What Didn’t Happen:

No new hardware and no earth shaking announcements; so to many this would be a somewhat disappointing WWDC Keynote address for Steve Jobs.  However, there were some good news and announcements that speak well for the health of Apple, the Mac environment in general and OS X Leopard 10.5.

Games Anyone?:

Now that Macs are using Intel chips and are slowly increasing their market share there’s signs that the one area where Macs have been lagging behind Windows might soon see an improvement. I’m speaking of games of course.  Electronic Arts (EA Games) has committed to bring EA’s portfolio of hit games to the Mac.  id Software has also demonstrated it’s upcoming Tech 5 rendering technology which will power it’s new unannounced game for the Mac.  This is good news for the younger crowd of Mac owners as well as for some of us old fogies that still like to spin a game once in a while.

Safari for Windows:

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Apple has released Safari 3.0 for Windows.  Wow, I didn’t see this one coming. It’s said to be from 1.5 to 2 times faster then current Windows browsers.  This seems a little strange to me. I wonder if this will fill some future requirement in the iTunes and iPhone experience?

iPhone News:

One of the big questions that everyone has been asking…Yes, the iPhone will support third-party applications.  Third-party applications created using Web 2.0 standards can extend iPhone’s capabilities without compromising its reliability or security.  However, they will be forced to run through the iPhone’s Safari web browser, not function as standalone applications.  A key point here is the OS environment. The iPhone is running a fairly full feature set of OS X and Safari should be almost a full feature set of the desktop Safari, so web based applications should be nearly as reliable and usable as those you may run on a desktop computer.  It will go on sale at 6 pm on June 29th.

Mac OS X Leopard:

A nearly final version of Mac OS X Leopard was shown at the keynote which introduces over 300 new features.  No, I didn’t count them I’m taking Apple’s word on this.  Some of them include:

  • a new Desktop;
  • a 3D Dock and Stacks;
  • an updated Finder (thank you Apple) with Cover Flow;
  • Time Machine (backup and restore);
  • full native 64-bit processing while still running side-by-side with 32-bit applications (no separate versions like Microsoft);

and other Leopard features, via Appleinsider:

  • Leopard Mail, offering more ways to customize and add personal style to email than ever before, with more than 30 beautiful stationery designs and layouts that look great on a Mac or Windows PC; Notes, making it as easy to take and organize notes as it is to compose and read emails; To Dos, for creating lists viewed directly in Mail and automatically sync them with iCal; and data detectors that automatically sense phone numbers, addresses and events so they can be easily added to Address Book or iCal;
  • Leopard iChat with iChat Theater, letting users present photos, presentations, videos and files in a video conference; Photo Booth effects, enabling users to transform their iChat video in real time with fun distortion and color effects; and video backdrops that allow users to choose any photo or video that makes them appear to be anywhere in the world, or out of it;
  • Leopard iCal, introducing powerful group calendaring features based on the open CalDAV standard that make it easy to organize and coordinate schedules with other people;
  • Spaces, giving users a powerful new, clutter-free way to create customized spaces on the desktop with only the applications or files needed for each project, and the ability to quickly switch between them with one click of a mouse or keystroke;
  • Web Clip, bringing anything that a user wants from a web page to Dashboard as a live widget;
  • Boot Camp, making it possible to run Windows natively on Intel-based Macs*; and
  • new development tools, including Xcode 3 with a next generation editor; an all new Interface Builder for easier integration of advanced animation effects into an application; simpler debugging; and support for Objective-C 2.0; DashCode, a better way to create new Dashboard widgets without writing a line of code; and Xray, a new application for optimizing application performance.

No mention of the ZFS file system.

Pricing is set at $129 for a single License or $199 for a 5-user family pack.  What, no six versions with multiple pricing?  ;-)

The Keynote Address:

You can watch the Steve Jobs Apple WWDC Keynote address at this link.

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