Macworld NY -

[symphonix]

Hi there! I am new to the Apple community, having abandoned my PCs after 6 years of Wintel and 2 happy years of Linux. I've ordered an iBook-Combo, but supplies are hard to come by, especially here in Australia, and I am still waiting after six weeks. The Apple guys tell me its still another two weeks away at least. One of the downsides of living down-under, I guess.
So, while working nightshift here I flicked to the Macworld Keynote on my work PC.

After so much whispering and hype, especially regarding a new flat-panel iMac, the show crowd seem to be a little disappointed with the lack of jawdropping new technologies.
The keynote mostly centred around software, in particular Mac Os X.
In the hardware department there was only a couple of new iMacs - now abandoning flowers and spots for more conservative graphite and snow finishes. Also, there are now two firewire ports, and more RAM.
And then, the new PowerMacs - the casing remains much the same but for a metallic frame and some sweet drive doors. They now have three superdrive models, including a dual processor G4-800. And of course, another firewire port.

The advances to Mac Os X with the soon to be released update fill some important gaps. Now you can put the dock to the side, and use your own pictures for the slideshow-screensaver. I was really impressed with the "Burn-CDs-in-the-finder" feature. The debugging code that was slowing down OS X is out and now it screams along ... bliss!
And the demo of iDVD 2 was simply astounding - I can clearly see that in a few years from now EVERYBODY will be putting their home movies on DVD with animated menus. All in all very good.

I mean, I can understand why people might have been disappointed, but from the reports I've been picking off the airwaves, people were close to tears after the keynote. Some were apparently very angry and disruptive.

I really feel for the people who put on this show, since they obviously had obviously poured so much effort into putting some brilliant technologies into the hands of their loyal customers, only to be knocked back with comments like "What a waste of two hours..."
Wintel would happily hype or prematurely release any product that wasn't ready, while Apple has been very careful not to promise anything they can't deliver. I think this shows how much they care about the quality of their product.

So, what did you guys make of it?

 

[davidbrit2]

I certainly didn't think the presentation was bad by any means. How could I, when 10.1 looked so fabulous? Sure, some of the hardware rumors fell through, but they were just that - rumors. (Many of which I heard from Think Secret, I might add...) What I did find annoying, however, was the ignorant, biased commentary that was given by the folks at Tech TV. During the showdown, they kept moaning that the PC's RAM and hard drive weren't specified, when it was stated very clearly that both had 1 GB of RAM, and similar/identical hard drives. Then some "market analysts" came out afterward and began complaining about disappointments. I've never really liked that channel.

Oh, and you'll love the iBook. It's the finest laptop I've ever used. And I've used lots of laptops!

 

[symphonix]

Thanks, Dave, re: the iBook comment. You can imagine how hard it was to part with four-thousand Aussie dollars six weeks back when there was so little information to go on. Since then I have been relieved to see so many positive reports.

Anyhow, I was pretty offended at some of the comments floating around. I remember when I was working for a local paper, and when the very first issue went to press EVERYONE complained about EVERYTHING, and they did so without any respect for the staff. The guys at Apple are not gods, they're human beings. They can only do so much, and they ARE on the cutting edge and they ARE meeting price-points. They've created a new OS from an entirely new platform, and packed it with more integrated features than I could even have thought up. I really empathise with them.

In the mainframe world, operators demand a new feature and it shows up in about five to ten years (trust me on this). And if it were Windows, and people were demanding "burn-in-explorer" then MS would bring out a new version and charge them another $200. That Apple's people can do these adjustments in a matter of weeks is something they should be proud of.

 

[iPenguin]

I agree with what you said about TechTv being biased! Today their cover story is all about Apple
yet they spent more time talking about Microsoft's new mac products than they did actually talking about apple! Grr... i hate microsoft!

But at least TechTv isn't completely biased, after all, They did show Steve's keynote, and they did give apple a cover story...


I disagree with all the people saying that the Keynote was disappointing. It wasn't at all disappointing! WHo cares that there isn't a new iMac??? Ever since 10.0 came out I've heard people complaining left and right that X is too slow, And now apple has sped it up greatly, added Dvd and Cd burning, i don't see what X users have to complain about!

Plus they released a dual processor 800 mhz G4! that thing must be extremely fast!!!!
Mabye even gigahertz fast!! If you think about it that may be true... the dual processor 500 mhz g4 was approxamatly equal to the 700mhz G4. So therefore I'd think us mac users have gotten the gigahertz speed finally... but I may be wrong.

Over all, I don't see what people have to complain about! The things that didn't happen where the things that people hyped up the most, so in a sense the people disappointed themselves, not Apple!


I hope that makes sense!

 

[rharder]

'Hope you get your iBook soon. It's gotta be terrible waiting for it.

I managed to get a TiBook (not on my dollar!), but I've got half a mind to like the iBook more--what with it being so small and stuff.

-Rob