The below will be a 'live updating' page with text of what's going on in Steve Jobs' keynote at the MacWorld Expo 99 in New York, which begins at 9 AM Eastern time.

The Opening

To start off with, at about 9:20 EDT Jobs and Noah Wyle who portrayed him in the TNT movie, Pirates of Silicon Valley. They bantered about their virginity and Noah being a betters Jobs than Jobs. Steve then went on to talk about how Apple only has 0.6 days of inventory compared to Compaq's 28 and other PC companies. He also mentioned the 2nd quarter profits and the new employee from The Gap.

QuickTime 4

After the opening he went to discussing QuickTime and how The Phantom Menace trailer was the biggest internet event ever. They downloaded over 400 terabytes of Star Wars movies. Talking about QuickTime4 and the new codecs for better quality and the new interface, plus the streaming capabilities. It has been downloaded 10 million times, and Apple is going to "give REAL a real run for their money." Apple is launching QuickTime TV. They are pulling together content and charging nothing for streams, as far as taxes like REAL's. They also are giving away the QuickTime Streaming Server for Mac OS X Server and for Darwin, Linux. It has been downloaded 25000 times. Apple has Akamai company, where they have all streams go to 900 servers and then are sent only to the servers nearest you for best quality. They are announcing ABC, ESPN, Rolling Stone, Disney, VH1 and more and content providers for QuickTime TV. Then the marketing guy, Phil Schiller, demonstrated the quality, speed and content on a smooth Studio Display. The Phantom Menace trailer he showed looked great, and the Weird Al Yankovic music video was hilarious and got the audience cheering. He then opened the BBC World stream to the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. He showed how using flash and Reprise Records he could choose an album to listen to and make interactive content. You could buy the album through the player and a web browser. The Rolling Stone QT4 channel you could choose songs and apparently interviews and other audio content through the Flash interactive QuickTime stream. The Disney Channel had a trailer for Toy Story 2 which looked pretty sweet. Jobs then made a joke about having to go see Toy Story 2, made by his own company, Pixar. Talking about QuickTime TV scaling to new broadband access and its advance over competitors.

Sherlock II

Jobs went over how great Sherlock was and how Sherlock II will be even better. Phil Schiller came back on stage a second time to demonstrate the renamed 8.7 to MacOS 9 with Sherlock II. He showed how he could search for Apollo 11 and the moon landing. With over 100 plug-ins he could very quickly search and get back all that info in one window pane with relevancy, catergory, page name, and a description. With so many plug-ins they have now designed "sets" of plug-ins for different topics, such as news. You could also search for people for a white pages if you want. It is very easy to make LDAP plug-ins for servers with LDAP. Apple now has a plug-in for Yahoo, Bigfoot, 411, and other people searchers on the web. He can use it to buy books relating to Apollo using the search "sets" previously mentioned. He searched Amazon and Barnes&Noble via Sherlock II, with price, description, and availablility. He showed him searching by price, name, availability, and comparing prices. He then began to search eBay and Amazon Auctions for anything relating to Apollo 11. It showed the time left on the auction, what price it is at, and a description. Clicking on it took him to the auction webpage to place a bid. They aim it for comparison shopping for toys, videos, music, auction sites, and everything else. Phil then left the stage and Jobs said there are 40 other features in MacOS 9 for $99 in October..

Systems/P1

Steve went into a speech about the Pro and Consumer desktop and how they are going to introduce the consumer portable now, after the Pro Lombard PowerBook G3. He's saying the iMac is selling well, and in the last quarter Apple has shipped more iMacs than ever before. He said in under 1 year it has been creeping into our culture through TV and other media. By the time iMac is 1 year old they will have shipped just shy of 2 million iMacs. 1 out of 3 iMac buyer is a new to Mac or computers. 9 out of 10 iMac users use USB. It is also the anniversary of the iMac and using USB. He said it is 30 times faster than serial and hot swappable. He talked about evangelizing device makers from 25 USB devices to 125 USB devices and another 100 very soon, adding up to 250 devices soon. He demoed a NEC USB scanner that powered itself with no power cord. 3 multi-purpose scanners/printers/fax are being shown at expo, 2 by Epson, 1 by Canon. He reiterated that USB will be on all Macintosh lines. Almost 4000 new and renewed Mac applications since iMac started shipping. Jobs then showed some new Disney CD ROMS. He then mentioned game companies beating up Apple and telling them what they need to do to get games. This brought Steve to OpenGL and Rage128. He then showed a Bungie game called Halo, when everyone expected Oni. This is the first time it has been shown. It is an action game for single player or co-op multiplayer. Then he showed, not a move, but a real time rendering with the Halo game on a PowerMac G3. Halo looked awesome, as any Bungie product does. I was hyped about Oni, but this just made me drool. The particle effects and rounded surfaces were insane. Halo will be out in the first half of next year and will be even better according to Bungie. IBM will be bringing ViaVoice to the Mac platform. IBM's Jeff Kuznit (sp?) came up on stage. He demonstrated it successfully and the crowd seemed pleased ;-) He transferred it into Microsoft Word and IBM announced the further showing of ViaVoice at the IBM booth and raffling of iMacs. Jobs said there are 1300 Mac products shipping before showing the P1. Steve said,"I hope you live it." It will be called iBook, as Doug said earlier. The display will be 12.1" Active Matrix TFT, as Doug said. 800x600 resolution with millions of colors and a Rage Mobility. It is a 300 Mhz G3 processor with built in CD-ROM, 24x. 3.2 gigabyte harddrive, 56k modem, USB, and 10/100 ethernet, all built in. The keyboard is full sized for your ergonomics. The battery life is great, with only 1 batters it has about 6 hours of battery life. Steve then brought out an iBook, and said,"It's really beautiful." He said it's made of the stuff that bullet proofs are, and the iMac colors are double rubbered for durability. It is a very rounded clam shell design. They showed a tangering one, and the handle is really chic. With no latch, it just snaps closed like a cell phone. From the side it looks very slanted and rounded. The ethernet, USB, and modem are on one side, the CD ROM on the other, the handle on the back and battery under the bottom. The cable for the plug-in/charger is built into the iBook. It will be shipped in tangerine and blueberry. It will cost $1599 and will be available in September in volume. You can now order them today from The Apple Store. Steve then showed the TV ads for audience opinions. They showed a white background floaty iBook ad that was very cool,"iMac Unplugged." The second was similar but with more sultry classic music. Both seemed to be narrated by Jeff Goldblum. He asks if it is possible to fall in love with a computer and answered himself,"Oh yes, oh yes." The third one was kind of 70s funkier and Jeff Goldblum was like,"Oh, I get it, it's iBook to go." The fourth one had Barry White singing a love sound about iBook. The second and fourth ad seemed to get the best response. Steve said,"Well, we'll pick them and put them on TV." He then showed him going to the Apple website with no wires. AirPort Wireless Networking. It is 11 megabits for a second, is based on industry standard, 802.11. Steve said in the next 6-9 months there will be many devices to interact with it, and it will all be encrypted through the air. Lucent helped with making it affordable and mixing well with Apple. Steve showed an AirPort Base Station with a built in 56k modem, ethernet built in for DSL/Cable/Ethernet/etc. The iBook has 2 built in antennas for better range and speeds and an AirPort card designed for the iBook under the keyboard. So drop in the card and you have it setup automatically. 10 iBooks can share one AirPort Base from 150 feet. Jobs then made a joke that that will be good enough range for everyone but Gates, who can afford 2 iBooks according to Steve. The AirPort card will cost $99, the AirPort Base, $299. Steve then showed another iBook ad, this time promoting the wireless functionality with a flying AirPort Base Station. It then landed and said apple.com/wireless. Jobs had a little trouble getting the James Bond The World is Not Enough trailer to work, but eventually got it to work, and it worked great, over wireless and it was big and smooth. He then streamed BBC via QuickTime 4. Phil Schiller was hanging about 50 feet above the expo floor to prove the wireless. Jobs then encouraged Schiller to jump. He then jumped, and landed safely. Jobs then joked,"Nothing is beyond the call of duty at Apple." All 3 items, iBook, AirPort Card, AirPort Base Station, will ship in September. Jobs graciously had all Apple employees stand up and gave them a round of applause. Then Jobs allowed people to demo iBooks with all 100 of them in the audience to try.

The End is Near...

That about does it, hope you all enjoyed the coverage, it's basically quick and dirty, but not as much as uploading this will a 56k modem streamed it ;-)

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