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Apple Updates at MacWorld
fishboy writes "There are updates to apple's product line and, most significantly, a significant update to OS X-- 10.1 that features improved performance, dvd support and a seamless client for windows-based networking." Here is coverage
of the keynote from
macnn.com and info about OSX.1
on apple's site (quicktime required to read much beyond the homepage). Looks like wireless setup might be fixed up (hazah!) but mainly those speed improvements are needed.
I attended the keynote by proxy - I was at the Glendale Apple Store at 6:00am for the keynote broadcast. (Well, I was ten minutes late, actually, but got most of it).
:-(.
..." it's always tomorrow.
... or ... um ... or ... cough. And that's the problem, isn't it? It's not like we're going to switch to Windows or Linux, is it? (Well, I have a Linux machine or two as well - but you get the idea) :-(
The good news is that the Puma upgrade to MacOS X looks like it will be awesome, with the speed gremlins totally vanquished.
More good news is that it looks like most of the vital vendors are fully on target to release OSX applications. We had demos from Adobe, Quark, a few game people Microsoft, and so on. (I must confess that the Microsoft Office demo was surprisingly cool). There will be no lack of software for OSX.
Except Photoshop, which was conspicuous by its absence in the Adobe demo. Looks like Adobe is coming out with the first upgrades for software in markets with genuine competition (Illustrator has Freehand, InDesign has Quark, and GoLive has a few million competitors). Photoshop, well, is Photoshop. Nuff said
The iMacs were all but unchanged. The adventures in plastic moulding are all gone; Indigo, Snow and Graphite return. There was a decent speed bump and CD R/W throughout the line, but nothing that would really thrill as far as I could see.
The new PowerMacs were significant improvements over the old ones, but nothing to make me run over to the store and replace my dual G4/450 straight away. The 733 is now at the bottom of the line, which is a nice bump from the older 466-odd models. The 867 is also nice but less than one would hope. But what's with dual 800s? Why not dual 867s? Surely availability can't be a major problem with the 867s in the mainstream of the line.
All in all, it looked like most of the great stuff was in the future. It's time to go back to bed, snore and dream of September and MacOS 10.1. Then, we Mac fans should have something to rave about.
"The sun comes out, tomorrow
Come September, we'd better see some changes or
D
----
I have 2 mac clones.. I'm very happy with them. My next machine will be a mac.
I've been very happy with my machines. They've been painless in terms of both OS and hardware (I've upgraded the CPU and memory added 2nd video card... all easy). It seems a lot of thought was put into the machines. I had a quantum harddrive I added fail (twice actually, the one covered under warrenty failed too...), but the original IBM drive is still ticking 5+ years later.
The machines aren't cheap, but they last a long time, and save me lots of time and hassle, and after working with computers all day (HPUX) and fixing some friends windows pc's they work great.
OS-Xs unix underpinnings make the decision easier (I can perl and grep!!!)
The old machines make good LinuxPPC servers too!
Profit doesn't drive stock prices. Success doesn't drive stock prices. Expectations drive stock prices, and when profit and success do not meet expectations, then the stock price will fall. Expectations are usually based on a company's predictions for that quarter, so in this case, Apple probably fell on its own sword.
On a side note, I would love an G4 Powerbook or iBook with MacOS X if a) the price weren't so high, or b) the hardware requirements didn't make the price so high. A pretty box and a pretty interface don't matter if you can't afford either. That is why, IMHO, Apple has not been able to penetrate the market.
Apple's cease-and-desist tactics have also made them less than endearing to me. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
Although güd Mr Jobs didn't announce it, OS 9.2 has been (somewhat) released. You can't download it yet, but OS 9.2 is running on the fancy new G4s at the Apple booth at Macworld. (They're running OS X 10.0.4 as the current OS, but 9.2 starts up for Classic applications.) Classic launched about twice as fast on the dual 800 that I was using as compared to my Pismo 400 powerbook. Don't know how much of that is 9.2 being good and how much is the machine. I'm guessing more of the latter. Anyway, it should be available soon.
Networking is also more compatible: Mac OS X version 10.1 now includes the ability to connect to AFP servers over AppleTalk making it easier to integrate Mac OS X into legacy networks with older AppleShare servers and Windows NT servers. We've also added support to natively connect to Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Unix-based SAMBA file servers with the built-in SMB client. These servers appear right in the Finder like any other file server. This makes Mac OS X fluent in all of today's network languages.
Now I can connect to my company's Windows network without extra software! This will be very important for those wanting to move from Windows to the Mac without buying extra software.
------
James Hromadka
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
One thing that you'll see in the video that isn't mentioned that often in the text reports is Steve Jobs' little fiasco with the digital camera while at the computer.
Steve: Just got to turn your camera on. [pause]
Steve: Alright. [stares at the camera]
[Someone in the front row says something.]
Yeah, I need some help out here, it's technical. My camera's not turning on.
[Same guy.]
Steve: What's that? I did slide it in like that. It's not turning on. Here. [throws the camera offstage at the guy]
[Crowd goes ooh - some applause, some laughter, bit of nervous tension.]
Steve: We'll let an expert see if he can turn it on. Hopefully he can. Shall I show you, uh... Got it on?
[Guy says something about batteries.]
Steve: Batteries have to go back in from me throwing it. Sorry.
WTF? I am shocked that Steve didn't introduce _________ [new feature] that _________ [big OS vendor] has had for years! And why didn't the _________ [model] come in a _________ [weird-ass design] instead of these _________ [abusive term 1], _________ [abusive term 2] toys for _________ [derisive term for Mac users]. Clearly Apple is never going to provide the leading _________ [OS, PC, 802.11 hub, video standard, etc.] because they are so far out of touch with _________ [broadly written user type that includes ME]. Instead they spend all their time cracking down on _________ [favorite Mac rumor site] and writing crap like _________ [crappy consumer utility] I'll never use.
Aw, fuck it, I'll switch to _________ [Yellow Dog / LinuxPPC / WinXP]. That will show those _________ [derisive term for corporate types] in Cupertino. Just as soon as it supports _________ [fancy Mac feature that nobody uses] and has a better user interface than Mac OS _________ [6, 7, 8, 9, X]. Watch out, Steve, you're going to lose a _________ [number > 10] year Apple loyalist!
sulli
RTFJ.
Apple will never sell a computer for $500 in order to gain marketshare. That would make too much sense.
MacCentral:
Keynote
Mac OS X.I
iDVD 2
New iMacs
New G4s
New Apple Stores
The Register:
Hardware
Software
News.Com
Macintouch
Low End Mac
And lastly:
Apple's Official News
--Volrath50
That tells me only one thing: Wall Street is completely irrational.
Okay, two things: Wall Street is completely irrational and the success of a company should never be judged by its current stock price.
There are no apps (unless you count the crash test dummy betas)
Um, VPC is almost ready, the preview is downloadable today (very important for me), the new Illustrator is very cool as well as the web integration of Quark totally rocks, WCIII is on shedule for simultaneous release, Word looks good. Even if these don't ship today, at least they are progressed far enough that they look very good in a presentation. I'm pretty happy with the software announcements so far.
On the hardware side, one big YAWN! Speed bumped PowerMac G4s that you can't order and receive for another month. Nothing new in the notebook area and the iMacs are getting pretty lame -- only a RAM boost and a price increase
Well, you are wrong. Plain and simple.
I'm dissapointed that UMA 2 with DDR didn't make it but the high end mac is now the lowest model, and the dual 800MHz model is a huge jump over a single 733MHz at the top of the line.
Not shipping? Um, did you watch the same keynote? 733 and 867 ship today... dual 800's in a couple weeks (august).
Now as for you claim of increased prices (the bit you are truely wrong about), I told the boss to hold off on buying 4 Macs till the conference. For $300 LESS per machine we now get 200MHz faster processor, double the memory, and a CDR/DVD drive instead of a regular DVD. We even get a free inkjet printer with every machine... And this is more expensive in what way?
The really lame part of the hardware demo was Apple's hardware guru telling us, "Mhz doesn't matter" /. ? I thought this site was for tech people.
Why do you bother reading
Since when has MHz been a good indicator of overall performance? What's faster, a 1GHz Athlon or a 1GHz PIII? What's faster, a 1.2 GHz Athlon or a 1.5 GHz P4? (in almost every benchmark the Athlon is faster). Now for different instruction sets, what's faster... a 800 MHz 21364 Alpha, a 1GHz PIII, or a 1.8 GHz Pentium IV? The Alpha's FP performance smokes the other chips. The SpecFP scores for the new Alphas are truely staggering, so much so that Intel feels the need to kill them off within the next couple years, hence the buyout of the Alpha from Compaq.
Is is so hard to believe that the G4, with Altivec and a short pipeline can't outperform a chip clocked twice as fast in A/V and compression benchmarks? Especially when the opponent is routinely smoked by other i386 chips that are 50-60% slower in clock speed? Do you deny that a 20 stage pipeline is little more than a 'trick' to push clock speeds up? Why not crank up the core voltage too and just ship them overclocked from the factory (I think they did this too... or was that AMD... might have been the failed 1.13 GHz P3... someone tried it).
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
Um, software companies can't magically have their products finish development on the same day. It just doesn't work that way. I consider a product annoucement that is within a couple weeks to be a release when it's at an event such as this.
Not wanting to spend too much time, here is what I've found in just about 2 minutes.
If they are planning release dates a month or less in the future, they are probably in Final Candidate state... they still need time to press and ship CDs after all.
I'm sure I could find more if I had more time... More vendors will make their announcements over the course of the show anyway.
2) Try to go to the Apple Store, order a new PowerMac G4 and have it delivered this month. ;-) To be fair, I did go back and try the 867 and it did list 3-4 weeks ship time. I _believe_ this to be an error since that would push it's ship time back to the same frame as the Dual 800. Jobs made a point to indicate that the low and middle would ship now, and the dual in August.
I actually did. The ship date for the 733 model is 2 days! Not too bad if you ask me. That would be this month by the way.
I wouldn't be suprised if those ship times are based on how long it actually takes to ships a product. Since the 733 has been shipping, it would have an accurate figure (e.g. SAP queries the order database to make an estimate on the last weeks orders and posts that to the Apple Store page...). Since the 867 was just announced, there can't be an accurate ship time since they haven't shipped one yet. I would _guess_ that the ship time on the middle model will change drasticly within a week. Call Apple and ask if you need to know for sure.
3) As much as I would like to think the short pipeline in my Dual 500 G4 makes my machine fast, outside of Photoshop and Media Cleaner Pro, I do not feel like I am driving a HotRod compared to a 1Ghz+ x86 box.
This probably has something to do with the slow Aqua interface (poor finder performance). OSX 10.1 should fix this... this is a software issue, not a hardware issue. The fact that these machines DO routinely trounce much higher clocked x86 machines in A/V benchmarks, and in apache benchmarks (for Darwin running Apache, not for OSX) goes to show that the claims of Apple, though skewed tword Apple's core customers tasks, are valid. (wow, nice run on sentence huh?). You original assertion was that the "MHz doesn't matter" thing was dumb. I still claim that it is an important point, supported by many different platforms (Alpha's are good examples, though I don't consider the G4 an Alpha killer by any means).
I'm not feeling witty so bite me