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All-New PowerBooks, Web Browser Featured at Macworld
from the overall-i-say-it-is-boring dept.
The 17" model is 1440x900 resolution, 16:10 aspect ratio, G4/1GHz, SuperDrive, GeForce4 440 Go/64MB, and all the same ports, with the addition of line in and FireWire 800 (in addition to FireWire 400). It is less than 1" thin, and 6.8 lbs., and has fiber-optic lightning for the keyboard activated by ambient light sensors. It will be available next month for $3,300.
The 12" version is 4.6 lbs., and is smaller than the iBook in every dimension. It's 1024x768, G4/867, GeForce4 420 Go/32MB, and is AirPort-ready ($99 extra). It is $1,800 for a combo drive model, $2,000 for a SuperDrive model, and will be available in two weeks.
Both models sport the new AirPort Extreme (802.11g), which is 54Mbps, up from the 11Mbps of AirPort (802.11b). The base stations and clients are fully compatible with the old AirPort, handle 50 users, and support both wireless bridging (to extend the range by adding more stations) and can act as a USB printer server.
Jobs also introduced Safari, a new Mac OS X browser based on the KHTML rendering engine from KDE (and Apple will publish changes they've made to it). There's nothing especially great about it -- it's a web browser -- except that, unlike most other browsers, it is expected to be fast and work properly, as well as be fully integrated into Mac OS X. The web is a killer app, but pretty much all web browsers suck; Apple hopes to give us something that doesn't suck in Safari. It is a free download for the beta, starting today. This story was posted using Safari. W00p.
iPhoto 2 has been revamped, with iTunes integration (access to playlists, tracks, even searching) for slide shows; one-click enhance of photos; a retouch brush; archiving to CD/DVD; and more. iMovie 3 has added chapters, the "Ken Burns Effect" (panning through still images), and precise audio editing. iDVD 3 has added a ton of quite cool themes, which will look great the first few times you see them.
They are -- along with iTunes -- bundled with all new Macs beginning January 25 as "iLife". All but iDVD will be freely available online, contrary to previously published reports. The entire bundle of four apps will be available for retail purchase for $50.
For sale today at $99 is another new app, Keynote, which is the presentation software Jobs has been using for over a year for his own presentations. It includes all sorts of flashy features like textures and Quartz-powered 3D transitions, and can import and export PowerPoint, as well as export to PDF and QuickTime. It has an open file format (using XML).
Jobs also introduced Final Cut Express, a stripped-down version of Final Cut Pro, for $300, and noted other prominent third-party software recently released for Mac OS X: QuickBooks, Director, and DigiDesign Pro Tools (later this month). He noted that the number of native apps for Mac OS X jumped from 2,000 to 5,000 in 2002.
Meanwhile, the number of users of the OS went from 1.2 million to 5 million last year, and he expects the number to jump to 9 or 10 million in 2003.
Update: 01/07 19:37 GMT by Jamie (also posted with Safari): And thanks to the several Slashdot readers who pointed out a great but unannounced product: X11 (aka the X Windows System) for Mac OS X. It's in Public Beta right now. Great to see this, an Apple-supported X is greatly needed. I don't know why Jobs didn't at least mention this, it would have gotten quite the round of applause I'm sure.
agent identification for Safari (Score:3, Interesting)
Looks strange to me. Is this really the KDE HTML rendering engine or is it Gecko? It certainly identifies itself as Netscape 5...
Re:agent identification for Safari (Score:5, Insightful)
Safari is NOT Gecko (Score:4, Insightful)
The choice of this K stuff over Chimera/Gecko is puzzling, but the performance is there.
Re:agent identification for Safari (Score:4, Informative)
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;
Doesn't look strange to me, everything IDs as Mozila. We'll also note the default Konqueror UA is:
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/2.1.1; X11)
FFR
Apple surfs Slashdot! (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.apple.com/safari/theater/bookmarks.htm
No!!! DON'T DO IT! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Apple surfs Slashdot! (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, were I wanting to show off a new web browser, I would probably try to hit slashdot before anywhere else. Why?
Ugly table code! Your typical slashdot pageload is a humongous mess of hundreds upon hundreds of random tables nested in odd ways. If you want an example of a truly taxing test to throw at a web page renderer, slashdot's about as heavy as you can do. Since Safari is apparently all about speed, then it makes lots of sense. After all, rendering a single slashdot discussion page is enough to make MSIE on Mac OS 9 choke on my parents' G4 400 just about every single time-- once the page has loaded, the computer freezes up for at least 5 or so seconds even if IE is in the background. (MSIE for OS X does not have these problems) Omniweb loads slashdot fine but tends to act sluggish while scrolling. (Or it did the last time i used it.) This is what Safari is competing with..
Of course, this reasoning is obliterated by the poor framerate on that one quicktime movie, making it impossible to tell how smoothly it's running. but still ^_^
Safari (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Safari (Score:5, Informative)
Bug Button (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bug Button (Score:4, Interesting)
While I'm posting, let me just say that besides the missing tabs, it is a great web browser. Before today, I was a Chimera user. I used CHimera because it was fast, lightweight, and looked good in OS X, but it had a few stability problems, mostly dealing with downloads and plugins, so I had to keep Mozilla and IE on stand by for each of those respective problems. Now I can finally use one web browser. It's about time.
Also, it's good to hear about the iApps price.
Re:Safari (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Safari (Score:4, Informative)
Look on the "View" menu, check "Status Bar", done.
Re:Safari (Score:5, Informative)
Oh that's easy, considering the amount of code involved. You see, one of the main arguments in favour of KHTML was its small size - like 140.000 lines of code. I'm guessing, but that's probably a fifth of the Gecko codebase. Read it up in this mail [kde.org] to the kfm-devel mailing list.
Apple rolled their own X11 too! (Score:4, Informative)
Something Steve didn't mention in his keynote but very cool-- they're really reaching out to the developer crowd here. A double-clickable X11 installer? yeeee-haw!
Re:Apple rolled their own X11 too! (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple has begun a true split from Microsoft - first in the browser (remember the old agreement - we'll give you Office and some investment cash, you put on Internet Explorer).
Now, in the background, we've got a beta of X11. And what's needed for X11 and other Unix apps (Gimp, etc)? X11.
I'll wait another year before anything really big happens. But I think Apple is getting the chess pieces on the board to finally ditch Microsoft as far as possible - or at least give us the tools to do it ourselves.
Now, if we can just get Markler released....
Re:Apple rolled their own X11 too! (Score:5, Interesting)
For some reason I think that Apple is trying to get into the bussiness world (I mean, not "doing bussiness", but appealing to bussiness users). Why? Simple, Linux already pops up once in a while in bussinesses, often introduced by geeks. It's the same geeks they want to win over in order to get a foot into the bussiness world.
I might be mistaken, but I don't think I am. If I take my personal iBook to work, I have a lot of people showing interest (not only IT people, but also Managers, Bussiness Consultants, etc...) However they mostly stall when I say I don't have Office on it. While I know Micrsoft Office X exists, I am not going to purchase MS Office X for the meager use I have. AppleWorks suffices, however you won't impress people with AppleWorks. OpenOffice on the other hand might. Perhaps Apple will make it's own fork of OpenOffice. Who knows what the future brings?
And the myth of incompatibility still roams around. I actually had a manager talking to me and he said that Macs couldn't be used for video editing. My eyes nearly popped out of my sockets when he said that.
Re:Apple rolled their own X11 too! (Score:5, Interesting)
> Apple has begun a true split from Microsoft - first in the
> browser (remember the old agreement - we'll give you
> Office and some investment cash, you put on Internet
> Explorer).
>
> Now, in the background, we've got a beta of X11. And
> what's needed for X11 and other Unix apps (Gimp, etc)?
> X11.
>
> I'll wait another year before anything really big happens.
> But I think Apple is getting the chess pieces on the board
> to finally ditch Microsoft as far as possible - or at least
> give us the tools to do it ourselves.
I think you are right, but Apple released something far more important than X11 today. They released Keynote, a Microsoft PowerPoint competitor, said to blow PowerPoint out of the water. Keynote supports both the Microsoft PowerPoint file format, and open standards such as XML.
Remember also how today, after they were all out and fairly mature, the iApps suddenly sprang together into a suite called iLife? What if Keynote is the first member of another kind of suite, a professional office suite from Apple designed to replace Microsoft Office? An office suite that is file compatible with Microsoft's, but light years ahead of Microsoft's with real features real people can use?
Mind you, I doubt Apple would give this suite away for free, or force anyone to use it (though if it is like iLife, people will want to use it). AppleWorks, ThinkFree, Open/Star Office and KOffice will be welcome to join the party. Heck if any of the above suites are successful in competing with Microsoft, Corel might be persuaded to rejoin the party with a seriously updated WordPerfect. The more the merrier.
> Now, if we can just get Markler released....
I don't know if the future of the Mac lies with the child of IBM's Power4, or in the x86 world. One thing is quite clear: Apple is not only getting ready to ditch Microsoft, they are arming for all out war. And from the size of the basket of fish they handed to Tux today, they are helping to arm Linux as well.
Microsoft is due for a rude awakening, very soon. Almost as rude as Millennium/Orga got when he tried to swallow Godzilla head first. Of course that rude awakening was followed by a terminal case of thermal-nuclear heartburn!
Godzilla 2000, the Dreaded God! The battle for Earth's future has begun!
The future Millennium threatens.
Godzilla cannot be assimilated, by Millennium who would embrace, extend!
[posted via Safari]
Re:Apple rolled their own X11 too! (Score:5, Funny)
How is that pronounced???
oh ess ten ten eleven
oseks eks eleven
os ess eks eks one one
Re:Apple rolled their own X11 too! (Score:5, Funny)
This has led to speculation that apple will not drop the "X" once they are past version 10, instead opting to name their next major-number upgrade "Mac OS X 11"
So eventually, Apple will be releasing the Mac OS X 11 X11
Or, alternately, what if they simply choose to continue puting the major numbers in updates, making Mac OS X 11.0 "Mac OS XI"? This means that when version 12 of the Mac OS comes out, apple will have to make a Mac OS XII X11
Its graphics accelerated! (Score:4, Informative)
also I note that contrary to the story here, the imove, itunes apps are not going to be free. Or atleast they are not being offered for free on apples web site.
All but iDVD free, available Jan 25 (Score:5, Informative)
iDVD will still be sold separately, "since it's too big to download". And they put the three other apps on the disk as well for those who don't want to mess around with downloads.
That's fine, except that the disk version will cost a whooping $49, which is at least $45 over cost. So Apple is slightly sneaky there, but no big.
Apple's implementation of X11 also released. (Score:3, Redundant)
http://www.apple.com/macosx/x11/
S.r.
Also, Apple based X11 (Score:3, Informative)
Not announced, but still quite interesting. Its X11, but with all the OS X look on the windows (shadows, genie, etc)
Not bad (Score:5, Informative)
It's officially the 'year of the notebook' - so that's how Apple is coping with slow processors then!
Very nice new powerbooks though - especially the 17-incher, with glowing keyboards and ambient light detection. It also adjusts the screen brightness, mmmm
Safari, the web browser, is actually based of KHTML - KDE's HTML library. Not bad, especially seeing as they're going to give the 'orders of magnitude' speedups back in the way of the source code.
And digs at Quark. And the rumors sites were practically all wrong. Hah. Best keynote in ages.
Re:Not bad (Score:5, Informative)
No video iPods, no all-in-one networking appliance (though the new Airport is certainly a step forward).
Re:Not bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not bad (Score:5, Interesting)
As a person weaned in the service bureaus of the late-80s/early-90s, I can say that every decent presentation app produced in the last 10 years has been EOLed because of Powerpoint's ubiquity.
Aldus/Adobe Persuasion, anyone? That was one hell of an app. And -- get this -- you could have real, multiple master pages in the same presentation. Harvard Graphics had that feature as well.
"What," you say "presentations can have more than one master... in the same file???"
I'm not talking having a slide master, a title master, etc. I'm talking as many different title templates as you'd like in the same file.
Persuasion supported alpha channels too (through Mac PICT format), and a million other things that were never developed into powerpoint because they haven't needed to, and apparently, no one's complained. Yeah, PPT has transparency. Through freakin' GIFs. Hardly a substitute.
Powerpoint is so bad in its handling of master slides and typography, not to mention its abhorrent handling (mangling) of graphic formats other than WMF and BMP that I chose to personally design every presentation I've made since Persuasion was dropped in Macromedia Director. That's a pretty big hammer to solve that particular problem.
The point to this diatribe is, that I damned near cried when I saw Keynote unveiled.
- NICE looking templates
- Uncluttered, friendly interface
- Eye candy galore
- PPT, SWF and Photoshop compatibility out of the box, layers included
I challenge you to find *ANYONE* who enjoys working in Powerpoint. Most users outright loathe it, but there's nothing else on the market now that approaches its (limited) functionality and is compatible with newer PPT file formats.
Powerpoint is a hell of a chink in MS's armor.
This is more than a shot across the bow.
Safari rocks! (Score:5, Insightful)
Disinformation (Score:5, Insightful)
(Remember that laptop CPUs typically don't run as fast as desktop equivalents - especially when on battery. Most OSX laptops are as fast as PC equivalents. So the CPU gap doesn't apply)
I can't wait to download the new iApps (sorry, iLife) as well.
Favorite Part (Score:5, Funny)
Gigantic screen behind Steve Job reads:
"Open Source
We think it's great"
-Spyky
Why KHTML rather than Gecko? (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course if they were both perfectly compliant, it wouldn't matter, but neither one is.
Gecko has a larger install base with existing Netscape, Moz, Chameleon, Galeon, and Phoenix installs, and is more likely, with AOL converts, to have a larger market share and have more 'feature-rich' pages designed to render properly in it. Both are cross-platform.
(BTW, have you used Phoenix
The only thing I can figure out here is that Steve really likes KDE or he really doesn't like the MPL. Maybe he's paranoid about helping Steve Case any more than need be by speeding Moz/Netscape acceptance.
Re:Why KHTML rather than Gecko? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why KHTML rather than Gecko? (Score:5, Insightful)
What the hell were they thinking? Perhaps it's a little faster or smaller, but that sounds like a small payoff when you end up with a browser that is broken and doesn't work properly on a large number of sites. Chimera shows that Gecko can make an amazing browser on OS X so why they've jumped over is mind boggling.
Re:Why KHTML rather than Gecko? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, I'd noticed it seemed to be doing okay on most CSS pages I'd tried, so I was *going* to say, "nyah, nyah", but then I figured I go to the ever-useful CSS1 test suite pages. [w3.org]
Oops...on the very first test, it fails to display even the test page correctly and the dialog tells me it's choking on the illegal mimetype text/html. Very ungood.
Well, it's beta, and Apple has never seen a wheel it didn't want to re-invent at some point...
Re:Why KHTML rather than Gecko? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why KHTML rather than Gecko? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, whatever. Designers have clients. Clients make demands. You see:
Client: I think our front page should have flashing news scroller, a slide show, and dancing girls that follow the mouse!
Me: Trust me, you really don't want that. It will make your page slow to load, and incompatible with numerous browsers. I could do it in Flash, but that would cost a lot.
Client: But the dancing girls are so cute! We'd sell more widgets! Don't use flash; I hate downloading plugins.
Me: I feel a great need to pop a clue in your a**, but I really need the money.
Client: Don't forget to make it play "Achy Breaky Heart"!
Me: Grr!
Re:Why KHTML rather than Gecko? (Score:5, Informative)
Quote:
"When we were evaluating technologies over a year
ago, KHTML and KJS stood out. Not only were they the basis of an
excellent modern and standards compliant web browser, they were also
less than 140,000 lines of code. The size of your code and ease of
development within that code made it a better choice for us than other
open source projects. Your clean design was also a plus."
Re:Why KHTML rather than Gecko? (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation: we realised that we had no chance of building our own layout engine or javascript engine, so we had to choose between Gecko/Spidermonkey and KHTML/KJS.
Why not use existing tools if they are good enough?
The Mozilla technologies were better, but we could understand the KDE ones.
Who wants to work with software you can't understand? 140,000 lines of code vs. bigger? I'd take 140,000 if I could, too.
In particular, Mozilla is full of cross platform code that makes it harder to adapt and integrate into our OS, and it relies upon its own portable runtime and rendering layers.
Who's fault is that? Certainly not Apple's.
When we started this project, Chimera didn't exist.
Who cares? Safari rocks. A big, bad commercial softwarre developer uses an open-source project and gives back to that community and there are still people who whine. It boggles the mind.
Re:Why KHTML rather than Gecko? (Score:4, Insightful)
Mozilla may not have the greatest share of the market, but it may be the best browser available. This is why Apple DOES NOT want Mozilla. Sounds crazy? Not really.
Jobs realizes that competition will create better software. It would certainly be possible for Mozilla to become so popular and 'standardized' on the Unix and MacOS operating systems that development of KHTML would slow down and eventually die. If you have a company behind KHTML like Apple while AOL is behind Mozilla, you can expect a war to brew.
Mozilla is a great browser, KHTML is not bad.. but unless they become more popular and gain more press, Microsoft won't bother to compete.. they won't have to.
If KHTML and Mozilla begin a new browser war, first.. new OSX users will be using KHTML, Linux/Unix geeks will be using either Mozilla or KHTML. Apple still does have a large userbase, using KHTML could really put a dent in Microsoft. KHTML's competition would make Mozilla better and more popular, even in Microsoft Windows.
Apple may have just sparked not only a browser war, but a rejuvination of computing without Microsoft. I won't be surprised to see 30-40% of the web using non-IE browsers within a year.
Re:Why KHTML rather than Gecko? (Score:4, Insightful)
Please don't take offense to the following:
I just love it when people who have no business concepts come up with crackpot reasons for why corporations do what they do. A lot of times these people make me laugh with their logic.
First of all, Jobs doesn't want competition. He's the CEO of a multibillion dollar company. Do you honestly think he believes in a competitive, efficient market? Sure, he'll say and do whatever he can as long as MS is where it's at, but only as long as he's in second place.
Remember, the Macintosh computer is a franchise market (read: Harley Davidson) with Apple at the helm. Companies with a monopoly over a franchise market (which Apple has) have little that will erode their marketshare. The Harley Davidson example is the textbook case. Basically, Harley Davidson has 0 competition from Honda, Yamaha, whoever in their main market. Harley's main market happens to be "Harley Davidson Motorcycles". Similarly, Apple has 0 competition from other computer makers in the Macintosh market. Everytime somebody tries to release something that emulates a Mac, they get crushed by Apple's litigation thugs. Send an email to themes.org if you disagree.
Now if we can rule out betterment of society from CEO Jobs' goals, we should be able to assume that profit is his ultimate goal. All of his plans revolve around those little 3 step underpants gnomes plans. in this particular case, we have:
1. Use KHTML
2. ????
3. Profit!!
Now we just have to find the elusive step 2. from the 3 step plan. You, GiMP suggest that he wants a competitive browser market to create a better browser that will drive people to the Macintosh platform, thus, creating profit. Hmmm. I don't think that having the best browser will generate any profit. How much profit has MS made from IE (if we haphazardly assume it's the best browser)? None. Has dominance with IE led to profit with IIS? IIS has yet to generate profits for MS, so again, No.
Here's my idea of why Apple chose KHTML, and although it may be just as crackpot as yours, at least it's business based crack (the expensive stuff that Wall St Tycoons snort) as opposed to opensource hippie crack. I think that Apple sees a switch campaign as a good way to increase revenues so he needs to get more people to "switch". One main reason that people don't feel comfortable with OS X is because all of the browsers suck. I use OS X and I'm justified in saying that ALL CURRENT OS X Browsers suck. I currently use a collection IE, Navigator (chimera?), Mozilla, and OmniWeb. Every one of them sucks differently and together, there's usually one that's right for each job, but I can't use one for everything. Steve Jobs knows this and says, "Holy shit! How can convince people that OS X is the best platform when people can't even browse the fscking web?" CEO Steve is smart though. He realizes that the slow web browsers in OS X (IE and Mozilla) don't suck as much as the fast web browsers (Navigator and Omniweb). He decides that Apple's going to do it's typical amazing thing and surprise everybody with a fast webbrowser for OS X that doesn't suck! Has Steve succeeded? From other comments on this page I'd say not yet, but it's a beta version and CEO Steve put a serious team of hackers behind his browser.
Why did he choose KHTML? Probably because it was the easiest *fast* html renderer to modify and create a new web browser with. CEO Steve knows that reinventing the wheel costs too much in today's economy.
PS. I'm very happy that Apple chose an open source browser and is giving back to the community the way that they are. I'm happy for the KDE people (all of them) for creating a browser and desktop environment that was capable for a company like Apple to use the code base.
Innovation... (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, my spalling does suck, but nevermind about that :)
The keyboard design is brilliant (there's a pun there, I think). The only thing missing is a little camera somewhere to enable Video Conferencing (which I use a lot with all my friends and some of my clients). But no complaints.
I probrably don't have anything smart to say right now... too busy drooling after having watched the entire live stream of the keynote. But if anyone wants to throw links to great places new Mac ownsers can go to (such as http://fink.sourceforge.net/ ) I'd LOVE to see your thoughts, links, suggestions, etc.
backlit keyboard?? f'n cool (Score:4, Informative)
Automagically adjusting itself depending on the ambient light
Autoadjust not just cool, actually important... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't believe they would not adopt Chimera, especially with David Hyatt now working at Apple. No offense to KDE which I hold oh so dear over any other WM system, but Gecko is just a better engine. Its truly cross platform, has a huge amount of momentum behind it, and AOL would essentially be doing R&D for free for Apple. Not to even mention the fact the Netscape/Moz has much much better industry suport,a ton of addons and a much larger user base. If this is true I'd just call the move foolish.
posting this from safari (Score:3, Informative)
* no tabbed browsing - wtf?
* no way to import bookmarks - got a hundred in chimera, time to poke around and see if I can figure a way to do it
* nice default fonts
* respects internet preferences like homepage
* nice brused look
* looks clean
17" AlBook:
* what's up with the keyboard. they're using the same sized keyboard for the 12" and 17" models. wtf? the 17" has so much more space, and a bigger keyboard would be a great feature
Re:posting this from safari (Score:4, Informative)
Drag and drop. Open Chimera's bookmark list and drag it to Safari's bookmark list. Done. Very sweet.
12" Powerbook Very Cool! But... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, however, the notebook doesn't include DVI-out support, so my monitor [sgi.com] would fall back to VGA mode if I tried to use the notebook with it. Does anyone know if Apple or a third party plans to offer a PC Card with DVI support? Margi had one, but it's only 4MB... not quite enough for this particular monitor.
Also, one thing Apple keeps failing to address is the #1 reason I haven't switched to a Mac. Steve, where are the software trade-in incentives? I own Photoshop 6 and 7, Dreamweaver MX, and Microsoft Office XP for the PC. What on Earth is keeping Apple and/or other vendors from offering trade-in incentives? Why can I not trade in my two boxed Photoshop-for-PC copies and receive Photoshop 7 for Mac OS X? The same goes for Dreamweaver MX. The cost to move to a Mac is almost doubled by the $1500 worth of software that I already have for my PC.
Here's hoping Apple will start to address this issue, especially since the platform is geared toward video developers and graphic designers -- two markets whose people invest heavily in expensive software.
"beta tested at every Macworld keynote in 2002" (Score:3, Funny)
And here I thought only Microsoft tested their products three times before they shipped.
My takes (Score:4, Insightful)
Addresses two key issues with Apple. First is slow cpu's. cpu speed isn't as big of a deal with laptop users, so the ghz gap isn't as pronounced here. Second, and most important, laptops have much higher margins than desktops. Apple already sells a higher percentage of laptops, this does nothing but help the bottom line and if they continue, the bottom line will still look good (even if market share drops).
Most dissapointing
No advancment on the ghz front. I just said that it doesn't matter _as_much_, but it's still dissapointing that Apple continues to lag here.
New FireWire connector. I know that this might not be Apples fault, but yet another connector type for 800Gb FireWire, ugh. Yeah yeah, an adapters available, but couldn't IEEE figure out a way to make the two compatable?
Most "interesting"
Safari. How does this fit into the big picture. Does Safari really make the Mac a sweeter deal for those who were fence sitting (or firmly on the other side)? Does what Apple gets from it outweigh the development costs of it? Is this another sign that Apple is distancing themselves from Microsoft? Now with Safari, Office is the only thing left that Apple has a dependency on M$.
Most likely to go "cube"
The 12" PowerBook. Yes portability is good, but does it sell in enough numbers to keep it alive. Will people want a G4 bad enough to pay the extra for the 12" PB vs the iBook? Subnotes/small notes are notoriously hard to sell, but I guess it does plug a hole in the Apple notebook strategy.
Re:Keynote vs OSS? (Score:4, Insightful)
- j
Very welcome news (Score:5, Interesting)
The keynote application is noteworthy (although I dislike its icon) does anyone else think that this is likely to be a precursor to more MS-Office like applications in the future (based on its success)? I think Apple is treading on Microsoft's toes in a bold way, and this has to be a good thing - shaking up the industry is good for everyone as it has become increasingly stagnant and impeded by Microsoft (non-MS innovations are either bought or copied-and-crushed by MS, and MS-innovations are practically non-exisatant and VERY slow in coming along).
Safari seems to be just another way of taking independence from MS, and I just LOVE the fact that they chose an open source codcebase, I think this is very important. It shows that Apple is willing to give back to the OS community in a huge way, and that commerce and OS can live together and even help each other prosper. I want tabbed browsing however.
The Powerbooks look great, although I am more sceptical of the small one, the larger one seems to be perfect, typical Apple excellence, and I have to say a fine price for the extreme configuration of the machine! Creative professionals are going to go nuts over these.
I think there is certainly more on the tip of Apple's tongue, new LCD lineup for certain, and new digital lifestyle devices like the iPod are also admitted to be in the works by Apple themselves. And then there's the XRaid, and updated XServes, and 2003 will certainly show OSX 10.3 and a G5 processor. I have to say that Apple must be grinning with all the goodies that seem to be coming to fruition this year.
I also think that the iLife suite pricing has been handled PERFECTLY, everything is still free, except iDVD which for very good reasons is charged for (huge size, and codec liscensing). This is NOT Apple making a quick buck, it's s sensible move, and one that Mac users cannot possibly complain about.
Congratulations Apple, and I can't wait to see what the rest of this year holds!
Safari Blocks Popups (Score:4, Informative)
Safari Acknowledgements (Score:3, Interesting)
Portions of this Apple Software may utilize the following copyrighted material, the use of which is hereby acknowledged.
Lars Knoll, et al. ( khtml ) [snip]
Lucent Technologies ( dtoa.cpp ) [snip]
Netscape Communications Corporation ( arena files ) [snip]
Harri Porten, et al. ( kjs - JavaScriptCore based on kjs ) [snip]
University of Cambridge ( PCRE ) [snip]
Great Keynote! (Score:3, Interesting)
This was one of the most entertaining keynotes I've seen in a long time out of Apple. This is also the first one (for me anyway) which wasn't clogged to death when you tried to watch it via live QT stream.
Like the new Notebook, though its pricy. But it also doubles as a surfboard in a pinch!
Now the big big big thing was Steve Jobs standing behind the huge words "Open Source is Good" or something like that. That Apple is releasing the browser code improvements (a years effort) back into the open source community and announcing that Open Source is good is just amazing! It is such a wonderful difference from Microsoft's constant "Open source is the tool of the devil" rants. I think this will help attract more geeks to Apple as well as make open source developers more open to writing software for the Macintosh.
Another thing that was neat was that Keynote uses open standards and that Jobs even verbally invited 3rd party developers to take advantage of that. In a way, I actually wonder if Apple is developing a radical corporate strategy which involves a sense of responsibility to the computer industry as a whole. By releaseing open source changes back into the world as well as using open standards in their document formats, Apple opens the door for other companies to create new tools and new markets alongside Apple. In this way, Apple is *helping* the economy and the computer industry as a whole by creating both new products as well as opportunities for others to share in the wealth of the market those new products exist in. It will be very interesting to see if Apple works on spreadsheets or word processing next. A beefed up Appleworks or Claris works would be nice!
Gripes:
Having to pay $49 to get iDVD3 (even though other iApps come along they are also freely available) is rediculous.
Keynote is expensive, nice, but still expensive and on par with Microsoft's rediculous prices for their own office apps.
Apple should have offered the iApps along with Keynote for like $79 or the iApps by themselves for $29. That would have made it worth the money to get the iApps. Jobs even said the only reason they don't offer iDVD for free is that it is so huge in size. Given that admission, I will feel no guilt at all when I download it from elsewhere or get it from a friend's new Mac.
But that is the only real gripe I had, so over all a very favorable keynote!
Re:Great Keynote! (Score:5, Interesting)
> corporate strategy which involves a sense of
> responsibility to the computer industry as a whole
What an interesting idea. The big advantage software companies have on hardware companies is the incredible margins: the cost of goods sold for software is basically nil (the price of the CDs), while for hardware, you have all the costs of buying the parts to make your hardware. Keep in mind, R&D is handled as a capitalized expense and isn't amortized over the cost of each unit sold.
So software companies could enjoy huge margins, while hardware companies had to be happy with less than 25%.
Microsoft benefited from this, but they also increased the barrier of entry for competitors by illegally abusing their monopoly. So it wasn't enough to build a better Word processor; you had to be able to make it much better and cheaper than Word (since Word was generally bundled in price with the rest of MS Office), and be completely compatible with Word's file format (because of the network effect).
What's interesting is that open file formats (and Open Source in general) lowers these barriers of entries. For example, if all software applications use the same file format, then the software packages have to compete on their own merits since the network effect related to file compatibility is eliminated.
With Apple embracing open source and open file formats, they're essentially leveling the playing field between software vendors and hardware vendors. If they can get software vendors to adopt open formats, the cost of switching between software vendors will reduce for the users, and it will be easier for new entrants to build competing software programs. In that case, Apple will succeed as well, because they're building some of the best hardware (the new 17" PowerBook G4 is Exhibit A). If their plan works, competition will increase in the computer industry, benefiting all.
IE & Powerpoint replacements - is Microsoft go (Score:5, Interesting)
What you should be wondering is not just whether Apple is trying to compete with Microsoft (and to end its dependence on MS for such a key piece of its OS as the browser) but if Microsoft has started warning Apple that it's going to leave. IE is still listed on the same software page, which doesn't mention Safari by name. There's some posturing going on here, and I'm not real sure what the motives are.
Fwiw, been testing Safari. Super-fast with a clean interface, but doesn't do nearly as good/mature a job displaying hard core dhtml as Mozilla, and therefore Chimera. Good freshman effort, but Apple better not stop at version 1.0.
Re:The new X11 from Apple (Score:5, Informative)
12" Powerbook (Score:5, Interesting)
TiVo via Rendezvous? (Score:5, Interesting)
After poking around in the preferences, I noticed you can turn Rendzevous bookmarks on -- meaning you'll automatically discover web services running on your LAN. And bookmark 'em. Cool enough by itself.
I then clicked on the "About Rendezvous" button underneath, and found the page [apple.com] has been updated with a tantalizing little treat (in addition to pledges of support from game and printer developers):
Yep. You'll be able to serve your iTunes collection to your TiVo. I'm assuming with playlists and all.
Happy speculating...
KHTML vs. Mozilla (Score:4, Insightful)
Mozilla is created as an alternative. It was not created to be the ONLY alternative. And assuming the world domination thing happens, IE dies off, we would have the same thing, but called Mozilla and hidden behind different 'skins' (front-end like Phoenix, Galeon, Chimera, Etc). I think those projects are great, but choice is what the entire Free Software movement is about.
I choose to run WindowMaker. I choose to use FreeBSD. I can choose to release my projects as either GPL or BSD, or even LGPL, or any of the other licenses. I choose to use an x86 based platform.
Why not let Apple choose KHTML? If we wake up one day and find that only Gecko is out there, IE died and Konqueror is "that other browser" (Like Opera and Mozilla are considered today, in the mainstream, although both are gaining considerable acceptance), where would we have gotten? Except for the fact it's open source, it'll be no different than IE.
Just my 2c.
Re:KHTML vs. Mozilla (Score:5, Insightful)
And assuming the world domination thing happens, IE dies off, we would have the same thing, but called Mozilla
Uh.... the same thing being a popular web browser? :)
I think those projects are great, but choice is what the entire Free Software movement is about.
Actually it's about freedom. The fact that choice/duplication of effort is often a side effect of freedom isn't really what it's about, it's just a sometimes pleasant consequence of the way the free software movement works.
Why not let Apple choose KHTML? If we wake up one day and find that only Gecko is out there, IE died and Konqueror is "that other browser" (Like Opera and Mozilla are considered today, in the mainstream, although both are gaining considerable acceptance), where would we have gotten? Except for the fact it's open source, it'll be no different than IE.
Well, uh, yeah, except that it's open source! That's the big difference. Nobody controls Mozilla, yes Netscape/AOL have a big influence on the project but you can always fork it. You can't fork IE. The fact that it's open source IS the big deal. A monopoly of Mozilla wouldn't be bad at all - there's nothing wrong with huge market shares if it happens to be the best product and the makers of said product are not trying to prevent competition.
I think you need to think about that one a bit harder. Choice is fine, but it's a means to an end, not an end in itself, and sometimes restricting it (ie technical standards) is a good thing.
Interesting wrap to rumors. (Score:5, Interesting)
What really struck me as interesting, particularly with the quiet reaction to it, is that Apple seems to have declared war on Microsoft. They praised MS Office with one breath, then bitchslapped Gates and his cronies with a double whammy of a new browser and a competitor to Powerpoint. I'm predicting now, a monster update to AppleWorks within the next two Macworlds.
The one thing that really dissappoints me is the incompatibility of Airport Extreme with the current 15" Powerbooks. I hadn't expected they'd deliver a blow like this to Powerbook owners so soon after a revision (867/1Ghz models), and was hopeful for an 802.11g transition that I could replace my standard Airport card with.
...has fiber-optic *lightning* for the keyboard... (Score:5, Funny)
1.21 giggawatts!!
A 'thong' of adoring fans? (Score:3, Funny)
How many mice does it take to make 12 pounds of mouse nuts? [xnewswire.com] And why are people eating them?
Wunderkind (Score:5, Interesting)
Safari is a neat browser and of the stuff released today was one thing that really suprised me. I didn't figure Apple would want to enter the browser "war" so I sort of wrote off them ever making a browser. It made no sense to go after that essentially profitless market when there are so many alternatives already entrenched. After using Safari a bit I realized Apple didn't enter the browser war, they just built a system on the fallout ridden wastes of the browser war. The gadgetry MS has been trying to add to IE in the form of auction watches and whatnot are handled by Sherlock 3, Safari doesn't need them. It also doesn't need some entirely new plugin architecture because Quicktime supports a huge swath of file formats and media types that are readily found on the web. All Apple really had to do was build an interface for a third party's HTML renderer which I think they've done pretty well. As an added bonus it also lets Apple ship consumer systems with entirely first party software and still have it be functional for the typical Mac neophyte. It's also really sweet seeing the GPL is a product like Safari.
I've been waiting for Apple to move to 802.11g for a while now, I figured they would have done so way earlier than now. Had they done this they might have ended up screwed over by a standards committee had anything changed in the spec between when they released it and the still pending ratification date. Keeping that in mind waiting until the spec's finality was imminent makes a lot of sense. It might take me a while to move up to Airport Extreme (as I just bought 802.11.b equipment) but when I end up with a new Powerbook it will be awesome that it is there.
The Powerbooks facinated me, I'm really glad I've held off buying a new laptop. I had figured the Powerbooks would be the next candidates for an upgrade but never did I think the upgrades would look like they do. I think the 12" Powerbook is an excellent idea and I hope to have one ASAP. While the iBook is a nice system it falls short for anyone wanting a good dose of processing power (read gaming performance) in a portable system. Adding Radeons to the iBooks helped a bit but a "scorching" 49fps in Quake 3 is a yawner (though Apple needs to learn if you want better frame rates you can down the resolution or drop the color depth for some pretty decent playability). I think for most things the 12" Powerbook is going to end up making x86 laptops look pretty crappy, especially subnotebooks. Most of the smaller systems you can find run on hobbled Celerons or Crusoes and cost as much if not more as the new PB. Maybe Apple will get more of a leg up in the portable market.
Between an iCal release that works, a new browser, and an official X11 system that works with Quartz, I have a lot to do on my Powerbook. Maybe one of the first things will be to order a new one.
Why KHTML (from the KDE mailing list) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:David Hyatt is on the Safari team? (Score:4, Informative)
Self-signed certificates (Score:3, Informative)
I guess this must be Apple's fault, not KHTML's. I known Konq works on the above url.
Apple X11 for Fink users (Score:5, Informative)
dpkg -r --force-depends xfree86-base
dpkg -r --force-depends xfree86-base-shlibs
[install the SDK from apple - http://www.apple.com/macosx/x11/ ]
[install the user install from apple - http://www.apple.com/macosx/x11/download/ ]
fink install system-xfree86
(courtesy of Ben Hines on the fink-devel list)
You may have to manually edit your $HOME/.xinitrc file to add the "exec quartz-wm" line in place of any other "exec" lines.
Other than that, it works great for me. The new Quartz WM is good.
Why the release of OSX X11 is important (Score:5, Insightful)
OpenOffice isnt seen as a viable replacement among mac users because it uses X11, and looks decidedly un-maclike. With this new release of X11, thats fixed. Apple can now bundle open office with OS X, and they won't need to spend hundreds of man hours porting it to run under Aqua.
The combination of OpenOffice running under apples X11 implementation, Safari, and Keynote could be just the thing that apple uses to decrease (and perhaps ultimatley do away with altogether) its dependence on MS. And that, I think, is a Good Thing.
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"Open Source - We Think It's Great" (Score:4, Insightful)
My point is, that by promoting the ideas and benefits of Open Source to Graphic Artists, Travelling Business People, "Creative Types" and the Casual Mac User(tm), Apple is doing more to promote open source among non-technical people than any other company out there - at least any other company my grandmother has heard of, anyway.
Here's a screen shot:
Apple Keynote Screen Shot [alternativelight.com]
Hats off to OroborOSX (Score:5, Insightful)
They didn't bash it. They didn't knock it. They didn't even complain about it. They said something like, "How does this affect our project? We don't know. Download it. Check it out. Don't forget to back up the X11 directories beforehand, just in case." And they linked to a message forum thread on their site that had been created to talk about this new product from Apple. Even in the forum, there was very little criticism of Apple's X11 product, and everything critical they had to say was constructive.
Even though this product could completely obliterate the need for their software, they were open to an alternative. They didn't go into FUD mode and immediately issue press releases bashing the "competition".
One could argue that they have no reason to get upset or concerned, because they were giving their software away anyway. No money to be made or lost, right? So take your ball and go home. Not so. You can't tell me there's no pride in Open Source. These people found a void and filled it, and the void could very well be filled AGAIN by the very people who caused the void in the first place. It would be very understandable for the OroborOSX team to get a little miffed.
Hats off to these guys for representing the best of the Open Source Community, which most often really DOES seem to be about ensuring that we all have the very best software that we can get, no matter who makes it.
Now I'll check to see if my "optimization" is done yet, and I'll begin my little evaluation of Apple's new effort. But I will be very careful to REMEMBER who has already been here and to not forget the work that they have done. Now that they have been here, the bar has been RAISED for Apple and they will have to produce quality software. This is a great role for Open Source software, if nothing else.
Cheers,
RP
Safari mounts ftp sites on desktop! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:more apple contempt for its customer base (Score:4, Informative)
You should try using your damaged memory a little more, then you'd notice that the price of the iBooks has dropped by $100-$200!
There is no "finder-level hardware graphics acceleration". You're probably thinking about Quartz Extreme, which is window compositing-level hardware graphics acceleration. And guess what: the Radeon 7500 (either with 16MB or 32MB) in the iBooks supports the required features just fine.
Re:Mac guys (Score:3, Insightful)
As for your 486 running faster than an 8600, do you mean for general OS performance, or for actual comparable applications? My 486 would barely run a graphics program, which the 8600s I've used handle passably (not wonderfully, but better). So at that point, it's subjective word-against-word.
In any case, that's all old news. The reason today's Macs excite us (or me, anyway) is that they offer very spiffy design on very solid, quick performance. You say Macs are not "faster, cheaper, more stable systems." If, for such systems, you mean Linux, I can't argue with you. I would claim, though, that the newest Macs match or best top-flight Windows systems for performance (thanks to G4/Velocity) and stability (thanks to OS X's BSD core). Then, what you get for the extra "expense" is a tastefully designed, fully integrated yet completely flexible computer and GUI. To re-iterate, over Windows, you gain even more stability, possibly some speed, and a full set of command line tools. Over Linux/other *NIXes, you get a snappy, consistent GUI and access to more applications.
Personally, I use all three, depending on the task. I mostly just find Macs a nicer environment to work in.