Tuesday, January 7, 2003

Day One Summary Day One of the Expo is finished, and I find myself exuberant with the possibilities that are out there. In about two weeks, Apple's releasing iLife and with it, all the tools to really do more online stuff with my photos, in addition to doing more along the lines of DVD production from my photos, I can do a lot more with the stuff I already have made. Doing more with iMovie may be a goal in the near future, especially with new iDVD features. I feel inspired by this Expo. Inspired to develop more content, inspired to develop MacSlash to include more original content, inspired to do more in the community, to foster some of this stuff. Maybe it's the Reality Distortion Field® that's having lingering effects tonight, but I really am excited by all the degrees of interconnectivity. Keynote also rocks my socks. This is a PowerPoint Killer, ladies and gents. I'll be doing a full review of its features in the coming month, for MacSlash and for here. Then there's Safari, which I'm using to write this entry, and despite its lack of tabs, this is a real kickass browser. It's fast. Like IE on the PC fast. It renders tables seamlessly. And for the most part, it's open source. It's built on the KHTML and KJS platform and tuned by the guy who wrote Chimera. Perhaps, we may see something tabs-wise in the coming months as part of the final 1.0 release. Spent some serious time talking with the Asanté folks and the FirstClass devs today which I will detail at a later time, but I have found solutions to many things. 8:31:43 PM    comment [] Woz Panel Notes and Writeup on the Presentation Panel including Steve Wozniak, Neil Ticktin, Robin Williams and Bob LeVitus. Moderator is Dave Mark, editor in chief of Mac Tech. The line for the presentation snaked across the Expo floor from one exhibit hall halfway to the other. The crowds were being packed in with a crowbar to see the return of Steve Wozniak to the Apple banner. Despite MacSlash's press-credential-denial, we were still able to get a fairly good seat. The panel's topic is Moving to OS X. Some opening questions revealed that the audience was very savvy and very excited about the talk. Most had bought their Mac before 1990, as well. About 10% of the crowd was still booting into OS 9. First Question: What's your mac setup? Bob LeVitus: G4 Dual 1 Gig, Cinema Display, 17" CRT as well, PowerBook G4. 6 or 7 FireWire Disks. All running OS X. Robin Williams: G4 Tower 1.5GB OS X w/ SuperDrive. Old Orange iMac as well (9 only), PC in the corner. Flat Panel iMac. The IDG expo Dave: Titanium G4. Every Peripheral, iPod is favorite Woz: Tower dual displays, Cube is his family machine, "I love the cube". His personal is a portable. G4 TiBook. Current Wireless Setup: 802.11 in the school district he works in. Wireless in the house. "One less wire for neatness". Bluetooth, USB flash reader Neil Ticktin: 9 and X machines for the house. PowerBook and eMac in 9/X. What features do you miss from 9 that you want to see in X? Dave: Windowing/Layering algorithm. Interleaving of windows is frustrating. Bob: Unsanity is making WindowShade. I miss the configurable menu. Fruit Menu fixes. Labels X from Unsanity, too. Robin: Open Dialog Box can't type the first few chars to get to the file. Dragging by the edge no longer. Neil T: Click on a file is edit name, and you can't toss it out straight away. "Make windowing work as on 9 as a preference!" Woz: Draggability isn't a constant, and it should be. The longer program names change the way in which you hit the menus. That needs to go back. Advantages to Switching: Bob: MacOS 9 is better in OS X. Stability. No "forced brick" moments. Woz: "I switched my browser and got rid of my crashes." Switched to iCab, no crashes. Robin: The biggest reason is: you have to. Do I need to learn unix to make the most of OS X? Robin: No Bob: No Woz: Unix is great: it opens the Mac to Unix people. Neil: Probably not. What's the answer for disk utils? Bob: fsck. Just run it from the drive. Takes a few seconds. Woz: fsck is like rebuilding the desktop. Bob: Disk First Aid and fsck do the same stuff. DFA means rebooting though. Cmd-S runs fsck -y at startup. Neil: OS 9 could do that without a reboot. Bob: Diskwarrior is the last stop at protocol for reviving/fixing. Neil:Drive 10 is great. Bob: MacFixit.com is great for info about this. If you were the MacOS Product mgr...? Woz: More testing! There needs to be more testing before they ship. Neil: iPhoto should be able to handle a large number of photos without trouble. Woz: iPhoto has issues. Major Apps Missing: Robin: Quark. Mariner Write. Bob: Quark. But the consumer won't need anything special. Woz: It's all there. The expense between 9 and 10 is brutal. Dave: Digital Performer. ProTools. But both are coming. Neil: There's no reason not to be on X. There are some folks who need some other things in 9. There are solutions we need to encourage Apple to push for. Getting the whole community on X should be our goal. Woz: Why would I switch if they just work? Neil: But those aren't front line machines. If I was setting up a new machine, it would be in OS X. How will Mac OS X work in the biz world? Woz: OS X provides IT and Schools and such, with a solution to the enterprise needs. Neil: Apple's laying the foundation for small biz to move to Mac. There's features in Jag that make a lot of sense for VPNs, for cross-platform computing networks.Keynote and the Xserve as well. 3:05:52 PM    comment [] Photos! Photos from Day One at Macworld Expo. Posted via Dlink Wireless connection from Macwarehouse.com 12:36:04 PM    comment [] Keynotes I've survived the ordeal so that I can now claim a seat at the Keynote Address! Now we're starting up! Notes: Macworld is the biggest MP4 stream ever. Heh, Ellen Feiss, Switchers 7.8 mil unique visitors for switch?! Kickass. 68% are Windozers. Apple Retail: 51 Stores in the US. 85 mil people live within a short drive of Apple Store. I'm gonna have to go to the Grove in LA! Revenue info: Right on Target for Retail. $148 mil. 50% Switcher Biz 1.4mil people in December. 20 Macworlds. Holy shit. X for Teachers. Extended til March 31 iSync: syncing for the masses. 1.0 last week. He's moving so damn quickly. .Mac: Email, iDisk, Homepage, Picture Books, Virex, Backup, iSync to sync across multimacs, iCal hosting. "We got some feedback." 250,000 subscribers. iPod: "Walkman of the digital age" 600,000 iPods. 1 every minute since shipping. #1 MP3 player in US and Japan. 42% Market Share in JP. Accessories: Burton makes an accessory: iPod jacket?! wtf. Switch in the sleeve. C'mon. Updates done in 15 minutes. 5 mil Xers, 10 mil by end of year. X transition is done. Office for $200. Extended til April 7th. QuickBooks Pro by Intuit debuted. Nascar Racing 2002 w/ Force Feedback. Virtual PC 6 Director MX out. This is all old news... Pro Tools from Digidesign. To ship this month. ProTools Sound stuff. Recording artists and such. $495 for the basic sys. Very slick demo. Software's only $75! FCP is #1 by units sold. Final Cut Express! Edit Like a Pro. Same chrome same project style as FCP. Same file format, but with also iMovie projects and others. Transitions the same way, with software realtime effects. $299. Still too high for me. Available today though. G'night OS 9. Been real. Digital Hub time: We rock, no one else delivers. Here we go! Hidden features: iTunes 3? iPhoto 2. Integrated with iTunes 3. One Click Enhance. Retouch Brush. Archive to CD and DVD. Searching is cool. Grabs from iTunes for the slideshow musak. iDVD integration. One Click Enhance. Holy shit. That's great. Retouch kit. Hot damn. Does a lot of stuff. iMovie 3. Full integration. Chapters in the films for iDVD. Ken Burns effect plugins. Precise Audio edits. Window interface. Adding Skywalker Sound Effects. This Ken Burns Effect Thing is really rocking. New Titles, Transitions. Chapter markers are cake. No more export to iDVD. Just click the button and go. iDVD 3. Fully integrated w/ iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie. 24 new themes for the discs. Scene Selection. This is slick. The New Themes are cool. "You can make this stuff." This is the new slogan. This is why I come to expo, I leave Excited and full of hope and possibilities, imagining what I can do with my own mac. This is what it's all about, self-expression through Macs. $3 a DVD. Man, I will be burning a ton from the London trip. Booya. iLife. January 25th. Bundled together with all new macs. Free Download iTunes. Free Download of iPhoto2. IMovie 3 for free. iDVD for sale. Whole thing for $49. Safari. Turbo Browser for OS X. First New Browser in 5 Years. Faster Browser. 3x faster on load. 2x faster on JS. 40% faster on load. Google searching native. Snapback. Bookmarking is different. Sheets help do stuff that rock. This will be an IE killer. Standards based. XHTML, CSS2 compliant. Apple used Open Source and are returning the Open Source code libraries better. KHTML based rendering. Beta release: Free Download: Today. Keynote. PowerPoint Killer. Built for Steve. Been in Beta for a whole year. Keynote supports full quartz graphics, all alphachannel support. PSD, ILL, Flash. Full Theming behind it. Imports and Exports PPT files. PDF, or QT Movie too. Open File Format. Can b manipulated with XML. Cost: $99. Very slick. Avail Today. Get it at Keynote. Nice. TiBooks. 2 years old. No one's caught up. 35% of apple's sales are laptops. Here we go. 17" TiBook. 1 Inch Thick. Thinnest PowerBook ever. They're in the booths. 1440x900 display. 16:10 ratio. Backlit keyboard. Fibre optic. Ambient light sensors. 7 lbs. Aluminum Alloy that's Anodized and NOT painted. 1 GHz G4, with 1 MB L3. SuperDrive. GeForce4 440 Go, 64MB, FireWire 800. GigE. SVideo, DVI/VGA out. Dual USBs. PC card in, line in, headphones. Wireless. Bluetooth BuiltIn. Airport as well. Airport Extreme as well. 54 Mbps. 802.11g. Fully compatible with B. Antennae are fixed. Range of the iBook. Basestation: 50 users, Bridging, USB printing over WiFi, $199. Lithium Prismatic Battery. 4.5 Hours of life. Price: $3299. Not bad. That's $100 more than this one. February Ship Date. 12" PowerBook. 1.2 inches thick. 4.6lbs. Smallest Powerbook. 867 G4. GeForce 420 Go, 32Mb onboard, slotload combo drive, WiFi ready, Bluetooth, AirEx. 5 hours battery. $1799. Most Affordable TiBook ever. Shipping in 2 weeks. This is a good keynote. Cheaper G4s, Cool ass keyboards, bigger screens, FireWire 800. the new iLife suite. Apple's creating a niche market. They want people who are fully enabled. Creators and Builders. They are a framework for creativity. They provide the stage, but you provide the show. There isn't a thing like this anywhere else. Thanks Apple. You power my creativity, my blog, my photos, my movies, my DVDs, my lifestyle, my writing, my focus. It acts a lens. New TV ads. Hilarious. 11:08:12 AM    comment [] Here I sit, in the staircase at Moscone waiting to get into Keynote. I got up about 5:15 this morning to wander down to 4th St. and Mission past the Marriott toward the Center. I wandered past about 125 people, some there from 4am onwards, to my spot in line, with a couple design students from LA, an Architect from Long Beach and a couple of Mac Enthusiasts from USC. As they moved us around in the San Francisco predawn chill, up and down Harrison Street, past the street lights that had a mind of their own and moved their stalks up into pinnacles at 6am, past the box of donuts some kind soul placed on the steps to feed us all, and past the racks of free magazines for the show to where I stand now. There's an interesting atmosphere here, one of hope, but also one of skepticism and disappointment. The architect wants his CAD program to work better under OS X, the design students want a faster, more accessible platform, the enthusiasts want to know why a video iPod will do anyone any good. I share their fears and their hopes. We're all here in search of whatever Steve deems to be the Next New Thing. Some are saying Wireless, others Rendezvous, others Digital Home Device. Me, I'd like to think it's some combination of all three. Ben and Neil are off to Palo Alto to watch and post news from the Palo Alto Apple Store, they're wandering down on Caltrain and walking to the new store. It should be a fun adventure, and they'll be able to post news from the Keynote directly over the Wireless net in the Apple Store. Who knows, maybe they'll see the new goodies before we do here. Enough for now. More inside the hall. 6:50:24 AM    comment [] Well, we've survived the first day of Macworld. After a long fight with IDG Expos, http://www.macslash.org was denied press credentials on the basis that we accept too much commentary from our users, don't provide enough unique content and don't have professional bylines. So, we'll need to make some changes. I'm working on what we need to do, first we need to change to have real names in our stories instead of Vidmaster or AcaBen. Sorry guys, it's got to happen. We have to start doing more in our communities in terms of boosterism, interviews, and developer discussions. We need partnerships with O'Reilly and others. But the City is both as gorgeous as I remember and sketchier than I remember. There are parts where the homeless problem has gotten far worse, there are parts that are infested with porno. But it's also got a beautiful appearance in others. We wandered down Mission to Beale tonight for the Mac Managers Party (photos forthcoming for bandwidth...) which was great. Got to meet all sorts of people, Chuck Goolsbee of Digital Forest, Mark James from SoftRAID, a whole load of really scary smart people who've been Mac Geeks as long as there has been a Mac. I'm really outclassed in some things, but I did actually know which version of the Finder shipped with the Mac Plus (System 1.1) though. Wandering home, I am exhausted. Five hours until I get up for Keynote. 12:13:58 AM    comment []

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