news of 2004-01-06
Feedback...
Thanks to all of those (more than two dozens) viewers that have expressed their thankfulness to our service today! We're quite proud here to be one of the few sites that actually were able to provide an (almost, 60s) live text-feed of the keynote by Steve Jobs. One user wrote: "1. One minute reloads. Most sites did not have this. And to top it off, the only one that worked besides yours was Macminute (their window could not be minimized to a smaller size) and their reload died halfway through the Keynote Presentation. 2. Ran efficiently and without errors. 3. Informative! [...] The most annoying site went to Macteen who asked for a donation three-quarters of the way through the Keynote." Again, thank you!
Looking forward: We're still waiting for those new G5s, Steve. Reports were in (and confirmed) that a PowerMac G5 revision at up to 2.5 GHz would be ready for today's show or within the month after the show. However, Steve Jobs also promised 3 GHz G5s within a year after the introduction of the original G5, which will be in June. This is going to be close... ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-06 at 21:35 CET ]
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After the keynote...
So this was it, this was the keynote of MWSF 2004. And while there wasn't anything that wasn't on the rumour sites (such as ours) before the show, it was an entertaining one. GarageBand came kinda late (for the rumour sites), but was worthwile at the keynote. This sounds like big news for musicians, and 49$ is certainly a low price for iLife - and you're getting it for free with a new Mac, which is quite nice.
But about those iPods... The pricing scheme looks a bit strange now: 249$ buys you 4 GB, 299$ buys you 15 GB (that's one large gap), 399$ buys you 20 GB (that's a very small GB gap and a large price gap) and 499$ buys you 40 GB (that sounds about okay, just like before). The 'iPod mini', although more expensive than anticipated, is one cool unit. Its style is unprecedent, taking the iPod into the new year very well. It's small and light enough for everyone - and still packs a thousand songs like the original 5 GB iPod (Apple started to count differently when adding AAC as a format for the iPod). And while this may or may not be enough for your music collection, this is still a lot of music for such a small device. We're looking forward to trying one out.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-06 at 20:18 CET ]
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The Keynote Live Transcript
(We post the news in 'normal' mode, i.e. the newest item will be the lowest item. macnews.net.tc is set to reload every 60 seconds, so please do not reload the page by hand.)
• Steve Jobs just entered the stage. The crowd is cheering, of course, and we're now set for the usual roundup beginning.
• Steve mentions Mac's 20th birthday. "The computer for the rest of us."
• Steve shows us the "1984" ad. - A free "1984" poster for attendees.
• Now we're in the roundup. Panther is the subject. The 150 new features are reiterated...
• Final Cut Express 2.0 officially announced. Richard Kerris is demoing it now. 299$, 99$ upgrade for FCE owners.
• Next up: Microsoft Office 2004. Roz Ho, MBU talks about Word, Excel and PowerPoint having had its birth on the Mac platform. Kris Barton is demoing MS Office 2004 now.
• New to MS Office for the Mac: Project Center. Available throughout MS Office applications. Networked, too. On a server or your iDisk. MS Office 2004 for Macintosh will be available in Spring 2004.
• Next up: The G5. Virginia Tech, more specifically. A video is shown about the 'BigMac' (System X).
• Xserve G5. 1U. Single & dual 2.0 GHz G5 processors. 3 models: 2'999$ (single), 3'999$ (dual) and 2'999$ (dual, computer node). Also updated: Xserve RAID (3.5 TB in 3U, 2 Gb Fibre Channel). Xserve RAID also certified for Windows Server 2003 and two linux distributions.
• iTunes/Music Store is next up. 30 millions of songs sold. iTunes Music Store has 70% of the legal downloads statistically. 50'000 audio books sold since October. New today in iTMS: Billboard Charts. And: 12'000 new Classical tracks. Totals to 500'000 available tracks. Makes iTMS the largest online music store in the world. "So that is iTunes." (i.e.: no international stores yet.) :/
• Next up: iLife '04. "Like MS Office, but for the rest of your life." ;) Contains iTunes 4.x, iPhoto 4 (#1 feature: supports up to 25'000 photos, smart albums, rendezvous photo sharing, editing while doing a slideshow [rotating, rating etc.], improved slideshows with better song selection [iTunes playlists] and transitions [cube!] book-printing available in Japan now, in Europe in March), iMovie 4 (trim clips, timeline alignment guides, new titles, iSight import, audio scrubbing), iDVD 4 (new themes, enhanced menus, enhanced slideshows, navigation maps, pro encoding 2 hours on one disk, now works on Macs without SuperDrives), GarageBand - the recording studio for everyone (digitally mix up to 64 tracks, 50 MIDI instruments, 1'000 loops from SoundTrack, record live audio, 200 pro-quality audio effects). (Steve Jobs is playing around with Garage Band for quiiiiiiiite a while now. Must be fun.) ;) Now James Mayer is playing the guitar into the Mac, while Steve's selecting different guitar amps. iLife '04 sells for 49$. Cheap enough! GarageBand alone is worth a few hundred bucks.
• USB-keyboard with 49 keys for 99$ that you can use with GarageBand (not Apple made, just reselling it).
• iPod. Last quarter: 730'000 units sold. Today: 15 GB instead of 10 GB in the 299$ model. New Apple in-ear headphones (sold separately). New ad. Not one more thing? Ah, yes. The rest of the market... Introducing: The iPod mini... 4 GB, 1'000 songs, 0.5 inches, 249$. Alu. And sexy. And really mini. ;-) The four buttons are on the solid state scroll wheel. And in several colours. Silver, gold, blue, pink, green. Anodized aluminum. February for the US, April for the world.
• One more thing... (?) Nope, that was it.
Side note for the keynote: Rio released a new 4 GB MP3 player probably based on Cornice's 1" harddrive today. The player retails for 249$. So, basically, Apple has the same stuff at the same price in a much nicer package.
(The date and time you see below this article is changed everytime the transcript is updated. Thus it will not reflect the date and time when we actually started reporting here, which is about 3 hours before the keynote.)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-06 at 20:12 CET ]
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Palm delivers Palm OS 6
... to device makers (Sony, PalmOne etc.). This'll mean a nice round of PDAs in springtime, we guess.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-06 at 17:06 CET ]
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ThinkSecret MWSF roundup
ThinkSecret posts its rumour roundup for MWSF 2004 keynote, which starts in less than 4 hours.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-06 at 14:11 CET ]
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