The Keynote
Damn—it appears that Apple turned off the Airport connectivity during the keynote, so I wasn’t able to report live, as I had planned. I wasn’t the only one who noticed, either, as a quick look at the list of available Computer-to-Computer Airport networks confirmed.
So, instead I’ll have to try to sum up my thoughts during lunch here (which is looking extremely disappointing, by the way, assuming I’m not missing something!).
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I have to say, I find myself oddly unimpressed with Panther. I’m definitely not happy to see metal Finder windows. The new usability features will be nice, but they don’t strike me as earth-shattering. Overall, it doesn’t seem as significant an upgrade as Jaguar was.
The one exception is definitely Exposé! It’s rare that I see a new UI feature that really screams “this will save me tons of time,” but I think Exposé qualifies!
Oh—and was it just me, or did the Unix slide say that Panther would support popular Linux APIs? He actually said “UNIX APIs,” but that’s not what the slide said! If that’s true, it’s pretty cool—it could enable developers to easily port a whole class of apps that are built specifically for Linux rather than plain old UNIX. Guess we’ll have to see…
I’m also really curious to find out more about what changes are in store for Cocoa. The “Cocoa Update” session should be interesting.
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The new development environment, Xcode, looks like it should answer at least a few of my previous gripes about Project Builder (the constant compilation, for example, reminds me a lot of Eclipse). It’s nice to see Apple putting the kind of polish that characterizes the iLife apps into its developer tools for a change!
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The iChat AV demo was masterfully done—what a wonderful presentation! The call to France and view of the Eiffel Tower was really fun, and really helped convey the possibilities inherent in video conferencing. I must confess my interest in the product might have been helped considerably by Apple’s decision to give everyone an iSight. How cool is that!
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Much of the G5 presentation was lost on me, as I’m not really a semiconductor geek, but it was really fun to nod my head knowingly as IBM’s Ph.D Senior VP talked about 13 angstrom transistors. It was also really exciting to see an absolute titan like IBM showing such solidarity with Apple. IBM is certain to be everything Motorola hasn’t been in the past few years, and should have the resources and motivation to ensure that Apple’s hardware never falls behind again!
Not sure yet if I like the case, but I will have to reserve judgement until I’ve seen it in person.
Well, that’s it for now—I’m off to join the hoard of greedy geeks downstairs as they frantically try to secure their freebees (in addition to the iSight and Panther, O’Reilly is giving out free copies of Cocoa in a Nutshell, which makes me very glad I decided not to buy it the other day!).
More to follow…