Jeff LaMarche sent this great summary of the mood of the show so far, that I just had to share. Thanks Jeff!
Through most of the keynote, it was pretty sedate, and people were sorta acting like “okay, not only did all of this leak, but it’s the most boring of the leaks that are turning out to be real”. People were politely impressed with the software updates, but nothing stellar. I missed the Adobe demo and part of Aperture because I had just a Users Conference badge (the lowest price one that gets you into the Keynote)… almost none of us yellow badge people got into the main room, which was sort of disappointing, and we were not seated in the overflow room until 15 or 20 minutes into the presentation.
When the iMacs were announced though, and Steve showed the benchmarks, people were pretty wowed and there was a tangible buzz and audible murmuring, and then the “one more thing” – the MacBook Pro .
Mac Book Pro
The new laptop itself, really wowed people. The screen in real life is really something to behold – bright and crisp and just amazing. And the machine just feels nice in your hands. On the screen of the keynote presentation, it just looked like a 15″ aluminum PowerBook with a hole in the case for the camera, but when you heft the real thing, it is noticeably lighter and just feels good – more solid or something. The trackpad only has one button – and it’s limited to acting as a single button – no software changing it like for the new Mighty Mouse to act as a right-click, which I thought was a real blunder on an otherwise stellar-looking machine. I would order one today, except I’m holding out for a 17″ MacBook Pro. I live on my laptop and have gotten used to the extra screen real estate from my first generation 17″ machine. Nobody will say, of course, whether there’s going to BE a 17″ MacBook Pro, but with how well the 17″ PowerBook sold, I’m going to give it up to a year and keep my fingers crossed.
The new iMacs are really sweet, too. They are blazingly fast. just doing things like scrolling them, really is amazingly smooth. It is noticeable the difference in speed. I think they should have made some external change to differentiate them from the G5 ones, but that would have ruined Steve’s schtick at the end where he pointed out that he had been using them for the whole presentation (something I sort of suspected when he said he had 25,000 pictures in his iPhoto library).
A lot of people really liked iWeb too. I’m not really a typical Mac consumer, so I’m not as jazzed over the consumer software in general. I use it, I think it’s great, but it’s not what really gets me excited. I does look like a great little addition to iLife, though.
The RDF definitely worked
In the last 15 minutes, the place was just buzzing, and people just bee-lined for the Apple booth on the exhibit floor. Even now, it’s hard to get to one of the new demo machines. People are placing orders for the MacBook Pro left and right.
Outside of Apple’s booths, it’s not really very impressive this year to be completely honest. Not much swag, really, and not a lot of really exciting products. Adobe is demoing Photoshop CS2, not the new program, Quark the old version of XPress, Microsoft the old version of Office… so there’s not much buzz outside of Apple, but there’s plenty of it from the Apple booth. For gamers (I’m not one) there’s a lot of stuff – a lot of big titles have now been ported and the small number of Mac gamers present seem to be really pumped.
Actually, one piece of news that was really well received was Microsoft extending support for Office. I mean, people just really liked that – one of the rumors spreading through the line waiting for the Keynote was that Microsoft was going to end-of-life Office and stop supporting it completely after 1997. Guess the rumor sites got that one wrong.
Watching Steve was an experience, even from the overflow room. I mean, I felt a chill when he showed the benchmarks for the new MacBook. Had they been a little faster opening the Exhibit hall, I might just have ordered one; I was totally inside the RDF and it took a few minutes for it to wear off. I’m still a little torn, because that new laptop is really sweet.
The new commercial was well received, although personally I liked it, I thought it needed more. I’m not sure many people outside the hardcore Mac fans and some very technically oriented people have any idea what that means. Cool factor for the commercial is high, I’m just not sure if it will accomplish that much.
The poster that I thought was a check, was part of the iLife poster. I took a picture and will post it when I get back to the hotel room. I was wrong, but it was a reasonable guess, but figured Steve wouldn’t announce something like a spreadsheet program until he had locked Microsoft in to supporting Office… it might even be a condition of the deal that they not do a spreadsheet. Who knows? I don’t have any visibility into it, just conjecture.
Steve Sighting
I did have a brush with Steve today. I was standing reading a message on my phone and all of a sudden was just engulfed in people – Steve was walking through followed by swarms of people and media (I guess they’re people, but). Steve gave a sort of nod and mouthed a non-verbal “hi” which was pretty cool for me, as geeky as that sounds. He’s quite a bit shorter than I thought, and up close seemed much more like a real, live person than the icon (or is that iCON?) I know from watching him on video.
That’s about all for now.
Jeff
Wow that was the exact same reaction i had to the whole thing, i was bored (cos i’m not at Macworld) so i wrote my own review of the keynote, but yours is more or less the same as mine:
http://www.soupinajamjar.com/2006/01/10/my-views-on-macworld-2006/
Siajj –
Well, I was most certainly not bored. Watching Steve in real-time with a whole lot of other Mac fans is quite an experience. He is a master showman and you do not get bored. The first part was not that awesome, but I was never bored, and I think it was a bit intentional, because by making the first part less amazing, it made the RDF that much more effective when he finally dropped the iMac bomb then his trademark “One more thing…” (the MacBook). I had shivers go up my spine when he introduced the MacBook (though I hate the name). You will not experience that watching the Keynote and knowing what’s coming, but watching it live… it was something.
I got a chance to play with the new machines a bit, and they really are sweet – more so than came across in the presentation. There are things about them I would change in a perfect world, but the Apple and Intel folks who managed to get those machines out in the time frame they did… well, that was just amazing, and those folks in the trenches deserve kudos for getting it done and done well.
I’m betting that once the transition to Intel is complete, we’ll start seeing more visible, user-facing innovations. I know just enough about hardware design to know that what they did was impressive and took some serious innovation and a lot of hard work and long hours, but none of that innovation is user facing, so it doesn’t wow us quite as much as many of Apple’s recent introductions. A 5x speed increase over the PowerBooks, though? Wow. After the period of stagnation we’ve had with the PowerBook G4s, it’s a very welcome bump up, I just wish they had made a 17″ MacBook.
I also wish there were benchmarks for Rosetta with the big apps that are not Universal yet (Photoshop, Word).
Whoops i should have worded that differently i wasn’t suggesting that the keynote was boring (man i’d love to go to one of those things), i was just saying that i wrote a review because i was bored and was waiting for the keynote to come online.
“One of the rumors … was that Microsoft was going to end-of-life Office and stop supporting it completely after 1997. Guess the rumor sites got that one wrong.”
Maybe they weren’t so far from the truth, and Microsoft did consider that possibility as an “or else” type threat. Let me explain:
When I saw the slide for iWork ‘06 appear, I immediately thought, great, he’s going to announce Numbers. What is/was Numbers? Apple’s spreadsheet of course. (The main evidence was that they’d trademarked the name, and it’s a natural fit for the iWork suite.)
Now, Microsoft may have been willing to tolerate Pages, which is really more like “Indesign Lite” than Word but when it came to yet another reason not to buy Office, uh uh, no way.
So it could have been the case of: “if you want Office to be x86′ified, then you’ll drop the Excel killer. Otherwise, it’s lights out, MacBU.”
Hence, no Numbers in iWork.
(Or maybe it’s not ready yet – but I like conspiracy theories!)
Heh, actually I had the same exact thought. I’m thinking Numbers has been ready to go for some time (Steve likes insurance, which is why they kept maintaining the x86 builds of OS X, and I can’t imagine him risking the Mac platform without a viable productivity suite). I’m guessing he’s told Microsoft that he’ll keep Numbers in-house as long as Office is being developed and supported and updated, etc.
Now, let me just say that I have absolutely NO inside information. This is pure speculation on my part and (for the redord) my history with Apple prophecies is not good.
Just a quick comment…
As I was watching the videocast at the beginning, I realized something was up with the computers. I recently purchased an iMac G5… and I guess Steve was just hoping nobody would pick up on the fact that the ports were along the bottom, not the side. Just wanted to point that out
By the way… why does he have 2 up there?
(Oh and the intel skit was sweet, so was the very end. I love when they dig into Apple’s history like that.)
@BJ: The ports are placed along the bottom since the iSight iMac. The first iMac G5 had it along the side. So this was already before the Intel shift.
I feel al little betrayed by Steve, that he has already updated the iMac. Just bought the new iSight iMac, thinking the iMac wouldn’t be updated already. I guess nobody expected this. Of course my iMac is still a wonderful machine.
BJ: Steve always uses two computers.. one as instant backup possibility
usually they’re under the desk (attached to a kb/mon switch), but with imacs that’s a little difficult.
heck… why didn’t the page load completely.. now I doubled someone elses comments
there are more differences to the old G5 imac as well..
no onboard-soldered RAM .. two real memory slots now.. unfortunately it is DDR2 5300, which isn’t available in 2Gig strips (yet)
but it makes upgrading memory a lot cheaper though
I’m a professional writer, fiction and non-fiction, and you wrote the best Macworld piece that I have read. Interesting and informative with perfect tone–Good job!
I too attended the Keynote. I thought I’d be safe getting there at 4:30am – my plan was that if no one was there I could go grab some breakfast at Dennys around the corner. But there’s already a huge line there and considering how far back I was I don’t think I’m doing it again.
I’m surprised you didn’t get VIP seating.
Aesthetically the screen on the new MacBook feels smaller – I can’t quite put my finger on it. I’m thinking it might have something to do with the increased bezel width at the top (and if you look at the resolution it’s 60 pixels less in one axis).
Here are at my photos from the Keynote Day.
http://homepage.mac.com/dark_lotus/PhotoAlbum29.html
Cool photos! Thanks for letting us see them.
Jeff,
Enjoyed your report. I fully agree with your comments on the new tv commercial. It is funny but it misses the mark. I just wrote a story on http://www.brandscribe.com that the ad is more about Intel than it is about Apple. I find that a shame. It says nothing about them. I really believe they made a mistake.
Did people comment on that?
Best
Dirk