Commentary--Macworld Keynote

We have now had a few hours to reflect on Apple CEO Steve Jobs' keynote address of yesterday morning. [Update: It's now available for viewing.] Our initial reaction was quite positive as hopefully reflected in yesterday's report. However, we did get a fair amount of sour email and many Mac web sites openly expressed their disappointment in the keynote.

We are not disappointed overall because the keynote covered about what we expected as we noted in yesterday's report on Apple's third quarter financial result. While we are disappointed in having to wait 2-3 months more for the significant new features and improvements in Mac OS X v10.1, Mac OS X will shape Apple's future more than any piece of hardware. Apple must get it right before Windows XP hits the street in October. Today, Windows XP is ahead in our judgment so Apple has a lot of catching up to do and we are not going to begrudge the company for taking every last minute to do so. It simply must.

Some also inexplicably complained that the latest Power Mac G4 is simply an uninteresting speed bump. We find this to be an incredible position to take. Yes, the CPU clock speed did not surpass 1 GHz but it took a huge leap. By the way, from looking at it in person the new "Quicksilver" enclosure is identical in size and shape to the older graphite one. The video/slides Steve Jobs used in his keynote made it look more slender but it's not. We suspect it's someone who saw those photos before the keynote that is the source of the "leak" for the rumor sites' size change claim. As we noted yesterday, the leak was correct about the door shape and speaker. We like the new box.

Last January, the Power Mac G4 line up was 466, 533, 533 DP, 667 and 733 MHz. The 733 was very late in shipping and the value leader was the 533 DP. Today the line up is 733, 867 and 800 DP MHz. That's a huge change in 6 months. The biggest change, though, is that the value leader at $2499 has a super drive and the fastest G4 CPU available at 867 MHz.

As for the iMacs, we were right. Apple has sold a healthy 300,000 or more in recent quarters. With the tech economy still in a slump, these sales are very good relatively speaking. Apple picked the best colors (indigo, snow and graphite), juiced the G3 CPU up to 500-700 MHz, added a very popular slot-loading CD-RW optical drive to each model, bumped the RAM up to reasonable levels, gave them capacious hard drives and kept about the same pricing structure. We suspect Apple will continue to sell them at the same or even better clip. We do wonder who might buy the middle model, however. We think it suffers from the same deadly combination that killed the 667 MHz Power Mac G4.

The availability of 700 MHz G3 CPUs may fuel some sales to legacy Mac owners if the third party CPU manufacturers like PowerLogix, Sonnet and XLR8 step up to providing them at a reasonable price. After playing with a 700 MHz iMac running Mac OS X 10.0.4, we'd be interested in switching the 400 MHz G3 ZIF in our Power Mac 7300 for a 700 MHz model.

Finally, we're super happy that we did not fall victim to the rumor web sites' prediction of a Cube-like iMac and got one of the last G4 Cubes available instead. Remember, we continue to tell ourselves, the rumor web sites are just entertainment for those who enjoy that kind of fun. Their only downside is the disappointment that they create in those who take them too seriously.

As a postscript, both Dana Baggett (Maine) and Bill Jensen (Virginia), who watched the keynote via the QuickTime web cast, wrote that it was the best quality QT streaming web cast yet.