July 2001 MacWorld Expo Recap
July 24, 2001
By Keith Cooper
MacWorld Expo Recap
This year's Apple Keynote Speech at MacWorld Expo in New York gave us a preview of
the first major upgrade to Apples Macintosh OS X, faster iMacs and G4 machines and
a look at what software companies will be bringing to the OS X platform in the near
future.
Steve Jobs kicked off the speech with an update on the Apple Retail Stores in McLean,
Virginia and Glendale, California. He showed an edited film of his introduction to
the stores and the opening day at the McLean location. You can view this video in
two separate parts from Apple's Retail store page at http://www.apple.com/retail/. He also announced four new locations that will be coming in August bringing
Apple to six locations on its way to a goal twenty-five locations by year's end.
Then he moved on to give a status of OS X placing us at four-o-clock on the time
line of Apple's OS X ramp-up schedule. At four-o-clock we have thousands of products
ready for OS X. He then introduced software developers to introduce ten software
applications that will be coming to the platform in the near future. Representatives
from Maya, Microsoft, WorldBook, Adobe, Quark and Aspyre were among those demonstrating
their wares for the keynote audience.
Steve then took an opportunity to give us a sneak preview of OS X version 10.1 due
out in September. Among its new features will be a faster interface with quicker
response, launch-time and startup; support for AirPort Base Station configuration,
DVD movies and digital cameras; ability to burn CDs from Finder; and better overall
performance.
Steve then moved on to hardware announcements. He gave us a status of the new iBooks
which have sold over 182,000 units since their introduction in May. He showed quotes
from publications praising the performance and style of the PowerBook G4 Titanium.
Steve pulled a virtual veil off three new iMac models. The low end model sporting
a CD-R drive (allowing you to burn your own CDs), a 500 MHz G3 processor, 128 MB
of RAM and a 20 GB hard drive. Middle and high end models both include 256 MB of
RAM. These models offer 600 and 700 MHz processors; and 40 and 60 GB hard drives,
respectively. Check out these fast new iMacs at http://www.apple.com/imac/.
The keynote next focused on the professional level G4 desktop machines. The three
new G4's have a new look that Apple is calling QuickSilver. The machines are faster
than ever with the low end machine coming in at 733 MHz (the day before the expo
that was the high-end model). The new line up features 733, 867 and dual-800 MHz
processors; 128, 128 and 256 MB RAM configurations; 40, 60 and 80 GB hard drives;
and CD-R, SuperDrive and SuperDrive optical drive options, respectively. If you're
unfamiliar with the SuperDrive that can be found on the mid- to high-end models,
it's a remarkable drive that can read and write both CDs and DVDs. You can see these
new pro tools at http://www.apple.com/powermac/.
Jobs closed the keynote by focusing on Apple's revolutionary authoring software that
makes great use of this SuperDrive. iDVD allows you to simply author your own DVDs
that can be viewed on most consumer DVD players. Not only is this software as easy
to use (or easier) as Apple's iMovie, Apple is already finishing up version 2.0 which
will be released in September. Jobs demonstrated its simple interface dragging and
dropping files and switching between templates to show how easy it is to create your
own DVD productions. You can check out DVD at http://www.apple.com/idvd/ and watch a new commercial for the software at http://www.apple.com/hardware/ads/idvd_elope.html.
Jobs then closed the keynote thanking his hardworking Apple teams and reassuring
Apple faithfuls that they were working overtime to bring us incredible technology.
I'll be anxiously looking forward to Apple's next offerings.
Keith Cooper
NOTE: There are some pictures of the Expo at...http://homepage.mac.com/netmug/mwny1.html
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