Macworld Expo Keynote Report

Well, almost. He started with the business update that I projected but that is a gimme since he always does. To the 7 consecutive profitable quarters, $3 billion in cash and the $500 million stock buyback, Steve reported that Apple's inventory time is now less than the one day that he reported for the second quarter. Apple, best in the industry by far, is down to 0.6 days (15 hours) of inventory on hand--truly amazing!

On Apple's software technology, Steve covered QuickTime and Sonata which is now officially Mac OS 9. There were no Mac OS 10.0 (or X), AppleWorks nor Microsoft demoes, a nearly complete strike out for my software projection.

The QuickTime 4 technology highlighted was QuickTime TV. Apple has partnered with Akamai, a company in Massachusetts which has nine "repeater" servers on the internet which provide for a more stable and consistent reception of streaming video. He mentioned new content from ABC News, ESPN, Rolling Stone and Disney. Phil Schiller demoed the technology with a song video from Weird Al's web site and the trailer for Toy Story 2 from the Disney site, among several.

Mac OS 9 is now the official designation for Sonata which has been referred to for awhile as Mac OS 8.7. It will be a $99 upgrade and will be available in October. The Mac OS 9 CD pictured was light blue with what looked like white clouds or smudges--I was way off to the side in the auditorium this year and couldn't tell. There are over 50 new features in Mac OS 9. Steve highlighted Sherlock 2 and Phil demoed it. The main feature being classes of searches like news, people and e-commerce products.

On Apple's hardware technology, there were no updates mentioned for the B&W PowerMac G3 nor the iMac, just as I projected. Steve updated some figures projecting 1.9 million iMacs will be sold by its "birthday" August 15th. He showed several third party peripherals: NEC's tiny portable USB scanner and Epson's new multifunction USB devices (fax, phone, copier, printer,scanner). Jason Jones, Bungie's co-founder, was called up to demo a terrific new 3D future-shooter game called "Halo" which will be out in January. Ozzie Osborne and "Jeff" from IBM demoed its very impressive ViaVoice coming to the Mac. Jeff dictated to a Mac using an iMac blueberry colored microphone headset.

The big announcement was of course the iBook, Apple's new consumer portable. Aside from the name, my projection was at the wrong end of the price spectrum--virtually everybody else's speculation was a lot closer. The hand drawing of a clam shell design that appeared recently on O'Grady's PowerPage was remarkably close to the actual design. I did kind of get the handle and use of new technology right but not really.

The iBook is a $1599 near full size notebook with a 12.1" 800x600 active matrix screen. It has 32 MB RAM, ATi Rage Mobility graphics chipset, 4 MB VRAM, 300 MHz G3 CPU (backside cache not mentioned), 24x CD drive, 3.2 GB hard drive, 56K modem, one USB port, 10/100 ethernet, a full size keyboard, 6-hr battery and it officially weighs in at 6.7 pounds (corrected), almost one pound more than the PowerBook. It is made of ice-colored polycarbonate like the iMac and has a hard rubber overlay on the front, side edges and bottom that is colored at present only in tangerine and blueberry. It has a colored handle that flips out of the back edge, no latch like a cell phone, ports on the left and CD drive and AC connector on the right. The battery charger is a small disk which appeared to be a cord reel. On the back edge is an LED that blinks when in sleep mode. It will be available in September and the Apple Store is accepting orders now. You can see it on the Apple Store.

The iBook is the first Apple product to use the AirPort, a wireless local area network (LAN) technology using the standard protocol co-developed with Lucent. There are two antennas in the iBook that connect up to 150 feet away with the base station. The base, a roughly 8" diameter conical pod, has a 56K modem port and an ethernet port for DSL or cable modem. To use this technology, one has to buy a separate AirPort card which drops in the iBook into a slot under the keyboard. 10 iBooks can connect to the base. Steve demoed the technology with a 007 movie trailer from the internet and Phil Schiller jumped some 30 feet from above the stage into an airbag holding an iBook that did not lose its connection during his fall. Steve showed four potential iBook commercials and asked the audience which it liked with applause. The card will cost $99 and the base will cost $299.

That was it for the keynote. I'll report more on the iBook when I get a chance to really use one.There are also many new product announcements that have filled my email box.