As the keynote starts at 9:00 AM Pacific Time, this page will be updated live as soon as Steve Jobs announces products and events. Reload very, very often as we'll be updating by the minute. Stay tuned!
The stream is here at Apple, and here at ZDTV in QuickTime 4 format. However, both those streams are identical. We figure Apple told ZDTV they'd host it for them in QT4 so it didn't look like RealVideo was the only option there. Speaking of RealVideo, we think there is no Real stream at all. Stay Tuned...keynote in 28 mins!
It's 11:39 Eastern Time, and the QT4 streams are showing the expo hall, instead of a test pattern.
Steve went over financial stats, and their stellar inventory stats. He talked about drexler, ,the new board member from gap. Now steve wants to go to the fun stuff. First quicktime.
Over 25 million downloads of the StarWars trailer. 450 terabytes. Steve babbles about the same QuickTime TV stuff as he did at MacWorld New York.
They bring out Phil to demonstrate QTTV, nothing really special. Toy Story 2 trailer as well as a few new audio QTTV channels. Steve cracks Toy Story 2 joke.
Steve talks about Mac OS 9 some. Wants it to be an "Internet Co-pilot" and will be available in October. He wants to show 9 internet power features. Sherlock II, multiusers, keychains, AppleScript over TCP/IP, Network Browser.
Now they're using the Voice Password feature. All of this stuff is identical to MacWorld New York's information. Now we're using Sherlock II with Phil again....
OS 9 will sell for $99.
Time for the systems........
The iMac first. 90% of users of iMacs are on the Internet. 1/3rd of the buyers are 1st time computer users. 4380 new and updated applications since iMac's release. Now they're going to show IBM's ViaVoice voice recognition program.
iBook information. It's faster than every other WinTel portable, for that matter any portable, except Apple's own PowerBooks. He just runs down the other specs for a bit that we've all heard. Waiting on the numbers.....It's 11:48 AM here in Central Time to keep everyone updated. Available in "Mid September." We've gotten 140,000 orders! He goes to show some TV ads now.
AirPort overview, same as MWNY. Up to 10 iBooks sharing one AirPort basestation. Steve runs an AirPort commercial. And that wraps up iBook information.
PowerBooks....latest revision in May, making a lot of them, but haven't been able to keep up with demand. Gives quick overview of features.
Now, Pro Desktops. He gives an overview of the B/W G3s. Fastest computer in the world. It's called a "supercomputer." He gives a reason why you need a supercomputer. This is the new desktop....A supercomputer can executive over 1 billion floating point operations a second. Called a Giga Flop, or Gflop. Steve goes through all the reasons you would need this power. Mostly examples in Adobe Photoshop, QuickTime encoding in which you'd need 1.8 gflops in realtime. "we think gigaflops are become a very popular thing in the near future."
Who can afford their very own supercomputer. Today we're announcing the G4 chip. Calling AltiVec the 'velocity engine.' He talks about a bunch of gigaflop information. Now he compares it against the Pentium III. They went to "go ask intel." The G4 was 2.9 times faster than the PIII running Intel's own tests. Wow. This chip ships in 400, 450, and 500 MHz versions. The high end modules will have 3x the memory bandwith over the g3s. Twice PCI bus throughput. Rage 128 graphics on AGP 2x bus. 16 MB vram. UltraATA/66 drives. All of models have firewire built in. Over 60 announced FireWire devices. Steve talks about digital cameras with FireWire. MO drives, etc. AirPort, as we said, is built into the high-end models of the G4s. He shows the G4, it's a badass grey looking machine, very similar to the yosemite case, with small differences. New pro colors. Silver, Clear, and "graphite" grey. Three models:
400, 450, 500 MHz, 400 has 64 MB ram, 128 in the 450, and 256 in the 500. CDROM in 400, DVD in 450, and DVD-RAM in 500. Prices. 400 MHz for 1599 shipping now, 450 for $2499, shipping in a few weeks, and a little later than 500 MHz. 500 Mhz costs $3499. Basically, the 400 is "Yikes!" and the 450 and 500 are "SawTooth"
The G4 blows away the Pentium III in a photoshop test. It DEMOLISHED the PIII. Apple.com is now updated with the new machine. It's 12:12 PM. This machine is freaking awesome. There's a picture of the new studio display on Apple.com, though steve hasn't announced it yet. It's pretty neat looking. 22" inches, which is amazing. Equivelent to a 24" CRT display. Still doing tests with the PIII and G4 at the keynote. The 'tonga' 22" display is only available through the AppleStore. Now they're doing SETI@home with G4. it's four times faster than the G3 in SETI@home. They do a Mars pathfinder data test. . the G4 blows the Pentium III again....
Adobe's John Warnock comes up and gives the G4 a rousing endorsement. Now they're going to show some TV ads for the PowerMac G4. It actually starts running tonight. The first one is great...calling the G4s supercomputers, and the Pentium "harmless." Got the idea for this commercial when Apple was informed it could not export the G4 to certain "sensitive countries." Steve shows the commercial again. Apple.com's webservers are very bogged down, as a side note. "we're leaving the century on a high" says Steve. Strongest product lineup ever says Steve.
One more thing, says steve. Great displays. He introduces color-coordinated 15, 17, and 21 displays like we're used to, then rolls out tonga, the 22" display we mentioned above. The Apple Cinema Display, steve calls it. It's so big, you can display two full 11x17 documents and have room for toolbars etc, due to its aspect ratio. He plays A Bug's Life full screen on it. It's all digital, like we said on PBZone yesterday. Looks good from the back as it does from the front. Largest LCD ever brought to market. It's now 12:33 PM Central Time. the Apple Cinema Display is 1600x1024 pixels. Very "leading edge technology." Limited supply, selling it for $3999, and it'll be available on October 1st. Only available from the Apple Store, only bundled with a PowerMac G4. $6498 for the starter bundle. That's it folks, great keynote!
