Today’s Apple press conference:

• Engadget
• MacWorld
• MacNN

iMac

Aluminum-and-glass iMac. Looks nice; as usual, Apple’s new product design makes the previous version look clunky. (Though I wonder what the metal case will do to the AirPort signal.)

It’s odd—this is the quickest I’ve ever seen Steve Jobs introduce a new product. He usually builds up with a considerable lead-in. I wonder what he’s got up his sleeve.

iLife ’08

’08? Well, okay, let’s see.

Updated iPhoto. Automatic “Event”-based albums with easy splitting and merging of events—which will certainly streamline my iPhoto library management. Better integration with .Mac: one-click web gallery publishing, plus the ability to provide print-resolution images for download. That’s nice. Plus the ability to upload photos by email, and to allow visitors to upload photos! If you choose to enable it, of course—there’s some sort of permissions system to control who can view, who can download, upload, and such.

New iMovie. A completely new program, apparently, that makes a video library like the iPhoto library. Some sort of newer, easier, faster editing methods. Many video formats: HD, standard, footage shot with digital still cameras. Auto-upload to YouTube.

Updated iWeb. Er…nothing earth-shaking in the paragraph at Engadget, but…well, we’ll see how this looks later. (You can easily embed Google Ads, interestingly.) Steve seems to be moving fast.

Updated iDVD. Whoops, Steve’s already blown past this. Well, I’m sure it’ll be quite nice.

Updated GarageBand. Includes something called Magic GarageBand that…I dunno, helps you make a song or something. Steve is moving at light speed. Hmm.

.Mac

Updated .Mac. In addition to the heightened integration with iLife ’08, users now get 10GB of storage. That’s pleasing. And…100GB/month of bandwidth! Okay! That’s very pleasing!

iWork ’08

Updated Keynote. I don’t have this, so I can’t really say how much better it is, but since it’s the software Steve uses, it’s gotta be in good shape.

Updated Pages. Blah blah easy to just word-process blah blah. What the heck is Steve barreling toward, here?

Numbers. A spreadsheet! Well, that’s good to hear. It reads and writes Excel, of course, and is easier to use, of course, and is gorgeous, of course.

Hey! Steve opens up the floor for Q&A! That’s new. A few good exchanges, which you can check out at the Engadget and MacWorld pages.

Amber Simmons at A List Apart:

• Reviving Anorexic Web Writing

The distinction I make between “content” and “copy” is my own: I don’t pretend this is an industry standard. But we all know copy when we read it: it’s the marketing fluff that serves no purpose but to take up space. It doublespeaks and obfuscates. It’s the inflated speech of the politician using many words to say nothing, the sales pitch of the greasy used-car cretin whose crafty euphemisms try to disguise the fact that his product sucks. Copy is recognized by its pervasive use of agonizing words such as “leverage,” “optimize,” and “facilitate” [...]

Content, on the other hand, fills a real need: it establishes emotional connections between people. The writing has heart and spirit; it has something to say and the wherewithal to stand up and say it. Content is the stuff readers want to read, even if they have to print it to do so. (And readers will print a long piece; just because something is published online doesn’t mean it must be read online). Content is thoughtful, personable, and faithfully written. It hooks the reader and draws him in, encouraging him to click this link or that, to venture further into a website. It delivers what it promises and delights the attentive reader.

It took me a while to parse the title, which I first thought was calling for a revival of anorexic writing—but no, her point is that web writing has become anorexic; her desire is to revive it from anorexia.

Anyway, good article, and I like her content-vs.-copy distinction.

Write on, you all out there.

I have finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I completed the last 200 pages at 5:00 this morning. It was worth it.

No spoilers here.

I’ll hold my observations for later; for now, I’ll just say that if I had any doubt that I’m a Ravenclaw, I have that doubt no more.

EPCOT Center opened on October 1, 1982. This year is Epcot’s 25th anniversary.

The wand beside Spaceship Earth was erected in 1999 for the Millennium Celebration. It was 257 feet tall—the tallest structure by far at Walt Disney World—and featured a giant, sparkly, illuminated “2000”, arching partway over the geosphere and fashioned like a looping red ribbon trailing from a magic wand held by Mickey Mouse’s hand and tipped with a confetti-covered star. The surface of Spaceship Earth was peppered with dozens of smaller, sparkly stars.

Epcot entrance, 25 November 2000. Photo by Jeff Keller. Used with permission.

For that celebration, it made sense: The advent of the new millennium was a big thing, and a big gaudy decoration fit the New Year celebration theme. I have to imagine that if they could have made a giant string of party-decoration letters instead, they would have.

But instead of taking it down when the party ended, Disney left the big gaudy decoration there for another seven years. After the Millennium Celebration, they replaced the “2000” with the word “Epcot” in a bafflingly informal typeface which reminded me of the name embroidery on, say, a bowling league shirt—completely inconsistent with Epcot’s futuristic/cosmopolitan theme—adorned with an inexplicable curly blue ribbon. (No, wait: Now that I look at it again, the ribbon camouflages the back of the “E” on the other side of the sign. Inelegant, but not inexplicable.)

Epcot wand viewed from under the monorail station, 9 December 2006.

The Epcot wand threatened to become a permanent eyesore, towering over the geometric perfection of Epcot’s trademark geodesic dome (itself arguably the most unique and recognizable structure in any Disney park). It ruined the scale of Spaceship Earth; it made the astoundingly big sphere look like a toy.

Spaceship Earth viewed from inside Epcot, 8 December 2006.

The big purple canopy-web thing in Innoventions Plaza further threw off the perspective, as did the clutter of huge “Leave a Legacy” stones blocking both sightline and walking path at the park entrance and looking like a sci-fi war memorial.

Epcot entrance, 11 December 2006.

But those are topics for another time.

The wand always looked like a temporary decoration. Its support structure was visible from all angles, even right at the entrance to the park.

Epcot wand, 8 December 2006.

Especially looking up from under it.

Epcot wand, 9 December 2006.

Notice the warning beacons for low-flying aircraft. Disney carefully keeps its tallest structures just under 200 feet, the height at which such lights are mandated by the FAA; no extraneous, non-show-related lighting on anything at Walt Disney World—except the wand.

Epcot wand, 9 December 2006.

That wand has been the #1 hate-magnet for Epcot fans on the web. “Tear down the wand!” has been the popular battle cry. At least one enthusiast even Photoshopped the fantasy come true.

Unattributed image from Re-Imagineering, 16 February 2007.

Not the most practical means of execution, seeing as it would destroy several buildings and the monorail track, but…well, desperate times, desperate measures.

And times did look desperate. Even just earlier this year, the Vice President of Epcot, Brad Rex, announced that there would be no official celebration of Epcot’s 25th anniversary. There would be “private observances” for the cast members, as if it were a funeral.

Well, Brad Rex left for the hotel business. Epcot got a new VP, Jim MacPhee. On July 5, Jim announced that the wand was coming down in time for the 25th anniversary—and there would be a few surprises as well.

I’m delighted. I’m going to Epcot for the anniversary, and I’m going to have Spaceship Earth back the way it’s supposed to be.

• Re-Imagineering: It’s Official!
• 2719 Hyperion: The Not-So-Magic Wand

• Psychology Today: Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature

The article isn’t hard to criticize for its sensationalistic angle and its lack of references (though it is a book excerpt), but it brought to mind my longstanding observation, which I’ve been meaning to mention here:

The anti-evolution (creationist, ID, etc.) movement is not just a silly, misguided, and annoying attempt to impose a fantasy rulebook onto human knowledge. It serves (intentionally and not) to undercut the insight into human nature that we gain from evolutionary psychology.

If you can recognize and understand the evolved predispositions of human nature—our instincts—then you can choose to master your response to those instincts and to armor yourself against other people’s attempts to push those buttons. The serious danger lies in this: If you refuse to even look at those buttons—because if you hold to the belief that evolution is a lie, then you must discredit evolutionary psychology—then those other people, who know the buttons well, will push them with impunity.

I stopped by my friend Alex’s desk to shoot the breeze about the rave reviews the iPhone is getting—and he reached into his pocket. I said, “You do not have an iPhone.”

He handed it to me. He got it on Friday. He actually let me play with it for a while.

I’m stunned.

If the iPhone has any flaws—and we know it does—they are completely overwhelmed by the amazing beauty of this device: the size, the weight, the screen, the interface.

Pictures and reviews and videos can give you an idea what it looks like and how it works, but they simply cannot convey the experience of actually holding one and using it. Using an iPhone makes you think, “This is what it’s supposed to be like.” It’s not gimmicky; it’s not merely a flashy, animated interface; it’s the correct interface.

The touch interface is astounding. It feeds back in real time. I was skeptical about flick-scrolling—it’s got to be annoying, overshooting or not moving enough, requiring all sorts of correction—but no, it actually behaves the way you want it to. It just works. You flick your finger to scroll a list or a page, and it slows and stops at the right place. Pinch-zooming does exactly what you expect it to do.

Typing on the on-screen keyboard…well, having never used it before, I typed a couple of sentences with two thumbs, pretty fast, and ended up with only two typos. And I was watching the text I was entering, too: I was missing a lot of letters, but the auto-correction figured out what I meant to type. It only misjudged “Thus” instead of “This” (the first word I ever typed on an iPhone; my fault for hitting the wrong key and spelling a proper word) and put an “a” instead of an “s” after an apostrophe (a correction I hope Apple will incorporate in an update). It is a great thumb keyboard.

It just works.

And if you run your finger over the text you’re typing, a magnifying-glass circle gives you a zoomed view of the text so you can exactly place the insertion point. Flawless.

The screen is gorgeous: sharp, smooth, clear. Even so, you’d think a 320-by-480 screen would make reading a web page impossible, but it doesn’t. Safari looks fantastic. When you double-tap on, say, a column of text, it zooms to fit the column-width on the screen. It understands the structure of the web page, and it correctly focuses on the item you choose.

If you scroll a web page before the phone has time to fully render the whole page—say, if you zoom in and immediately start scrolling around—the unrendered off-screen area appears as a placeholder background (a checkerboard pattern, just like in Photoshop), and that scrolls until the rendering catches up (which is very quick). This is right: The display always visually tracks your touch motions, so that the interface doesn’t become disorienting. No choppy response.

I concur with Robert Mohns’ conclusion in his iPhone review at MacInTouch:

[...] it’s a revolution in user interfaces. The now-traditional mouse is a proxy manipulator: you use the mouse, and the mouse manipulates symbolic objects. On iPhone, there is no proxy. You touch and manipulate the objects with your own hands. There hasn’t been a user interface change this significant since 1984.

I want a Mac with this interface: a full-size touch screen that can tilt anywhere from vertical to horizontal, like a drafting table or a tabletop drawing board or book stand. It will happen. I can barely wait.

The iPhone is shockingly beautiful.

Well, on the other hand, I wouldn’t exactly refuse an iPhone if someone dropped one in my pocket.

My I-swear-we-will-start-podcasting partner, Allen, has just started up his seventh podcast, Journey into iPhone. Seems he’s so fed up with his Treo that he’s just going to bite the bullet, the gorgeous Apple bullet, and get himself an iPhone. Doesn’t have one yet, but I love listening to Allen, so I’m already subscribed.

On the other hand: Presently in possession of an iPhone (make that dozens of iPhones, if I understand correctly) is Mac journalist Scott Bourne, one of the regulars on my favorite weekly podcast, MacBreak Weekly—and Scott is running what seems to be the definitive iPhone podcast, the Apple Phone Show. Between those two podcasts, you can fill your ears with comprehensive iPhone discussion, which…is, uh…the closest I’m going to get to an iPhone for quite a while.

Well, on the other hand, I wouldn’t exactly refuse an iPhone if someone dropped one in my pocket. I’m sorry, did I say that already?

• Journey into iPhone
• MacBreak Weekly
• Apple Phone Show

I was just out for a walk—braving the 100° New Jersey heat index for a little solitude after blowing most of the day debugging a problem somebody else created—and got caught in the rain. Florida-style rain, brief but vigorous, with sunlight. I stood under a tree, still getting hit by a handful of large raindrops but sparing myself from a soaking.

When the rain let up, I walked the rest of the way back, and I detected the absolutely unmistakable aroma of…Pirates of the Caribbean. The ride at WDW. Damp landscaping, humid cloth, mustiness—I’m not trained in fragrances, so I can’t articulate all the components, but the total effect was, beyond question, Pirates of the Caribbean.

Success is 10% inspiration, 10% implementation, and 80% debugging.

Thoughts before watching Apple’s iPhone Guided Tour:

The iPhone is available exclusively with AT&T/Cingular service. I’m distinctly unfond of Cingular, so I’m greatly unlikely to get an iPhone in the next couple of years.

Plus, I’ve been thinking about this lately: Despite all the hype about the iPhone, nobody has actually used and reviewed it. I have no doubt it’s an utter masterpiece of industrial and software design, but it is a cell phone, and if it’s not a good cell phone—by which I mean one that (a) lets you hear the other person well, (b) lets the other person hear you well, and (c) does a very-good-to-excellent job of maintaining the connection—then it is a failure. Nobody knows.

If it had all the features except the cell phone, had a good-capacity hard drive, and cost a couple hundred bucks less, then I’d be dying for one, because that’s the iPod I want. That’s the iPod everyone wants. I dearly hope that’s the iPod that comes out next.

Thoughts after watching Apple’s iPhone Guided Tour:

It looks scrumptious, but one thing stands out that I’ve heard mentioned before: They may say it’s “the best iPod ever,” but it has no tactile interface. You can’t reach in your pocket (or next to you while you’re driving) and feel where the Next or Previous or Pause button is. You have to use your eyes. Yes, it has the earphone thingy with the clicker that does Pause/Play and Next, but if you want to use that control, you’re stuck with the Apple earbuds instead of your headphones of choice (or your car stereo).

I dunno. It does look great. But I’m with Verizon, soooooo I’ll be looking at different phones when I’m up for a replacement in a week.

Addendum:

Got a comment from a previously-unknown reader, Will Mon:

I was waiting for Verizon to come out with a decent Windows Mobile 6 Professional (phone edition) device [...]

Windows? Hiss!

No, I was actually considering a Treo 700p, and somewhat still am, because goshdarnit, I miss having a Palm Pilot! At Dow Jones, I had a Palm III, replaced by a Palm V, and I later got an M500 for myself. Loved having them; kept my schedule and address book and tons of lists on them. The one thing I wished they all had was a thumb keyboard, so I’ve been drooling over the Treo line from the beginning.

I am “somewhat” considering a Treo because Allen’s Treo 650 crashes all the time, and I’ve seen plenty of user reviews (of the 650 and 700) to the same effect. Says he: “I know that the 650 is the most unstable phone I’ve ever had. If it didn’t crash and lock up and not show voicemail and stuff all the time, it would be a not bad phone.”

I’d try to resurrect my M500—it’s still lying around somewhere here—but then I’d just have another gadget to carry around. My camera, iPod, and phone are clutter enough. Replacing the phone (of which I’ve grown weary) with a combination phone/Palm would be great…if it worked.

For that matter, replacing the phone and iPod with an iPhone would be great, but the damned thing has only 8 GB of storage. I already can’t fit enough music—just music!—in my 10 GB iPod. Okay, THERE. There’s my biggest hardware-oriented reason not to get an iPhone.

One more thing: How much is the monthly AT&T iPhone service going to cost, anyway? Will they require a data plan? That’s expensive.