The Other Drummer

Don Herbert, known to you an me as Mr. Wizard, passed away yesterday at the age of 89.

I remember watching reruns of his show in Nickelodeon and in classes at school. The dancing spaghetti? Classic.

Thanks for the memories Mr. Wiz.

The short version: If the Finder and Desktop enhancements had been the lesser of the new features instead of the only new features, it would have been a good keynote.

Hey Steve! Talk about a Time Machine! Remember this? It’s last year’s WWDC when you said you had a lot of cool, “Top Secret” stuff you were putting in Leopard, but couldn’t show us because you didn’t want “Redmond” to rip it off. Then you showed us a few cutesy things like how to make your own widgets and how you can use iChat video with backdrops.

“Oooo! Look at me! I’m underwater!”

Spaces and Time Machine kept us pacified until January when you said Leopard would be out before Vista. It’s a year later and we’re all stoked about your promise that, “Leopard will be worth the wait.”

Guess what? It wasn’t. Excuse me. Allow me to correct my grammar. It ISN’T. (It’s still not out.)

Of your Ten Features, half were rehashed from last year’s conference. (Pardon me if I don’t wet myself over Safari on Windows.) Did you really expect us to get excited about widgets again?

A Finder revamp? Excellent. New desktop features? Wonderful. And…? Where are the “Top Secret Features”?

My birthday is in October. I’d wanted Leopard but now a pony sounds better.

Stevie J. must be in some kind of Time Machine because this is sounding a LOT like last year’s WWDC. C’mon…widgets? iChat? Spaces? These things have been up on Apple’s website for MONTHS.

*yawn!*

I almost forgot. Apple’s WWDC is Monday.

In addition to Leopard’s “top secret features”, I’m also anxious to see what Stevie J. will announce about .Mac.

I hope he gets rid of it. Everything .Mac does, Google does (but better and free). The exception is iDisk, though with rumbles of “Platypus” (GDrive) and 20 MB Gmail attachments, that’s not much of an issue.

All Apple needs to do is make iLife Gears-friendly.

For example, iWeb would publish to Blogger. iPhoto would sync/upload directly to Picasa (better than the current plugin) and, ideally, Flickr. iCal and Address Book would sync with Google Calendar.

This person wrote an interesting article about the integration of .Mac and Google Docs. I disagree with some of his points. You can already access Google Docs from anywhere, and Gears will soon make all of Google’s apps available offline. So, why would you need .Mac? Of course, Apple could make iWork with Gears which would make your docs available online through Google Docs without cannibalizing either product.

Apple isn’t offering anything unique in .Mac. And with free, online apps (all of Google’s, for example) going offline, it provides a great opportunity for Apple create innovative ways to interact with these new web applications.

Radio interview quote from Marine Corps General Reinwald and a female radio host. He wants to host some boy scouts at the training center for some practice exercises:

FEMALE INTERVIEWER: So, General Reinwald, what things are you going to teach these young boys when they visit your base?

GENERAL REINWALD: We’re going to teach them climbing, canoeing, archery, and shooting.

INTERVIEWER: Shooting! That’s a bit irresponsible, isn’t it?

GENERAL: I don’t see why, they’ll be properly supervised on the rifle range.

INTERVIEWER: Don’t you admit that this is a terribly dangerous activity to be teaching children?

GENERAL: I don’t see how. We will be teaching them proper rifle discipline before they even touch a firearm.

INTERVIEWER: But you’re equipping them to become violent killers.

GENERAL: Well, you’re equipped to be a prostitute, but you’re not one, are you?

The radio went silent and the interview ended.

Semper Fi baby.

Story courtesy of here.

UPDATE: Turns out the interview is a fake (see comments). Fake, yes, but still really funny.