Calling it the “most crash proof operating system in the world,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs in his Macworld Expo keynote today said that Mac OS X was a raging success and that over 2,500 native apps are available today.
What’s more, starting today all new Macs will boot-up in Mac OS X. Adobe and Palm reps, among others, were also on hand to talk about their OS X plans.
Jobs said that Office for X was a major step forward. Apple “is thrilled with its features and Microsoft is thrilled with its sales,” he said.
Then Shantanu Narayen, executive VP of Adobe, joined Jobs on stage. He said that the company is committed to bringing its “best of breed” applications to the next generation operating system. Acrobat Reader and Illustrator 10 are already shipping, InDesign 2.0 has previously been announced, and Mac OS X native version of GoLive and LiveMotion were announced today (see separate story). And what of Photoshop? Narayen demoed Photoshop 7.0, noting that it was “real and almost here.”
Todd Bradley, chief operating officer of Palm, came onstage next and said that Mac users were “some of Palm’s best customers.” He — aided by Ken Freeman, product manager for Palm OS — showed how Palm Desktop for Mac OS X was more “intuitive,” supporting such things as Vcard drag and drop. And hot syncing is now here for Mac OS X. A public beta is now available, though no date for a final version was announced.
Mike Evangelist, Apple’s director of marketing, then touted the features of the new Final Cut Pro 3.0, which has been Carbonized for Mac OS X. Theodore Gray, one of the founders of Wolfram Research showed off Mathematica (software for doing calculations in science, engineering, and mathematics ) adding that “everything looks better in Mac OS X” and praising its Quartz rendering engine and memory management features.
Moving on to games, Aspyr President Mike Rogers said there was never a better time to be a Mac gamer. He showed off the upcoming “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” adventure game (available in a couple of weeks) and announced that “Star Wars: Galactic Battleground” and “The Sims Hot Date” was coming to the Mac.
Finally, a “customer,” Dan Gregorie, animations supervisor of LucasFilm, came on stage, along with George Lucas (via video), talked about how the company uses Macs and such products as Maya and Adobe After Effects to “previsualize” movie scenes. The marriage of the Mac, Maya, and After Effects allowed LucasFilm to plan over 4,000 shots, Gregorie said.