Apple news
This spate of entries tonight started out as a quick note mentioning all the cool stuff that Apple announced at this morning's MacWorld Expo Keynote, but I got sidetracked into all that sf stuff.
And now I'm out of time, so I'll try and keep this brief.
I missed the Keynote; couldn't connect to the streaming video. Lots of people trying, I guess. But here's a list of the announcements:
- X11, aka the X Windowing System, for OS X. This is the windowing system used on most UNIX systems, and people have ported it to run on OS X before but this will be an official supported release from Apple, based on open-source software. It's only in beta for now, but very cool; it'll allow Mac OS X users to run a huge number of graphical applications written for UNIX.
- iPod control built into a jacket. Kinda cool, very geeky. (Um, that's not an insult.)
- Airport Extreme: a new wireless-networking system that runs five times as fast as the old AirPort (but is fully compatible with the old version). The new AirPort base station lets you adjust the antenna power, so you can limit the range of the network, if (say) you don't want your neighbors to be able to hack into it.
- Final Cut Express: a new end-user version of Final Cut Pro, the professional video-editing tool. Not of interest to me, but pretty cool.
- iLife: they're packaging new versions of iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD, plus the latest version of iTunes, into an application suite called iLife. It'll be free on new Macs, and will be sold for $50. But you'll still be able to download all but iDVD free from Apple, at least for now.
- A new presentation application called Keynote, clearly designed to compete with Microsoft's PowerPoint. Steve Jobs has been using Keynote for all his public presentations in 2002. Much excitement from those who care about such things.
- The thing I'm most excited about is Safari: Apple has created their own web browser. I figured I'd download the public beta and give it a spin, then go back to using IE5 as I've been doing since I switched to OS X—and ten minutes later I had switched over to using it as my primary browser. I've been using it all day, and it's lovely. There are a few rough edges, but mostly it just works. I like their bookmark system (which automatically imports from IE5 and presumably NS), I like their bug-reporting system (click a button to report a bug), and most of all I like the speed, which is way way faster than any other browser I've used in OS X. Fast startup, fast download and display of pages. Everyone says Opera is the fastest browser, but my experience with it has been mediocre. And Safari interoperates nicely with the OS, of course, and it's not a MS product—I admit I'm an anti-MS bigot. I don't know whether they'll charge for the final release version, but if they do, I'll buy it—and I've never paid for a browser before.
- The other most exciting pair of items are the new hardware announcements: a pair of new PowerBook G4s. One with a 17-inch screen (that's significantly bigger than the already-huge screen on my PB), and one tiny one with a 12-inch screen, that's smaller in every dimension than the iBook. The 17-inch one is a little odd: it's significantly wider, but only about 50 pixels (maybe half an inch) taller, which isn't nearly as much as I would hope for. Also, it's made from an aluminum alloy instead of titanium; someone noted that that makes it an AlBook instead of a TiBook, much less cool-sounding. I assume the aluminum is cheaper and lighter but not stronger; but I gather it's also more scratch-resistant. Anyway, I won't be in the market for a new laptop for a couple more years, so I'm pretending to ignore these new models.
And that's all for me. (Except to say: I bet Microsoft is not at all happy with Safari and Keynote. I predict that MS Office will be withdrawing Mac support at some point.)
Must go eat and edit.