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MacOS Keynote Coverage
11223 writes: "MacJunkie has HTML coverage of the keynote." Cease and desist notes are being passed out like party favors ;) Actually they've officially announced the wacked out touchy mouse. The Cube is for real too: read more at
Apple's Site
But Apple trying to converge with other OS's? That'll be the day. I think that Apple, as a corporation, is probably equally as evil as Microsoft, it's just that they haven't been in a position to do too much evil. Apple's not evil you say?
- Get other vendors to come up with clones, then refuse to license the OS after they finally get up and running.
- Support QuickTime under windows, but do it in such a way as to make the software as annoying as possible. Put your big logo up at the front every time it's launched. Make your own wierd control panel. Add yourself to the desktop. Claim to want to play everything, but not work on half the stuff. And the only reason they do it at all is because if they didn't support windows nobody would use QT at all.
- Don't support QT on anything but Windows
- Ship horrible mice and keyboards with your products, and then go with the line ``you can replace them with something else if you want!'' instead of shipping a reasonable product.
And, perhaps most importantly,- All the FUD and lies they spread. Steve Jobs claiming that you can't buy a faster computer than a mac with the G4 -- besides the fact that you could get an UltraSparc or Alpha, many PII's at the time beat it out in most things. Telling people that MacOS was technologically superior to everything. Telling them that it was compatable and flexible. You can't even change the MTU without third-party software.
Don't get me wrong. MacOS is very easy-to-learn. They put some interesting stuff in their boxes. But I wouldn't trust the company. I especially wouldn't trust the company to converge with anything. I'll be watching Apple try to stay as much in ultra-proprietary-land as they can.-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
New Input Devices
New optical mouse. Still one-button only, but the entire surface is the button. Will be standard on all Macs. This is not the touchy, squeezing, twiddling mouse that everyone has rumors about, and it looks radically different from previously posted pictures.
New 108 key keyboard based on the old Mac Extended Keyboard design. Includes volume and eject keys along with the standard arrow. Both keyboard and mouse will be sold on the Apple Store as seperate components for $59 each.
Pentium vs. G4 Showdown
Used a 500 MHz G4 vs. a 1 GHz Pentium III with Altivec and SSE enhanced filters, respectively. Did the standard Photoshop test, this time rendering the "Inspector Gadget" movie poster. G4 = 100 sec, P3 = 124 sec.
They did the same showdown again with a dual-G4 machine vs. a single P3 machine. Note that Photoshop is one of the few Mac apps designed to take advantage of Apple's asymmetric multiprocessing API. Until Mac OS X, not all apps will be able to take advantage of this boost. This is a bit of a stacked comparison, but not bad for an OS without SMP. 61 seconds on dual G4.
New machines
Yes, they are formally announcing dual-G4 machines today. The 400 MHz model is going to still be single processor machines, but the 450 MHz and 500 MHz models will only be able to be bought with dual-G4s.
They are also including Gigabit Ethernet as a standard option on the motherboard for all G4 machines. To show off Gigabit Ethernet, they played a Final Cut Pro movie with the uncompressed video source being streamed from the server. They also showed scrubbing through it from the server. The showed smooth playback at over 16 Mb/sec, and showed good recovery after the cable was pulled mid-playback and replugged.
New machines will include 20 GB, 30 GB, and 40 GB drives respectively. All of these new features will be sold at the same price as the old machines.
Mac OS X
Public Beta is on track for September. Also on track to release in 2001. No time for a full-blown demo, but do show off a the new UI. They showed off the following:
3rd Parties
Bruce Chizen from Adobe came and raved about the PowerMac G4 SMP. Nothing of consequence was said, though.
Kevin Browne of MS comes to talk about the new Office 2001 for Mac. Added a new application to Office called Entourage, which is apparently an Outlook replacement.
Brought up MS's VP of Games to talk about Bungie. MS and Apple are teaming up with Bungie to being bringing their entire line to the Mac, including older MS games. They transitioned to talking about the X-Box and brought up the CEO of Bungie. He mentioned their origins as a Mac company and confirmed that, yes, Halo WILL still be coming out for the Mac. Wow, this game is going to be sweet. Very cinematic.
iMac
Talked a little about the 2 year history of the iMac. 3.7 million iMacs sold in 2 years. That's about 5000+ per day, 200+ per hour, or 1 every 18 seconds. Did the demographic breakdown.
4 New iMac models:
Yesterday, it was announced that Circuit City will be selling iMacs. Furthermore, the digital cameras and iMacs will be sold side-by-side now. Showed off the new commercials for the new iMacs. (I love the choice of "It's Not Easy Being Green" for the Sage machines. "White Room" was also pretty funny for Snow.)
iMovie 2
New user interface, intended to be easier to use. Enhanced audio editing and special effects. They adopted some Aqua GUI elements. (Why, oh why, can't they use their own Appearance Manager?) They showed the drag and drop functionality in iMac's timeline and clip manager panel. They also showed off some new audio functionality. Unfortunately, after Jobs actually got started working, the audio for the webcast got cut, so I can't really tell all of what he was doing. They did show off how you could now have clips transition into sepia tones.
iMovie 2 is free with all desktop Macs -- but what about the entry-leve iMac? For people who aren't buying a new machine, there will be a $49 download available in August.
iTools
Talked some about iDisk and using iMovie to create movies and uploading them to iDisk along with pictures. You can use Apple's homepage templates to create personal photo and movie galleries. Did a demo of doing this.
The Cube
They are expanding their product line to create a new area between consumer and pro. The new 8" cube Mac is for real. The PowerMac G4 Cube has:
I'll be damned. The Apple Insider picture is pretty close to what it looks like. It's almost identical to the picture with the two dark screws. The slot-loading DVD drive is in the top, and the connectors are on the bottom. To open, you turn it upside down, push on a pop-up handle, and slide it all out by the handle. The handle locks it in place (and comes with a Kensington lock). Access was a key issue. (Side note: It seems to have an internal grill, so it seems that pencils aren't a case, but don't you dare put a coffee cup on it.) Comes with two little spherical Harmann speakers.
Apparently, the new 17" monitor was also dead on. The front screen is flat, and the graphite enclosing is clear. It has 2 USB ports, costs $499, and has a single cable carrying power, video, and USB. Also, they debuted new Studio Display models - 15" & 22", both with 1 cable for all needs. They say that it is compatible with the older models and not just the cube.
The wrapped up the keynote with a commercial filled with interviews about the new cube. Steve then gave free optical mice to all the keynote attendees! Sweet!
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
more from: http://www.macmedianetwork.com/mwny/index.shtml
Now Jobs is talking about iTools and how easy it is to make a homepage. The new iTools has more templates and features. He whipped out a website in iTools real quick to show how easy it is. He's demoing the photo album in iTools. It now allows drag and drop reordering of pictures. Now he is making a page to show an iMovie. He's talking about being able to build a very extensive website after dinner in just a few minutes.
He's gone back to the product matrix and is reviewing what they've gone over. "But there's even one more thing..." He's talking about their product strategy and how successul they've been for the past 2.5 years, but now they are expanding their product strategy with a new desktop. The new desktop will be a G4, up to 1.5 gigs of RAM, up to 40 gigs of storage inside the machine, ethernet, USB, firewire, Airport. This machine is much smaller than a G4, being an 8" cube, 1/4 the size of a G4. It doesn't have a fan. It looks totally chic and would look most excellent to an Apple LCD. It has slot-loading DVD on top, toaster style, apparently they've gotten around the 8x barrier that vertical CD players used to have. It is very easy to access the insides for upgrades, so those who worried about that, don't. It has ball speakers, which are very hip. It costs a cool $1800, so not really very cheap. The models are available in early August.
Now he is showing the new displays. The new 17" CRT display with Diamondtron and is totally flat. It has a brilliant clear enclosure. It has 2 USB ports built into it. The display is powered by the computer, just one cable carries video, USB, and power. One cable replaces 3. It costs $499. The next display is the 15" LCD. 2 USB ports again, and powered from the computer just like the CRT, and only costs $999. The last is the new Cinema Display, which uses the video/USB/power over one cable. Now they are talking to Apple employees about how great the new stuff is.