Apple unveils Intel-based Macs (and more)

When Steve Jobs walked on stage, the applause was deafening, a sure sign that many of these were newbies who had never sat through 45 minutes of a bladder bursting GarageBand demo featuring John Mayer. However, before the software demo-torture—and more importantly hardware—appeared, there would be a "great year" recap. Steve Jobs began the 2006 Keynote talking about how great a year Apple Computer had, mostly selling things that were not computers.

Apple opened up something like a million stores, or 135 total, and they will open more in 2006, with 26 million visitors during the holidays, a US$ 5.7 billion quarter. There will be more stores too, including stores in places the average American high-school graduate could not find on a globe, places in far away countries where they may not speak English, but where the universal language of money is understood.

iPod

The "best" music players in the world were then fawned upon. Apple sold 14 million iPods in the holiday quarter and has sold 42 million since 2001, so many that the axis of the Earth could even tilt on its axis. More than 850 million songs have been sold, and sales continue at a 3 million per day pace. According to Jobs, the iTunes Music Store holds 83 percent of the market.

More than 8 million downloads of video content taken place. New content includes old Saturday Night Live sketches.  A remote and FM tuner was introduced for US$49, one that includes a snazzy little station interface when using the radio. The iPod will now offer "integration" with 40 percent of the cars sold in the US, but that is not the same thing as offering iPod-only integration. Steve then showed the new iPod featuring Winston Marseliis, Jazz, and the color blue.

Aperture

Steven then said, "it's Macworld, and were are going to spend the rest of the time talking about the Mac." Actually, software came first. A longish infomercial for Aperture played, featuring photographers raving about the product—but nobody from Ars Technica. Unsurprisingly, the touchy issue of destructive nondestructive editing and abysmal performance was mentioned.  Interestingly, all the photographers were male, the last line being, "Stanely Kubrick would be jealous." I have no idea what that means.

Mac OS X 10.4.4 and iApps

Bizarrely, widgets were the segue into OS X, 10.4.4, which will be available today.  More than 1,500 widgets are also available, with Apple announcing new ones for Google, Address Book, Calendar, Ski Report, White Pages, ESPN, and Suicide Girls—er, wait, not the last.  Then came iLife 06 and iWork 06. Proving that innovation is a two-way street, Apple has once again "borrowed" ideas from Microsoft, not in terms of software, but in the concept of years as version numbers and of yearly software composed of largely incremental upgrades.

The new version of iLife will be US$79, but installed for free on new Macs. iLife '06 consists of a universal binary, and is even more heavily integrated with .Mac than a stockholder might dream.

iPhoto

The newer version of iPhoto will have "incredible speed," which would be a big improvement over "churning butter speed" in previous versions, as well as a 250,000 photo limit. There will be full-screen editing with translucent tools and "one click" effects, or filters. All new cards, calendars, and books with "even better" printing and color will be available for purchase. A new feature, Photocasting, automatically adds pictures to .Mac—complete with RSS feeds—while simultaneously taking marketshare from Flickr (or so Apple hopes). A longish iPhoto demo followed, with most of the audience looking at the new icon in the Dock for iWeb.

iMovie

Last year, HD was big in iMovie, if not with the general public. This year's new improvement is animated themes, which could be described as clip art for movies. The movie titles have animated transitions and menus.  It's entertaining for the first few minutes—possible motion sickness not withstanding—but then you realize you are watching home movies again and you want to die. Other features include multiple open projects, easier iPod integration, and plenty of eye-candy.

iDVD

Streamlining iDVD further, there is now "magic" DVD creation, which are not DVDs of birthday parties that are worth viewing, but faster and easier production of content that makes people bleed from the eyes.  Users can also now make widescreen DVDs, all with new themes and slideshows.  Finally, Apple has decided to support third-party burners, at which time Hell immediately froze over. Again.

GarageBand

It's now about talking with the Podcast Studio, a complete end-to-end system for annoying the hell out of people with your voice.  Steve made a joke podcast on stage about a "super secret Apple rumors," but made a mistake that then played the podcast backwards. It said, "ThinkSecret is dead," and then began to read from a lawsuit text.  Other podcasting functionality lets you mix tracks of voice and music, as well as photos, "artwork tracks." The ability to use iChat integration for remote interviews is also there. Other new GarageBand features includes 200 free sound effects, 100 royalty-free jingles, and another Jam Pack, World Music, was announced. 

iWeb

In light of Apple's recent release of iTunes 6 five weeks after iTunes 5, it's somewhat surprising that iTunes N+1 was not released, but then it is iLife 06 anyway.  This cleared the way for iWeb.

Setting a new record for destroying competition from third-party developers, Steve showed off iWeb. The website creation tool known is designed with ease of use in mind, and it will compete directly with the just-announced Sandvox, a website creation tool designed with ease of use in mind. Anyone who remembers the internecine Mac user fight over whether Sherlock stole from Watson, or vice versa, will remember Karelia Software, also known by some as one of Apple's unpaid R&D groups. 

Well, the Curse of Karelia has struck again, because iWeb is a mouthwatering mix of  rich drag-and-drop, textured templates—and it's acronym free! HTML need not apply (but it can be used) and even if iWeb has only 80 percent of the feature set of Sandvox, it will come with every new Mac as part of the ever-assimiliating iBorg, er iLife, Suite. According to Steve, you can share all your iLife with anyone who is interested using iWeb, including stalkers. Choose a theme, use the iLife Media Browser to select content, type your blog entry or add a podcast, "push one button," and it's automatically uploaded to .Mac.

iWork

Last year, Apple introduced an office/productivity "suite" composed of two products, the now superseded iWork 05, which was composed of Keynote, presentation software that Steve Jobs actually uses, and Pages, a word processor that nobody actually uses. At the time it was feared by some that Microsoft might halt development of Office in response, possibly putting Apple Computer in danger of going out of business. In reality, iWork, and specifically Pages, hasn't even been able to put third-party Mac word processors out of business. Obviously hurrying to get to the hardware, Steve glossed over iWork 06—no "Numbers," "Cell," or "Abacus" spreadsheet included.  There are 3D charts, reflection effects, free-form shapes and masks, tables with calculations—not a spreadsheet—and new image-editing features.  The price remains the same, and iWork 06 will be a Universal Binary, and included as a 30-day trial on all new Macs.

Get to the hardware already!

Finally, Steve got to the hardware, intoning, "We have had a really good year." As far as the eye can see, there appear to be quarters in which at least a million Macs will be sold, and just over the horizon is Intel—and then it changed to an Event Horizon and the "June of 06" became now. Paul Otellini was sucked into the RDF and clean-room bunnysuit, showing up on stage as the crowd reached a frenzy of excitement, and possibly a few seizures.  The marriage—some say shotgun—was consumated less than a year ago, with over a thousand people working at Intel on the Apple Project.  "Don't be encumbered by history, go out and create something wonderful," quote Paul.  Steve replied, "We want to make the best personal computers in the world, which is why we chose Intel." Gangster-slap to IBM and Freescale.

Core Duo iMac

Stating Apple was, "a little ahead of schedule," Steve rolled out the Core Duo iMac, same size, design, great features, and price, but a brand-spank-my-FSB new chipset and CPU.  Sloughing off years of Photoshop bake-offs and benchmark demons like a snake does its skin, Steve declared the Core Duo iMac "2-3X faster than the iMac G5."  The new, bestest benchmark, SPEC, was trotted out, proving the only thing faster than the new iMac is the about-face of a CEO.

Steve then revealed he was using a Core Duo iMac for all the demos, and then he talked about software. Quark will have Quark Express as a universal binary for anyone who hasn't dumped them for Indesign yet. Roz Ho of Microsoft's Mac BU came out, reiterating Microsoft's support for the Mac for at least five more years, which means the Universal Binary will of Mac Office will probably make it just under the wire—no timeline was given.

The obligatory ad for the new iMac was shown, and it was hilarious, setting Intel "free" from the "dulll little tasks of the PC world." It will have the heads of Apple haters exploding like firecrackers on this, our Inteldepence Day.

iMac tech specs:

• Intel Core Duo CPU running at 1.83GHz (T2400) or 2.0GHz (T2500)
• 2MB shared L2 cache at full CPU speed
• 667MHz FSB
• 512MB of PC2-5300 (667MHz) DDR2 SDRAM (expandable to 2GB)
• 160GB or 250GB 7200rpm SATA drive
• 8x SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• Built-in 802.11g, Bluetooth, 10/100/1000 BaseT; USB modem sold separately
• ATI Radeon X1600 PCIe graphics card, 128MB (monitor spanning supported)
• Mini DVI output port
• Built-in iSight
• 2 Firewire 400 ports
• 3 USB 2.0 ports, 2 USB 1.1 ports on keyboard
• 20" LCD (1680x1050) or 17" LCD (1440x900)

One More Thing

Every heart was atremble as the old warhorse PowerBook G4, the first of the best in 2001, the last of the last in 2005, flashed on the screen, and like a Phoenix it did not die but was reborn.

The PowerBook G4 is dead!  Long live the MacBook Pro.

"We're kind of done with Power," Steve said, trotting out the performance per watt graphic and a promise of 4-5X better performance than the PowerBook G4.  The new machines will include an LCD as "bright as a Cinema Dispay, and iSight camera built-in, for "video conferencing right out of the box," and a freeze on sales to corporations with no camera policies.  The Apple Remote and Front Row will be included, and a new safety feature, a magnetic power cord adapter called the MagSafe for quick release upon tripping over the cord. However, Firewire 800 is gone: there's just USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 now. The MacBook Pro is 1 inch thin and 5.6 pounds light, priced at US$1999 for 1.67GHz model and US$2499 for a 1.83GHz model.

MacBook Pro tech specs:

• Intel Core Duo CPU running at 1.67GHz (Core Duo T2300) or 1.83GHz (Core Duo T2400)
• 2MB shared L2 cache at full CPU speed
• 667MHz FSB
• 512MB or 1GB of PC2-5300 (667MHz) DDR2 SDRAM (expandable to 2GB)
• 80GB or 100GB 5400rpm SATA drive
• 4x SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• Built-in 802.11g, Bluetooth, 10/100/1000 BaseT
• ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 PCIe graphics card, 128MB or 256MB
• DVI output port
• Built-in iSight
• 1 Firewire 400 port
• 2 USB 2.0 ports
• ExpressCard/34 slot
• 15.4" LCD (1440x900)
• 1.0" x 14.1" x 9.6", 5.6lb

There was then applause, applause for the Apple Computer team, for Intel, for living, and just like that all the nightmares were banished, if not a few ghosts. They had been invisible in the other-wordly light of the RDF, so bright was the iPod Halo Effect over Steve's head. But in the post-orgasmic denouement of the Keynote's the phantoms could at last be seen lined up against the walls, the famous and the anonymous, the latest of the late being Altivec. There was the one-button mouse. There was Steve Wozniak—who isn't dead but sometimes says really weird things like a ghost might—holding an Apple II. The entire Apple Human Interface Group was accounted for—except for Tog whose ghost is haunting his website. A very bitter platinum spirit with a gray beard bemoaned the loss of "Teh Snappy" and the spatial Finder. There were more, but the crowd clawing and fighting their way onto the Expo floor to fawn at Intel Inside never saw them. In this, the thirtieth year of Apple Computer, with a future as bright and green as a springtime of money, a moment of silence was in order... Now get the hell out my way and let me have my MacBook Pro!