1984 – 2004
20 Year Anniversary

By Enza Sebastiani

Perhaps I was too busy taking pictures of the 1984 – 2004 slides and notes of today’s exciting new Apple releases at the Keynote, but those two hours went in a heartbeat! How come? Maybe because Apple CEO Steve Jobs and his charismatic style allows him to create this alchemy between audience and time?

OS X : Transition over
OS X represents for Apple the ultimate innovation in 20 years of history.
This Unix based operating system claims over 9 million users, more than 40% of all Mac users. It’s the fastest adoption of a modern operating system in the desktop history. With over 10,000 applications developed for this platform, OS X is one of the most popular languages in the world of personal computers.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/

Advanced Editing for the rest of us
Among the new releases, Final Cut Express 2 is most definitely the non-linear editing system “for the rest of us”, optimized for the G5 and Panther (OS X 10.3) with new features like real time -up to 99- compositing layers and effects (RT Extreme), a huge time saver if you are working with multiple layers and motion 3D graphics. Audio capabilities have also been implemented with VoiceOver, for recording narration directly into the timeline and Soundtrack that allows you to incorporate any of the thousands professionally recorded instruments already in the box.

The friendly user interface puts Final Cut Pro 2 at the top of the advanced editing software out there at a price you cannot turn down: $299 and only $99 for the upgrade. http://www.apple.com/finalcutexpress/

System X
Next, the Virgina Tech System X made with the first 1100 Power Mac G5 is just an amazing glimpse of the endless possibilities of terascale computing and even more so, an eye opener on the power of collaboration.
http://www.onethousandhearts.com/idealmac_article.htm

The XServe RAID
The new XServe loaded with G5 and an optical drive was also announced today.
The XServe RAID works on multiple OS such as Windows and Linux
The dual 2.0GHz G5 has up to 750GB OS storage, OS X Server 10.3 and unlimited client license are offered in the package at a competitive price:
1 TB of storage at $5999, 1.75 TB at $7499, 3.5TB at $10,999

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/jan/06xserveg5.html

It’s terascale computing at an average of “$3 per GB lower than Dell, Sun, HP” and the rest of the world claiming to own supercomputing business.

Office Mac 2004
Office Mac 2004 has some cool new notebook features, such as adding any types of note marks, i.e. audio for files that contain narrations or music tracks.

The page layout view in the Formatting Palette menu and the Project center allow users to view their notes & documents by different sub-categories: contacts, files, schedule, mail among the new features.
The architecture of Office Mac 2004 looks and feels more manageable, as word processing application/data base.

The release is scheduled for Spring 2004, but with the new Tech Guaranteed Program, Microsoft promises to give a free upgrade to Office Mac 2004 with a purchase of the current version of the product.

The Ultimate Jukebox
A recap of the iTunes history followed. People were ecstatic at the site of this fine piece of software, the ultimate jukebox machine that owns 70% of the market share. Steve is proud to announce the first 30 million songs downloaded since April 28, 2003. In less than a year, iTunes has become the number 1 in both revenues and songs. Mac and PC users love this product.

Among the new features, iTunes 4 has charts for each of the popular music genre, called Billboard. 12,000 classical tracks and a total of 500,000 new songs have been added to the store from today, January 6.
Check out the 5000 audio book selections, they are really cool.

Also, Pepsi and Apple cut a deal on 1 million free songs to download from February 1, running for 60 days. The instant gratification winner will find a code similar to this one C35A1 – 39F15 on their Pepsi can or bottle and can claim the free song immediately. Nothing better than free music!

The Fifth Element
iLife 4, the “Microsoft for the rest of your life”, steals the show with a new and very hot fifth addition to the already well-known iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto and iTunes creative tools, all implemented for Panther (OS X 10.3) and the G5 with lot’s of new features.

The fifth element is everything you dreamed of having in your Garage when playing music with your band.
GarageBand, - no wonder they named it that way – is a digital sound mixer with up to 64 tracks, playing over 50 software instruments, 1000 professional audio loops, recording live performances, with over 200 pro-quality audio effects, vintage and modern instruments, among them the Grand Piano, tempo and pitch adjustment, exporting capabilities to iTunes and the iPod, I can go on and on…
http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/

iMovie is really growing into a more reliable and stable consumer non-linear editing application with version 4, allowing users to trim clips directly into the timeline, a non destructive form of cutting without loosing information of your original clip.

You can also import footage directly from your iSight, transfer a specific clip on your iDisk, by selecting “Share” from the “Select” menu and post it on the web with .Mac. Or export the entire sequence directly into iDVD and burn an awesome disk of your “Lord of the Digtal Ring” series.

IDVD looks and feels the same, but the Map Chart new feature makes it easy to have an overview of menus, submenus and navigational layout.
New motion menus have good royalty free tracks as well.

With iPhoto, you can upload up to 25,000 photos with ZERO waiting and share them with Rendez-vous. Many new filters, ( the new Sephia looks very good), transitions (the cube one is cool), seamless integration of iTunes and the iTunes Music Store from where you can directly pick the newest track for your slide show. The rating system is fun and allows you to categorize the best images you took at the beach or at lake Tahoe, in Paris or even better in Rome.

If you compare a similar hub on the Windows platform, which does not exist, because you have to purchase separate software that often fight with one another, you have to invest over $300. iLife 4 is free with every new Mac, or $49 for the box. http://www.apple.com/ilife/

The Jam Pack, at $99, offers 150,000 Bosendorf grand piano and 12 strings of guitars, among the other features, a nice upgrade to GarageBand..
http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/accessories.html

Now, you would think that these innovations are plentiful for the opening of 2004. But, there is always “One more thing” with Apple.

That one more thing that everyone was waiting for is the sleek and colorful iPod Mini, 4000MB, 1000 songs in your pocket for $249 a pod. 16 times more space and more songs than any of the low end PC MP3 players for just $50 more, supplied with Firewire cables and a USB 2. Among the accessories there is even an arm-band holder. Gee, how can you go out without one of those!

On the show floor, people are gravitating towards the Apple booth, to touch and try the new little giant that has brought to San Francisco so many visitors from all over the globe.