SFist Tech Labs: Speculate Different
The MacWorld Expo is going on all week at Moscone Center, and there's been all kinds of speculation going on about the internets concerning what Steve Jobs was going to unveil at his opening keynote address this morning. Rumors ranged from the "definite" unveiling of a new Mac mini-based home media PC (and we chomped on that rumor like a bass), to the "unlikely" announcement of a new Apple-branded HDTV.
What actually happened was a little less earth-shattering, more a confirmation of what had already been announced. Apple's big push was the release of the first two Intel-based Macs: the iMac and the MacBook Pro. The iMac is functionally equivalent to the iMac G5 released late last year, the key difference being that it's now using the "Intel Core Duo" CPU that Apple claims is 2x faster than the iMac G5. And the PowerBook G5G4 has gone the way of the iPod mini, obseleted for the sake of consistency in the company's product line.
The comparison to last year's iPod revision seems apt, because the new MacBook Pro is a little bit slimmer and more streamlined than the PowerBook, but with more power. In terms of features, it's equivalent to the new iMac — new Intel dual core processor, built-in iSight camera, and Front Row and iLife software included. Apple's switch to Intel was driven by a need for faster and cooler processors on their laptops, and their claims for the MacBook bear that out: it's four times faster in benchmarks than the PowerBook G5G4, and it runs cooler. (Welcome news to those of us who have learned to live with painful thigh burns for the sake of using such a nice computer).
iLife, iPods, and cultish behavior after the jump. More photos available on Flickr
Apple's other main announcement was the new revision of the iLife '06 suite, but a sidetrack before we get to that. We were looking forward to going to the MacWorld Expo to get a look at the culture as much as to see the new technology. Because face it, Apple devotees have a reputation to live up to — gadget-loving, Steve Jobs-worshipping hippie art school types.
So we were a little disappointed that the crowd at MacWorld wasn't all that different from the crowd on the MUNI bus to get there. It was basically a cross-section of San Francisco, albeit skewed a bit more towards the nerd side, and with an over-representation of aging guys with goatees and earrings. We're not sure if that's because of the new dominance of the iPod market, or if everyone had fainted during the keynote at the idea of being in the same room as Jobs, but the lack of hard-line Apple cultists was a little disconcerting.
At least, until the Apple demo for iLife started on the show floor. One guy standing next to us, wearing a jacket with the old-school rainbow Apple logo on the back, was shouting out "yeah!" and clapping at announcements of scroll bars and new radio buttons. When they showed that iPhoto can now handle 250,000 pictures, the crowd clapped more appreciatively than the "Emeril Live" audience on garlic night. And when they announced that iDVD can now burn to third-party drives instead of just the Apple SuperDrive, the crowd actually cheered instead of shouting, "It's about damn time." So we were able to mock The Stepford Wives Via Cupertino with smug self-satisfaction...
...until we became part of the cult. Seriously, we'd love to be objective and cynical about a corporate announcement, but the demo of iWeb just floored us. It's the first demo we'd ever seen that actually accomplished true drag-and-drop website creation, and it looks to be perfectly integrated with the rest of iLife. It's just for personal websites, but it does incorporate blogs, photo blogs, podcasts, and video. We were so impressed with it, we thought we'd finally have to get a .Mac account — but then an Apple rep showed us that the resulting site can be saved to a folder and published anywhere, not just with .Mac. Expect to see the included Apple themes get overused and very tired very quickly (just like the sample loops included with GarageBand), but at least as far as first impressions go, Apple did a spectacular job with iWeb.
Other improvements to iLife focus on integration and sharing media over the internet. iPhoto has a new photocasting mode, where internet users can subscribe to your photocast and see your photo albums directly from iPhoto or a web browser. GarageBand has new featured to facilitate podcasting, and iMovie HD and iDVD are more tightly integrated.
The main themes for the rest of the show, as expected, were iPods and digital media. Software wasn't entirely an afterthought, but at least half of the third parties were advertising iPod cases and accessories, iPod installations for your car, or systems to broadcast iPod and iTunes music wirelessly throughout your house. Apple seems to be the only one reminding everyone that the iPod is a Mac accessory, and that it hasn't officially broken off into two separate companies.
Those are our highlights; more about the show is available from... well, just about any website you choose.