WWDC: Apple Reveals Its Path
by Daniel H. Steinberg07/03/2003
At the end of his WWDC keynote, Apple CEO Steve Jobs summed up what Apple has released since January. In hardware, there are the new iPod, the twelve- and seventeen-inch PowerBooks, and Airport Extreme. There was also the WWDC announcement for the new G5 machines to be shipped in August. Software releases include Keynote, the Safari browser, the iLife package, and iTunes 4 (including the Apple Music Store). At WWDC, Jobs also showed off a preview of the Panther release of the operating system. Apple has also opened more Apple stores, with new stores coming to Chicago, San Francisco, and Tokyo.
Maybe it's the RDF working overtime, but it makes we wonder what other companies are doing. Sure, we're still waiting for the fifteen-inch PowerBooks to rev., and Keynote still lacks some features I've come to depend on in a presentation tool. The WWDC allows and encourages developers to give the Apple engineers and management feedback on what is needed. I can't cover any of that here because of the NDA, but Apple's view of the road ahead was clearly revealed in Jobs' keynote address, and that's what I can share with you in this article.
Panther
The WWDC keynote is an opportunity for Jobs to encourage developers to follow the path that Apple is blazing. Now he can add the support of the Apple store, saying "We love to sell your software and hardware accessories." This year's message was simple and direct; Jobs announced "Jaguar's Over." Remember, he's talking to developers; he's not talking about end users, where clearly Jaguar will live on for a while. He's telling developers to start delivering applications that take advantage of the Panther release. Panther will retail for $129 and will be available by the end of the year.
Finding and Navigation
The under-the-cover tools have been updated and further integrated. X11 is now bundled in, and Kerberos is widely used for authentication. Further support for ibV6 is included, and the FreeBSD version will be 5.0. Windows integration has been improved with new SMB Printing browser, SMB Servers in the finder, SMB Home Directories, and IPSec-based VPN.
The Finder has been redesigned and its performance has been improved. Apple seems to be adding to the confusion of the metal look and feel vs. the Aqua look and feel. The final version of Safari is metal, as is the new Finder. The best feature on the new Finder is that searching begins immediately as you start typing in the Search input box. Now consistent with Jef Raskin's "Humane Interface." As you type in "Tex" on your way to typing in "TextEdit," Panther starts returning those names with "Tex" included in them. There is an action button in the Finder. The idea is to clue more users in to what can be done with any given file or directory in the Finder. It provides little information that you can not currently get with a right click -- it just exposes the capability to more users.
Other enhancements include a revised iDisk and the introduction of FileVault. The iDisk improvements are designed so that stuff on your iDisk automatically syncs (in the background) with stuff that's in your local folder. With more than one computer, it makes it easier for you to sync through .mac. FileVault secures your Home Folder. The idea is that if you lose your notebook, you don't want others to have access to your data. A single checkbox turns on the automatic on-the-fly encryption and decryption of files you store in your home folder. Another feature that is helpful if you have kids is fast user switching. Jobs acknowledged that Windows XP had this feature first, but showed off a simple menu in the corner that allows you to change logins easily. Individual logins may still require a password, but the switching was fast and seamless.
The coolest navigation feature is Expose. This is a great tool for when you have a bunch of windows open, and some are overlapping, some are hidden. You don't want to shrink several down to the dock to find the one you want and then bring them back. With Expose, a single key press or mouse event shrinks all of the windows down to a size where you can still identify them, but they don't overlap. As you mouse over the reduced size windows, a labeled button appears with the title of the document. Select the one you want to work on, and all of the windows return to their previous size and location with the one you selected in front. A different key press allows you to view and organize just the documents tied to the application in which you are currently working. A third press hides all of the active documents and shows the desktop. This is clearly Jobs' favorite new feature and he showed it in slow motion, the same way he used to show off the Genie effect.
Communication
Various communication applications have been created or improved for Panther. Everything in Mail is faster, and Apple has taken advantage of the Safari web kit to render HTML. It is easier to identify and manage discussion threads. Addresses are now presented as objects identified by the person's name and not address. They appear as little capsules that you can move around or select to choose an alternate address for.
Other improvements include a built-in fax. Just as you can save to PDF from the print menu, you can also send a fax from the file you are working on, by using Command-P. You'll find the new fax button next to the PDF button in every print panel. IPSec-based VPN is now built right into Panther and Panther Server for increased security. Apple is introducing a new codec for QuickTime called a Pixlet. (Pixar wanted to be able to compress film-grade images so they could send them around and edit them without having to see film artifacts.)
The biggest communications announcement was the introduction of the new version of iChat. The Apple custom AIM client now adds audio and video to the existing text chat. You can now see, in your buddy list, which of your buddies is available and set up for audio or video chat by displayed icons. You can attach a Firewire camera and use the built-in mic or a USB mic. The audio only requires a 56K modem connection or better, while the video requires broadband. For those that didn't understand the implications of this technology, Jobs points out that this provides free long distance over the net. You can download the beta from Apple's site; it times out at the end of the year. The final version will be part of Panther and will also be separately available for Jaguar owners for $29.
The Hardware
The first hardware announcement is the companion to iChat AV. Jobs introduced a new Firewire camera and microphone called iSight. Each of the WWDC attendees was given a free iSight, which features video up to 30 fps, auto-focus with 4/2.8 aperture, auto-exposure built in, and a dual-element microphone. The box includes three different stands for mounting iSight to the different Mac monitor styles.
The big hardware announcement had been much anticipated. Generally, WWDC does not feature hardware announcements. Rumor sites had published screen shots from Apple's site of the specifications of a new tower that would be announced at WWDC. The specs for the new machine were impressive, and there were debates on whether it was a mistake or whether Apple was baiting the rumor sites. Jobs referred to the Thursday appearance of the G5 machines on Apple's site as "premature specification." He smiled at the audience and says, "It was a mistake, and it's true, and it doesn't begin to describe it."
The Chip is an IBM 64-bit processor that will run existing 32-bit apps natively. The initial models will run at up to 2GHz and are planned to hit 3GHz within a year. There is a 1Ghz front-side bus and the chip has a twelve-unit core that can support 215 in-flight instructions at a time. The velocity engine has been optimized, and there is support for full SMP (symmetric multiprocessing). The system built around it is designed to move bits quickly. You can install up to 8GB of memory to reduce the time spent writing to or reading from disk. The I/O shipped with the machine includes Firewire 800/400, USB 2.0, Gigabit Ethernet, Airport Extreme, Bluetooth, and Optical Digital Audio. The least expensive configuration includes a 1.6GHz G5 for $1999. The 1.8GHz G5 will be $2399 and the dual 2.0GHz G5 will be $2999. The machines are scheduled to ship in August.
Summary
All in all, the developers are excited by the announcements at this year's WWDC: a new version of the operating system, coupled with a new line of machines that feature a new chip. Jobs also debuted XCode, Apple's replacement to their multilanguage IDE ProjectBuilder. XCode features a new set of developer tools, but focuses on speed. Distributed builds take advantage of Rendezvous to use spare cycles of nearby machines. Fix-and-continue allows developers to make changes to running applications and to compile and insert the revised versions in place. Apple developers walked away from this year's WWDC with plenty of new toys to play with and a clear indication that there is more to come.
Thanks to James Duncan Davidson and Chuck Toporok for sharing their notes on the keynote.
Daniel H. Steinberg is the editor for the new series of Mac Developer titles for the Pragmatic Programmers. He writes feature articles for Apple's ADC web site and is a regular contributor to Mac Devcenter. He has presented at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference, MacWorld, MacHack and other Mac developer conferences.
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Showing messages 1 through 14 of 14.
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Exposé
2003-07-04 02:01:09 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
Please, it's Exposé, with an e acute (type Option-E, then e on an US keyboard, or use the character palette). Is it so difficult to understand there is more than 7 bits to a character? I'm tired of suffering of the limitations of software written by people who assume that "7-bit ASCII ought to be enough for anybody." -
Exposé
2003-07-04 05:45:39 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
I agree with you, but we're not there technologically or worse yet educationally. Most people think accents are terribly difficult (I still flub them and I write in Spanish and French) ... ahhh if ASCII was the only problem. -
Exposé
2003-07-08 09:14:55 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
This is fun. Perhaps accents are there to assist readers who cannot accumulate context as they go along.
In any discussion (conducted in Spanish, that is) whether one means "papá" (father) or papa (potato) should be clear from the context. Except, of course, when the individual in question is watching television (after all, potatoes have "eyes" too...) -
Exposé
2003-07-09 05:10:00 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
Here in Germany we have no accents, but we have umlauts (ÄÖÜäöü) and the sz (ß)
You cannot replace ä with a, for example, because the two vowels sound absolutely different, but you can always substitute ae for ä, oe for ö etc. and ss for ß.
There are some people here that want to ditch the umlauts, but I don't understand why we should no longer use the umlauts which have been around for hundreds of years, just because some old computers have no support for 8bit or Unicode encoding. -
Exposé
2003-07-04 07:52:52 dogzilla [Reply | View]
if you look at the rendition of this title in the listing after the article, I think you'll understand why the author didn't try to include the acute - it renders as é.
Maybe 7-bit ASCII isn't enough for most folks nowadays, but railing against the reality isn't going to do much - it's like complaining about the ubiquity of Windows.
Personally, I think accents are useless. I speak English, French, and Spanish, and I see accents as vestigial, useless, and needlessly confusing. I say, let's ditch 7-bit ASCII *and* useless accented characters
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Exposé
2003-07-04 12:03:50 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
That might be, but accents are far from vestigial. They direct the speaker/reader to the proper pronounciation. I, too, speak English, French, and Spanish. In Spanish, imagine the different with an accent over the last "a" in "papa". With an accent, it's a familiar form of "father", without and accent, it's "potato". An important distinction. Also, it's useful for question words, to indicate, in writing, whether a question is being posed: cuándo versus cuando. One implies a question being asked, the other is just "when", to be used whenever you normally would. The same goes for French. Not only are they used for pronounciation, but they are a part of the word.
As far as 7-bit ASCII goes, it's a remnant from the beginnings of digital exchange. Languages that require 8-bits to properly work have come out with a work around, such as VISCII for Vietnamese text encoded in 7 bits. However, UTF-8 is very suitable for encoding, and out to be used. As far as for using it in a webpage, try using the entity é (not sure if that will show up, it ought to read &eacte; ... let's see which displays). But 7-bit ASCII is dead .. move along.
-- Rob
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hahahahahaha
2003-07-04 08:39:57 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
<Now consistent with Jef Raskin's "Humane Interface.">
hahahahahaha!
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Apple vs MS and Wintel box makers
2003-07-04 12:02:30 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
>> Maybe it's the RDF working overtime, but it makes we wonder what other companies are doing.
Exactly. MS is 40 times bigger than Apple, but what has it done lately other than delivering weekly or daily security fixes. Dell the box maker is 12 times bigger and makes much more money than Apple, but the Dell boxes are as ugly as any other.
Apple is an incredible company, and innovates in ever quickening paces. Sometimes it looks that Apple is making more cool stuff than all the other computer makers combined except IBM and perhaps Sun. I laughed almost with tears when Steve showed Longhorn chewing grasses slowly while Panther galloping ahead. -
Apple vs MS and Wintel box makers
2003-07-05 19:08:38 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
Subtract the difference in cost between a Mac with OS X and a Dell running Windows and you'll understand how much some people value, and more particularly, are willing to pay for "style". The emphasis is on 'some' because many more people are simply more interested in the basic functionality ("good enough") of a commodity PC at a minimal cost. The difference between "designer jeans" and Walmart blue jeans if you will. (Macintosh machines also seem to go out-of-style rather quickly with each new design "innovation" - being a consumer at the leading edge of Apple hardware/sofware products is a costly proposition ...)
For this reason Apple will be always be a niche ($$) market. Indeed, they'd loose some of their cachet (hence price differentation) if they aimed to garner too big of a market.
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Apple vs MS and Wintel box makers
2003-07-06 11:31:08 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
You obviously don't get it.
Apple not only has better style, but also more functionalities, and is actually cheaper than Dell - at least in the long run.
All Mac models (including the $799 eMac and the $999 iBook) are of high quality and come with virtually everything that most people ever want, a cheap Dell most likely requires lots of costly updates over time. Up till now, the only thing that the Wintel platform is good at is the raw CPU speed, but that advantage has just been destroyed by the G5. Now the dual 2 GHz G5 Power Mac costs only $3000, and the dual 3 GHz Xeon Dell is $4000, there is really no reason for anyone to prefer Dell to Apple other than out of prejudice or ignorance.
And don't forget that Macs do last much longer than Wintel PCs. I bought my 400 MHz iMac about 4 years ago for £1000, and my boss paid £1500 for a 600 MHz P3 Dell. While my iMac has USB, FireWire and wireless, none of which were available to his Dell at the time. Over the years, the only thing I added to the iMac was 512 MB RAM, and it feels as good as a new machine and gets faster with each new version of Mac OS X, while he had spent lots of money on a new CPU, new hard drive, new GPU, and a few other things, but the machine was still a crappy old Dell and eventually ended up in his garage last year when he bough a new computer.
With the combination of Mac OS X and the G5, there is really nothing that can prevent Apple from gaining more market share, particularly within the geek community. Apparently, 50% of laptops in JavaOne 2003 were Apple PowerBooks, and mostly the old Titanium models. Can you imagine how many people would buy G5 PowerBooks?
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Apple vs MS and Wintel box makers
2003-07-09 05:53:12 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
Ouch! I happen to own both a G4 12" PowerBook and Dell Precision P4 tower. Both weren't cheap and both are great machines. Pitted against each other, they've required the same updates.
I think Apple's to Apple's (no pun intended) Macs are a little more costly; however, as the models scale up the price level flattens. The G5's are very competatively priced with Dell's line of Xeon workstation (e.g., precisions).
To me Apple's appeal is the versitility I get out of the box. An out of the box Mac has Java, Pearl and Apache ready to go. A little DL time, and I've got a free set of dev tools (versus 600 smacsk for .net studio). To be fair, I think MS supports Visual Studio more vigiriously than Apple supports its own suite - that is just my perspective. -
Apple vs MS and Wintel box makers
2003-07-07 14:52:37 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
Rather than purchase from wal-mart or the designer, I prefer to seek out the well-built alternative. The current Mac architecture most definitely is an evolving platform, but it is still worth the different just to NOT support the "wal-mart" mentality.
I vote for better products, not necessarily cheapest. My first Mac was in operation for over 10 years, nearly 24/7. Not bad for my original investment. ;)
