Transcript of Live Report from WWDC
11:25 Keynote is over folks, thanks for tuning in, and check in with Apple Matters for more analysis, opinions, news, etc.
11:21 Steve is summarizing the ten new features. Developers are getting a preview starting today. Leopard is planning to ship next Spring.
11:13: Now to #10. iChat is going to be seriously enhanced. Multiple logins, tabbed chats, recording of video conferences, and more. But Steve wants to take iChat further. Talks about built in iSights. Photo Booth effects to video iChats. iChat Theater. iPhoto slide show right within iChat. Last feature is Backdrops. Steve is now going to show off Backdrops. Starts an iChat with Phil Schiller, photo booth effects in real time. Now showing the theater feature. Beautiful transition to iChat. Now showing iChat showing a keynote presentation. Very nice! Can also play quicktime clips right within iChat. Now showing Backdrop, you can put any image, or even a video clip as a background.
11:05: Now going to item #9. Going over Dashboard. There are now over 2500 widgets available. Dashcode is being released, to allow developers design, develop and debug widgets. Starts off with templates. There are RSS templates, podcast templates, image templates. Just modify and you are done. Dashcode is also a graphical tool for HTML and CSS. Shipping with a rich parts library, elements and javascript. Javascript editor and debugger built in. The next feature is for the user, called Web Clip. Anyone can turn any part of any webpage into a widget! Now opening up Safari and opening up a comic strip dilbert.com. Let’s say you want a widget of that comic. All you have to do is click a button in Safari and opens it up in safari. Crop the webpage, and click done. Now the dilbert cartoon shows up in a widget. Now, everyday, the latest comic strip will show up in a widget. Now showing building an eBay widget. To keep track of an auction. Just lay it out, crop into the ebay page. It updates within the widget. Now showing how you can create a clipping of the New York times top ten list, and then you create a clipping and you are done. Showing how a webcam can also be turned into a widget. (ed comment, not clear that these widgets can be sent to anyone else, they look like they are instances on your local computer).
11:03 Now showing notes….Steve types in Make Sure Leopard Gets Done on Time. It show up in the note mailbox. Now To-dos. The also show up as a distinct item in Mail.
10:57 Next big update is to Mail. Stationary, Notes, and To-dos are being added to mail. Staionary are html-standard email templates that make emails look nice and professional. There will be templates, you can also make your own. Next thing is Notes. You take notes is special window, they appear with their own folder. Another thing is To-dos. You can select item, and now it becomes a To-do. You can set due dates, alarms, etc. You can select any item and make it a To-do. Its not just mail, it is also an OS level service, that you can do from anywhere. Steve is now doing a demo of these new features. Showing all the new email templates, dinner invites, party invites, etc. Now showing Stationay. Works a lot like iWeb. Just drag and drop.
10:53 Universal Access is being completely revamped. Brail support. CC support. VoiceOver advances. Going to demo a new Universal Access item VoiceOver. He is playing a new text to speech. He is playing the Tiger Voice TTS engine. It is choppy from Tiger. Plays the Vista beta version. Better than Tiger. Now playing the Leopard version. Much much more seemless. TTS sounds fantasic from Leopard. He also shows a sped up version which is surprisingly understandable.
10:49 6th feature is core animation. Let’s you take a scen and decompose it into layers. You create start, goal and key frames. Core animation will manage all animation between these states. Automatic animation. He is showing an example of the iTunes screensaver, and how much lines of code it saves. You can basically do everything in core animation with interface elements. You can easily add rich interactive experiences to applications.
10:47 5th feature is Spotlight. It gets better in Leopard, you can now search other machines, or across a network. If you have the permission to see the files you can search the other macs. You can also search servers. There is now advanced search features, boolean, etc. Adding recent items to spotlight.
10:44 4th feature is Spaces. Spaces is a new way of working on your Mac. Steve goes to the machine, he shows Mail and Safari being open. Mentions that he is also doing a podcast at the same time, he switches to garageband when need be. He is also working on a website. So each one has a space. This allows him to switch between each like a virtual desktop. You can collect applications in different spaces.
10:41 Now going to feature number 3 and back to Steve. The 3d feature, they are going to deliver the complete package. So bootcamp will be part of Leopard (500,00 downloads of the beta). Front Row will be built into Leopard. Photo Booth
10:31 New Feature Time Machine. Who actually backs up? (26 percent). But a lot of people are doing this manually. How many people are doing it automatically? (4%). Apple plans to change it in Leopard with Time Machine. Time Machine automatically backs it up. It backs up everything, your OS, your folder. You can also restore a la carte. Mising one file, one folder, restore it. With Time Machine you can go back to files you’ve saved over, even by accident. Now showing a demo of Time Machine. Shows an awesome interface of 3d windows going back in time. Incredible timeline interface on the right. Very innovative. Hard to describe, but I’m trying! Now showing Time Machine working with iPhoto. You click on any window, then use Time Machine to view that window, through the past.
10:29 Starts off by showing a Top Secret icon, saying some things are going to be under wraps. Number 1 is support for 64 bit applications. Not only does it support the Unix layer, but also to Carbon and Cocoa right to the application layer. This means you can have a 64bit native aplications.
10:28: Steve is back to talk about the future of OS X. Redmond spends about 5 billion a year on R and D and all they do is copy Apple and Google (yes, Steve said this).
10:24: Comparing what Apple has been doing for the past 5 years to Vista. Bertrand Serlet is up to poke fun at Vista. He is comparing feature for feature how Vista is copying OS X. Spotlight, copied. Safair, copied. Even has the same layout. Vista has also copied Apple’s Mail, they’ve copied Calendar….It may look the same, but underneath it all, its still Windows. Huge laughs. It still has the registry, it still has activation.
10:21: Steve is back, now talking about OS X, 19 million OS X users. The last release, Tiger, has been Apple’s most successful product ever. Under the hood there were 86 millions line of source code that were ported to Intel with 0 hickups.
10:21: The new xServers are better and cheaper than Dell’s offering
10:18 Phil is now discussing the xServe. Looks like they are going to update them. They are going to be udpated. The new Intel xServes are 5.4 times faster than their old machines. They have added some over features, including redundant power. Storage is up to 2.25 terabytes. New Lights Out Management.
10:16 Mac Pro will start shipping….today. The Intel tranisition is complete (although some people are shouting out xServe)
10:15 Comparing it to a dell, the Dell Precision would cost 1000 more.
10:15 One standard config. quad 2/66, a gb of ram, 250 of ram, 16x superdrive, nvidia geforce all for $2499.
10:11 Very fast memory system as well, up to 16gigs of memory, 4 channel. 4 hard drive bays because less cooling is needed. Dual optical drives available, more Front I/O. 4 wide PCI cards. New interior design, although the exterior looks the same as the G5. Interior drive design bay is amazing, very simple. 8 fully buffered dimms.
10:08 Phil Schiller is introducing the new Mac Pro. Based on Intel Xeon chipset. Also known as Woodcrest. All dual core running up to 3GHZ, 4MB shares L2 cache, 128 bit vector engine. They are 64 bit. Performance per watt is 3x than the G5. They are putting two Xeon processors. So the machines will have quad xeons. Compared to the quad g5 these machines will be 2.1x as fast. These are screaming fast machines.
10:07 All products have been transitioned, accept the powermac, he is about to announce the new powermac.
10:06 Notebook market share has gone from 6% to 12% for USA retail notebook sales…has doubled!
10:06 Best mac quarter ever last quarter 1.33 macs shipped. Growth rate was faster for macs than for pcs. We are gaining marketshare
10:05 Last quarter 17 million visitors to Apple stores.10:04 Updating about the Apple store in NY
10:02 Steve is up on stage, largest WWDC ever. People from 43 different countries, 750,000 registered Apple developers.
10:01 The windows guys is up, cracking jokes about Vista, gadgets are widgets, etc.
10:00 Lights are dimming, we are starting on time.
9:56 Music is jamming, things appear to be settling down, should be starting any minute.
9:35 In the room! Amazing energy here. Connection is working. Stay tuned, and visit macitt.com and spinmatters while you are waiting
8:10 We arrived at 6:00 am after waiting and waiting by are now in the buidling. In a holding area on the second floor of Moscone West. Waiting to get shuffled to the next spot. Interestingly Apple has 5.8 ghz wireless that only works on the new Macbook Pros. Stayed tuned.
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Other than the Mac Pro, which everyone knew was coming, is there anything new? Am I missing something?
10:06 Best mac quarter ever last quarter 1.33 macs shipped
Now there’s a figure to get excited about!!?? Pity the poor sod who only got a third of a Mac.
dual… woodcrest…
i HATE to say I told you so….
I was with you the whole time, Ben.
Ben, have you been sneaking up on Apple’s Cupertino labs? You were right about multi-CPU but you were pushing Conroes not Woodcrests on Mac Pros. You were reserving the Woodcrests for the XServe (along with me) which happens to be the same foundation as the Mac Pro’s.
Since these Intel CPUs are inexpensive enough (for the pros, of course) there was no need to offer a single dual-core Woodcrest.
This got to be the most boring WWDC (there I said it) ever! Why? Everyone but the clueless poor “s.o.b. who got a third of a mac” knew or had a clue of what was about to be shown.
Where was “...and one more thing…”? Did that “fade into history” too? And why was Phil Schiller introducing the “meat” of the keynote - like he’s the best conductor for this kind of stuff? If there was an on-stage protege qualified to arouse the restless audience, that would have to be Jonathan Ive, the designer extraordinaire.
Am I the only one who thinks this WWDC is quite numb despite the number of items or features introduced. Or the rumour mill took much of the surprises weeks in advance of WWDC.
Ben, have you been sneaking up on Apple’s Cupertino labs? You were right about multi-CPU but you were pushing Conroes not Woodcrests on Mac Pros. You were reserving the Woodcrests for the XServe (along with me) which happens to be the same foundation as the Mac Pro’s.—RI
No I wasn’t:
However the PowerMac’s direct descendent will be the one that inherits its mantle as the professional level machine packing the greatest punch. And in my view, Woodcrest is the only processor on intel’s roadmap that adequately fits the bill, since such a computer will surely include support for more than one physical processor.—Me
This got to be the most boring WWDC (there I said it) ever.—RI
Personally I thought this and was a bit disappointed too at first. But actually, and having RE-watched the keynote (yes), I think Leopard looks like it could be ace. My one concern is that it should increase the refinement of the OS, not just the feature set, but I have high hopes that they will make further such subtle changes and improvements over the coming months before release. Leopard is in my view the iteration of OS X that should really raise the bar, not just in being feature-rich, but by drawing the sometimes disparate UI elements together into something cohesive and really superior.
Certainly, I think if you compare this year’s keynote with last year’s, it is actually much more interesting. Personally I attribute people’s negative reactions mainly to hype and the rumour mill. The whole ballyhoo tends to take little account of apple’s actual release cycle and is anyway only loosely based in evidence and rationality.
This helped raise my opinion, too.
Oh and, err, read this.
FTA:
Those of us who are developers are freaking amazed at all the great stuff that’s in Leopard.
Apple is a computer company, and they unveiled a machine that runs blazingly fast and is $1,000 less than a similarly equipped Dell. This doesn’t make people happy? Seriously? What’s it take? I mean, you can equip this baby with a quad-SLI video card, install Boot Camp, and play Doom at 80 billion fps for way cheaper than you could on Sunday.
Yes, Steve didn’t announce any new consumer products. Here at the developer conference. Wow. What a shocker.
Right. I’m off to south america. Until september, homies.
The new Mac Pro is a lot bang for the buck…for pros, not consumers. At $2499 base price is a lot of dough, even for a hard-working solo acts like small developers out there.
Bring this kind of power to the consumers in the form of the iMac or a new upper-end consumer device that will populate the $1500-$1900 range and you will have a revolution.
Why stop there, take advantage of Intel’s economies-of-scale and bring the Core 2 line all the way down to the Mac minis.
Ben, you are correct (my baddy).
You did mention and suggested Kentsfield may be adopted for both the Mac Pro and XServe when it comes out in 2007. After all, this is a quad-core direct descendant of Woodcrest.
Since Kentsfield won’t be available for awhile, Apple smartly chose Woodcrest to “fit the bill” until then.