Archives For macworld

the tease begins, he`s talking about the ipods now. 4.5 million ipods sold last christmas. 10 Million total, over 8 million in calendar year 2004.

and here it comes, more car manufacturers adding built-in ipod  adaptors; nissan, mercedes, volvo, ferarri, alfa romero and scion.

itunes on motorola phones announced at CES.

and now the show stopper, a flash ipod player; ipod shuffle. no display, smaller than most packs of gum, weighs less than an ounce. smalled LED display. either shuffle or playlist. USB 2.0, 12 hour rechargable battery, autofill feature from iTunes, share songs and data. two models; 512Mb, 120 songs, $99, 1Gb, 240 songs, $149.

available today.

acessories include a battery extender, sports case, arm band and a dock, available in 4 weeks, $29 each.

oh iWork is $79 and is available January 22.

time for the hardware annoucements. and the rumour sites were right; the Mac Mini.

slot loading combo optical drive, FW, USB2, Ehternet, modem DVI and analog video. it`s small and it`s bring your own display, keyboard and mouse. shipping with Panther and iLife `05, priced at $499 and $599; 256MB, 1.25Ghz G4 and 40 and 80Gb HD.

hour two begins

January 11, 2005 — Leave a comment

i apologise for the stuccato nature of these posts but i`m trying to post as fast as it happens, there will be a more coherent summation either tonight, depending on my access to an internet connection otherwise, it`s going to happen tomorrow.

we`re back to demoing idvd, with all the new features i`m not really getting into because you can read all about it on the regular channels later today.

next up is GarageBand and a new jam pack that features orchestral instruments plus a whole new host of features that will be demoed again by John Mayer who seems to be having a great deal of fun with it. now they`re recording four tracks live which is kind of cool to observe and experience.

iLife `05 free with all new Macs or retailing for $79 and available a week from Friday.

holy shit, Apple takes on MS to some extent with iWork, which features a new version of Keynote and a new word processor called Pages, which is now being demoed by Phil Schiller

and so it begins

January 11, 2005 — Leave a comment

with blather about the new apple stores, 101 to date, 1,000,000 visitors a day. now we`re on the new imac, more blather. we know all this. i`m waiting to be impressed. does this mean the noted reality disrtortion field doesn`t extend into the over flow room.

ooooh tiger, shipping first half of this year, but all the features we knew about all that already. oh wait, a preview.

steve`s demoing spotlight, which is the content finder built into tiger from almost anywhere, in any format. and it crashed, sort of.

next up is the mail app, integrated with spotlight, more integration with all mailboxes, smart mailboxes; allowing you to sort by content; and a slideshow built into the mail application.

also coming with tiger is quicktime 7 with a new codec H.264 and on-screen controls, realtime scaling etc, etc, etc

now dashboard; a series of widgets, including weather, currency exchange, calculator which thus far is the most impressive thing i`ve seen.

ichat also gets a bump, with up to four to video conferences at once using the new H.264 codec and up to 10 simultaneous

audio chats.

on to more stuff, steve has just declared 2005 the year of High Definition Video and just introduced FinalCut Express HD for editing HD.

and as expected iLife `05, with new versions of iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie and GarageBand, not updates for iTunes just yet. more editing features for iPhoto as well as support for RAW format.

in an interesting development, i can`t seem to log into journalspace from the overflow room`s wireless network anymore.

so i`ll just keep typing and hope for the best. imovie has new features including support for HD.

interesting developments, on stage now is the president of Sony to talk about their HD consumer cameras and is singing Apple`s praises as part of making 2005 the year of HD.

a combination of excitement and still being on CST ensured that i was awake by 5:30 this morning, but weather and train delays ensured that i arrived late enough to get stuck in the overflow room watching the keynote on big screens and almost guaranteed none of the actual keynote swag. the room isn`t full yet, but there are still 16 minutes before the keynote begins and there are a lot of journalists standing outside haranguing our handlers for access to the actual area. i`m content at this point to just deal with it. i know what it`s like, i`ve been here before, i should have braved the rain and left earlier.

i have a camera but a fat lot of good it`s going to do me taking pictures of the screen. like this

in news of swag, i managed to pick up at an event last night, the monster ipod car cable; now it`s just left for me to buy an ipod; and a copy of adobe`s indesign.

keep it here, there will be more posts, `live` from the overflow room as the keynote progresses.

the countdown begins

January 7, 2005 — Leave a comment

For the first time in several years, Apple Computer may not provide a live feed of its opening keynote presentation at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco.

read the rest here

however, next Tuesday is going to be one of those multiple posting days, as i`m assured there is wireless access at the keynote and i`ll posting live as details are unveiled from the keynote.

in other news, for firefox users trying to get some more ooomph out the browser here`s a tip that i found here:

# Hit “Control+T” to open a new tab.

# Type “about:config” and hit enter.

# Scroll down to where it says network.http.pipelining

# Double click to change this value to true.

# One below this you should see network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

# Double click this box and change the 4 to 8 [ed.: some sources suggest 30 or 100 instead of 8, which may conceivably seriously tax some web servers… do what you will and may god have mercy on your soul, speed demons].

# Scroll down to where it says network.http.request.max-start-delay (makes the page start to render as soon as your browser starts recieving information)

# Double click and change the value 10 to 0.

# FireFox should now run much faster.

good luck and may the force be with you.

this weekend will be the first time in almost year that i will spend more than one night away from vic. i`m going to SF for MacWorld from Saturday to Wednesday. we were planning on both going and celebrating our first anniversary together in SF but finances don`t permit. we`re doing our celebrating on the Friday after our anniversary by treating ourselves to dinner at Zola. it`s going to put a dent in our budget this month, but this is our first anniversary in three years together and well worth it.

i`m still however looking forward to going to SF, i`ve never been to the west coast, so it`s all part of the grand adventure, i realise that i`ll only have Sunday to do exploring and i already have a specific list of stuff to bring back for vic; you can`t be in love with a geek; of any sort; without some of it rubbing off on you. i also must make a pilgrimage to the Good Vibrations store.

Monday will be filled with getting my badge holder and checking out some of the pre-exhibit conferences. Tuesday is all about the keynote, which i intend to be posting live from. based on previous experience, i`ll have to get there early to get a seat even in the press area. and due to work constraints i return to Nashvegas on Wednesday, where i have to go straight into work.