macworld keynote underwhelms

Even an Apple nut like me can’t help but be underwhelmed by today’s Macworld keynote. OS X 10.2 looks nice and all, but $129? For a 10.x upgrade? When the whole operating system, built from scratch, cost only $99? No discount for early adopters? Geez. I might just wait for 10.3 — the feature set seems underwhelming. (An AOL-compatible IM app — already plenty of those out there. Sherlock 3 — blah. A better Mail.app — still not up to par with Eudora or Entourage. Et cetera.)
The only highlight: the entry-level iPod is finally down to $299, which might make me turn my technolust into credit card debt.
(In other OS X news, RealPlayer is finally in beta — that leaves Photoshop as the only Classic app I ever use. And Palm sync for Office v.X is also finally a reality.)

6 thoughts on “macworld keynote underwhelms”

  1. You do know that Photoshop 7 is out and is OS X compatible, don’t you? I think $129 is the price of a retail box. Not sure what the upgrade from 10.1 will cost, but surely it has to be reasonable. Maybe $49? I agree that it was underwhelming, but apparently they’re announcing faster G4 towers sometime in August.

  2. A couple things I saw today said there would be no discount for 10.1 people — that it was $129 for everybody, period. I’ve seen a site or two that disagreed, but the Apple Store still hs no upgrade pricing — just the $129.
    And yeah, I know PS 7 is out, but too pricy for my checkbook at the moment, alas. I still run PS 4 in Classic.

  3. If you want to complain to Apple about their price gouging (I did), you can submit a message at http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback. I was really pissed when I read about the lack of upgrade pricing. I’ve bought OS X five times already. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay full freight for a sixth. The sad thing is I still spend most of my time in OS 9, because I just find OS X unusable. But having UNIX underneath is handy for developing web sites….

  4. I don’t understand why people give Mail.app such a hard time. I use it exclusively for my email on OS X. Entourage seems to have issues with my IMAP mail server, and frequently unsubscribes me from my folders on the server, or it just crashes outright. I haven’t really used Eudora on OS X much. I couldn’t get past the awful looking interface.

  5. Color me discouraged as well. I love OS X – now that I’ve worked out most of the major bugs, er , quirks. But I refuse to pay $129 for the fun of ironing out the “quirks” in yet another not-ready-for-primetime upgrade.
    The iPod though, just went from “someday when I win the lottery” to “Christmas Bonus”. Too bad we have to share them with all the weenie peecee users. *bleh*

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