Microsoft Silverlight event – and living with the iPhone

Silverlight

Although the Apple Mac is my computing platform of choice, I wouldn’t say that I live in an Apple bubble. When needs must, I will use Windows XP to get the job done (mostly usability software analysis tools) and I like to keep up to date with what the linux world is doing. On hearing that Microsoft were giving a talk in Brighton on their ‘Flash killer’, Silverlight, I made sure to go along.

I considered bringing my MacBook Pro along to take notes on, but I thought that being clubbed to death with a copy of Vista Home Premium is not how I want to check out of this world. Imagine my surprise however, when I turn up and both the MS presenters are typing on their MacBook Pros.

The future of web interaction

When I was an undergrad studying Software Engineering it was relatively simple to keep abreast of the technology. There was no internet overflowing me with information, there were only a handful of languages that were of importance and the instruction set of each was small enough to keep in my head.

How things have changed.

You may have thought that I was describing a computing era from the ’70’s, however this was 1992. With the current desire to make webpages behave more like desktop apps,

Mac Nano

I’ve been using my iPhone for just over a week now and it’s been interesting to note just how it’s affected my computing experience. I’ve been using my iPhone for checking and replying to e-mail, browsing the web, jotting down notes and of course for entertainment purposes such as checking out YouTube and listening to podcasts or music. What I’ve realised is that this represents a significant proportion of the tasks that I do on my laptop, however now it’s trouserable. So why can’t my next Mac be my iPhone?

This leads to my proposal for the Mac that I ideally want, the Mac Nano.

iPhone interaction

Yes, I stood in the queue last night. Arriving at 5:30pm, there were only a handful outside Carphonewarehouse, though a much larger crowd had formed at the O2 shop just 200m down the street. There was plenty of banter to be had, people discussing what they did with their Mac and how they tried to resist the lure of the iPhone, but couldn’t.

Just for a few moments I felt slightly embarrassed about queueing up for a phone, I mean it’s a phone, it’s not essential to life and if I got it in a few weeks time would my life be any different? Of course it would,