To be honest, I’m struggling to fall in love with it. I have an iPhone since Xmas 2008 and I love it to bits. I’ve since bought my first MacBook Pro and the love affair in terms of design and user experience continues to grow.

This however, I find difficult to get my head around. Maybe it will change when I eventually see one ‘in the flesh’ but from pictures and videos it looks a bit awkward and as someone said on Morning Ireland today like you had taken a rolling pin to an iPhone.

Aside from the lack of love at first sight, I am excited by the way it will probably change how we interact with the web and with each other. No, scratch that, it will change all that.

Here’s what I think…

• It’s going to affect many industries and what they offer:
  • Telecoms: optional 3G but no voice support means new opportunities for mobile operators and good times for Skype
  • Web design and development: another new set of screen dimensions with full multi-touch and still no Flash support means HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript will be doing the tricks for now
  • Gaming: a large portable screen with compass and GPS – delicious opportunities for interactive immersive gaming
  • Advertising: no Flash support so traditional interactive banner ads won’t be appearing on an iPad near you – time to cook up the alternatives and embrace the new format
  • TV: if you haven’t been doing so already you’re going to need to start outputting your video clips using H.264 compression
  • Publishing: iBookstore is to books as iTunes is to songs – e-books are on the up
• Those who decided to learn Objective C and got into iPhone/iPod app development will be delighted and continue to be hot property
• It’s another foot in the grave for bulky sluggish netbooks

Now, when do I get to play with one?

Donal Skehan‘s stew = win.

Open evening this Thursday at the Dublin Institiute of Design. Pop in and you could win a wee course.

Been looking at web app development frameworks for Safari on iPhone lately. If you want something other than Dashcode, check out the iUI Framework and JQTouch. May blog properly about this later on in the week.

You’ll be able to submit nominations for the 2010 Irish Blog Awards soon. Blogging may be dead but long live the Blog Awards.

My buddy Jenn combines two of her loves, writing and good beer, to create a new beer blog fresh from Colorado.

Via Damien, “No, Your First Impression Isn’t Wrong: Android ISN’T As Nice As The iPhone“. Read here and no, this isn’t Andriod bashing nor iPhone ass-kissing.

Finally, congratulations on getting through the first week of the year – arguably the most difficult first week of any new year we’ve had in a long time

IWA in a nutshell

Haven’t quite recovered enough energy or compiled the thoughts properly on last night’s Irish Web Awards but suffice to say it was a cracking night, had fantastic fun and met a whole bunch of new rockin’ people.

Major kudos to Damien and all the IWA gang for a great night, congrats to all the winners.

Ubergeeks Dav & Darragh from boards.ie

As part of the launch celebrations for Windows 7, Microsoft are running a competition to find Ireland’s biggest geek.

You can nominate yourself or a friend/colleague/family member via the Celebrate Geek website and for your troubles bag a load of geeky goodies including a Windows 7 laptop and an invite to the official launch party for Windows 7 on October 21st.

The deadline for entries is 6pm on Wednesday 14th October 2009 so get nominating!

Keep track of the competition at the website, on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

I am quite excited and encouraged by what I saw in the demos and from having a quick play with it on a netbook. Microsoft just might have got it spot on this time around but at the very least it appears to be a big improvement on Vista.

Windows 7 Taskbar peek

First impressions

It’s fast. Starting up a 1GB netbook running Windows 7 took what seemed like 1 or 2 seconds. As our demo guy moved through various apps and processes it seemed very nifty indeed.

It’s clear. From the visual aspect (lots of semi-transparency, large icons and a general feeling of de-cluttering) to the levels of windows involved in various processes, the whole OS is more simplified, straight-forward and easy to use.

It integrates. The demo we saw only showed syncing of Windows Media Centre between a PC and X Box but it was easy, seamless and quick considering the volume of media that was on the machine.

It’s fun. One of the interactions that I took a shine to was by clicking, holding and shaking a window, all other open windows are hidden. Theme packs (based on traditional Windows themes) are bundles of wallpapers, interface colour schemes, soundscapes, bookmarks, RSS feeds and more based on a specific country. There’s 20 ‘official’ theme packs to choose from with an Irish one available post-release via the Microsoft website.

Searching in the Start menu

Other good stuff

For designers the re-organisation of the font library sounds like a welcome change. If like me you have a few hundred fonts installed, selecting fonts from dropdown menus in Photoshop, Flash or even just Word is a bit of a nightmare. Windows 7 will automatically hide seldom-used fonts from these menus. Within the font library itself you can manually show/hide particular fonts and font families to your own preference also.

PSR (Problem Step Recorder) is a new addition to the Windows OS. Essentially, it’s a small program that allows you to record a screen-capture sequence of an interaction on your computer and submit it to Windows support to help resolve problems.

Windows 7 will also have full bio-metric support as well as support for third-party multi-touch devices.

Bad stuff

Admittedly, I haven’t done a huge amount of reading on it but I hear upgrading from Vista and indeed XP might be a bit of a nightmare. There’s no option currently available for non-DVD drive netbooks but there may be a solution released some time in the future.

When can I have it?

It’s on sale to the general public on October 22. If you’re a business customer you can get it right now under volume licsensing. Prices on their website are in dollars (boo) starting at $120. Follow them on Twitter as @win7ireland for updates and competitions or find out about upgrading from XP and Vista and all that jazz over here.

I’ve got no idea how easy/tough it’s going to be to upgrade my parent’s PC to Windows 7 but I’m going to give it a go when I’m down there in a fortnight. I think it’s going to make life a lot easier for them.

Many thanks to all the folks at Microsoft and Edelman Ireland for the demos, Q & A and the lovely surprise of a copy of the OS to take home.