Winds of Change

written by Charles DeVore

from Mouse Tracks February 2003

Welcome to the Steve Jobs World–oops! I mean Macworld 2003. Here is a place where everyone checks the real world at the door and enters a room where the only windows are the real ones that Anderson Windows put up as a display. For everything else, it's a Macintosh world. One of the most impressive things Janet and I noticed was the sea of laptops lining the passageway between the South and North Moscone Halls. Most people were trying to take advantage of some open AirPort base stations that you could log into. We expected to see many iBooks and older PowerBooks such as Pismo/ Lombard/Wallstreets. We saw a couple here and there, but most people had TiBooks–sometimes ten or more in a row.

Janet and I were among the first to enter the North Hall when the doors opened Tuesday morning. There was a light crowd due to the fact that Steve Jobs' keynote speech was still in progress (it ran about 15 minutes long). So we got to see the teardown of the curtains covering all the Apple signs around their booth.

Apple's new hardware
Starting with the new aluminum-cased PowerBooks–even the keys are metallic.

12" PowerBook G4 12.1-inch TFT Display 1024x768 resolution, 867MHz PowerPC G4, 256MB DDR266 SDRAM, 40GB Ultra ATA/100, Combo Drive, NVIDIA GeForce4 420 Go 32MB DDR video memory, 10/100BASE-T Ethernet, FireWire 400, AirPort Extreme Ready, Bluetooth built-in, VGA & S Video out.

(All of this jargon means it's small, fast and powerful.)

17" Widescreen PowerBook G4 17-inch TFT Display, 1440x900 resolution, 1GHz PowerPC G4, 1MB L3 cache, 512MB DDR333 SDRAM, 60GB Ultra ATA/100, SuperDrive, NVIDIA GeForce4 440 Go 64MB DDR video memory, Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire 800, AirPort Extreme built-in, Bluetooth built-in, DVI & S-Video out.

(What Apple is trying to say is it's really big, fast and powerful.)

AirPort Extreme Base Station (with modem and antenna port) At speeds up to 54 Mbps, Apple's new AirPort Extreme wireless networking is nearly five times faster than original AirPort technology. The new AirPort Extreme Base Station with 56kbps modem and external antenna port lets you set up a wireless network for Internet access and file sharing via AirPort or AirPort Extreme Cards.

(Here Apple is trying to leapfrog the other wireless base stations with five times the speed–if you have a new computer and one of the new Extreme AirPort cards. Please note that older computers will not be able to upgrade with Apple's card. However, there is a good chance many third party vendors will step in with cards that can be used by this base station to give your older PB the "extreme speed" Apple is promising.)

Apple's new software
Also introduced at the show is an Express version of Final Cut Pro for $299. Apple has taken note of what Photoshop Elements has done and copied the idea. This version of Express does editing of DV format video with all the power and tricks normally used by high-end videographers. So you buy this product, and when you get to the point where you need the full product, you already know how to use 95 percent of the features. This means the upgrade path is a lot easier than trying to jump from iMovie or iDVD. This idea also tends to cut down on pirates who figure anything that costs $999 is fair game for copying.

iLife is really not as much a new product as it is a way to get upgrades to people who do not have a broadband connection. In fact, most of what is on the disk is located on Apple's website for download. The only thing not offered on the Apple website for download is iDVD which is way too big even for most broadband customers. So for your $49, Apple will send you the updates to iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, and iDVD on CD. Remember, if you do not have a SuperDrive, iDVD won't be very useful because you cannot record on non-Apple DVD burners.

Keynote is for making presentations by everyone. It has a few bumps here and there but, all in all, is not too bad for a brand new product. Janet borrowed a copy to see how well it worked and was able to get up and running with very little reading. It even allows users to open PowerPoint presentations and export the Keynote file as a PowerPoint document for your PC buddies. You can also export to QuickTime or PDF format. Since PowerPoint sells for over $300, the $99 for Keynote is a bargain price. Just be aware it is version 1.0; there will be at least a couple of bugs and also some features that will need to be added.

Apple introduced a new web browser, Safari, for the Macintosh based on an engine that uses KHTML from KDE's Konqueror which is an Open Source project. Apple has taken this engine and added significant enhancements that will be contributed back to the Open Source community. PMUG members–please listen before charging out to download this program. It's a beta program. It may work fine, or it may damage files and crash your computer. Let them get it to the point where it's version 1.0. This usually means it's stable and will not damage anything. If you do indeed want to try it out, it requires Jaguar 10.2, 128 meg of RAM minimum, eMac, iMac, iBook, Power Macintosh G3, Power Mac G4 or any PowerBook introduced after May 1998. Please note this is going to be a very popular item when it's released as a finished product. It has many good features that people will be interested in; check it out at www.apple.com.

Also at Macworld
Apple also announced that there are now five million OS X users and 5,000 native applications. As always, I question just where anyone gets this kind of information. Are these five million full-time users, or are they people who bought or got issued the product? I have many products that I purchased with intent to use and never quite got that far. Jaguar is a fairly stable system compared to some; I'm just worried Apple is beating its chest with vapor figures. (I'd hate to have us do a Microsoft.)

One of the things I noticed at this Macworld, compared to other Macworlds, is that vendors were much more interested in talking about visiting user groups than in the recent past. So I have several leads to follow-up on for future presentations at PMUG.

One of the vendors turned out to be a Portland company called Panic, Inc. who Janet invited to come by the General Meeting. It was a pleasant surprise when they took her up on the offer and showed up. Panic asked to do a quick demo of some of their products, and it was a big hit. They demonstrated DeskTastic which allows you to draw over things on your desktop, Audion which is a MP3 player/encoder/editor, CandyBar which allows you to change your System and Dock icons, and a short demo of Transmit 2 FTP client. The great thing about these startup companies is that they charge reasonable prices and have really interesting software. Prices are from $8.95 to $24.95. Check out their products at the www.panic.com website. Please note all their products are for System 10 only, and you can download demos and try them out. I really like the try before you buy attitude.

The big thing at Macworld Expo this trip was training. It seems like every other booth had a training CD, video or offered online tutoring. I'm thinking that System 10 has been a real good marketing tool for most of these companies.

On to local things
I want to thank all those who showed up at the PMUG office to move us to our new office on the third floor of the Galleria building. Yes, I know we just got settled on the fourth floor, but, as we all know, pucky happens. Special thanks to Glenna Rose Bowman who headed up the packing and oversaw the actual move while I was in San Fran attending Macworld. I firmly believe that the new office will give us a more public face and hopefully spread the word about PMUG. So if you're downtown on Tuesday night between 7:00 and 9:00pm, stop by and say hello.

Speaking of the new office, we sure would like to have some volunteers who would open up the office and talk to people about PMUG and joining the users' group. This would be during the day and would be perfect for some of our retired members who are looking for a way to help out the club. You don't have to be a Mac genius. What we are looking for are friendly folks who can answer questions about the user group and our classes and who can hand out information. Give me a call if you're interested, and we'll talk.

You can reach me at charles@cdevsol.com.

Previous Article Next Article

Back to Home page