Now that the excitement of the keynote has subsided and Expo’s winding down, you may be wondering exactly what happened this week, and how you can catch up. Never fear — we’ve compiled all our Expo coverage right here.
Shortly Before the Show
Macworld met with Microsoft, twenty-four hours after Monday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal carried a scathing article about software developers’ concerns over the adoption rate of Apple’s new operating system, with some of the most critical comments coming from Microsoft. But in speaking to Macworld editors Tuesday, however, Microsoft officials downplayed any disagreements with Apple and stressed that it was in the Mac business to stay. Closer to the home front, our forum posters gave their predictions.
At the Keynote: Here’s What Apple Announced
There were a number of significant software announces during the keynote. Among them: the introduction of iCal, a calendaring application with networking capabilities, and iSync, a utility that works with your computer and your iPod to flow iCal information from one Apple hardware product to the other; iTunes 3, an update to Apple’s digital-music application that now includes highly customizable playlist options; RealNetworks’ announcement that their streaming media RealPlayer would now be available for OS X users.
Two other pieces of software news likely to cause long-term ripples for Mac users were the confirmation that an updated version of OS X also known as Jaguar would be available in August, and the announcement that Apple would be retiring its free, Web-based iTools suite of services and debuting a fee-based successor called .Mac.
The big software news largely centered on two things: the iMac’s new, bigger screen and the iPod’s expanding line of digital music players. The new iMac sports a striking 1,440-by-900-pixel flat-screen display and an upgraded graphics chipset — Nvidia’s GeForce4 MX and 32MB of double-data-rate SDRAM. The iPod now comes in three sizes: the original 5GB model (now priced $100 lower at $299), an updated and streamlined 10GB version ($399), and a 20GB monster ($499).
Catch up on All the Expo News
Of course, Macworld Expo is also a prime opportunity for Mac-compatible software and hardware vendors to demonstrate or release new products. To find out who showed what, peruse the news digests from Tuesday, July 16, through Friday, July 19. Each digest goes through the days’ stories on MacCentral and Macworld.com, summarizes them, and hyerplinks to the full version. Highlights include: