Monday, June 8, 2009 |
10:58 - No leopard like Snow Leopard
http://www.macworld.com/article/140897/2009/06/keynote.html
|
(top) |
Snow Leopard (aka Mac OS X 10.6) sounds freaking awesome, for one reason above all others: native Exchange support. That's a whole third-party app market shivved in the kidneys (I guess it wasn't good things that were afoot after all); yet I'm not that inclined to shed too many tears. Reverse-engineered Exchange support tacked on to an OS that has no inclination to play with it is simply not fun. If OS X will now be a full-fledged Exchange client, with functionality as well polished as they claim, it sounds like it'll be the best Exchange experience that can be had.
What this makes me chuckle, though, is the thought that if in the remainder of this keynote they spend time denigrating the Palm Pre in favor of the new iPhone platform, it'll send a hell of a mixed message if they monkey with iTunes to lock out the Pre from masquerading as an iPod in order to sync its music. Because that's got to be what Apple's doing in order to interoperate with Exchange: reverse-engineering the protocol. Or are they licensing the API? If the latter, it's odd that it's taken them this long to do something that's above-board and has so much obvious potential utility for business users. I always assumed the only reason Apple hadn't built in Exchange support into the system services was that they couldn't do so without Microsoft's begrudged blessing. But if they're playing nicely now, well... everybody wins, right? Should behoove Microsoft to want to get in on this lucrative new Mac software market...
So all this for $29? I'm sold. ...Well, except that it's apparently Intel-only. Which I guess means my six-year-old G5, doughty soldier that it remains, is entering its long-anticipated final lap of usefulness. That's rather a depressing thought. This machine has been a trooper. As has the PowerPC. We hardly knew ye.
More to come, I am quite sure.
UPDATE: The new iPhone stuff is just too damn fun; you get the feeling they're only just now starting to discover what's possible. Now you can find your lost iPhone via GPS and MobileMe? Hello future! Now put that feature on my keys.
|
|