The atmosphere at MWNY can only be described as electric. There's more press representatives and VIPs here than I've ever seen before at a MW show. The keynote hall is absolutely packed with people, though our seats are almost as good as they get. Of course, the entire hall is decked out in black curtains, with the customary large white Apple logos flanking each side of the large screen. It's always comical to see the glow of PowerBook screens on people's faces throughout the audience. Of course, no MacWorld keynote session would be the same without an eclectic mix of music, and this year's selection seems to revolve around oldies and swing tunes.

No keynote starts on time, but this one wasn't that bad. Here we go, let's just hope doesn't say PowerPC processors come from Intel.

• The keynote begins as the lights dim and Noah Wyle walks on stage amid very loud cheers and the designation 'iCEO' on the large screens. Wyle speaks about the 'resurgence of apple' and actually spoke the words 'insanely great' several times, and the real Steve Jobs walks out, yelling 'cut cut!' 'this insanely great thing went out years ago.' They banter a bit, all in good fun, ending the talk on someone saying 'are you still a virgin?'
• First off is a business update for Apple. 3rd fiscal quarter profits of over 200 million dollars, the seventh consecuvtive profitable quarter. Total cash reserves total 3 billion, and have announced a half billion dollar stock buyback program.
• Steve went on to talk about days of inventory, and he's happy to report that Apple only has .6 of a day of inventory, or 15 hours, besting their previous record of 1 day of inventory. He then announced that Drexler of Gap, Inc has joined the board of directors, something that was announced previously.
• Steve went on to products. First came QuickTime. He spoke of the Lucasfilm Star Wars trailer for Episode One. Over 23 million downloads of the trailer have been completed, over 400+ terabytes of video.
• Over 10 million downloads of the QuickTime player version four since mid April.
• Steve went on to introduce "QuickTime TV." 25,000 people have downloaded the QuickTime streaming server, Apple's free broadcast software. Apple has partnered with Akamai, something that's not new, as their servers were used in the Star Wars downloads, the WWDC QT4 Webstream, as well as this keynote if you're watching it on QT4. Steve went on to content...the BBC world, Bloomberg, FOX News, Fox Sports, HBO, NPR, The Weather Channel, and WGBH, a public access channel. Some newcomers today are now: ABC News, ESPN, RollingStone, VH1, and Disney.
• Steve went on to invite Phil Schiller, the ever-present VP of Worldwide Marketing, up on stage to demonstrate QT-TV. Phil played the Star Wars: TPM trailer, then Weird Al's parody of Star Wars. Then Phil demonstrated live tv, starting with the BBC, then FOX. Then in a little Steve Jobs company inbreeding, a PIXAR clip of "Toy Story 2" was played off Disney.com.
• The second thing he wants to talk about is Mac OS 9. Now, you'll note that this is the first mention of Mac OS 9 ever. 9! This was previously called 8.7. It's going to ship in October says Steve. Sherlock 2 is featured as OS 9's big feature. Phil came back out to give a demo of an 'early release' of Mac OS 9, in particular, Sherlock 2. None of this is really new, as this was all shown at WWDC in early May. There are 49 other new features in Mac OS 9. "Get a whole new Macintosh for $99."

  Boys and girls, it's P1 (or iBook) time now. Steve brought up the now-famous pro/consumer and desktop/portable chart. Of course, only the consumer portable is missing. Of course, we need to go over the iMac numbers again. More iMacs shipped last quarter than any other time, ever. August 15th is iMac's birthday, as Steve mentions. By the time iMac is one year old, Apple will have shipped "a little shy" of 2 million units. in the U.S. almost 90 percent use the iMac for Internet. Around the world, 1 out of every 3 buyers is new to the platform. There are now 125 shipping USB devices, with almost 100 more waiting in the wings. In iMac's first year, there have been 3935 new and renewed Mac apps.

• Steve went on to rah-rah the gaming and graphics...Bungie's Jason Jones to debut 'Halo' for the first time. After watching the almost five minute video sequence processed in real-time on the Macintosh, I must say this game is fairly unbelievably rich and detailed. Shipping early next year....
• Steve announced that IBM is bringing their ViaVoice speech recognition software. This guy is actually named Ozzie Osborne that is the 'General Manager Speech Systems" at IBM. While it's probably very, very well 'trained' to the demonstrator, it worked amazingly well.
• NOW, it's time for P1. Steve asked his consumer and education customers what they wanted in their portables is an 'iMac to go." What are we going to call it...steve asks....of course, he announced the name iBook, literally mirroring the logic we used in our names article. Here is the iBook's specs, along with if we predicted it right:
  • 12.1" TFT (active) screen, Rage Mobility (predicted correctly)
  • 300 MHz processor, 512k cache, 2nd fastest portable in the world (predicted correctly)
  • 3.2 gig HD (we didn't mention it)
  • 32 meg, 56k, 10/100 ethernet, USB, full size keyboard. (all predicted correctly)
  • Wow, they went on the low side of estimating a six hour battery life, which actually could be seen before.
  • Now steve showed everyone iBook, ,which is a really nice machine, colored a little different than the prototype I saw last night. It's very durable, polycarbonate plastic, and it's got rubber all the way around in the colored sections. And Steve showed the nicely designed handle we mentioned.
  • He mentions that there's no latch, like we said last night. It's a very, very nice design there. Wow, there's only two colors, so we were wrong on that, I had thought it was all five. Only tangerine and blueberry.
  • Steve goes on to destory WinTel consumer laptop's designs. He shows the integrated CD-ROM, he shows the modem ethernet and USB ports, which don't have port covers, which could prove to be a problem with dirt and dust.
  • He shows the charger, the device we described as a 'yo yo' and it certainly looks like that. the cord retracts back in it.
  • Pricing: is a little off our target at $1599, with availability in September. You can order them today from the Apple Store and your other retailers.
• Steve goes on to introduce a few TV ads. The first is just like the spinning iMacs commercial, just with the iBook. It says, to the tune of guitar music, "presenting the iMac, unplugged" The next has another spinning iBook, slowly opening, "is it possible to fall in love with a computer?" the commercial asks and answers "oh yes, it sure is." The next "what, have we here? whoa, nice! look at this! Oh Sweet, Sweet, it's iMac to go! good good!" The next is another spinning iBook with a very deep voice.
• Steve does show the iBook's secret weapon. The thing we've been alluding to all day, the secret weapon of iBook. yes, folks, it's 'one more thing'. Steve is being quite a smart-ass right now. he's going to show the iBook's wireless internet capabilities. If you want to know full details, hit our article we wrote about it, here. Steve commences to walk around the stage with his iBook, holding a hula hoop around it, clearly showing its wireless capabilities. "what is going on here?" he asks. He announces AirPort wireless networking. Wireless LAN at 11 Mbit/sec and it's based on industry standard 802.11 protocol. "everyone will be able to interact with airport, but we're just going to be first and best." They've worked with Lucent to marry their technologies and to bring the cost down. The AirPort base station looks like a small rounded pyramid, which Steve says is "really cool" It's got a 56k modem built in for those without ethernet networks, but it also has ethernet built it. iBook is the first computer ever designed right from the start to be optimized for wireless communications. There are two antennas in iBook. Then we have an AirPort card accepted by iBook in the slot under the keyboard. It'll be user serviceable. All the software automatically sets it up. Up to 10 iBooks can share one base station up to 150 feet away, half a football field. "bigger than anyone's house I know except bill gates, and he can afford to buy two base stations" says steve. $99 dollars for the card, which is a steal compared to Lucent's stuff. The base station costs $299, which seems steep, but again is very cheap comparable to the competition. This is shipping in September with the iBooks.
• Steve has an AirPort specific ad, showing the base station gliding around like an UFO and just says www.apple.com/wireless on the screen. I suppose that URL would work right now so why don't we make that a link?
• So steve can't resist doing a few demos here, but I wonder how he's doing the video out, as iBook has no video out.
• He goes to try a James Bond trailer, but it doesn't load at first, and people yell "it's a Microsoft product" about the browser. Steve again says "what is going on here?", but the trailer loads this time. This is all over wireless, and the trailer runs very smoothly. Now he streams something off the Internet, over the wireless. Now he hooks up a program that allows an accelereometer from Phil Schiller's iBook to Steve's iBook. Phil is up in the rafters peering down. He gets Phil Schiller to --get this-- jump off from the rafters. And he did it! The accelerometer, which shows motion, really went wild on that. "nothing is beyond the call of duty at Apple" says Steve. Now all the products are shipping, starting in September, again says Steve.
• Steve got all the Apple employees in the audience to stand up, and they were nicely applauded. There's 100 Apple people in the audience, and they ALL have iBooks. Steve says we're the first in the world to see it outside Apple. Oh well, I saw them last night...Steve signed off there...

Written/Edited/Published by Doug B. Landry
Logo by Jon Iverson
Apple, Mac, Macintosh, Mac OS,The Apple Store, and Powerbook are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc.
©1998 Doug B. Landry. All rights reserved. All or part may not be reproduced or distributed without prior consent.
Coded on a Apple Macintosh Powerbook G3 Series from Baton Rouge, LA