What the heck happened to resolution independence?

In Gruber's review of the Powerbook a few years ago, he trumpeted the coming of a feature long evading the Mac faithful, a resolution independent interface. Others at the time expected the same thing to appear in Leopard: UI elements that were completely independent of the screen's resolution, and, finally, a fully scalable interface, and freedom from whatever screen you were working on. Higher resolutions without squeezing down the UI elements. And as we got closer to Leopard, more and more word went around that OS 10.5 would have it. At WWDC 2006, some developers even confirmed it. And Apple even filed a patent to get it done.

Except now it's November, Leopard is out, and resolution independence is nowhere to be found, at least at the user-accessible level. What gives?

I've had this plan ever since the mini almost died earlier this year, and I'm sticking to it: as soon as I can buy a Mac mini with Leopard on it, I'll do so. And no one's going to stop me-- except maybe Jobs himself. Mac OS Rumors reports that they've heard that as of October's end, the mini is dead-- long live something new called the Mac Nano. Supposedly, the new low-end Mac will be even smaller than a mini (just tall enough to fit a hard drive in), and the enclosure will have a completely new design.

Intriguing idea indeed, even if it isn't quite new-- the Nano name has been floating around for a while. There are four other products sliding out of the rumor mill as well-- AppleTV is rumored to get an update (and a hard drive), and supposedly we'll see a MacBook Nano as well, the long-rumored ultraportable that Apple is supposedly working on-- a.k.a. Rumor #3.

The future of Mac, or wishful thinking? At this point, we have no indication-- Mac OS Rumors is no 9-to-5 Mac (ouch, but they deserve it, don't they?), but they are called "Rumors" for a reason. Either way, I want to buy an extremely small, compact, headless Mac with Leopard on it this fall. Whether it's called mini or Nano doesn't matter to me at all.

Apple Insider is reporting that Apple has filed a patent for collapsible ports, supposedly for use inside a coming ultraportable computer. I didn't quite get the idea at first (because supposedly the ports collapse in order to give the innards more room to spread out), but apparently the ports actually sit on the hinge at the back of the unit-- by opening the thing up, you also open up the ports, and can then plug the cords in. So while the system is in storage position, you don't actually need to have a whole port on there-- it can fold up and make for less space.

Ingenious. But does it mean an ultraportable is right around the corner? Seems unlikely to me-- with the iPhone at $600, and the MacBook at $1100, Apple would have to squeeze a 13" display portable in at around $800-900. What's the point? I love my 12" Powerbook, but if I was spending that much on an portable, I'd go with a MacBook anyway.

[ via Mac Rumors, thanks Brian! ]

Perhaps the most interesting and mysterious two words heard yesterday during Apple's big conference call were "product transition." The biggest surprise of the call was that Apple was setting its profit guidance much lower than expected, and the two big causes they gave for doing that were "higher commodity costs" (because they believe they got a good deal on iPhone components this quarter) and these mysterious "product transitions." So what's the deal there?

Almost unanimously, the analysts are predicting a product shakeup, specifically in the iPod family. Ars says multitouch is coming, Forbes suggests that Apple tipped its hand to upcoming product changes, and Apple Insider has Ben Reitzes, who was the first analyst to question the low guidance, suggesting that an iMac redesign or "ultra-portable" may be in the works.

But the majority of analysts say it's the iPod that Apple will focus on. The iPod has been waiting in the wings, watching the iPhone and OS X get all kinds of pretty updates, and call it what you want-- the halo effect or trickle down-- the iPod is ready for a refresh. ThinkSecret comes right out and says it: we'll see a 6G iPod as early as the first half of August.

Whatever this "product transition" might be, odds are we'll hear about it sooner than later. Apple's execs made it clear that by the time they did another call in October, everything would be made much clearer.