Jobs Reveals Load of New Apple Products
Posted by Chris Leckness on 01/10/06 in Music Players, Previews, Software, The Internet
Jobs has spoken, new products and revisions to existing ones abound. Click read more below to check it all out!
First and foremost, I’d like to introduce you all to the new lineup of products unveiled by Steve:
First, a combo iPod remote/FM Tuner (it’s in-line, not rf). Congratulations, you can all rebuy the remotes you bought for 4g iPods that won’t work on 5g. And yay, an FM Tuner, too bad every iPod competitor has that built-in.
Second up is an announcement that Chrysler is now integrating iPod support into 40% of its vehicles in 2006. Whoop-de-do, now you can have a car to go with that iPod.
Thirdly (and moving on from the iPod, thankfully), we have a bunch of new widgets for OSX. Again, don’t care. Way to rip off vista’s (longhorn at the time) sidebar, Steve.
Number four is an announcement for the release of iLife ‘06. If you already use it, perhaps you’d be interested, I’ll be honest and say I’m not very familiar with it, so I’ll refrain from biting sarcasm on this one. It’s just basically a refined, animated interface like most Apple products (toolbars slide in, etc.) and has a sort-of podcast like feature for when you add new photos to your album. I have no use for it, but whatever, it’s fine. There’s also an iWeb blog feature that integrates nicely with podcasts, if you’re so inclined.
Numero cinco is, you guessed it, Intel and Apple. Intel CEO made a guest appearance holding a mock silicon wafer saying "I want to report that Intel’s ready" to which Steve responds "I can report that Apple’s ready too." "So … today we are gonna roll out the first Mac with an Intel processor." It’ll be an iMac, 17” and 20” version available. Intel Core Duo (read: Yonah) inside, prices the same as last gen. Jobs admits it is way faster than the powerPC version (how long have I been saying that? Well, with AMD, but Intel is true as well). They’ll be releasing compatible versions of current applications in March, for an upgrade fee of $49…how kind of them. Yes I know Microsoft does this too and I don’t like it any more, but note that everyone does it, not just "M$" as people are inclined to say.
Oh yea, did I mention, there’s a dual-core laptop as well. The "MacBook Pro". Lucky guess I made back there, eh? Comes with iSight camera built-in, and a pretty dang nifty magnetic power cord that detaches without issue if tugged. No more breaking those pesky little pins. I’ve gotta hand it to Steve on that one, that is just plain genius. It’s one inch thin, has either a 1.67ghz or 1.83ghz yonah processor, and sports a radeon x1600 graphics card, which is very impressive coming from Apple. Hard drive is either 80gb or 100gb and ram is 512mb or 1gb. Prices are $1999 and $2499, respectively. Bluetooth comes with either. They’ll ship february, so you may want to order as soon as possible if you want one in the next year.
Apple’s ad campaign that makes it difficult for me to resist a rant: http://www.apple.com/
More than it’s done in a PC, huh?
I’d like to compliment Engadget on their incredibly up to date coverage, featuring pictures and accounts of Jobs’ speach, it was almost like being there. And with that, please fire away if you disagree with my assessments or would like to add your own!
Written by Chris Leckness · Filed Under Music Players, Previews, Software, The Internet
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Richard, Richard, Richard… I’m shaking my head right now.
Widgets a rip off of Vista? Please.
1 - A more arguable position is that they were ripped from Konfabulator, however even that is a debatable point and I’m sure Bud Tribble would agree with me.
2 - OS X has had them natively for almost a year now in publicly shipping final release products (i.e. not Beta). OS X has had them via Konfabulator for some time before that.
With all due respect, I don’t think there is ANY reputable claim that can be made that the Widget was Vista creation.
It’s just one of many “new features” that are coming to Windows users via Vista, that other OS users have enjoyed for a year or more. Welcome to the second half of the decade Microsoft.
And I shake my head at you howard, we can be head shaking twins. OS X did not have them first, it got them to market first. Having only a very very limited scope of hardware and OSes that are just small revisions to existing setups rather than a complete rebuild enable apple to bring things to market quicker than microsoft can. It’s an advantage, but it doesn’t mean that people can run around claiming Microsoft copied Apple.
However, I knew someone would disagree, so I spent a couple minutes researching ahead of time.
Check here: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/42728.html
“Borrowing heavily from what we had seen in Longhorn (Microsoft’s next version of Windows) last year, Tiger is an impressive piece of work.”
Let’s not get carried away. Just because a columnist at TechNewsWorld has a similar viewpoint does not make it fact.
Konfabulator was envisioned in 2000. I’d be more willing to accept that OS X and Vista BOTH copied from Konfabulator (and again, it’s debatable) then believe Mr Enderle. If you (Or Mr Enderle) can show me that Microsoft had previewed their Sidebar technology in 2000-2001 then I think you have an arguable point.
Apple certainly were able to bring the technologies to market quicker than Microsoft, that’s a fair point.
Indeed a similar column does not make it fact, but I did cite a source/backup for my opinion, which is more than I often find from those who would claim Vista steals from OSX doing.