MacStartup

Here’s the times for your local time zone:

• 07:00AM – Hawaii
• 10:00AM – Pacific
• 11:00AM – Mountain
• 12:00PM – Central
• 01:00PM – Eastern
• 06:00PM – London
• 07:00PM – Paris
• 09:00PM – Moscow
• 02:00AM – Tokyo (June 7th)

OK, if you’re an startup entrepreneur using a Mac you’ll want to watch, or at least visit, a number of sites that are blogging about what’s happening at Apple’s WWDC. I’ll post only the highlights and brief commentary about what I see from a business perspective, not a consumer.

As an initial comment, Apple tends to favor the consumer model of it’s hardware more so than the business. They are tackling the business market, but not at the level that I consider it worthwhile: Solopreneurs and Mompreneurs.

If you go to MacSurfer.com and visit the General Interest you’ll a number of bloggers and web sites that will write about what’s happening.

Commentary: Updates are happening:

1. Mac OS X Lion (Available in July): 250 Added Features (Apple’s Top 10, your mileage may vary, mine usually does):

1. Multitouch Gestures
2. Full Screen Applications
3. Mission Control
4. Mac App Store
5. Launchpad
6. Resume
7. Auto Save (great for version control during collaboration) (9)
8. Versions
9. AirDrop
10. Mail

Upgrade through Mac App Store: $29.99!! That’s a steal!!

2. iOS 5 for the iPhone and iPad (Ships this fall for users, the SDK seed is available now):

• 1500 new APIs (coder talk for code that makes it easy for programmers to write their code)
• 200 new user features
• 10 Key Features: 1. Notification Center 2. Newstand 3. Twitter 4. Safari 5. Reminders 6. Camera Updates 7. Mail 8. PC Free (OTA – Over The Air) 9. Game Center (“In just 9 months we have 50 million Game Center users. To put that into perspective Xbox Live has been around for about eight years and they have around 30 million users.”) 10. iMessage

3. iCloud (Ships this fall with iOS 5):

• Sync across all platforms: iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Mac. Cal, Contacts, books, purchased music, photos and videos, device settings, and App data as well.
• Documents/apps/music/photos/etc. in the Cloud. Pages, automatically uploaded to the cloud. ”Works across all iOS devices, and Macs and PCs too.” (My question: what if I don’t want to use Apple’s iCloud system as a business person?)
• iTunes Match – syncs all of your music between your devices, but only for 30 days will it hold onto your data. Means you need to ensure you download them to your Mac and iPhone/etc. devices so you don’t lose them. Think of it as automatic deletions.

Since the Apple Store was not “We’ll be back soon” yellow sticky is is presumed that these will release this fall, after the school sales ending the first week or second in September. Also, since  I was personally waiting for the new iWork and the iCloud  is not until this fall, it looks like I’ll have to wait another 3-6 months for it to “sync” with the other devices.

I’ll be cleaning up the post throughout the day as I get clarity around these subjects. Watch for updates later in the day or tomorrow.

You can watch the whole event at Apple’s 2011 WWDC video.

Related articles

• TUAW predictions for WWDC 2011 (tuaw.com)
• TUAW at WWDC: We want to see your apps (tuaw.com)
• Engadget, broadcasting live from WWDC! (engadget.com)

Image via CrunchBase

Did you know that there is a Loop Business Expo National Road Tour that is in a city near you? Per their web site:

The Only FREE Apple-Based Exposition for Business Users. This event is for all business end users that use Apple Mac’s, iPhones, & iPads for their day to day business. Admission for the expo is FREE. We will have over 50 manufacturers & developers from all over the world showcasing their business solutions for the Mac.

Check the web site for more and updated info.

Apple has recently announced that they’re discontinuing their XServe hardware for businesses on Jan 31st, 2011 and letting them move to either a Mac Pro or a Mac Mini running Snow Leopard Server. Some people in the tech industry just cannot connect the dots.

Apple is probably moving toward a Amazon S3 server approach with their own version in their new server farm in NC. Why? Because there are a number of reasons for businesses to move toward this.

• Businesses don’t have to worry about hardware issues, i.e. where to host the server.
• Offsite location so the server is protected from most natural disasters (tornados are the largest issue, but not likely).
• Scalable as needs come up.
• Location not an issue for sys admins, developers, etc.

And if you’re looking for a server for your business, you can figure a lot more reason why.

So let’s see if my connecting the dots shows up correctly by next year.

Your thoughts?

As an entrepreneur and startup business I’m always on the lookout for what’s next. Not necessarily being an innovator or early adopter, but one that uses certain Mac tools to get my work done and of those tools that I use, wanting to know and watch for when the next version comes out is important.

This means that I use iWork to handle all of my word processing, page layout, spreadsheet, and presentation software needs, including finishing up my upcoming book “How to Start a Business: Mac Version” completely done in iWork Pages. But let’s get to the root of this blog post.

iWork ’10 is coming out soon!

Why do I say that? Because there are a few things that point to this conclusion.

1. The current version is iWork ’09, a year and a half since the last release.
2. The last update to iWork Pages (4.0.3) was late last year, i.e. updates and bug fixes, none since, and there are still bugs that need to be fixed.
3. The iPad came out in April ’10 and came with iWork for the iPad. Steve wanted this to be his baby, so everything has been put on hold until this came out. Including updates to iWork, since they’re both now sharing info.
4. There is an iWork for the iPad feedback page.
5. Apple’s World Wide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) is June 7-11, 2010.
6. The iPad has been released, but work on updating is to make it “perfect” continues.

I’m speculating that either iWork ’10 is released, or at least an announcement of a release, at WWDC.

I’m hoping for the release and availability that week. Now, whether Steve does a Keynote of iWork, that remains to be seen, but unless it’s a striking new approach or version, it will only take up a small amount of Steve’s keynote.

So, what am I hoping for in this new release? Here’s my list:

1. (See below comments) Save a Pages document in an epub file format for creating books for the iBook Store. This is almost a given, if it’s not there, shame on Apple for missing it.
2. Based on the above comment, better sharing between the Mac and iPad documents.
3. More book tools in Pages, such as creating an Index, one button drop caps, etc. for creating more compelling styled books and selling them on the iBook store.
4. A one menu “upload to the iBook store” command in the Share menu in Pages that once your iBook store account has been loaded into preferences it’s as easy as 1-2-3 for uploading and selling your books.
5. A smaller memory footprint. This is based on the work Apple has done with the iPad and getting iWork to work with limited iPad hardware resources.
6. More “charts” types based on the data you want to show in both Pages and Numbers.
7. More integration with MobileMe, i.e. collaboration with iWork.com
8. More finer controls over the text and images in Pages. Again, the iBook store will be driving these features.

What I would love to see? In no particular order:

• All of the above suggestions.
• A few more book and text and header type fonts. If Steve took a typography class and it made an impression on him, shouldn’t there be more since he’s trying to change the publishing industry?
• Both improved color and black texture themes of charts and graphics.
• A much improved Font Book experience. Again, if Steve loves what he learned about typography, Font Book needs a radical update so that you can use fonts better as a designer.
• iWork has a color wheel, it needs a grayscale texture wheel for simple black and white books.

So, what do you think will happen at WWDC and iWork?

Update 06/07/2010: Well, no iWork released OR announced by Steve at the Keynote. Too much iPad and iPhone. From here Apple will either quietly release it or have another announcement sometime late summer or fall timeframe, probably guessing in mid September, if that late. There are three scenarios here:

1. Apple Store show up. This is where there is not much significance to what it is and appears on Apple’s online store.
2. Short Announcement. A guess would be that there might be, at the most, a shorter announcement IF there is something significant about the release, i.e. works enough with MobileMe and other aspects that it needs a release announcement.
3. Larger Announcement. If a number of publishers are on board with what iWork can do with the iBook store, etc. But from my vantage point there’s probably a lot of “back room” goings on such as improving MobileMe, etc. now that the iPad/iPhone has been announced and this will start taking up resources.

Update 06/07/2010 #1: Well, Engadget has a story that Keynote for the iPhone 4 is coming based on a screen shot, which means iWork is coming soon as well. My guess is that once they work good together, maybe not great, iWork ’10 will be released. Stay tuned for more info.

Update 07/21/2010: My guess is that Apple won’t release iWork ’10, or whatever they call it, until any new models come out in the fall after the current sales are up, sometime during middle of September or later.

Update 08/26/2010: Apple released today and Update to iWork 9.0.4 that adds a few fixes AND a new export feature to the epub format. I nailed this feature above.

Update: 01/23/2011: Rumor is that iWork ’11 will come out sometime Spring, maybe March or April because a proposed book on iWork ’11 has been delayed. Soon, folks, soon.