This morning I was looking at the Apple Store website and noticed a few things that just seem to never really get any attention – which made me wonder, has Apple forgotten about them?
The Forgotten
- Apple Wireless Keyboard: I know how do you make improvements upon a keyboard? And yes I know that Apple recently changed the requirements from a 3-battery keyboard to a 2-battery keyboard, but other than that this little aluminum and white plastic tray has stayed pretty much the same. I would have really loved to see a model with a number pad on it, or hell I would love it if they added a backlight to the wireless keyboard – that would be sweet.
- Mac Pro: Yes indeed Apple does continue to offer speed bumps and other performance enhancements, but the design has been the same for quite some time now. Yes, it is a good design and really easy to add stuff to, but are you telling me that the crew that just made the MacBook Air can’t do something a bit smaller than the current 60lbs model?
- iPod Classic: Back at the iPod event a couple of months ago Steve Jobs said that they were updating all the iPods – yet there was no mention of the iPod Classic. A quick check of the Apple website shows that you can still buy one in 160gb and 160gb configurations. The very least they could do if continue to update the HD size – 250gb would probably cover most DJs these days.
- iWork: The latest version is iWork ‘09 as in 2009. I am not saying that iWork needs to be updated every year, but if you are not on a yearly release schedule please show some wisdom and don’t make the version the same as the year it was released in. Also, please take Numbers a little further because I really hate to use Excel.
- iDVD: Yeah this probably isn’t long for the world given Apple’s distaste for all drives that spin.
- iWeb: You would think that Apple would want to have WYSIWYG web tool, but it seems they have just stopped caring about it. iWeb, though not a great tool, is a good tool for many amateurs who simply want to have a nice site to share with their family – why does Apple not care about that?
- Aperture: I know that Aperture is regularly updated, but let’s be honest here – Aperture is no where near in the same league as LightRoom anymore for digital RAW processing. Aperture was awesome when it came out and I still like it much more than LightRoom, but, that this is a big but, it is no where near as good as LightRoom and causes my MacBook Pro fans to spin up at the slightest thought of using it. I know they say slow and steady wins the race, but Aperture is just slow.
- MobileMe: Christ.
- AirPort Express: Where is the video out port for streaming video to a TV (oh yeah it’s called an Apple TV) – why even buy this over the Extreme? Why even sell this? What the…
- Time Capsule: Has this even really been updated since it came out? I still hear the same complaints and general dissatisfaction with the Time Capsule. This could be a really great product, but it is not there yet. This product feels like it is one guy in the Janitors closet that works on it. Poor guy…
- Apple In-Ear Headphones: They aren’t even prominently displayed in the stores. I think Apple could do something really great, if they actually made these sound great and lowered the price it would force other companies (ahem Shure) to lower their prices a bit.