Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

A Basket Full of Apple News

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the ladies-and-gentleman-the-steve-jobs-show dept.

active8or writes "During hit keynote at MacWorld San Fransico, Steve Jobs introduced the new tools from Apple. One, iDVD was a very powerful tool for making DVDs at home, and iTunes a powerfull MP3 and music ripping, writing, playing environment....for free. This seems to follow their new "killer apps" strategy. In addition, a 733 MHz G4 was introduced, and the entire line got a update. ". The new powerbook looks awesome (if only it had 3 mouse buttons).

6 of 444 comments (clear)

  1. Give it a rest by MouseR · · Score: 5

    If only it had 3 mouse buttons.

    You got both hands on the frickin' keyboard anyhow.

    Karma karma karma karma karmeleon: it comes and goes, it comes and goes.

  2. More info by MotownAvi · · Score: 5

    A few interesting points:

    • The new PowerMacs come with CD-RW drives (as expected), except for the 733Mhz one which comes with a "SuperDrive" combo CD-RW/DVD-R (not to be confused with the "SuperDrive" high-density floppy drive). The top three models also come with the nVidia GeForce2 MX card, but a Radeon is available as an option.
    • OS X is going to be in stores on March 24 (don't have any idea what that date is), and going to be preinstalled on Macs in the summer. The Apple menu is back on the left side of the menubar, and holds general system-wide stuff. It's not configurable. Folders in the dock, when you click and hold, pop up menus of their contents. The buttons in the header in Finder windows are configurable. If the buttons are shown, opening a folder replaces the existing contents; if the buttons are hidden, a new folder is spawned. There is a new widget on the right side of the title bar of windows for toggling the buttons. A status bar ("2 items, 7.9 GB free") is togglable separately.
    • iTunes (which Jobs accidentally called "iMusic" once) is a mix of SoundJam MP and Radialogic's CD Master. Plays and rips CDs, burns CDs, for free. Go get it from your iDisk.
    • iDVD is quite interesting. It encodes MPEG2 video at half-realtime, and provides a slick, idiot-proof way to build DVDs. The options for menus are varied but limited, and in the demo there always seemed to be an Apple logo in the corner (ugh). There is a pro version of it called DVD Studio Pro, but it wasn't demoed. This is obviously derived from Apple's acquisition of Astarte's software.
    • The Titanium PowerBook is sweet. Widescreen LCD, slot-loading DVD drive, G4. Whoo whee!

    Avi

  3. Re:Combo CDRW/DVD-R "SuperDrive" by fluffhead · · Score: 5

    I remember back when the original Mac "superdrive" was a 1.44 MB auto-inject/eject floppy drive that would read and write Mac and PC format HD floppies (it was "super" compared to the 400/800KB DD Mac-only drives that were its predecessors). Now we get 4.7GB per disc - super-schweet! You've come a long way, baby...

    My only caveat - does the DVD authoring include CSS-free and region-free options? Can you rip & copy DVD's with it? I'd hate for something this cool to be locked into the MPAA's riduculous regime....

    #include "disclaim.h"
    "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak

    --

    #include "disclaim.h"
    "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
  4. Mac OS 9.1 by Shadow+Knight · · Score: 5

    Mac OS 9.1 was also released, but it wasn't mentioned at the keynote. Got to Apple's Mac OS 9 page and see for yourselves!


    Supreme Lord High Commander of the Interstellar Task Force for the Eradication of Stupidity

    --

  5. Re:Looks like the DVD-CCA's worst nightmare by iso · · Score: 5

    You can do a track by track clone of a DVD and get a perfect copy if you have a DVD player and burner in the same system.

    well no, not exactly. by the looks of things, i'm not really sure there is a way to do a track-by-track copy of a DVD. as far as i know there's no "ripping" option to make an image of a DVD, and from what i've seen, there's no "burn from image" option on these new Macs.

    while it would be possible to "rip" the video stream and re-encode it to a new DVD, you'd be without the DVD menu, or any of the extras that ship on DVDs these days. not to mention the fact that this would be an extremely long procedure, and not worth it to most people.

    i imagine the real "danger" would be from people downloading DiV/Xs from the net, converting them to Quicktime, and then burning them to iDVD. still not ideal, as you only get the "bare movie," but probably good enough for most casual pirates.

    still, unless i'm reading all of this wrong, there's no way to make bit-for-bit copies of DVDs using this drive. this could all change in the future however, as it seems that the only thing holding it back is the availability of proper software.

    a couple of things: it should be noted that Apple will be selling blank DVD media (that will play in commercial players) for $10/each. that's amazing. secondly, i really hope it's possible to burn region-free DVDs. i don't want region coding infecting the movies i create.

    - j

  6. Re:Faster Apples by Bearpaw · · Score: 5
    I'm not an Apple user, but it's nice to see Apple finally getting the G4 a bit more upto par with AMD/Intel speeds (after all Joe Average buys more often than not on the machines MHZ value). Hopefully this will give AMD and Intel a bit more competition and lower prices even further.

    That'll only happen if Apple can get it through Joe Average's thick skull that actual performance is only partly a function of MHz. This might be a little easier than it would have been if Intel hadn't shot itself in the foot with the Pentium-4.

    (No offence meant to anyone out there named Joe Average.)