Even as an admitted fan of their products, it’s hard not to laugh at the frenzy into which Apple manage to whip the press over what is ostensibly just a press release albeit one delivered with some theatrics by their CEO. I imagine it must really annoy other tech companies who struggle to get any buzz around their new products.

This year it seems that Apple’s attitude to streaming its launch events has come full circle and they are once again providing live coverage. However it wouldn’t be Apple if they didn’t manage to lock it down, or make it more exclusive if you prefer, which they did by using their HTTP streaming protocol and therefore requiring OS X 10.6 or a recent iOS device. Being a good Apple disciple those requirements caused me no problems!

I was particularly interested in seeing the iPod touch refresh, primarily because I’d been waiting for the device to get display parity with the iPhone before buying one. It seems as though the rear camera has been somewhat hobbled, though whether this was a design or marketing decision I can’t really say.

Apple’s attitude to their AppleTV product has always been somewhat odd and sadly today’s announcement did nothing to change this. The $99 price point, which equates to £99 in the UK, does at least make the device an impulse purchase. But I’m not convinced making it iOS based, seemingly without enabling apps, was the right way to go. Why Apple have yet to make a high-end HTPC utilising the recent Mac Mini with HDMI I don’t know. If they improved FrontRow and bundled that with a better remote I’m sure it would fly off the shelves.

I must say the stream itself worked pretty well for me, it didn’t seem to degrade much at all. Although weirdly it did reset itself once or twice, rather than stuttering it began playing from the start and needed a refresh to resume.

When the “show” was over, I busted out my credit card and tried to pick up an iPod touch. I’ve said before that my card provider seems to have a somewhat tetchy fraud prevention system and once again I appear to have tripped it. I must admit I got a little irritated, as my tweets show, because when transactions fail there is so little information given its basically impossible to work out what the problem is. I’m presently working on the hope that it’s just a temporary problem with the Apple store and I won’t have to phone my bank tomorrow. A feint hope really because my ire caused me to try purchasing 5 or 6 times, which I suspect means I’m well and truly stuck until I phone them and explain the weird pattern. #Facepalm.

I don’t think we’ve really gotten the full story on the iPad. Frankly I found the announcement somewhat lacklustre, mainly because it was precisely the product that a number of people had already speculated. It was a jumbo iPhone; which was the one thing everybody hoped it wouldn’t be.

Apple has a history of blazing a trail and Jobs’ comments in the announcement supported the idea that they intended the iPad to be a new category of device. Make no mistake; this isn’t the first tablet on the market by any stretch of the imagination. This form factor has been touted by various companies, most notably Microsoft for at least 10 years. So why would this product succeed when many others have failed to make any market headway?

Software is absolutely the key, and I don’t mean up-scaled iPhone applications as much as those might fill a temporary gulf. If Apple can design a truly engaging user interface vernacular which rather than translating the current desktop metaphor actually creates a new and compelling requirement for touchscreen operation then the iPad has real potential.

However being the crafty bunch that they are a backup plan is clearly evident. Sew-up the eBook market in much the same way they have the MP3 market. No it isn’t an e-ink device, and therefore is likely to suffer from battery life and ambient light problems; but Apple’s marketing might I suspect can overcome those problems. Frankly the average consumer presented with a choice between Apple’s bright shiny colour touchscreen device and Amazon’s cheap looking plastic monochrome effort will I image plump for the former with alarming regularity.

When the device appears in my “local” Apple store I’ll doubtless have a whole lot more to say. Whether that will include my having purchased one is something I’ll have to wait and see.

As is often the problem I find at the weekend, I had far too many invitations. So now wanting to disappoint anyone and unable to choose between I decided to have a night in. Actually I think the invitations might have been an illusion, but the evening in wasn’t.

Anyhow I settled down with a rather tasty Waitrose Rioja and a bowl, which was frankly too large to be healthy, filled with spicy tortilla chips to watch a recently arrived DVD. Welcome to Macintosh is a documentary by Robert Baca and Joshua Rizzo. It’s certainly very polished and I thoroughly enjoyed it; I’m not sure it adds much to my knowledge of Apple’s history, but interviews a number of very interesting characters who provide very illuminating colour to the story.

Setting up a new Mac is usually pretty easy, Apple even provide a handy migration tool. However when the machine in question is a 1999 vintage iMac-DV running Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger” that is likely carrying a good deal of cruft automated tools probably aren’t the way to go.

So I dutifully copied the contents of the Library, iPhoto, Mail, and various other bits and bobs onto the new machine. Job done you’d imagine, as did I; but no, not even close. iPhoto got half way through the old library and hung. I tried various ways to rebuild it to no avail, so ended up importing the raw photos into a new library, leaving the job of reorganizing them to another day. Then tried importing the mail, which was fine, but moving from the import folder to the native folders was a pain as it didn’t want to do the whole lot in one go. Finally I had what I considered to be a fully migrated machine at around midnight.

Although I’m pleased with the new machine, this doesn’t dampen my affection for my little lime coloured friend, she’s not going anywhere. If I could put her in a frame and hang her on the wall I would; but sadly her generous CRT proportions are just a little too Rubenesque for wall hanging. I’ll find somewhat appropriate to “display” her though you can be sure of that.

Apple mice have been pretty consistently mediocre at best over the years. The early Macintosh “soap bar” shaped mice were actually pretty good for their vintage, but while all their other products improved their mice went in the opposite direction. Culminating in, or more accurately sinking to the iMac puck style mouse. While it might be echoed the design aesthetic of the iMac it accompanied, unless you were burdened with a very particular hand deformity this mouse could be in no way considered remotely ergonomic.

Thankfully since the puck Apple have realised that perhaps the mouse wasn’t their strongest suit and have made some strides in addressing this; leading to the Magic Mouse. I suppose the difficulty with a peripheral called a mouse is that any additive moniker will make a name that sounds decidedly like a cartoon character. This obviously happened with the previous “Mighty Mouse” and has again happened with “Magic Mouse” although I guess I can’t really regard that as a criticism; at least until they call a mouse Mike. It does look a little shallow to me, but then I have largish hands; perhaps if I had daintier more Apple user appropriate hands that wouldn’t be an issue. Although I’ll only know for sure when I get my hands on one, which will be sooner rather than later I hope.

Today was a very Apple kind of a day. A discussion at the weekend prompted me to return to XCode. I’m still far from competent in Objective-C and only vaguely familiar with the IDE so progress is frustratingly slow. I maintain a belief of sorts that books are simply displaced knowledge and so my ability to assert knowledge is directly related to the contents of my bookshelf. The shelves are presently devoid of any Objective-C tomes and so until I have proof to the contrary I shall cling to the idea that purchasing one will mitigate my current development difficulties.

Being as today was WWDC keynote day I had the traditional half dozen browser windows open following the various live-blogging feeds and a couple of video feeds. It is somewhat of a pity that the leaks have become more and more accurate over the years, it somewhat ruins the surprise but like a kid before Christmas I’m unable to resist the temptation to search beforehand. Once again the iPhone leaks were basically spot on, although the upgraded MacBook Pro line was a surprise.

Once again I find myself very drawn to an iPhone, but reluctant to jump due to the lack of a physical keyboard. Many have suggested that after a few months you can become pretty proficient with the virtual keyboard, but I think the phone may have been bounced off a wall by that point. My only idea is to begin training on demo phones at my local Apple store before purchasing, so when I finally get my phone I’ll already be up to speed. Unfortunately as my “local” Apple store is a 110 mile round-trip, I don’t think that’s a practical solution.

Will I be emptying any more money from my bank account into Apple’s in the near future? I really don’t know yet...

I spent much of the morning experimenting with iMovie 09. While a definite improvement on iMovie 08 it still doesn’t seem as intuitive as iMovie 06. I’m deliriously happy thought that producing cutaways can be done with a single click, rather than the manual hell that was required with the previous version.

Having signed up for various video hosting services, I really need to upload something. While I’m not going to be producing a movie masterpiece any time soon, I wanted to upload something more than the usual camera flailing monstrosity. Hence my interest in the capabilities of the newly upgraded iLife suite and my plausible excuse for whiling away the day playing with my new software toys.

It was without fanfare, and only pre-empted by the fact that the Apple Store went offline for a hour or two this morning that Apple launched updated minis, iMacs and Mac Pros. I’ve been quietly coveting a Mac mini to act as a media centre; I’m currently using a Macbook which isn’t the best solution. It is never worth waiting for new technology because whenever you buy it is bound to be superseded before too long, but against my own advice wait is what I did. My patience was rewarded with, well with a price increase mainly; thanks very much Apple.

To be fair though, that’s not all they’ve also added a faster motherboard with GeForce 9400 a much, much better solution than the Intel GMA950 it replaces. Plus faster base specification CPU and larger hard drive. Actual the CPU will be a bit of a stumbling block because on the face of it it’s the same speed as the previous generation clocking at 2GHz. However it is a different part number so may well provide better performance and thermal characteristics. I wonder if Apple will object too much to me running Xbench on one of their display units. Well I guess the point is to try before you buy, and that’s just what I plan to do.

I remembered I hadn’t ordered iLife ’09. I’m not sure what lead to that particular oversight, but it needed rectifying. My initial plan was to visit my “local” Apple store, but I’m afraid I was somewhat overtaken by lethargy, after all it was a Sunday, and really couldn’t be bothered with the 110 mile round-trip. Instead I tried John Lewis in Reading who thankfully did have iLife in stock.

The problem is my laziness has both skewed and confused my usual spending pattern. I’ve mentioned this before, but wherever possible I spend my money in support of products or business models of which I approve. Now I like John Lewis, and quite often shop there but iLife ‘09 being an Apple product I really ought to have bought it from an Apple Store. Now I need to make a balancing purchase from Apple, luckily I’m waiting hopefully for a new Mac Mini or iMac or possibly both. I guess I can buy that from an Apple Store and restore the balance.