You have to hand it to Apple. They have set so many bars so high as far as their WWDC Keynote goes that everyone sets very high expectations, and anything short of spectacular fails to satiate the desires of the die-hard Apple fan.
This year the Apple team failed to meet expectations, expectations set very high thanks to Internet rumors, the upcoming Zune release, and past Keynotes. While the Keynote was very good on the basis of new products (Mac Pro) and software (Leopard), there was nothing too special or unexpected, contrary to what we are used to seeing from Stevie J. and his team. No news on a new iPod, no new laptop, and alas, no cell phone. Apple’s stock price reflected the relative surprise at the lack of new products, dropping $1.09 (1.6%) on the day…(this could be due to a number of other factors, including the delayed filings release, as well as the general market hesitation due to the upcoming FOMC meeting…but for the purposes of this blog, I am going to attribute this to the WWDC…;))
However, sitting up at 1am in Hong Kong while reading the live update proved to be quite fun, and some great stuff was announced.
Mac Pro
This beast of an computer was released yesterday. Coming in at a base ofr around $2500, this machine is built for the hard core, with 4.8 million different configurations available…specs are up there and puts this as one of the fastest computers available. The crazy part…up to 2 terabytes of space…that’s 2000 GB! That’s quite a few season’s of Entourage…
OSX Leopard
The new installment of the OS looks to be pretty f***ing awesome. They have added a whole slew of new enhancements, the most significant being programs called Time Machine (automatically backs up all files…you lose the HD, you are ok…you lose one file, you are ok…man, how I could have used this 3 months ago) and Spaces, a program that allows you to have different virtual desktops and group all your stuff together. For example, if you are working on your WordPress blog, iTunes, Powerpoint and Excel for work, email, and surfing ESPN and Appleinsider (hmm…kind of looks like what I am doing right now), you can group these into different categories and open up the different desktops…looks pretty neat. Significant strides have also been made in Mail, iCal and iChat. And this is only the stuff they are choosing to disclose, because who knows who will copy it…*cough* Microsoft *cough*.
Leopard is set to ship in the Spring of ‘07, but unlike the boys up in Washington, Apple actually tends to release stuff earlier, so who knows…Feb ‘07 maybe? Pretty solid birthday present…
All products and software aside, my favorite part of the Keynote this year was the all out attack that was made on Microsoft, Apple basically said that Vista is copying Tiger in a number of areas, so on so forth. I thought that this was hilarious. They had signs up which said “Hasta la vista, Vista” and “Redmond has a cat, too. A copycat.” The most blatant attack on Microsoft I have seen Apple make, perhaps ever, they even showed how Vista copied Tiger IN THEIR KEYNOTE! Great stuff…
On the whole, not what I was expecting (or hoping for), but positive none the less. This week should see Apple lovers everywhere excited about the new releases, and hoping that the holiday season will bring the long desired products that everyone has been waiting to see.
Cheers,
Taps
