Updated live from the Show Floor every 2-3 minutes.
In closing, Jobs asked the audience for a round of applause for Apple’s engineers, and told attendees to go to Apple’s booth and “get (their) hands on the stuff.” Apple is touting the PowerBook G4’s 5 hour battery life as “perfect for a trip from LA to New York.” The new PowerBooks are expandable to 1 GB of RAM, leading one of the representatives of the Human Genome Project to say that the system would actually allow the team to complete their work faster. Jobs then showed a customary “variety” video showing commentary from Apple executives and other industry figureheads. Compared to the Sony Vaio, the PowerBook G4 is thinner, $50 cheaper, sports a 3″ larger screen, and is powered by a much more powerful processor. There are two new models for the PowerBook G4. Both include Rage 128 Mobility graphics and other features. The 400 Mhz model is priced at $2599, while the 500 Mhz model is priced at $3499. The systems will be shipping at the end of January. The device includes a front-mounted, slot-loading DVD drive. To introduce the new PowerBook G4, Jobs showed a new commercial. The new laptop is made out of titanium, and is one inch thick. It weighs 5.3 pounds. Apple is introducing a totally new PowerBook with “Power + Sex.” The new system sports a 500 Mhz G4 processor, a 15.2 inch screen, 5 hour battery life, AirPort, and more. “One more thing…” Jobs’ famous trademark was used to introduce the last product announcement, a new line of notebooks. “The PC is not dying… It is entering its third golden age… a digital hub.” said Jobs. Jobs also announced DVD Studio Pro, which is a complete professional DVD authoring tool. He says it “blows away” tools that cost $5000, and it is priced at $599. Apple will be selling its own line of “certified” DVD media for $10 each. iDVD has “themes” which allow you to change the interface of the DVD you are burning. Among the themes are “Road Trip,” “Chalkboard,” and more. The next component of the DVD system is called iDVD, which allows simple compilation of DVD discs for burning with the SuperDrive. Jobs says he has “dreamed” about the next announcement for several years. It is a new DVD encoding system based on software that is a “technical breakthrough.” Using the velocity engine in the G4 processor, Jobs says that encoding video information into MPEG2 format has been accelerated from 25X the content length to 2X (a 30 minute movie would take one hour to encode.) iTunes is available immediately for free download from Apple.com. It runs under Mac OS 9. Built into iTunes is a semi-psychadelic music visualizer, similar to cThuga which attempts to turn sound into a graphical representation. The visualizer drew massive cheers from the crowd. Jobs then dropped a portable MP3 player into its cradle, and dragged songs from his playlist onto the device from iTune. He also demonstrated Internet Radio, which streams songs from radio stations around the country. iTunes allows users to browse by album, artist, as well as many other categories. Like many other CD/MP3 tools, iTunes has the ability to access the CDDB database to get track titles and other information. Jobs demonstrated with a B-52s CD, which he said was being ripped at 8 times the speed other tools allow. Jobs announced a new MP3 encoding/decoding and manipulation tool called iTunes. It allows you to have libraries of music, burn CDs, rip CDs, and have playlists in one integrated application. Apple now plans to focus on audio in the same way it focused on video with the iMac DV and iMovie. Jobs then began to wax philosophical about the explosion of digital devices in today’s society, setting up an announcement regarding the iMac, which Jobs sees as the “digital hub.” Apple has cut the price of its 15″ flat panel display from $999 to $799. The new circular speakers, meanwhile, are priced at $59. Apple has introduced a new utility with the Mac OS that burns CDs one section at a time. For instance, when a blank CD is inserted, the system automatically asks the user what he or she wants to title it. Files can then be dragged and dropped to the CD in order to be burned. The new CD/DVD drives will be manufactured by Pioneer, and be called the “SuperDrive.” It will be bundled with every 733 Mhz Power Mac G4. The new systems will include the option for drives that have the ability to read and write both CDs and DVDs, allowing users the ability to burn DVDs that can be played in consumer DVD players. The new systems will be in standard single processor configurations ranging from 466 Mhz to to 733 Mhz. Prices range from $1699 to $3499. Answering many graphics users’ prayers, Jobs unveiled new Power Mac G4 systems with five full PCI slots. Mac OS X will be available Saturday, March 24 in stores, claimed Jobs. “Price: $129.” Mac OS X will be pre-loaded as the default OS in July. A representative from Alias Wavefront says that although Mya requires a ton of processing power, Mac OS X and the G4 processor offer the perfect combination for optimum performance of the application. Most of the movies that won awards for special effects last year used Mya. Alias Wavefront Mya was then demonstrated running under Mac OS X, an application that is actually larger than the OS itself. Jobs then began to discuss Carbonized and Cocoa based applications, which he says there are currently 450 developers committed to, representing more than 1200 products. He says hundreds will come out this Spring. Macworld July will be the “come-out” party. New toolbars are much smaller and completely customizable. Mac OS X has the ability to work similarly to the old Finder, opening new windows whenever a new file is acccessed. The “dock” can interact completely with applications. Jobs showed a movie playing in QuickTime, which was represented with a preview playing live in the dock. Steve Jobs began by introducing some of the interface elemnets of Mac OS X, including a detailed presentation of the “dock” as well as the new “save” dialog box.