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Can I Touch It?

Last night when watching Steve Jobs’ WWDC07 KeyNote, something didn’t feel right. (and I’m not talking about their stock-value after the presentation)

Usually, when you see an Apple Keynote, everything is perfectly prepared. The right buttons get pushed, appropriate jokes get told and Steve just wraps the audience around his finger.

This time, Mr. Jobs didn't appeared to be 100% sure of what he was doing when demoing Leopard, wich is — for Mr. Keynote himself — odd. He had to check his notes all the time, made mistakes and got nervous.

While lying in bed, waiting for the sleep to come, I started thinking about some other strange signs and actions coming from the Cupertino based company the last few months and then it hit me: They're going to announce touch control in Leopard!

Think about it:

• Why does it take so long to announce those new Cinema Displays and iMacs? They are way past their update cycle. Both would be superb for having some kind of touch-sensitive overlay.
• Why would we even want CoverFlow in the Finder? Ever tried browsing through your music in iTunes using CoverFlow and a mouse? Eyecandy, yes. Usable, no. If you could use it with your fingers on the other hand... (Get it? Using your fingers? Other hand? Ok let's just move on)
• The long-awaited sub-notebook: Rumours are flying all over the internet for quite a while now (3 years?). Wouldn't it be awesome to have a 10 or 12" touch-enabled portable computer? Writing off their 12" PowerBooks was a dumb move, unless Apple Inc. had been planning this for quite some time now.
• Leopard has a feature build in called “Resolution Independence”. Leopard has simple, rounded buttons instead of the glassy ones Tiger had. Hmm, just lower the resolution of your screen, add an onscreen keyboard and you’re set!
• Apple has hands-on experience with touch-control (iPhone). Why not apply this knowledge to their new operating system? This would give them an advantage of at least 5 years compared all other operating systems. Also: Remember what Apple told us when they announced the delay of Leopard? They needed Leopard-engineers to work on the iPhone. But apparently those engineers did something else. See the link?

All this, together with the not so subtle presented "SDK" for the iPhone and no new hardware announced, led me to the following:

Apple wanted to show off a boat-load of new stuff, but they didn't got it ready in time for WWDC07 or didn't want to take the spotlight off of the iPhone. My guess: Somewhere in October, when Leopard gets shipped, we'll be finding a couple of extra, not yet announced, features that will work together with new hardware.

So, that's my take on the somewhat disappointing WWDC07 Keynote.

PS: I would like to congratulate Jan from CSSEdit, with his Apple Design Award. Together with Veerle and Belgian chocolate, it's one of our best export products! I’ve added both of them to my links.