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

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My notes from the Webcast

[Valdrax]

Here are my notes from the webcast, for those who weren't able to attend the expo and who missed it:

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:

• Live dragging and resizing
  
• Showed off attached dialogs. Demonstrated intelligent behavior when the window is smaller than the dialog or a little off-screen.
  
• New save dialogs include a pop-up window with options to save to favorites, the desktop, and recent folder. Also includes a mini-browser (like the Finder browser view) to pick a different place.
  
• Finder
  
  • Showed that you can now drag a volume to the desktop and use it like you do on the Mac today.
    
  • Showed the controls to switch between iconic, list, and browser view.
    
  • Showed that the browser view includes a preview pane that can preview all kinds of QT media.
    
  
  
• The Dock
  
  • Showed addition and removal of apps and docs to the dock.
    
  • Showed window minizing, even had a slow-mo demo. Showed the nifty way it handles having half the window off the bottom of the screen befor being minimized. They also showed off a slow-mo demo of a quicktime window being minimized while the window still plays.
    
  • Showed the "Bomb" app while playing the movie. The app attempts to crash the system by doing everything a Mac app shouldn't do, including writing to low global memory. The app crashed itself, but didn't disturb the system.
    
  • Did not address dock overloading, organizational, or Fitt's Law problems with Dock design. It seems nothing has been done to address these issues.
    
  
  

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.

• Mac Only Features
  
  • Entourage includes a new preview pane.
    
  • There is a new categories feature that synchronizes with categories on a PalmPilot.
    
  • There is a new Project Gallery that help do finished formatting.
    
  • New set of formatting wizards for Word.
    
  • There are also some new formatting palettes that help avoid going through dialog boxes.
    
  • New picture tools for doing limited photo editing.
    
  • There is a new List Manager in Excel to help people create lists in Excel and format them well.
    
  
  
• BIG ONE: Powerpoint can now save presentations as Quicktime Movies. They did not say whether or not this is a Mac-only feature.
  
• Note that they also made mention improved inter-operability with Windows versions right before showing off all these Mac-specific features.
  

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.

• 30% 1st timers
  
• 14% Wintel converts
  
• 89% of iMacs are on-line
  

4 New iMac models:

• All models: G3 procs, slot-loading drives, USB, Ethernet, no fans, etc. All come with new mouse and keyboard.
  
• Entry-level iMac: 350 MHz G3, 64 MB mem, 7.5 GB drive, slot-loading CD-ROM. All new color, Indigo. Price: $799. Hyped it as the best internat appliance on the market.
  
• iMac DV: Includes Firewire and iMovie. 400 MHz G3, 64 MB mem, 10 GB disk, CD-ROM, AirPort ready. Comes in Indigo and another new color, Ruby. Price: $999. Hyped iMovie for everybody.
  
• iMac DV+: 450 MHz, 64 MB mem, 20 GB disk, DVD-ROM, AirPort, Firewire, and iMovie. Indigo, Ruby, and another new color, Sage, which is a darker green. Price: $1299
  
• iMac DV SE: 500 MHz, 128 MB, 30 GB disk, DVD-ROM, AirPort, Firewire, and iMovie. Price: $1499. Comes in an improved Graphite color and a new color called Snow, which is a solid white case.
  

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:

• G4 proc
  
• expandable up to 1.5 GB mem
  
• up to 40 GB disk
  
• modem, ethernet, usb, firewire, airport net
  
• no fan, again
  

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.

• 450, 64, 20, dvd, iMovie -- $1799
  
• 500, 128, 30, dvd, iMovie -- $2299
  
• available in august
  

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!