Steve Jobs kicked off his Macworld 2003 keynote speech with a two-hour parade of products, progress, and promise. Via a satellite link from the Moscone Centre in San Franscisco to the Pompidou Centre in Paris, he unveiled an eye-catching 17-in widescreen PowerBook. He also pulled back the curtain on a snazzy compact 12-in version of the laptop. He announced some impressive-looking updates to Apple’s well-regarded iApps that will have the programs working together like an a cappella jazz quartet.
Surprising perhaps then, that most Mac evangelists went to Macworld with low expectations: Internet rumour and you should always believe everything you read on the Internet, suggested that Jobs would unveil an iPod that would play video. What we got instead was Joni Mitchell followed by Louis Armstrong’s ‘What a Wonderful World’ — it didn’t exactly put the crowd in San Francisco and Paris in a partying mood.
So what happened? Steve Jobs just went out for two and a half hours and promised two Macworld Expos’ worth of announcements. The crowd went wild, and everyone left the keynote excited about what’s ahead for the Mac platform in the coming months. Yes! Here are some other winners and losers from last month’s keynote:
Winners
Apple: Probably the biggest winner to emerge from Macworld. The company simply didn’t make one misstep during the keynote. It delivered an impressive pair of additions to its laptop line that should cement its place among the top notebook makers. With the release of Final Cut Express, it’s meeting the needs of Mac users who wanted pro-level digital-video editing tools at a more affordable price than what the company charges for Final Cut Pro.
The updates to Apple’s iApps make iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, and iTunes even more compelling. And at first glance, newcomer applications — the Web browser Safari and the presentation application Keynote appear to be promising. Short of stumbling upon a faster PowerPC processor on the drive up from Cupertino, the morning couldn’t have gone better for Jobs and Company.
KHTML: Speaking of Safari, let’s say you’re one of the folks at KDE.org. One day, you’re working on an open-source version of a promising though relatively obscure Linux Web browser. Then, you find out at Macworld that Apple has thrown the weight and expertise of its programmers behind an OS X-native Web browser that’s based on your Konqueror open-source project. Oh, and Apple’s just sent you a list of the improvements it’s made to your code.
iApps users: iTunes will integrate more smoothly into the other three programs. It will be easier to add iPhoto images to your iMovie and burn those movies using iDVD. And you don’t have to pay anything to upgrade if you don’t want to (except for the iDVD update, but then again, you always had to pay for that). There’s a bunch of iTools users who probably wish they could say the same thing.
Losers
Non-OS X-switchers: If you’re among the crowd that steadfastly refuses to dangle so much as a toe in the OS X waters, this wasn’t the keynote for you. Then again, Apple has made it perfectly clear for some time now that earlier OSes really aren’t in its plans. The new PowerBooks only boot into OS X. Keynote, Safari, and all the iApps upgrades require the new operating system. Apple continues to give users more of a reason to try OS X and less incentive to remain with a rapidly aging OS.
Quark: Keeping with a long-standing tradition of dinging developers who haven’t come out with OS X-native products during the keynote, Jobs threw an elbow in the general direction of the desktop publishing software giant. ‘The OS X migration is basically over,’ Jobs said in the OS X overview portion of his keynote. ‘We’ve got one or two laggard applications we still have to get out. We all know which one we’re talking about.’ Judging by the crowd’s reaction, it appeared that we all did.
Microsoft: The software giant insists it’s on good terms with Apple, pointing to its ‘Office Romance’ joint promotion that ran in the US and the fact that the Office v. X Test Drive will come installed on all new Macs as being signs of co-operation between the once-bitter rivals. So in Microsoft, they’re probably wondering why Apple is coming out with a presentation application — Keynote — that seems like it would compete against Microsoft PowerPoint. And Microsoft probably can’t help but feel that the introduction of Safari is a pretty good indication that Internet Explorer — the only non-Mac application to come pre-installed in the Dock — might be getting its walking papers soon.
Club Mac Ireland update
This month ClubMac, the Irish Macintosh User Group, will look at high speed Internet access by wireless as an alternative to dial-up or ADSL.
The speaker will be Charlie Ardagh of Leap Broadband. With Leap on the verge of launching an all-Dublin wireless service, the meeting promises to be fascinating. It takes place on Wednesday, February 5th in the Merrion Cricket Club, Anglesea Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. Doors open at 7:30pm Admission EUR4 for non-members, EUR1.50 for members. In March, the speaker will be Mark Rogers, managing director, Apple Computer UK & Ireland.
For details see www.clubmac.ie
28/01/2003
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