[MLUG - DISCUSSION] Apple announces a lot of nutty stuff...

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

In case anybody was curious, Apple just announced a bunch of new 
stuff at MacWorld.  

Probably most relevant for Linux users is that they built a new
native-to-Mac web browser (named "Safari"; dunno why) based on
khtml, did a lot of work on that codebase, and released the changes
back to the community.  That sounds like very good news for
Konqueror.  I was surprised since I was sure they'd just tweak
Chimera instead and boost Mozilla.  So it goes.

Most of the announcements were for software; iPhoto2 sounds
especially cool, but all of the iApps were upgraded.  There's now a
budget version of FinalCut Pro.

Somewhat surprisingly, they also announced what they're hoping will 
be a PowerPoint killer called "keynote".  That makes perfect sense
given their big emphasis on notebooks these days.  Keynote imports
and exports PowerPoint, but uses a native (open, he said) XML 
format.  I only saw this stuff in a 3 x 2 inch streaming video 
window on my screen, but it looked really, really slick.

Other announcements included new 802.11g networking stuff that is
backward compatible with 802.11b (and reflashable when the standard
is finally blessed, etc.), and support for Bluetooth on the new
hardware.  The new 802.11g basestation is $200, and the 802.11g
cards are $99 from Apple, which means that 802.11b prices should
fall again if nothing else.  As a nice touch, the basestation also
has a USB port so you can share a printer off the base station.  
That's nice because the current shared printing solution via
Rendezvous (zeroconf), while elegant, really requires that the
computer hosting the printer is not asleep, which is a pain.

The new hardware consisted of a new *17-inch* Powerbook that is a
powerbook with a wide-format screen.  It also includes Firewire800,
which is basically doublespeed firewire, and bluetooth.  Allegedly
has a 4.5 hour battery life.  It costs $3300.

The other hardware was a 12-inch PowerBook that is 1 inch thick,
weighs 4.6 pounds, and costs $1800 or $2000 with a superdrive.  I
think this is the one they'll sell millions of, since it's probably
about twice the speed of an iBook, lighter, nicer all around, but
only a few hundred more expensive than an iBook with a combo-drive.

jking


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