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WWDC News Bits From Kenwood |
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 We'll try to keep you as up-to-date as possible as to what's going on with Steve's spiel. Refresh this page, and maybe every 5 minutes or so it'll be updated. Here goes!
12:40 - Here we sit at the Kenwood Town Centre in Cincinnati. The place is packed and standing room only (I'd guess about 40 people). We were lucky enough to be here early and get good seats as Slackin in her usual manner was mean and said we had to wait until later for food and beer. Good thinking! BTW, the guy next to us just let us know the online Apple Store is closed! Hmmmm..... ;)
12:53 - The manager just came on the PA to welcome everyone and asked that we scrunch together as well as possible so the aisles were clear as they occasionally like to sell computers to customers ;) He also said to stick around afterwards as there would be a "special announcement". Oooooo more hype!
12:58 - It is PACKED in here...maybe 60 people or more with more coming out of the woodwork. The excitement is building! At the Moscone Center it looks like a rock concert. Except that people aren't drunk, are better dressed, have laptops and they're sitting down.
1:03 - Steve is onstage. Opening statements, "So much stuff for you today...". He hypes Airport Extreme (802.11g). Apple retail, Chicago store opening this weekend. Nice pics of it. San Fran will open next spring. Tokyo store will be opening on the Ginza early next year (gives artist rendering). iPod: today Apple will ship their 1 millionth iPod. iTunes 4: sold over 5 million songs. A quick excerpt from Leno of Bin Laden doing an iPod commercial ("I Like big butts and I cannot lie"). Safari: 5 million downloads, it's a solid browser, today it will be 1.0. Safari SDK will be available for developers. End of updates.
1:11 - Mac OS X. Number of users picking up. Jaguar is over - Panther is up next. Over 100 new features in Panther. All that good old Unix stuff is in Panther - Panther is the most popular Unix-based OS. Brand-new finder. The old one was computer-centric - not user-friendly. Everything is in one column on the left, which then can go into column view. Fast searching, action button, labels, dynamic network browsing (Unix, Windows, etc.), revised open and save panels. Steve gives a demo of some of these features. Search bar is now 'active' as you type. New finder looks good!
1:19 - iDisk. Panther automatically syncs in the background.
1:20 - Expose. Solves having a bunch of windows open. He runs an AppleScript to open up a buncha crap. Whoa, reminds you of Minimize in Place...Very cool. All the windows minimize and the panels go away and there are little versions of the windows. You can set a key to do it, set a mouse button or a screen corner to do it. When you click a small minimized window, only that one and other ones for that app enlarge. It lets you assign a button to clear everything off and see the desktop. Or you can do it temporarily, to get to the desktop, get a file, then automatically come back so you can drop it in an app. U really have to see this in action, it's slick!
1:25 - FileVault. Secures your home folder - encypts/decypts files on the fly.
(Ok screw the times, I'm just listing everything! hehe)
Mail - Addresses are objects. Show external domains. Mail in threads. Safari HTML rendering. Drag'n'drop email objects. You can control-select them for someone's alternate addy. Threads: like newsgroups almost, you can have a drop-down for an email that contains all the emails in that thread.
Building in Fax to Panther - going on each print panel. Push a button and yer faxing.
Pixlet: Quicktime Codec. Studio-grade quality. A request from Pixar ("A company we like"). Film resolution quality, 48 bits/pixel source data. No noticable artifacts. Another demo using Finding Nemo. Looks pretty good at near full-screen. (It would look better except for the screen we're looking at). You can scrub thru the entire movie no problem.
Preview: fastest PDF reader in the world. Oooo a demo! He compares it to Windows Acrobat and says it blows it away. With the live demo it blazes thru 900 pages in no time. PDF's are searchable with Preview. On the fly postscript to PDF conversion. MAke your printer look like a postscript printer on a windows network
Fast user switching - "Windows beat us to it" - the only feature he could think of but Apple will catch up and make it better ;) In the upper right, he switched users and it did a 3d Keynote-like transition of the entire screen to the other user!
FontBook - Pro font management. A finder-like app for fonts mamangement, viewing, etc. Have 'sets' of fonts for certain projects you're working on.
iChat - will now be iChat AV. Audio & Video chat. "Videoconferencing for the rest of us". Just a modem needed for Audio, Broadband for Video. Demo! He calls Phil Schiller on the batphone. He actively resizes the window and it looks good. Look good at full-screen too. Phil hams it up by telling Steve to go long for a pass. Steve is now going to audio conference to Paris. High quality, lag in not noticable. But understanding the French guy is near impossible. They hang up and he calls back going to videoconference with him. Paris live - with Jean Marie near the Eiffel tower. Looks good! Now he shows off receiving a call. Incoming call from Al Gore. ( Al is a V.P. or visiting professor at UCLA.) iChat wrap-up: it'll be big for Education, Work, on the road, Family, Friends, etc. Mac to Mac only as of now, but if other "copy what we do" they'll do their best to interoperate. Free beta today, will work with Jaguar and Panther. The final 1.0 version will be included in Panther, and will be $29 for Jaguar users and an incentive for buying Panther.
Panther will be $129.
My butt hurts. Apple could've provided nicer chairs.
Steve shows off a Panther, a sleek, stealthy, black panther, and compares it to what MS is up to ----- a slow-ass fat cow.
iSight - "The eyes and ears of iChat". Full motion video. Compares it with iBot (the best up until now). iBot sits on desk, doesn't show the persons face, seems impersonal. iSight mounts right on laptops to make "that emotional connection" to people. 3 stands for top of screen mounting are included. Carrying case. (These must have been the small boxes rumor sites reported). $149. Available today. Apple is giving an iSight to all developers!!!!!!
Xcode - NEW SET OF DEVELOPER TOOLS FOR OS X. Speed is job 1. Fast compiles using GCC 3.3 compiler. Finder UI build in Xcode took 377 seconds, Codewarrior took 223. Still not tops, but MUCH better. Apple wants to be top dog, so Apple has allowed for Distributed builds. Adding one more machine to help out, and it's faster than Codewarrior. (Basically other Macs help out, like a render farm, but for compiling code). Zero Link - no link time. Predictive compile: compiles while you're editing, shortens your compile time by about half. Fix and Continue: makes changes to apps while they're running. It also sports a new interface. Demo time again! Chris Espinoza (Apple employee #8) takes the stage. Xcode is, "The best thing we've ever done in dev tools". He shows off Xcode. Has a slick interface with Safari-like bookmarks on the side and a built-in search feature. CodeWarrior-class building speed. He does on on'the'fly fix to some code for a running app.
PowerMacs
Talks about the PowerMac G5 leaked specs. "Premature specifications". "It doesn't begin to tell the tale." The world's fastest computer will be released today. It will be called the "G5". A 64-bit Processor - the world's first, and it also runs 32-bit apps. Runs at up to 2 Ghz. 1 Ghz frontside bus. Dual-processor ready.
The thing is a "floating point monster". It predicts branches! He goes on about the technical details...300 mm wafers, 130 nanometer process, etc. Talks of giant robots and eating wafers.
He brings up John Kelly from IBM to the stage. "How did we catch up and pass the competition?" They took the core of their server chips and dropped it down for use in their 64-bit consumer chip. Some geek specs here...subatomic layers in the gate or some such. IBM spend $5 billion a year in R & D. IBM has a great roadmap and a great relationship with Apple, so there's much to look forward to.
Specs include, 400Mhzh 128-bit DDR memory. AGP 8x Pro graphix. 133 Mhz PCI-x slots. Serial ATA for storage. All your Firewrie 400/800, USB 2.0, Gigabit Ethernet, etc.
Up to 8GB memory. 4X SuperDrive in all models. GeForce FX 5200 Ultrachip in low-end. Radeon 9600 Pro in high end.
Enclosure: All aluminum. Much like some rumored pictures. 4 Thermal zones with 9 fans. Independantly controlled. 35 dBA - twice as quiet as previous models. "We're the only folks that put handles on things".
3 models: 1.6 Ghz, 1.8 Ghz and dual 2 Ghz for $1999, $2399 and $2999 respectively.
"The world's fastest personal computer." Steve now does some comparisons with PC's, at least spec-wise. Sorry guys but these specs kill me so I'm not listings much here. Let's just say that Steve proves that the G5 is MUCH faster than a dual-Xeon machine.
He pulls Greg Gilley from Adobe up on stage for a bake-off. "Get a hot box!".
Greg is gone, and Phil hops on stage, for the bake-off. It's the dual 2 Ghz G5 vs. the Dual Xeon 3.x Ghz. Photoshop test. They do a test for creating a movie poster for Finding Nemo. The PC takes forever...the Mac is about 2.1 time as fast. The PC took about 30 seconds longer to finish.
Another bake-off with some rendering software (Luxology I think). The G5 outperforms the PC on the same render.
Yet another bake-off with Mathematica. Blah blah blah the G5 is good...blah blah blah....
Just got a pic of the G5 - Here.
Gernhard of eMagic comes on stage to tout the G5 as well. It's all well and good, but at this point, I could use a taco. And a beer.
Phil demos some music in CuBase comparing the G5 and the PC (It's some music from the Matrix). The PC is VERY choppy. The Mac on the other hand - smooth as silk. Very cool. It elicits a round of appluase.
Steve is back in charge for a summary of the G5. "In real world and spec test, the Mac has surpassed the PC to become the fastest computer in the world." What about the future? Within 12 months, IBM/Apple will be at 3 Ghz.
Video time! This is the part when people at Apple talk about how cool the G5 is. With some funky music from Fatboy Slim in the background. Phil, Jonathan Ive, Chris Espinoza, they all sing the praises of the G5. It's like an all-star Applefest! Ed Catmull (Pixar), Brian Peebler (Not sure), Bruce Chizen (Adobe), Ted Gray (Wolfram Research - Mathematica) all give the G5 mucho props.
Video over, Steve retakes the stage. Thanks everyone. Talks about all the recent good stuff and innovation from Apple. That's all folks!!!!!
The announcements at the local store were that if you guy a G5, you get a pro card woth certain special features (nothing really that special). Also the iSight will be available this week and they're selling old G4 towers for $1299. That's it.
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June 23 2003, 12:41 PM EDT, by
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Comments:
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| Wasabe |
6/23/03, 2:51 PM EDT |
Yep. Store is closed
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Wasabe
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6/23/03, 3:01 PM EDT |
The G5. It a beuty!
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| Wasabe |
6/23/03, 3:05 PM EDT |
Arrrrrr... I can't take it! Must... see... keynote... *cough hack.
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| Jonahan |
6/23/03, 7:05 PM EDT |
I dunno Wasabe....was anyone else severely underwhelmed by the G5's looks? Don't get me wrong the features are AMAZING, but it just looks.....I dunno, plain?
Everything else was very cool though!
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| Jonahan |
6/23/03, 7:09 PM EDT |
Plus I thought we'd get something from Apple for showing up. A shirt or poster would've been awesome, but a sticker would've done...just something, anything! A tic-tac or a jelly belly! A bad CD 'coaster' they had laying around.
Incidentally I saw a bunch of iPod shirts laying around. Do they give those out when you buy an iPod? Cuz Slackin and I didn't get one, although we bought 'em at a different store.....
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| Wasabe |
6/23/03, 7:18 PM EDT |
Ya. the g5 looks like the G4 cube. but i like it anyhow.
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| Jonathan |
6/23/03, 8:10 PM EDT |
If Jonathan Ive designed this one he's been smokin some pretty good stuff cause that's just plain fugly. I hope he handed it off to a second in command because I could have done a better job. It actually looks like the Chicago store with handles. Don't get me wrong here I want one but I'd have to stuff it under my desk so no one could see it.
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| Jedbeck |
6/23/03, 9:50 PM EDT |
I'm gonna get an iSight, pending favorable research!!! :)
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| Jonathan |
6/24/03, 7:32 PM EDT |
Btw that song was Right Here, Right now from FatBoy Slim in case you were wondering :)
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| Titom |
6/28/03, 12:16 AM EDT |
G5 .. well at least it's a very good start .. IBM yes.. but I still think we will see the G4 in the 15" powerbooks.. maybie 1.3ghz.. it's just too soon to see a G5 in a powerbook. Panther.. wow.. it's looks like a great cat..All and all .. a very good day for Apple :-)
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| OtherGuy |
7/3/03, 4:55 PM EDT |
I gotta say that I think the Kenwood store is a little on the weak side.... I mean you didn't exactly see Steve showing slides of the amazing Kenwood store. I also thought that maybe they would make a big deal with shirts, posters, wine, and cheese....yet all we got was nada! Next time I'm in Chicago I'm checking the new store out. Hopefully the Kenwood location will get more active with promotions.
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