Wishlist for the Apple press event

I’m not in the market for any Apple gear right now — I’m happy with the stuff I have, thank you very much — but I’m still looking forward to the things that might be presented today.

So here’s what I’m hoping for:

1. “Mac OS X Lion” — I wonder if Andy Ihnatko might be right by speculating that this might be v11.0 and not 10.7, also; Facetime support in iChat.
2. New MacBook Air — This seems to be a given and while I hope that it retains the 13.3” form factor, I’m eager to see if Apple manages to lower the price significantly. This is wishful thinking since Apple doesn’t produce anything without making a significant profit, but I’m hoping nevertheless.
3. iLife ‘11 — I’m not really using much of the included software regularly anymore, but improvements are always welcome.
4. Announcement of the white iPhone 4’s shipping date — As I said, I’m not in the market right now, but hey “I want to believe!”
5. Last but not least: I want to see Apple buying Dropbox and integrating the living hell out of it.

iTunes user interface changes

As every year Apple changed the UI of iTunes upon release of the new major version.

While I wasn’t very fond of last years revision, I really like what they have done this time, even if some of it still needs some work:

 
Immediately after the first screenshot of iTunes 10’s window was shown during the demo, there was an outcry among users, that Apple arranged the ‘traffic lights’ (buttons for close, maximise, minimise) vertically.
Yes it’s unusual, and Apple ignores their own interface guidelines here, but I like it, because it saves some space; and should I ever get tired of it; there’s already a “fix” that brings back the old look.

The redesign of the capacity gauge for iDevices looks absolutely gorgeous in my opinion.

Apple’s choice to bring back the blue-ish graphite look for the application has me wondering, but it does make for a clean look.

The interface does still need some polish, though. The sync button is but one example of impurities in the UI.

What’s more important — and far more annoying — is the new way album art is being displayed. Having been touted as revolutionary and useful by Steve Jobs during the keynote, I will admit that I like the idea, but the execution is far from perfect:
No matter how big or small you set the cover image to be, if the album title is slightly too long, it’ll be cut off. The only way to remedy this, is to widen the column, sacrificing a lot a screen real estate for grey-ish space.
Placing the album title atop the album art would allow for a much more efficient use of space.

All things considered this update brings a few welcome features to iTunes, gives it a great new UI and some welcome performance improvements.
I don’t like the “everything but the kitchen sink” approach Apple has been taking with iTunes for years now, but this update makes the feature overload bearable and more usable for me. 

Amazing game demo for iOS devices

During yesterday’s press event — which you can watch here — Epic Games demoed an upcoming roleplaying game for newer iOS devices, that employs their widely used and appraised Unreal Gaming Engine.

Besides the on stage demo, the game publisher also released an iPhone app that allows the user to explore the surroundings of the unreleased game beforehand, showcasing the graphics.

I was impressed by what I had seen during the on stage demo, but simply dumbfounded by the app itself. Hero of Sparta 2, N.O.V.A and Asphalt 5 are all optimised for the Retina Display and they all look great, but this level of graphics performance I’d would not have deemed possible on the iPhone 4.
I urge every one to try it for themselves; here’s a direct link to the AppStore.