Well, as you probably guessed there was no connectivity in the main hall,
but we're out now and plugged in.
I managed to get a seat 11 rows from the front pretty much in the centre of
the hall. Amazing experience. Very fun and an absolute confirmation that
Apple is continuing to fire on all four cylinders and excelling themselves
time and time again.
Speaking of Time Machine - that is going to be one serious stand-out feature
for everybody and of course its implementation just blew us all away.
Sitting in the audience as the roars of laughter and applause surged around
was remarkable.
Apple was having a lot more fun at Microsoft's expense comparing the copycat
features of Vista to Tiger and then demonstrating some absolutely
outstanding new features of Leopard.
Here's a very rough outline of some of the things that struck me through the
session (when I wasn't so totally wrapped up in the RDF that I forgot to
write anything!)
Mac Pro
G5 vs Xeon Quad
1.33 GHz Front side bus
16GB RAM
4 HD bays
2 TB of storage
2 USB fw800 400
4 PCI slots
Double-wide graphics slot
Snap in drive bays
The base model comes in US$1000 cheaper than a Dell with exactly the same
configuration.
Quad Xeon chips
1GB RAM
250GB HD
Nvidia geForce 7300GT, 256MB
$2499
Xserve
Quad Xeon 2GHz to 3GHz
5.4x faster
lights out management
dual redundant power supplies
$2999 ($100 dollars cheaper than the old Xserve and far cheaper than
similarly condigured Dell Xeon Server)
Delivery October
OS X
19 million OS X active users
Tiger best selling Apple software product ever
Intel OS X consists of 86 million lines of source code
Vista Comparison showing how MS has ripped off not just some of the
features, but the look and colours of Tiger software. Very funny
presentation by Bertrand Serlet.
Leopard
Full 64bit support of not just the bottom Unix layer of OS X but also for
Carbon & Cocoa right up to the graphical user interface.
Totally 32bit compatible without any translation or emulation. 32bit apps
can run alongside 64bits.
Time Machine backup & retrieval to any external hard disk or server.
fantastic way of zooming through your history of any folder or app to
pick a time say a day or two ago or a month back when a doc was in a certain
form. Beautiful 3D time machine interface with animated stars in the
background background etc. typical gorgeous Apple design.
If your hard disk dies, just go buy a new one, plug it in and in a short
while everything is restored (docs, apps, system stuff) and you can carry on
working.
Spaces virtual desktops done right - hurrah! Drag and drop apps from one
virtual space to another in an Expose like display of the spaces.
Spotlight search other Macs, servers
Advanced search Boolean etc
Application launcher like Quicksilver
Recent items pre-populate the Spotlight window
Core Animation
Higher production values (time machines uses it)
Universal access
Voiceover advances - much better voice than Tiger or Vista. Very good
at playing back at a fast rate. Huge advance.
Braille support
Close captioning in QT
Faster & better navigation
Apple Mail
Stationary - add templates like iWeb to email messages to drag
and drop photos etc into your email messages
Notes - very handy notes feature.
Todos - Any text can be selected and turned into a ToDo item.
Any app can address the ToDo service - for example integration with iCal
etc.
Dashboard
Dashcode
design, develop and debug Dashboard Wigets
Templates with javascript, RSS, podcasts, images
Graphical tool for HTML and CSS
Parts library search fields buttons controls
Javascript editor and debugger (breakpoints etc)
End user:
Web Clip
Turn any part of any web page into a little
re-sizable widget by dragging a web page around under a little widget that
can capture whatever part of a web page you want and turn it into a live
widget. Great for turning a small section of an Ebay auction into a widget
you can monitor live.
iChat
Theatre
Present iPhoto slide shows or keynote presentations in a 3D
interface alongside your video conference. Similar 3D interface that you
get when doing multi-party video conferences.
Backdrops
Leopard
Delivery in Aussie Autumn.
And we're all getting a developer preview copy of Leopard at the conference.
Yummy. :-)
-Mart
--------------------------------------
Martin Hill
email: mart "at" ozmac.com
homepages: http://mart.ozmac.com
Mb: 0417-967-969 hm: (08)9314-5242
