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For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Paul Takes On the MacWorld Expo 2005 Keynote

My opinions about the MacWorld Expo 2005 keynote--and the products Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced--might just surprise you. The mile-high view is that Apple hit a home run: Most of the new products they announced are quite exciting and it appears the company has actually figured out a way to grow Mac market share. Suddenly, I'm excited about the Mac again, though I remain a lot clearer-headed about Apple than most Mac fanatics. Here's my rundown of the keynote.

Apple retail stores
Apple has over 100 retail stores around the world (most in the US), which are now hosting over 1 million visitors a week. "20 MacWorlds a week, isn't that incredible?" Jobs asked. Maybe, I'm not sure. How many "visitors" does Best Buy or Barnes & Noble host a week, per each 100 stores? Is this figure high or low? We're in the computer industry, so we can't really say. I have a hard time imagining how boring it would be to watch any other CEO talk about retail store openings.

Anyway, Apple's retail stores appear to being doing well by the company. They are very Apple: Sparse, brightly lit, and not particularly warm feeling. They look like high-tech Gap stores. But they represent Apple very clearly, so if you're into that kind of thing, you'll be attracted to it.

Grade: A. Apple's stores have exceeded my expectations.

iMac G5
"It is the world's most beautiful desktop computer," Jobs said, but then he did design it. Certainly, looks are what matters. But where are the features people really need, like the 9-in-1 media reader? Jobs says the new iMac gets rid of all the cables, but of course the all-in-one design ensures that there will actually be more cables because all expansion is external. When Jobs quotes from a predictably glowing Walter "Apple Lover(tm)" Mossberg review of the iMac, and the audience actually applauds as if that means something, you just know they're primed for a religious experience that will not be intruded upon by logic or facts. However, here's a fun fact: the iMac G5, despite my complaints, is currently the best-selling Mac. That's not surprising, given the competition. In his phrasing, however, Jobs suggests that it's the best selling Mac ever. But that's not the case at all, of course.

And then what? No new iMac update? Bleh.

Grade: B. The iMac G5 is a solid release though I'm not a fan of the "form over function" aspects of the new design. It needed to be updated with faster processors and bigger hard drives, however.

Mac OS X Tiger
Jobs says that Mac OS X "Panther" is the most successful OS release in Apple's history. He also noted that there are over 14 million active Mac OS X users, and Apple has "completed the transition." That's far short of the 25 million users Apple typically claims, but is probably a lot more accurate.

What's next? Tiger, of course, the fifth "major release" of Mac OS X. It's "on schedule" for the first half of 2005. It allows for 64-bit memory addressing. It's more Windows compatible. It will automatically sync with other Macs over .Mac. Safari will add RSS support. Etc.

Jobs did show off a few new features. Spotlight is the new search technology that's being built into Tiger. Jobs, in a classic moment of chicanery, derides other desktop search solutions as "Spotlight wannabes." Cute. He singles out Google Desktop Search and MSN Desktop Search specifically and says they're not as good as Spotlight because Apple's technology is built into the "core of the OS" where you can "do things you can't do with a tool sitting on the side."

In a moment of unintended hilarity, Jobs is demonstrating Spotlight and--get this--he actually can't find a document he searched for. Here's what he says. "As an example, I can do down ... and ... um ... Oh, let's see ... [huge pause, uncomfortable silence, someone actually coughs] Where is that? I wanted to show you an event poster ... [another long silent pause] Well, let me show you a PDF brochure..." I'm sure the final version will work better.

In another moment of unintended hilarity, Spotlight actually crashes on Jobs. Unlike, say, the Media Center demo during Bill Gates' CES keynote, which did not crash, though it was incorrectly reported that way everywhere. "I'm going to get a lot of images here, I ... uh... oops ... I didn't want to do that. I'll show you that in a minute ... [awkward pause and then audience laughter] Alrighty. Yup. I've got a little bug here. [More laughter as Jobs gets the "bong" OS X error sound that typically required a hard reset]. Alright. Well, that's why we have backup systems here." [Riotous laughter and applauding] Only Jobs could get that kind of reaction from a "little bug" that was somehow big enough to freeze Mac OS X completely. And no, you won't see any negative press coverage of this very real gaffe, like we did for Gates, despite the fact that Gates' Media Center demo didn't actually crash. Ah well.

In any event, Spotlight makes for a great (if overly long) demo, when it isn't crashing spectacularly. It's typical of Jobs' Apple, with a gorgeous UI. I'm sure Spotlight will work just great when it ships.

Speaking of overly long demos, the Tiger demo goes on for far too long. It just gets monotonous. There's a new version of Mail.app. Fantastic. QuickTime 7 with H264 video compression and live window scaling on resize. Great. Dashboard, which Apple "invented" (ahem), presumably, because of some need. Whatever. A new iChat with multi-party video conferencing. Naturally. Shipping "long before" Longhorn. Of course it is. We get it.

On that note, Mac OS X Tiger will be a solid release, no doubt about it. Is it enough to sway Windows users? No, of course not. But I am utterly impressed with Apple's ability to deliver with Mac OS X. As Jobs and Apple fans often note, Microsoft talks about Longhorn, but Apple just keeps plugging away with their OS. Good for them. And if you're into technology, you just have to love OS X.

Grade: A. Mac OS X Tiger will be the best release of Mac OS X ever, and it will deliver on some Longhorn features about a year before Microsoft gets around to doing so.

Final Cut Express HD
Jobs says that 2005 will be the "year of high definition video" and I think he may be right. To that end, Apple will soon ship Final Cut Express HD, which sounds fantastic. And at $299 (or $99 for the upgrade) the price looks right. Available in February.

Grade: A. Final Cut Express is good stuff. I assume the HD version will be as well.

iLife '05
Apple's suite of digital media applications is unparalleled, and iLife '05 is even better, though iTunes hasn't been updated at all.

With iPhoto '05, Apple appears to answer a lot of the standard complaints, including the performance problems and full-featured photo editing. The new organizational features look good too. The Calendar view is derivative of other products, like Adobe PhotoShop Album, as is the editing dashboard, but whatever: Every photo app should have this stuff. Jobs really beat the heck out of the iPhoto demo, by the way: I was almost fast asleep by the time he finished.

iMovie '05 gets better performance and non-destructive trimming (finally, on both). It gets a feature called Magic iMovie that rips off Sony's Movie Shake, and it gets HD editing capabilities, which is sweet, though the performance of the latter during the demo was pretty bad. Jobs brought out Sony president Kunitake Ando to discuss a consumer grade Sony HD camcorder and how that product, along with Apple's HD software, will help usher in the year of HD. It was a good moment, an honest moment, and one reminiscent of Microsoft announcing its partnership with TiVo a week earlier.

iDVD '05 has new themes as you might expect, but it also features much simpler no-edit DVD creation, which is important, and now supports all writeable DVD formats, which is overdue. Overall, a small update, but to an already excellent application.

GarageBand '05 ... Eh. I'm sure the six people that use it are interested in whatever changed in this release. The ultimate niche application, and one that bears no resemblance at all to other iLife applications for some reason.

No iTunes update? Pfft.

The price? $79. Bravo! Bravo, I say, bravo!

Grade: A. There is nothing like iLife '05 on the PC side. We have parts of it, of course, free in XP, and you can get third party apps for various things. But $79 for this much stuff, all of it seamlessly integrated? My God.

iWork
Essentially AppleWorks '05, iWork is a productivity application suite, of sorts, that takes advantage of OS X features and works better with iLife. I say "of sorts" because iWork includes just two applications. The first, Keynote 2, is an update to the little-used and never-asked-for presentation package Apple first released last year. The second, Pages, is a word processor. And no, no one was asking for another one of those either.

That said, iWork is still interesting. Keynote picks up a bunch of features any presentation package should have, along with some lovely themes. Pages is brand new and can be used for virtually any word processing-style task. What sets it apart from other products is pre-made multi-page templates for such things as newsletters, letters, and brochures. In typical Apple style, they're stunning.

The ever-goofy Phil Schiller did the Pages demo. The only really impressive thing here is the price: Like AppleWorks, iWork is budget priced ($79). On the other hand, AppleWorks included a number of application types. For $45 more, you can get the much more powerful Microsoft Office 2004 Student and Teacher Edition.

Grade: C. Nobody was asking for this. It's not bad, just unnecessary, and I wish Apple would focus on the necessary.

Mac mini
Why doesn't Apple offer a stripped-down Mac is that is more affordable? "You know, I wish I had a nickel for every time someone asked me that," Jobs quipped before introducing the Mac mini. Essentially an iBook G4 without the LCD screen, the Mac mini represents a bold move on Apple's part: Jobs had always sworn that he wasn't interested in competing in the bargain basement world of sub-$1000 PCs. But with the mini, that's exactly what Apple's doing, though in typical Apple fashion, it doesn't include features--like a keyboard, mouse, and screen--that $500 PCs typically offer. And that mini will actually set you back more than an eMac when you deck it out in usable form.

So does it suck? Oh no. It does not suck. It does not suck at all. The Mac mini is a revolutionary product, one whose ramifications will be felt around the PC industry for months to come. I love it. I love that they did this.

The Mac mini is drool-worthy. The Mac mini is beautiful. The Mac mini is affordable. The Mac mini is small, quiet, and elegant. Like an iPod, it has trade-offs when compared to similarly-priced PC products. But you know what? I don't care. They're going to sell millions of these things. PC people will be able to get into a Mac for next to nothing. And Mac market share will grow. Mark my words. This is big stuff. Well, it's small. The box. Nevermind.

I love Mac mini. I love Apple for making Mac mini. And I love the thought of this thing turning around the Mac's fortune. All these years of over-pricing their products and Apple totally hit it out of the park this time. The 1.25 GHz version is just $499, though you'll need at least a RAM update to 512 MB. The 1.42 GHz version is just $599.

Let me address some concerns. Yes, a SuperDrive is extra. RAM is extra. The monitor, mouse and keyboard will add up. Yes, the 32 MB 1999-era video card is a joke. You know what? Who cares? The Mac mini rocks. I want one.

Grade: A. It's about time. The Mac is back, baby.

iTunes Music Store
Jobs described iTunes as the "world's most popular online music store." It may simply be the world's most popular online service, period. Despite selling middling quality songs that only work on the iPod, iTunes has done gangbuster business and it shows no signs of slowing down at all. Apple has sold over 230 million songs to date, and those songs are now selling at a rate of 1.25 millions song per day. The service has a 70 percent market share despite all the WMA-based competition. Apple sold 1 million iTunes gift cards between Thanksgiving and the end of 2004. This is, as they say, all good news. No, great news.

Grade: A. I don't like Apple's lock-in strategy, but you can't argue with success. iTunes is the standard by which all other online music services are measured. So far, none are measuring up.

iPod
Apple sold 4.5 million iPods during the 2004 holiday season, up from 733,000 iPods during the 2003 holiday season. That garnered a lot of applause, but it was well below the 5 million figure most analysts expected. Apple has sold over 10 million iPods totally so far.

There were no changes to iPod, iPod Photo, iPod U2 Special Edition, or the iPod mini, which is odd. The mini, especially, needs a bigger hard drive and a lower price.

Grade: B. Most iPods are still too expensive, and they're not compatible with non-Apple services, but they're selling amazingly well.

iPod shuffle
The iPod shuffle caused a lot of dithering on my part. My initial reaction was scorn: What, no screen? The competition has screens. But you know what? As with the Mac mini, this product--and its limitations--actually make sense. First of all--and this is astonishing--the iPod shuffle is actually cheaper than its competition. Amazing. Second, when you consider the people who will use such a device (say, someone working out in a gym) and where they will use it (a gym, jogging, etc.), the lack of screen doesn't matter. You're going to play a playlist and that's it. Suddenly, the iPod shuffle's major limitation makes sense.

As with the Mac mini, Jobs had pledged never to get into the bargain basement flash-based MP3 player market. But the iPod shuffle--like the Mac mini--proves that Apple is very capable of creating an excellent low-end solution when they really want to. If you're looking for a flash player, this looks like a great choice.

Grade: A. I don't need one, but you might.

What didn't happen?
Apple's MacWorld San Francisco kicked ass, but there were a number of confusing omissions. Why wasn't there a faster iMac? PowerBook updates? How about a cheaper iPod Mini with a larger hard drive? And where's the 3 GHz Power Mac that was supposed to first appear by June 2004? No DVR capabilities in the Mac mini as many had expected? Ah well. There's always next time.

[ Posted at 9:03 PM | Permalink ]