The biggest Apple story for 2007 is the phenomenal number of great products it released. OK, perhaps not every product was great. However, they were all still exciting and generated significant buzz. What other company can say that?
Here’s my look back at Apple’s year. I offer my brief assessment of each new product — with the benefit of end-of-year hindsight.
iPhone Calling
iPhone. The invention of the year. The gadget of the year. The you-name-it of the year. Could this product possibly live up to all this hype? Yes. Definitely.
Of course, it is not perfect. Where is voice dialing and built-in GPS, for starters? I am already salivating over the expected 3G iPhone 2.0 coming in 2008.
However, the 1.0 version is still as close to an out-of-the-park home run as anyone could wish for. For my money, it’s the most groundbreaking product Apple has created since the original Mac in 1984. It’s already hard for me to imagine how I managed without one. Whether I am looking up a location in Maps, checking movie times in Safari, listening to my voicemail with the incredible ease of its visual interface, sending a quick e-mail message, enjoying music (which I do more often now that I always have an iPod with me), or playing one of the games I added after hacking the device, it seems that I am always using my iPhone for something.
Leapin’ Leopards
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. A mixed bag. Yes, it has some intriguing new features. I am especially fond of screen sharing and Back to My Mac. Time Machine is also a plus.
However, the more I use Leopard, the more I find that it actually offers very little in the way of “must have” features. Indeed, if I was forced to revert to Tiger tomorrow, I wouldn’t object. Actually, I would welcome a return to the Dock in Tiger (with its hierarchical folder menus) or the firewall in Tiger (with its ability to turn individual ports on and off). Then there are the too-numerous startup and login problems in Leopard (see my recent MacFixIt column for exactly what I mean here). I have the sense that, with all the other stuff Apple had going on in 2007, Leopard was not given the attention it needed. It may take until around version 10.5.3 before Leopard is truly a “finished” product.
More Needed for Apple TV
Apple TV. I own one and I enjoy it. I have it connected to my home theater system in my living room. However, my major use of it is for playing music, not video. For streaming music from iTunes, it is a far better choice than the AirTunes component of an AirPort Express — because Apple TV offers a video interface and remote control. Even better, by syncing files to the Apple TV’s hard drive, you can play music without having to be connected to a Mac at all.
For Apple TV to live up to its name and be really useful as a “TV,” it needs a significant upgrade. An obvious starting point would be some sort of DVR-like capability.
AirPort’s Landing
AirPort Extreme. If you are thinking of upgrading to a new AirPort Extreme Base Station for the speed boost of the 802.11n network, you probably shouldn’t bother. In particular, if you use your WiFi network just for connecting to the Internet, your Internet speed is a bottleneck that will prevent you from seeing any overall speed gain as compared to 802.11g. Actually, the speed result can be even worse than no gain at all (as I detailed in the MacFixIt column months ago), due to problems with signal strength specific to “n” networks.
Still, the ability to add a networked hard drive to the Extreme is a plus. Of course, if you have no wireless router at all, the AirPort Extreme would make a worthwhile purchase.
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