Archive for June 23rd, 2003

WWDC Keynote

Monday, June 23rd, 2003

It’s 9:59 AM, and I’m sitting in the back, waiting for stuff to start.
I’ll fill this in with notes as I go.

10:02: Steve takes the stage. “So much great stuff today, we may need
to take a stretch break.”

Updates:

  • Airport Extreme is in sync with
    the final spec.

  • 25 months since Apple opened first store. 58 are open now, 17m
    visitors. Chicago (coming this weekend), SF, and Tokyo stores coming
    soon.

  • iPod; days away from shipping 1 millionth iPod
  • iTunes music store has been up for 8 weeks; sold 5m songs in that
    time.

  • Safari: 5m downloads. In beta for 6 months. Declaring Safari 1.0
    today; it will be on the web in a few hours. Safari SDK to come
    out today    , as well.

10:10: Jaguar is over for developers; Panther preview today. A big
silver X, no spots. 100 amazing new features. Some of the interop
stuff:

  • X11 bundled in
  • NFS file locking
  • FreeBSD 5.0
  • Better SMB
  • IPSec-based VPN
  • Active Directory

New Finder. Old one was computer-centric. New one is user-centric:

  • Left-hand spot for favorites, kind of like a shelf. This appears
    in the open and save dialogs, too.

  • Fast search technology.
  • Labels
  • Dynamic network browsing (Unix & Windows servers)
  • Dynamic search–results are updated as you type.

10:18: New iDisk:

  • Automatic two-way syncing of files.
  • “Local folder
    that syncs”.

10:20: Expose:

  • Multitasking leads to a lot of windows open, and it’s a big
    hassle.

  • He opens a bunch of apps; activates Expose, and everything shrinks
    dynamically, arranged nicely.

  • You can mouse over each mini-window, and
    it shows the title. Very snappy. You can do it for one app, or for all
    your windows. And of course, you can do it in slo-mo.

  • You can also make all the windows fly away

10:25: File Vault

  • Encrypts and decrypts files in the home directory on-the-fly.

10:26: New mail

  • Faster
  • Safari HTML
  • Addresses are objects
  • View and manage by threads

10:29: Built in Fax

  • Every print-panel has a fax button

10:31: Pixlet; breakthrough QuickTime codec.

  • Studio-grade quality
  • wavelet-based (Pixlet = Pixar + Wavelet)
  • 48 bits per pixel source data
  • no interframe compression
  • no noticeable visual artifacts

10:34: Preview; major work done on this.

  • Fastest PDF reader in the world.
  • 28 seconds to scroll through a 978 page document.
  • search is very fast

(Panther also has on-the-fly PostScript to PDF; can share any printer
as a PostScript printer)

10:39: Fast user switching

  • Can’t do this justice–wait for the webcast!

10:41: FontBook; font organization, preview, and search.

10:42: iChat AV

  • Audio chat
  • Video chat; Video conferencing for the rest of us
  • Zero set up or configuration
  • Locate people by buddy name
  • Works with any firewire camera/camcorder
  • Audio chat works OK with 56k modem
  • Need broadband for Video
  • Beta (times out Dec 31) coming today for Panther and Jaguar
    (will be $29 when it ships; free if you have Panther)

  • iSight–$149… unless you are here :-) is the hardware companion for iChat AV (30fps, full motion
    vide at 640×480, F/2.8, dual element mike, firewire for AV and power;
    screen-based mounting system even clips onto portables)

(you’ll have to wait for the webcast for the demos; there’s a nice
little surprise call from a certain Visiting Professor (VP) at UCLA).

10:56: Panther will be $129, and will ship by end of year.
(Wait for the webcast for a little fun with the competition.)

***whew***

11:01: Xcode; new stuff in Developer tools

  • Fast compiles (GCC 3.3) 101,391 lines of code: 377 seconds for
    Xcode, 223 seconds for CW. Still not as fast as CW, unless you use
    distributed builds (think zilla)

  • Linking is no more. Only links shit needed to launch the app.
  • Predictive compiling while you type (I’m not sure which one of us
    is high…)

  • Edit and continue
  • Incredible search capabilities.

Chris Espinosa (Apple Employee #8) joins him on stage for a demo. Be
sure to watch this part of the webcast.

11:12: One more thing… A funny thing happened on the Apple web site.

  • Many reactions: too good to be true; it’s not true; it’s
    brilliant marketing

  • Apple code word: premature specification
  • It was a mistake, and it is true: the World’s Fastest Personal
    Computer

The Chip:

  • Turned to IBM several years ago to make the coolest CPU: the
    G5

  • 64-bit
  • Runs existing 32-bit apps no problem.
  • up to 2GHz
  • 1 GHz Front side bus

The architecture:

  • 12-unit core (215 in-flight instructions; G4 can do 16)
  • 2 FPUs
  • Massive branch prediction logic
  • 130 nanometer process
  • 58 million transistors
  • 300mm wafers

Dr. John E. Kelly, III (Senior VP, Technology Group) from IBM joins
him on stage:

  • “6-7 atomic layers in the gate.”
  • “a roadmap that’s gonna knock your socks off”

The systems:

  • G5 system controller; one of the world’s fastest ASICS
  • Memory: 400MHz 128-bit DDR (6.GB/s); entire contents of a DVD in
    one second

  • AGP 8X PRO
  • 133MHz PCI-X
  • Serial ATA
  • Optical digital audio

The products:

  • up to 8GB RAM
  • New enclosures. Slick; all aluminum
  • Computer-controlled cooling; 9 fans, but quiet: 35 dBA for typical
    usage

  • 3 models: 1.6GHz $1999; 1.8GHz $2399 ; 2×2.0 GHz $2999 (comparable
    Dell is $4031); shipping in August

(see the webcast for benchmarks, including cool stuff from Adobe and
Wolfram)

The future:

  • 3GHz in 12 months

Closing remarks:

  • First 6 months of the year: 12″, 17″ PowerBook; Safari, Keynote, FCP4, iPod,
    iTunes 4, Panther, iSight, Xcode, PowerMac G5

  • And now, a bunch of sessions to learn about all this stuff!

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