Apple’s WWDC keynote announcements yesterday about Leopard have been talked about pretty much everywhere, but there are a few things I wanted to touch on:
- ToDos
- I was asked, so I’ll answer. I don’t see the ToDos and Notes implementation in Mail.app as a competitor to Tasks. My target audience is generally “folks who want to access their task list from multiple computers (and even multiple OSes) and want a good interface and some sophisticated functionality”. I don’t see the ToDos feature satisfying this market. On the plus side, perhaps some new folks will try managing their task list on their computer, realize they need more, and find Tasks.
- Time Machine
- Do people realize the hard drive space implications here? Also, sad to see a number of small developers lose so much income as their products are essentially dead.
- Spaces
- There goes the major market for the existing virtual desktop apps. Hopefully some of them will stick around. I use You Control: Desktops for example because it has a single killer feature.
- E-mail Stationary
- I am actually really annoyed about this. HTML e-mail is generally bad. Giving people tools to do bad things more easily is worse.
- Leopard Server (Calendaring)
- Everything they’ve added in the server is fantastic. Open sourcing the calendar server gives it a real chance IMO. Niall has a nice summary post.
The comments are open…
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Jeff Wheeler adds this Comment:
You know, about Time Machine hard-drive problems, most people do have a ton of extra space to spare. For example, I have 45 gigs of space on the hd that I’m just not using.
Interface is still horrible.
August 8th, 2006 at 11:17 am
Chris Meller adds this Comment:
I agree with you about the ToDos. Outlook has had a Tasks list for as long as I can remember, but it still sucks. The problem is generally that these applications aren’t geared towards managing Tasks. It’s an afterthought that gets added in addition to their primary function, and so it doesn’t get a whole lot of love from the developers.
iCal already has ToDos… Have you ever used them? I sure haven’t…
August 8th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
Geof F. Morris adds this Comment:
As for the Stationery: AMEN. HTML mail is horrible from a recipient’s perspective 99% of the time. The only purpose that it serves for me at work is to weed out people who are definitely not operators: if you have time to futz with email and make it all pretty, you have too much free time on your hands to be doing anything good at your job.
As for Tasks: you hit this customer square on the head. Even if all the stuff that Mail will do is IMAP-compliant—and I’m betting that it won’t be—chances are that I won’t be able to do it on my work PC, which I use 40+ hours a week. No thanks!
August 8th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
PatrickQG adds this Comment:
What I think would be neat if your Tasks could interact with the ToDo store. Best of both worlds, perhaps? Chances are it’ll integrate with .Mac, so I’d definately keep an eye on that.
Time machine? I’m not a typical user (I can say that fairly confidently, and not just because I’m in that 4% who actually does use an automated backup), but external hard drives are (comparatively) cheap these days.
Given that I’ve yet to see any backup software for the mac that I like (beyond .Mac backup & Aperture’s Vaults), I can’t imagine it eating into that market too far. In the keynote it was claimed it’d work with other backup software, so… who knows. Presumably it’s also not going to hit into those of us who like having offsite backups.
As to e-mail stationary, just get over it. People want to be expressive in their emails, let them. As long as it’s not a security risk, what on earth is the problem? I have no idea what ratio of my incoming mail is HTML, but once you we exclude the spam there is no way that only 1 in 100 is not “horrible”. Basing decisions on whether someone sends you HTML mail (like does it mean they’re doing anything good at their job) is a terribly short sighted thing to do.
August 8th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
Kerim Friedman adds this Comment:
Looks like Apple still doesn’t offer any kind of hierarchy or keywords (tags) for their to do lists – which pretty much makes them useless for me. The Omni group has announced they are working on a task management application together with the folks from 43 folders and Kinkless GTD – they clearly understand something Apple does not. Tasks is in a different category, not being a “Mac application,” in the normal sense of the term, so I don’t think there is any need for worry.
RE: Virtual Desktops, it does look like Spaces offers application-based activation of desktops, which is the “killer feature” you mention. I’ve never really found virtual desktops useful, mostly because my screen is so small I usually have my windows maxed out. But as people have more and more screen real estate, such functionality will get more useful.
I think it is about time Apple offered an easy-to-use back up solution. I love SuperDuper, but even using that seems complicated to many people. While it is easy to make fun of the Time Machine GUI – I think they have perhaps found a visual metaphor that is easy for people to grasp and actually use. No easy task.
As far as HTML e-mail is concerned, if Mail.app automatically shrinks people’s photos before mailing them it will actually make my life better. Many people I know still haven’t figured that one out.
August 8th, 2006 at 2:53 pm
Eirik adds this Comment:
I’ll join Geoff in his AMEN; HTML email should, for an infinite number of reasons, not be promoted or used.
I find that Tiger does everything I need, and then some, and I try to use as many webbased apps as I can (FeedLounge and Tasks Pro being two excellent examples) since the whole point with these apps is to have them available from different computers, so I just hope Leopard is as stable as Tiger has been for me so far, and that it doesn’t add lots of clutter and background stuff that will slow down my computer.
August 9th, 2006 at 12:34 am
Kevan adds this Comment:
Agree about ToDos – what I need is server-based, multi-workstation/multi-OS, probably web-based. The only good thing about iCal ToDos was that they sync with my treo (when i remember to do it).
Time Machine – yeah, I sense crazy HD space usage – though hopefully they are doing something like dirvish or rdiff-backup – heck maybe that’s what is working behind the scenes.
Re: Spaces – I think in the demo Steve showed exactly that killer feature. he had different apps on different workspaces, clicked in the dock to switch apps and it switched the workspace for him. Agreed though, virtuedesktops.info has to be a bit annoyed.
The HTML email thing is just more in this “email client as main document management system” way things seem to be going. Good thing my mail client has sender-specific allowing of HTML, images, etc.
August 9th, 2006 at 5:47 am