All-New PowerBooks, Web Browser Featured at Macworld 1095
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...
Apple surfs Slashdot! (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.apple.com/safari/theater/bookmarks.htm
Safari (Score:3, Interesting)
All this is sweet (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Apple rolled their own X11 too! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Safari (Score:3, Interesting)
It may be fast, but I gotta have tabs and a sidebar for my bookmarks. If they ad these two features, I'll use it.
I tried it, and it IS fast. Too bad.
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.
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.
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.
Re:Apple rolled their own X11 too! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Anatomy sized notebook (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Anatomy sized notebook (Score:2, Interesting)
-JD-
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!
Re:Apple to XDarwin Developers: Drop Dead (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh, and comments like yours make me sick. But then again Slashdot is some kind of masochistic pleasure to me.
Re:Anatomy sized notebook (Score:2, Interesting)
I for one will be picking up a TiBook 12" RSN...
The form factor of the iBooks appealed to me, but the lack of power put me off.
the TiBook is exactly what i was looking for.
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]
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....
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:Safari (Score:3, Interesting)
No tabbed browsing (killer omission) and no type-ahead features, which sucks. It is very fast, however.
One nice feature, though, is emacs-style navigation in type-in forms! Alas, that feature is a bit buggy, but I was very happy to see it.
Worst thing so far is that I couldn't post this from Safari itself since it got confused when I pressed the "Preview" button. OK, so Mozilla was also slow, but I knew something was up due to the, er, "throbber" thingie. No such beast on Safari.
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:16:10 aspect ratio :) - sweet (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, a very lustworthy material object, this. Given that it really is a serious candidate for replacing the desktop computer for many folks (it could easily replace mine), $3300 is not a bad deal at all, considering everything you get. The toughest part here is going to be my wife's permission.
Airport Extreme is very nice.
The upgrades to iApps are all very nice, but the best announcement of all is Keynote. Finally, a cheap alternative to the much hated Powerpoint! And with an open, XML based file format, no less. I give it a couple of days before someone publishes stylesheets for it.
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...
Re:Why KHTML rather than Gecko? (Score:3, Interesting)
Everyone who expects OpenOffice to make its way to full Aqua interface really ought to wonder whether KOffice won't make it first. Porting KOffice would likely be much easier than porting OpenOffice. (Not that I'm saying it will happen, mind you)
Re:Why KHTML rather than Gecko? (Score:2, Interesting)
So while technically Gecko might be more noble and "better", in real life Konqueror might very well work on more sites. From my experience, it ends up 50-50 anyway. On some sites Konq is faster or more accurate, on others Gecko wins, on most I couldn't tell.
Using Qt's native Aqua widgets might have been a huge factor too, instead of faking that look with XUL.
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.
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.
Buit-In Bluetooth (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Safari rocks! (Score:3, Interesting)
A few things could be added, though. There's no spell checker, like OmniWeb and Mail use, and it doesn't remember passwords like Chimera and Mozilla do. But it's fast, and it's a Beta. I did have to change back to OmniWeb to post this, as Safari kept timing out when I clicked on anything here, though to be fair, Slashdot seems to be pretty Slashdotted right now, and it took OmniWeb about three minutes to open this window.
I'll play with Safari some more, but I'll stick with OmniWeb for everyday use.
Re:agent identification for Safari (Score:1, Interesting)
Makes me wonder what the state is of Qt development... if there's something else in the pipe coming.
Re:My takes (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd pay the differance in price just for the faster processor, and the advantages of the G4 over the G3. The SuperDrive option is also really cool, and I'm sure if we get her the powerbook we'll get that too.
This may not sell a huge amount, but it will certainly be a nice upgrade for those that like the iBooks small size, but want a little more punch.
Or maybe it's just me
Re:why khtml?? i'll tell ya (Score:2, Interesting)
Check out the new Airport Base Station (Score:2, Interesting)
It's a print server for a USB printer. It's got a USB port - plug something in, and it shows up on your network.
It's a PPP server. You can apparently set your modem to answer calls. This will give you access not only to your local network (printing, file sharing), but if the airport is routing a DSL/Cable connection, you get full dial up internet access.
Kinda kills the answering machine, but what the hell !
JT
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:Way to reinvent the wheel (Score:2, Interesting)
Safari has been in development for around a year. This is notably longer than Chimera has existed.
There are several other links in this discussion to Apple's stated reasoning for choosing khtml. Those reasons pretty much all come to simplicity: it's about a tenth the code of even just gecko.
That smaller code size tends to make the finished product a bit zippier, but even more important is that it greatly increases the speed and flexibility with which they can improve upon it.
And standards compliance will only become _better_ with more commonly-used renderers. The harder it is for designers to write only for their favorite browser, instead of for the standard, the better.
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 ^_^
Re:agent identification for Safari (Score:3, Interesting)
AAARRRRRHHHHHHH!!!
This is exactly what I was afraid of. I didn't mind if they used something other than Gecko, as long as it rendered as well as Gecko.
The last thing we need is another browser with a different level of support of CSS.
Now we have to balance between 4 browsers/rendering engines: IE6, Opera 7, Gecko, and Safari/KHTML.
Hopefully the story will change once it's out of beta.
Re:OK, so what's new? (Score:3, Interesting)
Uhm, if you think Mozilla invented the Popup killer, Phoenix invented instant bookmark categorizing, or that Phoenix invented the google toolbar, you're sadly mistaken.
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.
Re:Anatomy sized notebook (Score:3, Interesting)
i want one i want one i want one i want one
it just comes with me.
now i'm sorry i bought that palm! this would pretty much replace it. i have no need for a slim-down under-powered pocket pc when i can have something like this so gosh-darned small.
Re:12" Powerbook Very Cool! But... (Score:3, Interesting)
I was informed a while ago, though I'm not sure if it's still true, that Adobe will gladly exchange your Windows license for Photoshop 7 for an OS X license for Photoshop 7, straight trade. I would suggest calling Adobe to find out if this is the case, as I would with Macromedia. It doesn't cost them anything, and it promotes good customer relations, so I don't see why not.
--Dan
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.
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:3, Interesting)