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New Apple products @ Macworld SF 2003
It's a great time to be a Mac user!! I stayed up to watch Steve Jobs' Keynote at Macworld at 1am (9am PST 7 Jan) and WOW.. what a showing. He wasn't lying when he said he had "2 Macworlds of stuff" to show.Started off with the usual stats of how sales are going and Apple market share etc, then move on to the software. Major updates on 3 of the 4 'Digital Hub' iApps, iPhoto 2, iMovie 3 and iDVD 3. iTunes unchanged but reportedly already had hidden functionality which integrates with the newly updated iApps. iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie will be available for free download later in the month but iDVD will only be available as part of the new iLife bundle which includes all 4 iApps in a shrinkwrapped box.
Next up was Final Cut Express, a small brother version of Final Cut Pro, and Keynote, a presentation software. A BIG and unexpected announcement was Safari - a 'Turbo-charged Web Browser which Steve claims is the fastest in the market, even faster than the current leader, Chimera.
Then came the hardware announcements -- introducing a new PowerBook with 17" widescreen!! HOLY COW! and it has everything but the kitchen sink. A über-cool keyboard backlight with ambient light sensor, BlueTooth and Airport Extreme built-in, Firewire 400 and 800, 2 USB ports on either side of the machine, S-video and DVI output, Audio Line-In and Headphone jack, Gigabit Ethernet, Superdrive, 1 Ghz G4 processor, 512 MB DDR SDRAM, nVidia GeForce 4 440Go graphics, 60Gb HD, and claimed 4.5 hours (more likely less than 2) on a high-tech 'Lithium Prismatic' battery.
Airport Extreme is Apple's implementation of 802.11g wireless networking, and it's backward compatible with 802.11b ('classic' Airport). The new Airport Exteme base station comes in 2 models, a 'Broadband Edition' which has just broadband ports and USB printer sharing (USB port on the ABS itself) and a 'Broadband+modem Edition' which also includes a v.92 modem and a connector for plugging in an external antenna. Firewire 800 is the long rumoured 'Firewire 2' that runs at double the speed and has a different connector. The new powerbook comes with an adapter to connect to standard Firewire 400 devices.
And then there was 'one last small thing'. ANOTHER powerbook!! The smallest full featured powerbook with a 12" LCD. Smaller than the iBook, and smaller than the Powerbook Duo from some years back even.. everything that you're used to in a Powerbook is there in a tiny package. internal combo drive, Airport Extreme ready (add USD99 for the card), 867Mhz G4 etc.
At the end of it all it left me breathless, especially the powerbooks. I SO want one.. either of them.. they are both very desirable machines.. I love my TiBook-500 but it's slowly starting to show its age, and I liked the iBook because of its small form factor, but the G3 seriously put me off cos of the work I'd be doing. Now there's the 12" PowerBook that fits the bill. But who can resist the 17" PowerBook?
It is a GREAT time to be a Mac user indeed.
Posted 8 January 2003, 10:46 AM