I liked today’s Macworld keynote. In many ways it was a return to pre-iPhone keynotes, with a few good announcements but nothing crazy earth-shatteringly amazing how-can-we-ever-top-this-again. Solid upgrade to iLife. Good news on iTunes. Impressive battery life on the refreshed 17-inch MacBook Pro.
At first I was worried that new versions of iPhoto and iMovie would obsolete my new app before its 1.0 even ships, but I think I’ve narrowly escaped the knife.
“Ryan at 37signals had this to say”:www.37signals.com/svn/posts… about iPhoto ‘09:
"Now iPhoto '09 has kicked their language up a notch further. In addition to Events there are also Faces and Places. Apple has made a few new slices into the photo organization cake, and they've opened up a new field of possibilities for people to find and enjoy their photos."
The new iPhoto does look amazing, but I’m not convinced that adding these new concepts improves the usability of the app significantly. Even in iPhoto ‘08, it’s not often clear when to use an Event vs. an Album. Tagging in Flickr and other popular web apps has proven that a fast, generic one-size-fits-all approach to categorizing can not only work, but is more flexible and requires less mental overhead to churn through images, movies, or what have you.
