Apple Fanboy Again

That is just soooo typical: For the past weeks my daily 'check-MacRumors.com' routine has been rather boring. Then, after being without internet for a week, I return only to find that a billion things have happened. And my, my, have we good news!

First up, there's Leopard announced to be released on October 26th. Apple has posted a list of 300 new features of the OS. I was really quite impressed when I skimmed through them. Of course there are the large announcements, such as Time Machine, Spaces, Stacks and the new sleek Dock. But a lot of the not so in-your-face features are fantastic additions as well. Take Core Animation for instance, which will add a new concept to the way we create interfaces (by providing visual animated cues). The Terminal app will see a great deal of improvements such as (finally) tabs! Multi-Core CPUs are now much better supported in Leopard. Cocoa introduces a new NSOperation class, that will automatically distribute complex operations onto multiple processors. Apple's own apps will use this as well, so speed-up can be expected here. Automator will see a great deal of improvements and now sports a command line interface. DVD Player finally does interlacing right. iChat will not only offer awesome new effects, but will also allow multiple logins in one window and recording of video and audio chats. QuickLook will allow you to quickly view the contents of a document without opening an app. You can even look at a document together with a buddy via iChat. Or, if your buddy is new to the Mac, share his screen, so that you can help with problems. For programmers, Cocoa will see huge updates, and will finally introduce garbage collection. The list goes on. Once I get back to Germany, I'm placing my order!

But the best news I heard from Apple today, is another open letter from the master himself, Steve Jobs. Just like last time, Steve is here to tell us that Apple is not as bad as everyone makes it sound. This time it's not about music copy protection, but about the protected environment of the iPhone and iPod Touch. Apple has until very recently made very clear that the only "SDK" (if that's what you can call it) that it will offer on the iPhone and iPod Touch is AJAX enabled websites. In the open letter Steve reassures us that Apple wants an open platform, but is weary of viruses. Thus Apple would need to take great care in making sure that development for such a platform does not lead to a surge of malware, that could spread across phone networks. Then Steve pulls the rabbit out of the hat: Apple will release an SDK for the iPhone and iPod Touch in February 08, that hopes will offer development freedom while still ensuring security. Whether this means that apps will require licensing from Apple's side remains to be seen. (Jobs calls Nokia's recent licensing approach "a step in the right direction"). If the unthinkable happens, and anyone can develop apps for the iPod and iPhone, then these devices will become a whole lot more interesting to me.

The Apple fanboy has awakened in me again, after being in a long slumber. Let's hope Apple can meet his expectations.