August 07, 2006, 2:39 PM PDT
No iPhone at WWDC: Back to the waiting game
Posted by: Kent German

So despite all the rumors of an iPhone, Apple did not unveil anything related to a cell phone at its Worldwide Developers Conference today. The new Mac Pro and updates to OS X were the highlights of the keynote, along with a series of jabs at the folks in Redmond, Washington. The audience oohed and aahed throughout, but we never heard the phrase "one more thing" from Steve Jobs. So we're back to the waiting game to see if Apple ever joins the cell world and what its entry product will be. And considering it's been almost a year since the ill-fated Motorola Rokr made its debut, we figure the Cupertino crew has to roll out something really big soon. Will it be a phone? Will it be cellular or solely VoIP? Will Apple start its own MVNO? Stay tuned.

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August 07, 2006, 12:34 PM PDT
Post-WWDC keynote impressions
Posted by: James Kim

Now that was a Monday morning. Properly caffeinated and ready to go with my wireless input device at Moscone West, I waited anxiously for the bassy PA system to die down and for the Apple keynote to begin (meanwhile, Jasmine France was hanging out at the Apple Store, ready to pounce on any new iStuff). When Steve Jobs popped onstage, I just knew we weren't getting an iPod, or an iPhone, or an iTunes Movie Store. This (and all the show floor buzz prior to the keynote) was all about the D in WWDC, nothing else. So we got the final link in the Mactel chain (the Xeon-powered flagship Mac Pro), a pimped-out server, and a preview of the upcoming Leopard variety of OS X. As Steve wrapped up his presentation, the whole auditorium knew the patented "one more thing..." message was not going to happen.

Though Leopard's visually pleasing features, such as Time Machine, Web Clip, fancy-looking e-mail, and Core Animation were impressive (while all the snarky Microsoft bashing was less impressive), we were left wondering what all that pre-event hype was all about. We got widgets instead of gadgets. No fault to Apple--it'll probably send out an evite for a special "red carpet" iPod event soon enough--but expectations were set pretty high by rumor-mongering media. So I ask, are you sick of the rumors? Or is this just about pure entertainment?

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August 07, 2006, 12:33 PM PDT
Macs are cheaper than PCs? Yes
Posted by: Andrew Gruen

As Rich Brown posted earlier this morning, the the new Mac Pro is here. Now that all Apple's machines run on commodity, Intel-based hardware, Apple can't get away with charging much more for its products. Sure, there's value in Mac OS X. There's also value in Apple's legendary industrial design. But now we get to see exactly how much it's charging for it.

At the WWDC keynote, Phil Shiller, Apple's senior VP of marketing, told us that the "standard" Mac Pro configuration is about $1,000 less than a similarly configured Dell. A Mac Pro with dual 2.6GHz Xeons, 1GB of 667MHz RAM, a 250GB hard drive spinning at 7,200rpm, and an Nvidia GeForce 7300GT video card with 256MB of dedicated video memory is $2,499 on Apple's site, as promised. A Dell Precision 690 workstation with the same specs except for an Nvidia Quadro NVS 285 video card will run you $3,709. An HP Workstation xw8400 with that same Quadro NVS 285 hits $3,791. So if our elementary-school arithmetic is correct, the Mac Pro is $1,210 less than the Dell and $1,292 less than the HP. With Apple's free Boot Camp utility that lets you run Windows on a Mac, it's easy to imagine folks opting for the Mac Pro even if they never plan to use Mac OS X. Obviously, Apple hopes that the price differential will get more power users onto the Mac platform to at least give OS X a spin.

Before leaving WWDC, we had the chance to eye one of the new Mac Pros. From the outside, they look remarkably similar to the PowerMac G5s. External differences include an additional optical drive bay, additional USB and FireWire 800 ports on the case's front, and space on the back to prevent blocking one of the machine's four PCI Express slots when using one of the latest, double-wide video cards. Also on the back, there's now only one fan grille, and the power jack is now at the top center of the case.

We don't have one of the Mac Pros in the Labs yet, but check back soon for a full review. Also be sure to bookmark CNET's full coverage of WWDC 2006.

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August 07, 2006, 10:34 AM PDT
A glimpse at Mac OS X Leopard
Posted by: James Kim

Scott Forstall (VP of platform experience) has joined Jobs onstage to give a preview of Leopard. There are 10 major highlights of Leopard (though Steve is keeping the rest "top secret"), including:

1. Support for 64-bit architecture extends 64-bit support through Carbon and Cocoa and can run 32-bit apps side by side with 64-bit apps.

2. New feature called Time Machine. Automatically backs up all your valuable data. If you change a file, that file is automatically backed up. You can back up to hard drive or server, plus a whole new visual way to back up, using Time Machine. You fly through time as windows pass by with space in the background. Cute, but we've seen backup apps before. Apple just sticks an incredibly useful UI on it.

3. Shipping Boot Camp with Leopard. Also will ship Front Row and Photo Booth.

4. Spaces. New feature that links like apps together to make your desktop less complicated; for example, you can link together apps such as Safari and Mail on one space and iTunes and GarageBand on another. Steve shows demo of switching between browser/mail space to Garage Band space. These spaces live off the screen in every direction, basically giving you more room to think with other groups of applications sitting one click away.

5. Spotlight: Improving it so that you can search other machines on a network. You can also search servers and advanced search--Boolean, and so on. Also, Spotlight will include an application launcher and a recent-items view.

6. Core animation (one person claps). Dramatically improves the production quality of your work--shows scene of layers. Showing an example of the technology's power--a facsimile of the iTunes commercial where album art is built up into a building. Core Animation is at work in real time and requires much less code.

7. Universal access. Continuing to try to make Mac OS X available to everyone, with support for closed captioning, Braille support, VoiceOver. The new voices in Leopard are very realistic.

8. Improvement to mail. New features include Stationery, Notes, and To Do. Stationery features nice-looking templates, and you can make your own. Templates appear as a drop-down menu in Mail, with all types of templates, and you can add your own images--very intuitive. Notes is a dedicated area for taking notes and can show up as in-box items. To Do adds check boxes to any note. You can select any e-mail or any application to add a to-do note--in other words, a systemwide to-do service.

9. Dashboard. More than 2,500 widgets available today. Two new things. First, a new developer tool called Dashcode, where you can modify existing templates. Visual editor for CSS and HTML, and also ships with JavaScript debugger. Second thing is for the end user: Web Clip. Allows anyone to turn any part of any Web page into a widget. For example, you can cut out a comic strip and turn it into a widget; plus, it will update automatically. You can also capture the area of an eBay auction and monitor that; or capture a specific sports boxscore or standings listing. Basically, you can create your own widgets, and it's incredibly powerful and empowering. You can even create a widget out of any Webcam.

10. iChat. Serious enhancements: invisibility, video recording, tab chats, animated icons. Plus, photo booth effects for videoconferencing and iChat Theater. Jobs demos iChat Theater and brings up photo slide show inside iChat. You can also put up a Keynote presentation; basically, you can use iChat to share media and presentations. Finally, you can add backdrops to your iChat conversations.

Expected ship date for Leopard is spring 2007. That's it for the Leopard highlights, and it looks like that's the end of the show as well. A developers' version of Leopard should be making its rounds soon.

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August 07, 2006, 10:27 AM PDT
Apple basks in Intel-pimped sales numbers
Posted by: Dan Ackerman

While Steve Jobs and friends are onstage talking about the high-end glory of the new Xeon-powered Mac Pro (see Rich Brown's blog about that), a bunch of interesting numbers were also thrown out concerning the current state of Apple's computer business.

It may not be as flashy as new product launches, but the nuts and bolts of sales and market share are even more important, because if you're not selling enough hardware, well, you won't be selling hardware for much longer.

From the various live-blogging outlets furiously covering the WWDC keynote, we've gleaned the following:

Fifty percent of people purchasing Macs last quarter were new customers.

Notebook market share went from 6 percent in January to 12 percent in June.

Apple has just seen its best quarter ever, showing 18 percent growth.

Seventy-five percent of the 1.3 million Macs shipped last quarter had Intel CPUs.

The entire Intel transition took 210 days.

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August 07, 2006, 10:14 AM PDT
Apple debuts new Mac Pro
Posted by: James Kim

After a few weeks of intense speculation about what would be launched at Apple's WWDC, we now know what's real and what rumors are still up for discussion. This morning, Steve Jobs opened with a new Mac Pro to replace the Power Mac G5 and brought out Phil Schiller to talk about the new system. The Mac Pro runs on Xeon Quad processors from Intel and also includes four hard drive bays, more I/O ports on the front, and a double-wide graphics card slot. It features Dual 2.66 dual-core Xeon chips and starts shipping today for $2,499.

10:19 a.m.: Just announced new XServe, running on Intel Quad Xeon, 5X the performance but $1,000 less. More new features: redundant power, flexible and configurable.

10:23 a.m.: Jobs is back onstage and talking about Mac OS X. Five major releases and now up to 19 million Mac OS X users. He thanks the developers for a smooth transition and pokes fun at Windows Vista. Introduces Bertrand Serlet to talk about software.

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August 07, 2006, 9:57 AM PDT
Good-bye, Power Mac; hello, Mac Pro
Posted by: Rich Brown

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference is underway as I type this, and the word is that they just announced the Apple Mac Pro, the Intel Xeon-based replacement for the old Power Mac G5. This is the last major Apple desktop or notebook consumer product to receive an Intel chip. Each Mac Pro will have two Core 2-based Xeon chips, making it another quad-core system like the Power Mac G5. Apple says it will offer the Mac Pro in a standard $2,499 configuration, which includes two 2.66GHz Xeon chips, 1GB of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM, a 250GB hard drive, a 256MB Nvidia GeForce 7300 graphics card, and a 16X SuperDrive DVD burner. Apple claims that a similar configuration in a Dell Precision workstation would cost up to $1,000 more. You will also be able to configure the Mac Pro to order. Other specs include the following:

- Four hard drive bays
- Up to 2 terabytes of storage
- Three full-length PCI Express slots
- A double-wide PCI Express graphics slot
- Up to 16GB of system memory
- Either an ATI Radeon or an Nvidia Quadro graphics card
- Bluetooth and AirPort Express wireless

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August 07, 2006, 9:50 AM PDT
Almost show time
Posted by: James Kim

San Francisco--I'm here at the Moscone Center, just about five minutes away from Steve Jobs keynote at WWDC 2006. There's a rave-like atmosphere in this cavernous auditorium. The room is buzzing, cameras are flashing, and Postal Service, is playing on the bassy PA. There's probably at least 2,000 Apple devotees and media members here ...

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August 04, 2006, 6:22 AM PDT
What will we see from Apple next week?
Posted by: Matthew Elliott

Let the speculation begin. Apple's World Wide Developers Conference kicks off next Monday in San Francisco, and rumors are, of course, flying about what Steve Jobs has in store for his developers and, well, the rest of us. First, someone snapped a shot of a banner Apple has set up in the Moscone Center that depicts various Apple products, including the Power Mac and a 64-bit emblem. We've long thought Apple was waiting for 64-bit Core 2 Duo chips to arrive before moving its high-end desktop line to the Intel platform; it didn't make sense for the professional-grade Power Mac to begin its Intel era with mobile Core Duo chips, which the Mac Mini and the iMac adopted earlier this year. We wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that the Power Mac G5 will shed its PowerPC G5 chips for Core 2 Extreme and Core 2 Duo parts.

And while Intel's Core Duo (a.k.a. Yonah) laptop chips were a fine choice in January for both Apple's laptops and compact desktops, the chips now take a backseat to the newly announced Core 2 Duo T-series (a.k.a. Merom) mobile CPUs. It's only a matter of time until Apple updates its MacBook Pro and MacBook lines with the new chips.

Apple Insider reports that Apple is scheduled to receive its first shipment of Core 2 Duo chips around Labor Day and that the company will be among the first with systems. We'd guess that Core 2 Duo-based Power Mac desktops and MacBook Pro laptops will be released next month.

Lastly, we were told earlier this year that Boot Camp will be rolled into Mac OS X Leopard and the first glimpse we'll see of the OS will be at WWDC in August. We'll have editors at the show on Monday to either confirm or deny the rumors you're reading today.

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