a 30-day trial version of a specially-configured/priced Dreamweaver.

So, you can create and host a plug-and-play web site with a few simple steps.

You can customize and experiment/learn/program any applications, as desired.

If you decide to host remotely, you have a working system installed locally, that you can easily upload/replicate on the remote host.

Dick

 

[sinisterdesign]

I wonder, seriously - if iLife was on Windows when you last bought a Mac, would you have bought a Windows PC instead? ...
I know I can think that some people might not have bought a Mac if they had iLife on Windows... it's just that everyone I know who has bought a Mac would have bought a Mac regardless.

i don't know about that. sure, you & i would still buy a Mac b/c we know that OSX is a great OS and the hardware is beautiful, but what was the entire basis for the Switch campaign? iLife and all the joy & simplicity it brings. PC users are happy w/ their virus-ridden, cumbersome computer. it takes a LOT of convincing to switch someone, so giving them one enormous reason LESS to switch would not be a good idea.

steve knows better than to fork over his pride & joy of the iLife suite. we whine & moan b/c we have to pay $50 for an upgrade. how many $50 iLife packages would it take to recoupe the difference of one G5 sale to a switcher?

if Apple makes iLife availabe to the PC market, i'll design my newspaper/magazine ads in Word for a week...pleeeease don't sell out, steve!

 

[ahmadof]

contribute

is a basic editor from macromedia that seems to fit the bill for what most people want for a basic editor. It has easy templates, works alot like a word proc. program and is integrated very nicely with .Mac. If they could improved as little more and intergrate iLife with it and the blog software, i think it would be perfect. I created and am hosting a website on my idisk after one afternoon playing with it. I started knowing absolutely nothing about the whole process.

 

[SiliconAddict]

If you read some reviews you'll see the base iMac is considered CHEAPER than a Dell or Compact for a comparable computer.

Compare it to an iBook that a lot of people swear by and it's $200 more for larger screen, faster processor & FSB and a larger, faster HD.

It also got a 5 star rating from PC Mag.

5 stars means exactly jack if someone can't afford it and we aren't talking comparable computer.

My uncle has an e-machine that he upgraded two this summer. Spent about $700 on the system that had a 2Ghz AMD, 512MB RAM, 160GB HD, etc. He didn't have to upgrade his display because he already owned a 21" monitor. What is his incentive to get a Mac? Hmm $700 vs. $1500.

 

[SiliconAddict]

Reminds me a lot of a different OS...or was it two of them...its a good thing Gates didnt consider that when he unvailed 98 and ME, I enjoyed his embarasment.

And I'm pretty sure Windows users enjoyed Jobs embarasment when he was demoing OS X and it crashed.

 

[Josh]

What about something like "iBot" or "iPlan" which schedules very specific tasks for your computer to do. People's lives are filled with busy schedules - toss out the schedule and let your computer do it for you.

I know Tiger has better scheduling to come, but very specifc scheduling needs to be possible.

For example, I would like to schedule my computer to do work for me while im gone, such as:

-Begin download of 'Album A by Artist B" from iTMS @ 5:45 pm.
--Burn 'Album A' to CD when download is complete.
-Resize images in "Camping Trip" folder to 800x600 and order prints.
-Send email to aunt Michelle, with subject: "John's First Fish!!" with message: "Look at John's first fish! What a whopper!" with attatchment: 'John_fish.jpg' @ 8:00pm.
-Check for updates, and install new updates @ 10:00 pm.
-Open headlines from CNN.com in Safari at 12:00 am.
-Sleep at 12:40 am

It would be nice to have your computer do certain tasks for you while you were gone, but it would be working as if you were actually there.

 

[kenaustus]

My uncle has an e-machine that he upgraded two this summer. Spent about $700 on the system that had a 2Ghz AMD, 512MB RAM, 160GB HD, etc. He didn't have to upgrade his display because he already owned a 21" monitor. What is his incentive to get a Mac? Hmm $700 vs. $1500.

Since the iMac starts at $1,299 with a 17" flat panel display your uncle wasn't that far ahead, except for the monitor and he was probably keeping a lot of the parts, including the case, power supply, etc. Look at what he kept and what he replaced to see the value of the retained parts.

His main difference now is that he has XP (or SP2) and all the joys that will bring until MS delivers a stripped down Longhorn sometime in the future. Personally I have been through enough MS problems from DOS through XP and, for me, it ain't worth the savings.

 

[devman]

I have no inside knowledge but I agree with what most are speculating here. Tiger will be later next year and iLife makes MUCH more sense for a Jan announcement.

I'd like to see multiple library support for iPhoto so I can keep my work pics totally separate from my family pics.

I don't think the speculation re: iFinance and such things is likely. If you look at iLife it's about movies and sound and pictures.

I'm interested in .mac enhancements. I think some sort of blogging front end to .mac might fit the iLife model. A daily journal (blog) to me isn't much of a stretch from the current apps.

For purely .mac, I'd love to see more disk space, better performance accessing the iDisk, a backup program that is reliable and smarter than the current one (saving the safari cache seems wasteful). I'd also like to see a cvs or subversion server available that xcode could use.

 

[jch200]

A couple of people have posted a desire to have a feature in Tiger to easily publish a web site.

I have some experience with this & would like to hear some more details.

First, Apple's .Mac provides you with a limited web site capability (picture albums, hand-written web pages, drop-box, etc.). Apple makes some operations, such as publishing a slide show from iPhoto, quite easy because they automate the publishing process and integrate your pictures with pre-written web pages.

1) What do you want to do with a web site -- maybe just more storage for the things available from .Mac? Some candidates are:
- Photo Albums / Slideshow
- A/V Albums / Playlists
- Blog
- Family tree
- email
- Database/Search Applications - Recipes, etc.
- Shopping cart

2) Do you want to be able to host a web site on your machine? -- Most things you need are included in OS X or available free, but it means leaving your computer on and connected to the Internet. Realistically, this means a second phone line or a high-speed cable or DSL connection $30-$50 month. If you are going to publish a lot of web pages and/or have a lot of pictures or data, you will probably need to invest in an external hard drive.

Surprisingly, you can host quite a nice web site on any hardware capable of running OS X.

3) If you want to host the site externally, there will likely be an annual or monthly fee. This becomes more complex because, right away, you need to decide what database to use, what programming languages to use and a lot of other details. A typical external site will cost $10-$30 per month.

4) Formatting information to display on a web site is not very difficult, but it does involve some understanding of a specialized language, HTML (HyperText Markup Language). There are some GUI programs that generate HTML pages, but they can be more difficult to learn than the HTML language, itself. You can learn HTML basics in a few hours.

5) More involved web pages usually require some ability to program and manipulate a database. So , you must learn a "programming" language. There are several choices, but the easiest programming languages are extensions to HTML. You use HTML to format and present the data in your web pages. You use a "programming" language to retrieve and manipulate the data to be published.

6) Many of the "applications" that people run on web sites (Bog, Photo Album) are available -- some are free or available at a reasonable price. You can use these, as-is, or as a base to customize the application to your needs.

One complexity is that all the pieces do not come with OS X. Things such as a database, an easy web "programming" language, and the applications" are available from 3-rd parties.

Putting all the pieces together is not difficult, but there a lot of details (a lot of chances to make mistakes).

If there is enough demand, an iWeb package could be written to provide the most-desired applications and the components necessary to run them. iWeb could be written in such a way that it could be hosted on your computer or by a 3rd-party host service.

I would like to hear any thoughts or ideas-- post on this list or email me directly at dicklacara@mac.com.

Dick

One thing .Mac is missing is the ability to post music files. I would have thought they'd make a music template for this when they released Garage Band, but they didn't. If you want to share a song you've made you either have to post in in a file sharing template, or turn it into a QT movie. Pain.

Also, I've always wanted to be able to post movies with a larger viewing screen than the templates they give us in .mac. I've since learned how to do some basic HTML so that I could do this.

 

[benpatient]

Since the iMac starts at $1,299 with a 17" flat panel display your uncle wasn't that far ahead, except for the monitor and he was probably keeping a lot of the parts, including the case, power supply, etc. Look at what he kept and what he replaced to see the value of the retained parts.

that's spoken from plain ignorance or at least denial.

More than a year ago, I built a new computer for 673 dollars including shipping and tax through newegg.com and a couple of other websites by recycling the following items from my old computer: 17" monitor viewsonic (it's now 5 years old and cost 249 at the time, still an excellent monitor), 12x DVD-ROM drive...These run about 35-40 dollars online.my excellent 4.1 surround sound Cambridge Soundworks speaker system, discontinued, but a 50 dollar upgrade option when i bought the old computer in 1998. mouse and keyboard, which i replaced with Logitech MX Wireless Duo this christmas (an excellent investment if you ask me)

Then I bought:

•Case
•400 watt power supply
•motherboard with 2 firewire, 6 USB 2.0, 7.1 surround, 2 ethernet ports, •SATA RAID capability, and a bunch of other crap
•128 MB ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
•120GB SATA hard drive
•52x CD-RW drive
•Athlon 2500+ retail package (with processor and cooling fan, etc)
•2 sticks of 512MB PC3200 ultra RAM from Geil

It's considerably faster at most of the things it does than the dual 1.8 I'm typing on right now is...especially games, which is why the PC is at home and the Mac is at work. but don't get me started on the problems I've had with OS X and with Macs in general since I started using them for design work 8 years ago.
But yeah...700 dollars is more than enough to make an excellent computer from scratch if you happen to have a monitor that you like already, and a keyboard/mouse you aren't using. Otherwise, you can easily get that for under 1000 dollars, still.

All you need is some mechanical proclivity and 3 or 4 hours to put it all together (one hour if you know what you're doing), and another hour or so to get the software up and running as you want it to be.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

that's spoken from plain ignorance or at least denial.

More than a year ago, I built a new computer for 673 dollars including shipping and tax through newegg.com and a couple of other websites by recycling the following items from my old computer: 17" monitor viewsonic (it's now 5 years old and cost 249 at the time, still an excellent monitor), 12x DVD-ROM drive...These run about 35-40 dollars online.my excellent 4.1 surround sound Cambridge Soundworks speaker system, discontinued, but a 50 dollar upgrade option when i bought the old computer in 1998. mouse and keyboard, which i replaced with Logitech MX Wireless Duo this christmas (an excellent investment if you ask me)

Then I bought:

•Case
•400 watt power supply
•motherboard with 2 firewire, 6 USB 2.0, 7.1 surround, 2 ethernet ports, •SATA RAID capability, and a bunch of other crap
•128 MB ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
•120GB SATA hard drive
•52x CD-RW drive
•Athlon 2500+ retail package (with processor and cooling fan, etc)
•2 sticks of 512MB PC3200 ultra RAM from Geil

It's considerably faster at most of the things it does than the dual 1.8 I'm typing on right now is...especially games, which is why the PC is at home and the Mac is at work. but don't get me started on the problems I've had with OS X and with Macs in general since I started using them for design work 8 years ago.
But yeah...700 dollars is more than enough to make an excellent computer from scratch if you happen to have a monitor that you like already, and a keyboard/mouse you aren't using. Otherwise, you can easily get that for under 1000 dollars, still.

All you need is some mechanical proclivity and 3 or 4 hours to put it all together (one hour if you know what you're doing), and another hour or so to get the software up and running as you want it to be.

I think most of us know that "typical" PC games aren't so good on the Mac. What you may not know is that there are plenty of Mac-only games from shareware developers that are as good or better than these "typical" PC games - these games are the ones I play on my Mac since they show off the Mac's advantages far more than any PC port could. The other thing I must point out is that building your own Mac isn't really part of the Mac experience - that's reserved for PC users (regardless of the OS they run on their x86 boxes).

 

[Rodan]

dicklacara,

You bring up a number of good points. I just looked at the Homepage feature from .Mac, and it looks like what I was thinking of.

If you have an Earthlink account, like most ISP's, they give you space to host a site. They also have some basic webpage templates and what looks like a fairly simple program, but there are limitations for mac users. Such as which browser you can use.

I know that Apple would make a better (meaning easier to use and more creative options) "drag and drop" style program for website creation.
This may be what .mac has to offer, but it would be nice to have it as a stand alone program, without a .mac account.

I would just use it for either family use, to share photos and quicktime shorts, or for a small business, such as a restaurant, that only needs a few pages. It would be nice to be able to edit text without having to use any programming language.

You say that HTML is easy to learn. Do you recommend any source for learning it?

 

[wrldwzrd89]

dicklacara,

You bring up a number of good points. I just looked at the Homepage feature from .Mac, and it looks like what I was thinking of.

If you have an Earthlink account, like most ISP's, they give you space to host a site. They also have some basic webpage templates and what looks like a fairly simple program, but there are limitations for mac users. Such as which browser you can use.

I know that Apple would make a better (meaning easier to use and more creative options) "drag and drop" style program for website creation.
This may be what .mac has to offer, but it would be nice to have it as a stand alone program, without a .mac account.

I would just use it for either family use, to share photos and quicktime shorts, or for a small business, such as a restaurant, that only needs a few pages. It would be nice to be able to edit text without having to use any programming language.

You say that HTML is easy to learn. Do you recommend any source for learning it?

Personally, I think limiting Mac users to Netscape Communicator (which is outdated anyway and no longer being actively updated) is completely stupid. See this page. If you're interested in learning HTML, the best source BY FAR is the W3C.

 

[davecuse]

If you're looking to learn how to use HTML, I would recommend going directly to xhtml and css. You can learn how for free at the W3 Schools

http://www.w3schools.com/

 

[GregA]

A couple of people have posted a desire to have a feature in Tiger to easily publish a web site. I have some experience with this & would like to hear some more details.

First, Apple's .Mac provides you with a limited web site capability (picture albums, hand-written web pages, drop-box, etc.).

It does - a good start. It seems to me it's best for dynamic web pages of photos.

I think Apple could do some amazing things - you're right that everything is pretty well possible using existing stuff, but I think Apple could make it a lot easier.

1) What do you want to do with a web site -- maybe just more storage for the things available from .Mac?

That's a good question. I can think of lots of things Apple COULD do... but what I want is pretty simple.

For my mother -
- I want her to be able to open her website (that I setup years ago), and edit words on it, put in new pictures, or whatever.
- Create a new page from scratch and link it to a couple of other pages.
- I also want to use my own webspace given to me by my ISP.
- She has Hamilton Island links in her Safari bookmarks. I want to publish those bookmarks, and dynamically update them when she adds or changes hers (or when a link disappears).

It'd be NICE to have some other features - such as
- help her (and me!) make an enquiry form that integrated directly with a database on her machine.
- A feedback form for people who have stayed at her apartment, complete with uploading a photo of "my holiday"
- some video footage of her apartment

2) Do you want to be able to host a web site on your machine? <snip>Surprisingly, you can host quite a nice web site on any hardware capable of running OS X.

That doesn't bother me really - I'd prefer it to be offsite. We don't have that much data - with the exception of video possibilities. I'd be happy for that to be streamed or downloaded from my machine when I'm connected (and unavailable if I'm not connected).

4) Formatting information to display on a web site is not very difficult, but it does involve some understanding of a specialized language, HTML (HyperText Markup Language). There are some GUI programs that generate HTML pages, but they can be more difficult to learn than the HTML language, itself. You can learn HTML basics in a few hours.

Well, _I_ can learn HTML basics in a few hours, my parents and many friends can not (or will not). I'd be happy with something almost as simple as TextEdit, but with headings in HTML style, font sizes etc - and automatic publishing, including compressing graphics

5) More involved web pages usually require some ability to program and manipulate a database. So , you must learn a "programming" language. There are several choices, but the easiest programming languages are extensions to HTML. You use HTML to format and present the data in your web pages. You use a "programming" language to retrieve and manipulate the data to be published.

Yes, this is a taller order for Apple. Maybe they could integrate this with Filemaker in some way, and host it on .Mac - I'd pay extra for that of course.

If there is enough demand, an iWeb package could be written to provide the most-desired applications and the components necessary to run them. iWeb could be written in such a way that it could be hosted on your computer or by a 3rd-party host service.

Apple is good at providing an application people don't realise they need.

Other possitilities:
- Someone mentioned publishing Garageband music. Great idea.
- Calendar publishing is already on .Mac and a good idea (what about on my own website!).
- How about publishing some of my iTunes playlists - JUST THE LIST OF SONGS, no actual music. If Apple wants to link the list to the iTMS so people can preview those songs that'd be cool (and make Apple money!).
- Integrate web creation with iDVD. Lets allow for a multimedia website
- Membership and discussion forums (via .Mac, at a cost)
- A paid subscription combining .Mac membership and iLife upgrades?

That's all I can think of right now.

 

[dicklacara]

dicklacara,

You bring up a number of good points. I just looked at the Homepage feature from .Mac, and it looks like what I was thinking of.

If you have an Earthlink account, like most ISP's, they give you space to host a site. They also have some basic webpage templates and what looks like a fairly simple program, but there are limitations for mac users. Such as which browser you can use.

Earthlink is a very good ISP -- I used them for several years. But, like most ISPs their web hosting offerings are not the best for the beginning web site publisher. Often, you can do better, by ignoring your ISP's web hosting capability and selecting a hosting service that provides the capabilities that you need.

I know that Apple would make a better (meaning easier to use and more creative options) "drag and drop" style program for website creation.
This may be what .mac has to offer, but it would be nice to have it as a stand alone program, without a .mac account.

Apple has some excellent tools to create web sites -- but these are targeted at professional programmers.

Unfortunately, Apple's OS X portfolio does not contain the programming languages, editors, databases,. and packaging that are easy enough for the beginner to use -- in other words, Apple doesn't have the things to make iWeb as intuititive as iTunes or iPhoto.

However, these things do exist! Apple, or someone else could integrate these into an iWeb application that would be consistent with the other iLife apps.

I would just use it for either family use, to share photos and quicktime shorts,

Easy to do in a way similar to how apple publishes fron iPhoto to .Mac.

or for a small business, such as a restaurant, that only needs a few pages. It would be nice to be able to edit text without having to use any programming language.

If you are talking about publishing a menu and/or a map to the restaurant, these are pretty easy to accomplish (even with Earthlink).

iWeb could certainly include some pre-formatted web pages that could be easily modified with a text editor.

You say that HTML is easy to learn. Do you recommend any source for learning it?

Ah... I don't have a fresh pair of eyes... I suggest you google for "HTML tutorial". There are also some excellent reference books at Amazon.com -- anything by Elizabeth Castro is very good,

Dick[/QUOTE]

 

[Diatribe]

I sure hope that with the next iLife they update iPhoto substancially because as of right now it is damn near unusable if you happen to have about 10000 pics. Trying to find one in there is like finding a needle you know where.
Of all the iLife apps this has got to be the worst. I have never seen any Apple app with such a huge potential of improvement, well maybe Sherlock but that's about it.

 

[iChan]

iLife 05 seems much more likely than Tiger in January. Maybe it'll include a new iApp? iFinance, maybe? Obviously this is completely unfounded speculation, but some kind of home finance app seems like the logical next step.

what makes you say such a thing? all the iapps so far have been entertainment baased apps or that geared towards creativity. your unfounded speculation is ridiculous to say the least.

 

[glennsan]

iWorks with finance app

I'm hoping for a complete overhaul of AppleWorks. Call it iWorks and integrate it with iLife with it's new HomePae style app.

While I admit that I haven't really used the AW that I purchased I have heard from many others that it needs a major update. If they did so and included a finance app I would purchase it as Quicken and MS Office no longer are products I enjoy using any more.