Keynote analysis (while on the train ride home)
Starting off the keynote was a few of Apple's new Switch commercials,
which combines the worst of Jeff Goldblum with the best of MTVish,
trendy, Gen-Xers, GAP ads. I like them anyway. Apple is showing some
real balls with this new campaign. "I used to think it was my fault
that Windows didn't work properly." I'm curious what backlash might
come out of this. Nothing like a direct assault on Microsoft to get the
competition wars started. We were also treated to a special commercial
with Will Fallow (SNL guy), who somehow compared the Mac to raspberry
parfait (or was it blueberry?). And with parfait, all you can do is eat
it and poop it out. His words, not mine. But enough of the silliness.
Steve Jobs came on stage with his usual black shirt, blue jeans attire.
Apple said that 20% of their user base has migrated to OS X in 24 months,
and that there are now 2.5 million active OS X users and are predicting
double that by end of year. There are also 3500 OS X applications as of
May 2002, as opposed to only 500 in April 2001. Considering that
applications drive OS choice and power, that's a good jump for them.
However I thought the OS X user base number sounded rather discouragingly
low. It'd be interesting to compare the migration speed of OS9 -> OS X
as with System 6 -> System 7 and Win 98 -> W2K/ME/XP. Still, if they
hit 5 million users by December, that is a force to deal with, and OS X could be
it's way to being the largest Unix.
I was surprised but pleased with hearing that RealOne Player was
available (in beta) for OS X. It's about time; I was getting sick of
listening to rushlimbaugh.com through Classic compatibility environment
and the performance problems with that. So now a crappy and ugly
experience is still...a bit less....at least its native. I take it
back, in the interest of journalistic integrity I'll jump to conclusions
after seeing it in action.
On to OS X 10.2, known as Jaguar. Ooooh....fast animal. Must be a fast
OS, huh marketing people. There are a few nice things in there that
Jobs didn't really address, like FreeBSD 4.4, LDAP, and IPv6. There
is an SMB browser, Active Directory support, and PPTP built into the
Finder. That's excellent news for those of us who need to connect to
Windows networks. The SMB client in 10.1, I'm sorry to say, truly sucked. I'm hoping that 10.2 is better.
Sherlock 3 has taken some steps into the web/Internet services area.
You can enter your zip code, and get returned a list of local movies,
the show times, and even the trailer. The yellow pages part of Sherlock
will let you search for businesses and sort by distance, and then also
give you a map and directions. This combines searching and browsing
multiple web sites, and in an interface that doesn't have to follow the
look and feel of a web browser.
Handwriting recognition is integrated into the OS. This is a long lost
Newton technology. Woah, Steve Jobs actually said "Newton" and Newton
team! They haven't forgotten about us Newton users! There is also now
support for Bluetooth, via a USB adapter, including syncing your address book with a bluetooth enabled cell phone.
Now the big news. .mac (dot-mac). Yeah, Jobs admits they got the idea
from a certain Seattle-based company. This is Apple's dive into
subscription-based Internet services. Gone are iTools. Free mac.com
email, free iDisk, free homepage, all gone. Now for $99 per year ($49
first year for current iTools users) you get all that and a bit more.
You get 100MB disk space instead of 25, backup software, easier
synchronization of calendar and address books, and McAfee antivirus
software, in addition to the previously free iTools services. Will
anyone bite on this? I already read some, ahem, much griping on the
MacNN and Slashdot forums over this immediately after the keynote. My
opinion is that iTools probably didn't sell any new macs. It just gave
some mac users a way to snub their noses at Windows people.
I do not see this new subscription service as being a positive or negative
influence on people's purchasing decisions, and probably will bring in
some extra bucks to Apple. Offsite automated backups and antivirus
software is a good deal for $100 a year, considering it'd cost about
$50/yr for the AV alone. Web hosting on mac.com could be worth it if
the amount of gigabytes/month is high enough. Finding ad free web
hosting for $8/month isn't always easy. Unfortunately it's just the
sign of the new Internet times, where nothing is free anymore. Except
Network Computing blogs. Those are definitely free. :-)
-- Mike DeMaria
