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Apple Reveals Mac OS X 10.2, 17" iMac, Windows iPod
The Address Book is now system-wide, accessible from many applications, and even has Bluetooth integration. Jobs dialed his cell phone via Address Book, and then when someone called him back on that phone, the computer popped up with the caller's name in Address Book. He had the option to pick up the phone or reply with a short text message.
iSync is a new system for synching your contacts and calendars with GPRS cell phones, Palms, and iPods; so Palms and cell phones are now a part of the digital hub. The iSync program shows you connected devices, and allows configuration of what to sync, and when. The demo showed a complete sync of an address book on the computer to the cell phone, again over Bluetooth. iSync will also allow integration with .mac to update your contacts and calendars between multiple computers, and will be available as a free download in September.
The Mail app now has much better searching and spam filtering, and inline QuickTime (no, that won't be abused ...).
Rendezvous will allow such things as automatic accessing of other's playlists in iTunes, accessing USB printers on the network, and more, with "zero configuration" (I hope there is some configuration, so I can opt in or out of such things). Epson, HP, and Lexmark will have Rendezvous-compatible printers. Jobs didn't mention any way to share USB printers between Mac OS and Mac OS X.
iChat, the new instant messaging program, and iCal, the new shared calendar program, can work with the $100-per-year .mac subscription, or with the free AOL IM account and any web server. iChat will use Rendezvous for finding local users, and shared calendars can be sent via iChat or mail. iCal will ship in September, as a free download.
Sherlock 3 has been completely rewritten, using Internet services (SOAP? XML-RPC?) instead of trying to parse HTML. The demo showed movie listings with embedded trailers, eBay searches with intelligently organized information and pictures, Google image searching, and a Yellow Pages search that knows your ZIP code and sorts by distance, and shows directions and maps.
iTunes 3 is out today, with new features such as rating songs, keeping track of how often songs are played, playing back all songs at the same volume, integration with audible.com, and "Smart Playlists" with rulesets so they are automatically populated (e.g., "25 most played songs", or "500 MB of songs where playcount is 0", to play songs you've never listened to). It is only available for Mac OS X, and requires registration with an email address.
For the iPod, Apple lowered prices on the 5GB and 10GB models ($299, $399), and introduced a 20GB model ($499). The 10GB and 20GB have a solid state scroll wheel, a door to protect the FireWire port, a remote control, and a case. The playlist counts, Smart Playlists, and audible.com integration sync between the iPod and iTunes. Sound volume check has also been added to the iPod. The new 10GB model is 7.692 percent thinner than the previous version.
Also added to the iPod, in addition to the contacts, is calendars, synched with iCal, so it can really act as a PDA for most people. Jobs also announced Windows versions of iPod, synching with musicmatch and including a FireWire 6-to-4 pin cable.
The new iMac has a 17" widescreen display at 1440x900, with an NVIDIA GeForce4 MX, G4/800, and 80GB hard drive.
Jobs also noted that there are 2.5 million Mac OS X users, that 77 percent of owners of new Macs keep Mac OS X as the primary OS, and that they estimate there will be 5 million Mac OS X users by the end of the year, representing 20% of all Mac users using the new OS in the first 24 months.
Apple showed some new ads in the "Switch" campaign, including a student who lost her paper on Windows, a student whose CDs get messed up in his bag (although they didn't point out that he can use iPod under Windows now), and a comedian who ended his commercial with, "My name is Will Ferrell ... and I'm a porn actor."
"That's less than $1 for each major feature," he quipped."
Bah, I can get Windows XP for only $99 and get thousands of bugs^H^H^H^Hfeatures for my money!
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iI ithink ithat ithey iare itaking ithis i'i' inaming ithing ito ifar.
OS 10.1.5
PowerBook G4
Everything Configured correctly.
Still have the beachball.
Quietly, I weep.
I think I see a trend forming here. The 16:10 "Golden Ratio" iMac screen and the $100 per year "Golden Shower" .Mac services.
Take a black felt-tip marker and carefully ink out the lower 90 pixels of you 17" iMac monitor. This will give you a 16:9 ratio, which matches HDTV!
you make some very good points.
-braxton
iWant to iGet iMyself iOne of iThose iNew 17" iMacs.
just gnot like gnu or gnome and most certainly knot like kde kdesktop which is trying to konquery the world as well.
:) heck, i could still use my 486 if i wanted to, we just got suckered into this performance/spec/mhz war.
everything is drawn out in the pc world
if it isn't one thing it is another
The main thing, however, is the use of the email address.
Let me get this straight...you got a free email address, switched all your friends and family and mailing lists over to that address, and now you're upset that it's going away? Why did you switch them all over to that address in the first place? If you aren't willing to pay for and use an email account, then that's the risk you take. As Jobs said in the keynote, things are a lot different now than they were a year ago. The free email addresses now cost money, and no one can just afford to give them away. As I see it, you built your life on this house of cards, and now you're upset that you have to pay someone so it won't fall down. I'm sorry, but Apple can't be expected to just give things away indefinitely.
Then I started using it, and got fully hooked by the bundled apps. When I bought it, it was all "self-contained". I didn't need to go out and buy *anything*, which is the only reason I could justify spending CAN$2500 on the "budget" notebook.
Guess what? Your iBook is still self-contained! You don't need to buy anything to keep using it! The mac.com email address is something external to the iBook, not part of the iBook. And no one is forcing you to upgrade to 10.2 if you don't want to. But if you do, you will get a whole bunch of new features that will make your life easier. In fact, you know this already, because you talked about how great the features were when you bought your new iBook! So, in short, you're complaining because a company has proven to you that they are very good at making applications that you use and enjoy, and now they are making more applications that you will probably use and enjoy, and they would like to charge you a nominal fee for the work they put into those applications. Pardon me if I'm not welling up with tears of sympathy.
It is a great operating system, on very cool hardware, but to me it just isn't worth what they want me to pay for it. The reason I'm bitter is that they've made me discover that after I started paying for it.
When you bought the computer, you didn't realize that companies charge for substantial operating system updates? Maybe you should stick with simpler devices that don't force you into such dilemmas. For example, you could just buy a car...wait, just as a warning: You do realize that you will have to pay for gas and oil and service for the car, don't you? Don't want to you get caught unawares and get all upset.