inessential by Brent Simmons

First Thoughts After the Apple Event

Off the top of my head, before thinking things through…

I want the watch. I want to write software for the watch. I want the watch. Want.

I think I’ll go for the super-big iPhone. I’m a sucker for screen real estate. Might as well go all the way. (But I might change my mind once I hold one in real life.)

At this point, Apple could, and should, slow down a little. Yearly OS X and iOS releases mean a lot of work for developers. Consider not just the usual updates we need to do — now we have watches and extensions and handoff and a new language. Wonderful things, but also a ton of extra work.

My favorite OS X release ever was 10.6 (Snow Leopard) — that was the year Apple didn’t add any features (except for some very cool developer features such as blocks). Apple fixed a ton of bugs and made everything faster. My hope is that Mac OS X 10.11 and iOS 9 are Snow-Leopard-like releases. If they switched to a longer interval between releases, I would not complain.

I like U2. I thought they were old and tired by the time I was in college (1986). (Their last good album was War, said me.) But now I realize that the young me was a jerk. U2 was and is a great band.

Every time anyone said “intimate” during the event I cringed a little.

I think health and fitness are massively important (doi) and I look forward to these features. But my liberal heart breaks every time I think about how much easier is it for the affluent to be healthy and fit than for people who can’t afford fancy watches. But that’s not a reason not do it. And I’ll be happy to take advantage of those features.

I actually missed huge chunks of the video. I’ll watch it later tonight once it’s available.

I’m massively worried that Xcode 6 and iOS 8 are not really ready for release. But then I have this same worry every time. I’m glad it’s not my job to make that call. Are the bugs fixed?

I hope bars get in on Apple pay.

I want the watch. Waaaaant.