Today Apple had its annual Steve Jobs Keynote/New Stuff Address at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). There are lots of links below about the event, but here are the highlights to me.
Mac Pro (standard config: $2499.00)
- The Power Mac is no more. The last bit of Apple hardware has made the conversion to the intel chipset with the introduction of the Mac Pro. A screaming fast machine for the high end graphics developer, user, gamer (except of course no games for the Mac).
- Basic configuration has 2 x 2.66 GHz Dual-core Intel Zeon chipset
- 1 GB RAM
- 250 GB Hard Drive
- NVIDIA GeForce 7300GT, 256MB RAM
- 16 Superdrive (think PC DVD/RW-CD drive)
- Machine is upgraded with 4 harddrive slots for 2 terabytes of data and 16 GB of RAM! I don't think its even possible to do that for current PCs without some extreme customizations.
- Cost to max out the Processor, RAM and data: $12,876.00 (hmm new computer or new card?)
Leopard - OS X 10.5
- Expected release is Spring 2007
- Supports 64-bit applications (without requiring separate version of OS like XP)
- Time Machine - Think traditional backup combined with MS System Restore. Backup computer plus data with ability to restore entire computer or just an individual file from various times frames (probably defined on how often you decide to back up to a drive)
- Space - Basically various "desktops" as you define it, each with the ability to change apps window to window dynamically. Can do same with XP, but have to download a tweak and it doesn't work all the great since its just a throwaway program.
- Updates on Photobooth, Spotlight, Safari, Mail, iChat and improved user support with Braille, voiceover, etc.
- Core Animation - Method to make animation easily.
- Dashcode - Update to Dashboard so that users can make easy personal widgets for themselves including creating widgets around sections of a website such as a comic or other data that may update on a site periodically.
There you go. New Apple high-end computer that is priced competitively with the PC versions and a new update of OS X that will probably compete directly with Windows Vista. No new changes to existing Intel Macs and no new iPod models announced (dang). The Mac Pro on paper sounds like a screaming fast, graphics loving machine. Since I don't do movie designs or other high end graphics stuff, the only thing that matters is how does the machine handles games in both Mac OS and booting in Microsoft XP. Hopefully soon there will be some benchmarks to see how well this machine does compared to other PCs.
Some links of note:
Keynote blow by blow
Mac Pro Hands-On
Mac Pro site
Apple Store link to buy
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