Ted Landau:
No other company besides Apple has such complete control over both the hardware and software ends of the market. This is what allows Apple’s devices to work so well together. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in the product integration we saw on the WWDC stage today
Andrew and Vero:
What you have to remember is that Spotlight’s primary objective is to search your files and a small handful of pre-determined web sources. Meanwhile, Alfred’s primary objective is to make you more productive on your Mac with exceptional and powerful features like Clipboard History, System commands, iTunes Mini Player, 1Password bookmarks, Terminal integration, fully bespoke and customisable user-created workflows and much, much more.
The new design looks great.
If you want to get a taste of how the new UI will look on your Mac, here’s a couple of high-res images from Apple’s site. Just open these in Preview and then go Full Screen: Safari with Messages; Finder; Spotlight.
And, I love the massive update they’ve given to Spotlight. I’ve been using an application launcher for years (Quicksilver for years and now LaunchBar), and I think they are just so great. There is much you can do with Alfred or LaunchBar that you can’t do with the new Spotlight (clipboard history just to name one thing). And so I think that for many people (myself included), a more powerful application launcher will still be their preference. But for many people, this new, more powerful version of Spotlight will be their first step into the awesome world of intelligent and awesome application launchers. And that’s great.
John Gruber’s classic overview of what he thinks we will and won’t see later today. I too am excited to see the potentially massive overhaul to OS X. And, of course, I’d love to see some significant improvements to iCloud and Photo Stream storage.
Starts in just a couple hours, and Apple will be streaming it live for everyone to watch.
