Macworld Expo Tokyo--Steve Jobs Keynote Address

began last night (ET) with a presentation of Mac OS X. He confirmed what we reported on February 5th, that Mac OS X will come out in 7 languages at the same time, March 24th, on one CD. He demoed Mac OS X's features and Maya, a professional 3D authoring application.

Jobs showed off the new PowerBook G4 Titanium and, like in San Francisco last month, he compared it with the Sony Vaio Z505. He presented the new Power Mac G4 line up and confirmed that all four models (actually 5 counting the 533DP) are now shipping. Apple had announced that the 733 MHz model with the DVD-R/CD-RW SuperDrive began shipping on Monday of this week.

As a nice surprise, Jobs announced that the price of the 22" Cinema Flat Panel Display has been reduced by $1000 to $2999. While that's still way to rich for us, it's moved significantly in the right direction. Check it out on The Apple Store.

Jobs and Nvidia's David Kirk demoed the upcoming GeForce3 graphics card with 64 MB DDR-SRAM for the Mac. The current Power Macs ship standard with a GeForce2 MX with an ATI Radeon as an option. The GeForce2 is super fast with an OpenGL application like Quake III Arena and the GeForce3 will blow it away. The GeForce3 is listed as a $350 BTO option on the new Power Macs--whoops! A bit steep at $599, it will also be available in April as an upgrade kit for our brand new 533DP delivered just last Thursday.

New iMacs were announced with the upper two levels getting CD-RW drives, new colors (flower power and Dalmatian blue) besides indigo and graphite and a price range of $899, $1199 and $1499. All are AirPort ready. They have 400, 500 and 600 MHz G3 processors respectively. The latter is very good news because it means that 600 MHz G3 upgrades may now become available from third party manufacturers. All iMacs are available now from The Apple Store. Here is Apple's press release on the new iMacs.

The 450 MHz G4 Cube's price has been reduced further to just $1299. A new midrange "faster" 450 MHz model at $1599 comes with 128 MB RAM and a CD-RW drive. The "Fastest" model runs at 500 MHz and has 256 MB RAM, a CD-RW drive and Nvidia GeForce2 graphics for $2199. The two higher models also get more software: Bugdom, Nanosaur, CroMag Rally, Mac OS 9.1 and AppleWorks 6. iTunes and iMovie come with all three which are available now from The Apple Store. Here is Apple's Cube press release.

Also demoed was iTunes v1.1, Apple's new simple audio application for making MP3 files from audio CDs and burning audio CDs. Version 1.1 is localized for Japan and available with drivers for over 25 CD-R drives. Download it here. The servers are jammed, of course. [Tip: If you have signed up for iTools check your iDisk, it's in the Software folder!] Here is Apple's iTunes press release.