Well it's that time of year again when the Mac world contemplates what Apple has in store for developers. As always there's those that don't get the concept of a Developer's Conference and naturally assume that Apple is going to release updated Macs and iPhones.

The gimme is that Apple is going to fully release the SDK for iPhone as well as v2.0 of OS X which is not to be confused with Mac OS X which is the version of OS X for the Mac not the iPhone/iPod Touch. Confused yet? It's a gimme because

If you've been reading the news about Apple you'd know that over the last few years Apple has been hit with numerous court cases regarding patent disputes. Apple has in fact settled on some, most notably the Creative case where Creative reckoned it had the patent on the iPod's menu system.

You may remember during the launch of the iPhone Steve Jobs said Apple had patented the hell out of it. It's an interesting situation because up until this Apple hadn't really taken out a lot of patents on

So on Thursday Apple supplied developers the tools to create native apps and in doing so made the iPhone and iPod Touch the next computing platform. One of the most interesting aspects of this is that both these devices can now become what Palm and Windows Mobile have failed to achieve, truly great portable platforms. Don't get me wrong, Palm and Microsoft have been around for a long while and have huge development resources but clearly have a long way to being great multipurpose tools. Don't

Daniel over on Roughly Drafted posted his list of possible annoucements for MacWorld but the one that caught my eye the most was his idea of an XServe Mini:

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/12/29/ten-big-predictions-for-apple-in-2008/

To quote him:

Xserve mini. I outlined a plan for a personal server back in 2006. The new Mac OS X Leopard Server now delivers on the software side with an entry level setup that is nearly ready for a basic embedded server box. Create a new appliance box along the

There's a couple of flaws in the views of Phil's. Firstly to say that the timeline allows more power is actually not true, in fact quite the opposite. While iMovie '06 does allow for a better volume adjustment, the fact that it only allows for two audio tracks + whatever audio is in the video means it is woefully inadequate.

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OK, Darryn and I have been having a bit of a discussion about iMovie 08 and Final Cut Express within the blog area. I wanted (through the use of state-of-the-art images...I joke!) explain what I mean about the issue related to the way of working (note - I had a habit of saying 'anology' when I should have said 'metaphor' in my last post).

There's one phrase in Darryn's reply that really struck a chord. And for me, it sums up my surprise and concern at what Apple has done....

"iMovie has about as much to do with Final Cut (Express) as tomatoe sauce has to do with a rock."

I'll come back to that comment later, but first there are some things that I want to respond to that I disagree with in Darryn's comments. Most notably, the issue of timeline use in iMovie.

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My comments were going to be too long for the comment system so I decided to make a blog post in reply to Phil's post here:

The timeline does matter - to me and Apple!?

When Apple released iMovie '08 this year it caused one of the most vocal attacks that has ever happened in Apple history. Why? Well, Apple changed its interface so vastly it took people by surprise. It seems not many people like surprises. But is iMovie's lack of timeline really a problem and should Apple carried iMovie's

I'm only just starting to get to play with the copy of Final Cut Express 4 that Apple recently sent me. I decided to start by taking a quick look at the Apple site to find out what had changed, and one page really caught my eye. Take a look at this page...

http://www.apple.com/finalcutexpress/

On the page about what is new is a movie showing how you can import iMovie '08 projects into FCE. Take a good look at it and what struck me the most was how different the "way of working" (for want of a better term) is between these two applications.

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