Home • ThinkDifferentStore • MacBoards • Advertising • RSS Syndication • Newsletter • Contact

Jobs began the keynote with news of more Apple retail store openings. Four more stores will be launched in August at Dallas, Texas (Mall of America), Minneapolis, Minnesota, Chicago, Illinois (Woodfield Mall), and Boston, Massachusetts. There will be 25 retail stores by the year end 2001.

Turning to OS X, Jobs noted that it has been 116 days since Mac OS X has been released, and Apple is viewing the OS X launch as a one year process. There are now more than 1,000 Mac OS X applications with more coming, such as Microsoft Office, which Kevin Brown from the MS Mac Business Unit came on stage to demonstrate, noting that the MBU wants Office for X to have no compromises and be fully native to Mac OS X. To wit: 700 toolbar items and 800+ dialog boxes have been redesigned to harmonize with Aqua. Excel for X will have photo-realistic tabs. Brown said Excel X will be the best version of Excel ever shipped for any platform.

Next up was Adobe rep. Shantanu Narayen who noted that we are now on the cusp of the third generation of personal computer -- the '80s had desktop publishing -- the 90s introduced Web publishing, now in the '00s network publishing will allow access to content any time, anywhere on any device.

talked about how Adobe is porting their apps to OS X and demoed the X version of Illustrator, which launches twice as fast under Mac OS X, as well as GoLive and InDesign. Said that Botticelli would be using InDesign to create Venus, were he alive today.

Quark's Sr. Product Manager for XPress Brett Mueller, followed Narayen, showing off version 5.x running on the 5.0 code base. Mueller says Quark 5 is great for both the print and web.

On to FileMaker's Dominique Goupil, who noted that FM had today shipped 50 thousand copies of FileMaker 5.5 for OS X, which runs every FileMaker solution for OS 9. FileMaker Server 5.5 for X will ship July 30 as a Cocoa application. By fall 2001, 100% of FileMakers products will be Mac OS X native.

Connectix's Kurt Schmucker came on next to discuss Virtual PC. A VirtualPC "test drive" for Mac OS X is being offered today as a free download for owners of VPC 4.0. VPC for X can boot WinNT, WinME, and WinXP.

Then it was IBM's Toby Maners' turn, "with something I think you're really going to like." (and something I've personally been eagerly awaiting) -- ViaVoice for Mac OS X, which features more customization, an Aqua interface, optimized for G4 and dual processors., plus (finally!) the ability to transcribe speech into virtually application with text fields. VV X was demoed live with text to speech into OS X's Mail.app with no errors. ViaVoice for X will be available later this year.

Up next: Michael Ross, the publisher of World Book for OS X. Steve Jobs says WB has an "amazing" product -- the 2002 version of World Book, which included multimedia options and features optimized for X; users' choice of background music; over 25,000 articles; fully searchable.

On to games. First Frank Pearce, co-founder of Blizzard, who allowed that "Mac gamers have always been a priority for us." Next winter Blizzard will release Warcraft III for Mac OS X in a worldwide cross-platform release.

Aspyr with Tony Hawk 2 for Mac OS X, plus Tomb Raider, Madden, The Sims. These are shipping now with OS 9/X in the same box.

Then Alias Wavefront with Maya. Today is the official release date for Maya for X.

Back to Mr. Jobs, who noted that there have been four updates to Mac OS X already, with 300,000 downloads of 10.0.5. Jobs then announced the first major update to OS X: version 10.1, which features more speed, with faster resizing, menus, application launches, faster launches; a movable dock, improved finder and more personalization, DVD playback, support for CD burning

in the finder, more digital cameras supported, over 200 PostScript printers, AFP servers over AppleTalk, and much better plug & play with USB printers, a built in SMB client, webDAV support (iDisk), and AirPort base station administration.

Jobs demoed how much faster OS X 10.1 is on stage. You can now view modem connection info and options in a menu, along with battery information, airport information, and volume options. Small flap as the DVD playback demo crashed on first attempt. Burned a CD from the desktop. There is now a burn button in the toolbar.

On to hardware:

Notebooks were dispensed with quickly -- no new hardware announcements. No speed-bumped TiBooks, colored iBooks, or "Son of Pismo."

Jobs noted that 182,000 iBooks have been shipped in two months, a rate of sales that stand to make it the best-selling Mac portable ever if it can be sustained. Apple is still not able to meet retail demand for the new iBook. Not much point in making changes to goose sales yet, as I predicted.

"We have never had a notebook lineup get these kind of reviews," says Steve.

On to the iMac. The wallpaper iMacs are gone! The wallpaper iMacs are Gone! Did I say that the wallpaper iMacs are gone? Hallelujah! Not only that, my favorite iMac "color" of all time, Snow, is back to replace them, along with Indigo and Graphite, which continue.

No flat screen iMacs yet though. There is a speed bump to 500, 600, and 700 MHz configurations, with 128 MB of RAM in the low end machine; 256 MB in the upscale models. There are 20, 40, and 60 gig hard drives respectively, and CD-RW on all units, with price points of $999, $1299, and $1499.

The PowerMac G4 second generation, code named QuickSilver, has the same case with more of an iBook/TiBook look, and the 733 MHz unit is now the entry level, with a mid-range machine at 867 MHz with a 2MB L3 cache, and the high-end unit being a dual 800 MHz with dual 2MB L3 cache. 5 slots, AGp 4x, FireWire, and 3 drive bays. RAM configs. are 128 MB in the two lower models, 256 in the duallie, with 40, 60, and 80 GB hard drives. The two lower end machines come with GeForce2 graphics cards, and there is a dual display card in the dual 800 MHz model with VGA and ADC connectors. The 733 MHz machine has a CD-RW drive with, SuperDrives in the mid and high end units

Price points: $1699, $2499 and $3499. The two lower-end machines are available now. The DP 800 comes in a month's time.

There was the obligatory bake-off between a 867 MHz G4 and a 1.7 GHz Pentium IV. The Mac of course wins at a walk. Yawn. Apple's John Rubenstein trundles out to explain that MHz isn't all that matters and that not all MHz are created equal. We still need faster PPCs, guys.

On to Studio Displays. displays. The 22" Cinema Display has been reduced to $2500 and the 15" is $599 - no change.

"One last thing?"

No earth shattering excitement this time.

iDVD - one in four households will have a DVD player by the end of the year. With iDVD 2.0 You can now put video on the backgrounds and buttons. There are new themes, soundtrack in slideshows, background encoding, up to 90 minutes of video, runs on Mac OS X. To ship in September as a free upgrade.

That's all folks.

Charles W. Moore

.