Notes

Steve Jobs Surprises The Crowd: Apple's New Macs And Mac OS X Server

Steve Jobs, Apple’s iCEO, delivered his most impressive keynote address to date yesterday. Of course, he was helped by having some great products to talk about and some spectacular demos (that all worked flawlessly). Here are the highlights.



The keynote began with an "ad", which featured Hal 9000 from 2001's A Space Odyssey. Hal apologizes for Y2K and remarks that Macs are the only computer free of it. It was funny and effective. EXTREME MINING And you can download it from Apple's web site.



After that, Steve introduced Apple's new line of Power Mac G3s. They look very different and are definitely not as beige as the iMac. They are also fast with a copper-based 400MHz CPU, ATI Rage 128 (FireWire) and ATI Rage 128 (both copper-based). They will also support Silicon Graphics OpenGL graphics library (to appear in a future OS version). Prices start at the same price as the old G3s: $1599. Two new monitors, Studio Displays, which look almost exactly like an iMac's, can be used in conjunction with it. The flat panel display has been redesigned in order to match the overall design of the other monitors.



The FireWire demo was very cool. FireWire can be used to replace SCSI (which isn’t included in these new Macs). However, you can add the capability by being an SCSI card. It is far better than SCSI because it does not use terminators, ID numbers or has a limit of 7 devices. It's faster. Demo showed a drive (coming shortly from VST), that can fit into your pocket and mount to your desktop immediately after you plug it in the FireWire cable (no external power).



The new G3 is perfect for you if you like your Mac to open easily. With a single press, the door opens and exposes the entire machine's interior.



Missing from these new Macs (taking a cue from the iMac) is a floppy disk drive (although Steve did not mention this in the keynote).



[Note : Steve accidentally described the G3 processors as Motorola and Intel. He meant to say Motorola and IBM.]



Next up was Mac OS X Server (due to ship in February). It is network bootable, which is what really caught my attention. This means that you can startup a client Mac connected to the server from a System Folder on the server. The client Mac can do this even if there is no System Folder on its own drive. In fact, it doesn't need a hard drive at all (a "true" network computer!). Steve showed 50 iMacs that were connected to the same server and all running QuickTime movies at high frame rate - all across the server. Wow!



Mac OS X Server also includes the Apache HTTP web server and WebObjects application server.



Steve briefly mentioned Apple's upcoming FinalCut Pro video editing program (and a copy of it is on display at the Apple booth).



Next, Steve highlighted the Mac's commitment in the game market, highlighting the Quake Arena. He also displayed Connectix' Virtual Game Station emulator, which is described in the following item.



Steve finally revealed the latest iMac revision. It features a 266MHz processor, 6 GB storage, and costs $1199 (100 more). And it comes in 5 fruity colors! The iMac has sold more than 800,000 units in its first shipment, 32% to first-time computer buyers, and 13% to Intel users.



Apple's website has a slew more press releases. Apple Launches New Desktop Collection for 1999


My Website: https://extrememining.org/