Macworld Keynote
Macworld Keynote
Live Report from Webcast. My delayed commentary is below.
Steve showed the new Apple menu, customizable windows toolbars, popup menus in the Dock, as well as improved Fonts panel. OS X will be released on Saturday, March 24 and priced at $129.
New Generation of PowerMac G4s, 4 new models, up to 733Mhz, CD-RW standard, AGP 4X, Nvidia graphics card, 5 slots, SuperDrive (CD-RW, DVD-RW) with high-end model. Prices range from $1699 to $3499. Low-end models available now, high-end models in February.
Digital Media Software
iTunes, MP3 recorder, CD ripping made easy, songs library manager with power search capabilities, drag & drop playlists, one-click burn, compatible with portable MP3 players. Internet radio channel selector.
My QuickTime Player crashed…
iTunes is free, available for download today, but only supports new SuperDrive, drivers for other CD-RW to be made available soon. The new SuperDrive can write DVDs, but encoding usually takes 25x longer than the original playback. Using the G4's AltiVec, Apple engineers were able to reduce the encoding time to just 2x.
iDVD, DVD maker software with easy to use GUI. Apple will be selling DVD-R media. 5 pack for $49.95. DVD Studio Pro. Professional DVD authoring tool, part of Final Cut Pro. Available by end of month for $995. PowerBook G4 Titanium 5.3 pounds, 500Mhz G4, 5 hours battery life, 1-inch thick, 15.2 megawide screen, DVD-ROM. $2599-$3499. In production, available by end of month.
End of broadcast
Delayed Commentary
A few hours later.
Mac OS X
They've listened to feedback, good. No ways to turn off or change Aqua, bad.
The new improvements are marginal at best. I didn't see anything that is bound to make Windows users actually want to jump ship. The clear advantage is in now in the OS architecture, not the UI.
I'm really starting to wonder if the Macintosh GUI as it stands today really has any clear advantages over Windows ME or 2k. I've been using Macs since day one, I should be biased, but I've also seen too many Windows users struggling with the Mac OS, finding it confusing and hard to use; just as I felt the first time I used a Windows machine.
Nowadays, I constantly flip-flop between OSs without even thinking about it. I use the OS which provides me the best tools for the task at hand, regardless of the OS specific UI.
Will the OS X UI be any different in the long run? Different, yes, better, I seriously doubt it.
PowerMac G4
Pricing/performance ratio is good but not great. I think I'll wait another round before getting a new desktop Mac. I'll probably end up getting a multiprocessor G4 anyway.
iTunes
I've downloaded it, and am using it right now. I might consider it as replacement for SoundJam MP Plus. Only time will tell.
iDVD
Not my thing, hopefully it'll appeal to others.
DVD Studio Pro
I'm so tired of the Pro label. Real DVD Professionals won't even look at it, they already have extremely powerful and expensive tools. At any rates, not my thing either.
PowerBook G4 Titanium
Say hi! to my next PowerBook. It's not cheaper, but a little thinner and a lot cooler than any of the competition. The fact that'll be able to run OS X doesn't hurt either. If Apple can keep up with the production, they should be able to sell them like pancakes.
Final Thoughts
It wasn't a bad presentation, Steve, but when all is said and done it felt like too little, too late.
Ask me tomorrow and I may have a completely different opinion. 