The Keynote
Steve Jobs’ keynotes are famous — and rightly so — for their embarassment of Mac-related riches. Monday morning’s was no exception.
Jobs touted Apple’s victories: the growing retail presence, revamped products like the iBook and new products like iPod. He also
pointed to OS X’s growing success in the Mac market. Then came the introductions: the latest in Apple’s multimedia products,
iPhoto;
a new iBook boasting a 14-inch screen; and finally, a
dramatically redesigned iMac. To recreate that you-are-there feeling,
read Peter Cohen’s moment-by-moment coverage.
The New iMac
Apple created a completely new iMac design boasting a flat-panel monitor and a processor upgrade (700 MHz or 800 MHz). The computer has three basic configurations — 700MHz G4 with 128MB of RAM, 700MHz G4 with 256MB of RAM, and 800MHz G4 with 128MB of RAM — will sell for anywhere from $1,299 to $1,799. For a tour of the new machine,
see Macworld’s news story.
Some Mac aficionados who were not been able to make it to the keynote got a sneak preview of the new machine
courtesy of a Time Canada article.
The New iBook
Would be iBook buyers received a triple shot of good news: prices on the lower-end 500 MHz iBooks dropped to $1299; the mid-range iBook now boasts a 600MHz processor and a DVD-CD/RW combo for $1499; finally, the high-end iBook sports a 14-inch screen, making it physically larger than the other iBooks. It will retail for $1799.
For more details, check out the Macworld article
iPhoto
Apple released iPhoto, an image-management program designed to do for digital cameras what iDVD has done for digital camcorders.
Vendor News Round-up
Adobe introduced GoLive 6 and LiveMotion 2 today. GoLive 6, a Web development and management tool, has added wireless content authoring capabilities and QuickTime 5.0 editing capabilities. LiveMotion 2, a Web graphics and Flash animation tool, rolled in JavaScript support, thus enabling graphics designers to streamline repetitive tasks.
Other vendor-related news:
MYOB demos e-business services — MYOB US, the folks behind MYOB AccountEdge, is hosting demonstrations and discussions at their Macworld Expo San Francisco booth (#4040) to show small business owners the benefits of using its recently announced eBusiness Gateway services for electronic processing of automatic payments, direct deposits, credit card processing and vendor payments.
Sustworks displaying new Mac OS X, 9 software — Sustainable Softworks (known as Sustworks, for short), developers of Internet and security software, will be discussing new products for Mac OS X and the latest version of their Mac OS 9 tools in the MacTech Central area at this week’s Macworld San Francisco.
Softmagic shipping Project-M Lite for Mac OS X — Softmagic announced today at Macworld San Francisco that it’s begun shipping Project-M Lite, a “Publish Different” desktop publishing solution that sports features such as a scalable objective-oriented environment and industry standard PDF imaging model.
SnapTalk, SnapMail showcased — Glass Bead Software is demonstrating SnapTalk and SnapMail — its proprietary chat, messaging and communication tools that require no server or Internet connection.
SynchronEyes comes into view — SMART Technologies is introducing SynchronEyes 2.0 for the Mac, a computer-lab instruction software that allows instructors to monitor and control up to 40 Mac workstations from a single computer.
Softchaos working that WorkStrip — Softchaos is presenting WorkStrip, an application designed to simplify work processes for all users by previewing files instantly, tracking files and Internet activity and gathering them into meaningful groups, for OS X.
ThinkFree Office showcased — ThinkFree Corp., a company that specializes in Web-based office productivity solutions, is showing ThinkFree Office — a Microsoft Office compatible suite of word processing, spreadsheet and presentation graphics applications. Written from the ground up in Java, the ThinkFree Office takes advantage of Mac OS X’s Aqua user interface.
DrawWell adds support for iTunes, AddressBook — DrawWell is a modular drawing, charting and graphing presentations package developed exclusively for Mac OS X that integrates with databases from FileMaker to iTunes.
HyperCard back for another expo — The folks from iHUG, the International HyperCard Users Group) are returning to Macworld San Francisco again to show support and try to keep HyperCard alive and well. You can learn more about HyperCard and iHUG at the Users Group lounge on Wednesday, Jan. 9, from 10-11am.
JobOrder goes to version 10.0 — JobOrder is targeted to design, advertising, engineering and consulting companies as a cross-platform, client-server solution for estimating, time and expense tracking, activity and resource scheduling, invoicing, accounting, and reporting. There are over 2,000 enhancements, including “major” overhauls to the analysis and display tools in version 10.
QPS unveils new burners, duplicators, drives — The company is showing off one of the first next-generation DVD+RW burner: the FireWire Que! DVDBurner+RW. QPS is also introducing its standalone 2-bay and 5-bay Que! DVD Dupe Towers. Finally, QPS is debuting its external Que! Firewire M5 Combo and RAID drives.
iListen gets update and UK English version — The Mac-only speech recognition specialists at MacSpeech are releasing iListen 1.2, the latest incarnation of their speech recognition program for Mac OS 9. iListen, which has “TalkAnywhere” technology, lets you dictate into virtually any Mac application.