Random thoughts from my two hours at the Apple Store
I’ve now spent over two hours at the SOHO Apple Store. I came to attend their “Digital Photography with Adobe Photoshop CS Pro” workshop (the seminar actually covers CS2).
The seminar was somewhat useful if you haven’t used Photoshop much, but it didn’t cover anything I wasn’t at least moderately familiar with having read the first few chapters of Deke McClelland’s Adobe Photoshop CS2 One-on-One. Still, if you’re new to Photoshop or are trying to figure out if you want to drop $500-plus on it the seminar is free and is worth an hour of your time.
My attention went in and out due to the Apple Store’s free Wi-Fi. I browsed the Web through the next seminar, which was about Aperture. As cool as Aperture looks (Apple’s stuff always looks cool), I thought this week’s Yahoo! Go and Google Video announcements were much more interesting.
The above is not an apples-to-apples comparison, obviously, but I’m much more interested in “network-level” innovation than I am in yet another desktop app. I’m much more interested in Flickr than I am in Aperture, Photoshop Album, iPhoto, or any of the like. The cool thing is that via the Flickr API you can integrate Flickr with any of these apps. I hope Apple does some of this type of integration proactively to keep the desktop apps relevant. As much as I like iPhoto, my Mac isn’t the only computer I use, and Apple online services aren’t the only ones I use, either.
This isn’t to say Apple doesn’t innovate outside of consumer electronics or the desktop, though they don’t do any services that personally interest me. (I use the iTunes music store, but I don’t even have an iPod. That’s a story for another day.) Apple obviously deserves points for iTunes’ impact, but I’d like to seem them do something that has a larger scale impact.
It will be interesting to see what Apple produces at Macworld SF this week. I hope to see at least 1) some sort of Intel Mac Media Center and 2) a compelling new network service, something as interesting the VOD service that’s been rumored.
Okay, I just looked up and I’m apparently halfway through “iPod and iTunes Workshop.” I’m outta here.