Sheffield, UK, September 19 2003 /The Wi-Fi Technology Forum/- On a beautiful September day in Paris, Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, took to the stage at the Palais des Congrès in Porte Maillot to the gravelly strains of the late Johnny Cash, and was greeted to a rapturous reception from almost 6,000 assembled industry luminaries, members of the press and hyped-up Mac fans who had made the annual pilgrimage to the traditional opening ceremony of Apple’s flagship European show, now in its 20th year.
Only this year, Jobs was on finer form than ever, evangelising about the new iPods — posters of which can be seen on over 1,000 Parisian street corners this week, the recently-released Power Mac G5 and Panther, the latest version of Mac OS X which includes over 150 new features.
However, the highlight of the speech was the launch of the new PowerBook G4 family, including an all-new 15-inch model, which now comes with a backlit keyboard, a 2x DVD-R/CD-RW SuperDrive, up to 2GB of 333MHz DDR RAM and runs at speeds of up to 1.25GHz.
For his finale, Jobs tickled the audience with his now legendary “Oh, and there’s one more thing” before unveiling the two biggest surprises of the day: the new Bluetooth-based Apple Wireless Mouse and Apple Wireless Keyboard.
10,000 songs in your pocket
Jobs began by discussing the recently-released iPod range, which now boasts a huge capacity of up to 10,000 songs in a stunning package that is thinner and lighter than two CDs. “At the end of June, we shipped our one millionth iPod”, he said with a hint of pride. “It took us just 20 months to do that. We could not be happier with the demand for iPods, and we’re building them as fast as we can”.
The world’s fastest personal computer
Jobs then went into detail about “one of the most important announcements we’ve made in a long time”, giving an off-the-cuff description of the unparalleled feature-set of the new Power Mac G5. He paid particular attention to the chip (“the fastest, most elegant processor in the industry”), the system (“this machine delivers 12 times the bandwidth of the Power Mac G4”) and the manufacturing process (“at the factory, these chips are virtually untouched by human hands”).
“Our highest-end pro customers are loving this architecture because they can move tremendous amounts of data”, he explained.
“Now that we’ve begun on this new architectural platform, it’s going to be amazing what we can do over the next few years. We’re not going to rest on our laurels. We’re going to keep on working, and in the future we’re going to make the Power Mac G5 even faster. We’ve committed that by next summer we’re going to be at 3GHz. That will be a 50 per cent increase within 12 months”.
Evolution of the species
Jobs then highlighted some of the new features in the next major release of Mac OS X, codenamed Panther: “the fourth major release and probably the most groundbreaking so far”, in his words. First, he demonstrated the new user-centric Finder. “I wish we’d thought of this a few years ago”, he mused with a rueful smile, “because it’s much, much better than anything we’ve ever done before. We’ve put all the things you care about in one column: your home, desktop and applications — all in one place”.
He went on to demonstrate Panther’s superfast search engine, improved PDF rendering capabilities, revolutionary Exposé technology and Fast User Switching feature. “We think Panther is going to be a spectacular release, and it’s coming out before the end of this year”, he said, to a round of applause. “Over seven million people are using OS X every day, and our goal is to increase that to ten million in the very near future”.
Warming to his theme, Jobs went on to demonstrate Apple’s iChat AV software — a full version of which will come bundled with Panther — and the stunning iSight webcam, by videoconferencing a colleague in London. “We released a Beta version [of iChat AV] in June”, he declared with a grin, “and we’ve already had 500,000 downloads”.
The year of the notebook
“In January 2003, we said this would be the year of the notebook for Apple — and it certainly has been so far”, proclaimed Jobs. “The industry average for notebooks is about 24-25 per cent [of hardware sales]. But last quarter, Apple’s was 42 per cent, so we’re substantially ahead of the rest of the industry in that respect”.
Then, to enthusiastic whistling and whooping from the audience, he announced what many of them had been hoping for: a new range of PowerBook G4s with faster processors, even better connectivity and improved graphics capabilities.
The new 12-inch PowerBook features a 1GHz PowerPC G4 processor, can support up to 1.25GB of high-speed 266MHz DDR SDRAM and comes with a faster 2x SuperDrive; while the new 17-inch PowerBook runs at 1.33GHz and supports up to 2GB of 333MHz DDR SDRAM, raising the bar even higher in the full-featured notebook space.
However, the jewel in the crown — the all-new 15-inch PowerBook — was described by Jobs as “the perfect balance of portability and power”. At this point, one heckler was moved to exclaim, “I want one!”, to which Jobs responded: “Well, you can go get one very soon”. And, almost on cue, proceeded to announce that all three models go on sale today, eliciting more raucous cheering.
The end of the tether
Pausing for effect, Jobs nonchalantly chuckled, “And I’ve got one more thing”, instantly creating a palpable ripple of whispered anticipation. “This is a set of products that’s been requested from us for some time. We wanted to take our time to get it right, and I hope we have”, he teased, before revealing a 20 foot-high image of a wireless mouse.
“They have a 10-metre range” — much longer than any competing products — “as well as adaptive frequency hopping and 128-bit security encryption, so what you’re typing stays with you”. The Apple Wireless Mouse has a three-month battery life while the Apple Wireless Keyboard batteries last nine months. Both work with Mac OS X v10.2.6 or later, and will be available at the end of September.
Before leaving the stage, Jobs ran through the impressively long list of new products released by Apple in the past nine months — “and we’ve not even finished the year yet!”
However, despite all the excitement of the previous hour and a half, his parting shot was by far his most telling: “Our strategy at Apple is to innovate. We’re going to keep innovating — that’s what we do best, and that’s what we love to do”. At which point, the Mac faithful gave the loudest cheer of the day, and a few were heard to mutter “Amen to that”.
Source: Apple
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