Category: Apple

Wired: Mac Cluster’s Last Stand?

“If Apple were to offer a scalable, high-density hardware solution, I would push hard for a platform switch,” said Patrick Gavin of the University of California at Santa Cruz Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering . “The PowerPC architecture is vastly superior to anything else out there in terms of power consumption versus processing power.”

It make sense that this point would come. Apple under the second coming of Steve Jobs has had a laserlike focus on the consumer and pro graphics markets. But they have other customer segments too. If nothing else, the reception that the guy demoing Mathematica at MacWorld got might convince them to pay attention to these genomics researchers. Then there’s the big BLAST story….

Every time recently that I try to connect to AOL Instant Messenger using Fire for the last few days, it fails to connect. It’s odd being disconnected from all your friends… (at least the ones that use AIM). For any of my other friends watching, yes I’m on MSN Messenger too. Instant messenging right now is one of those things where it’s impossible to use only one standard — too many people are on one standard or the other, making programs like Fire and Trillian necessary.

My Mac went into a kernel panic this morning as soon as I tried to hot-sync my Palm via infrared this morning. My data file got corrupted. I lost my class schedule, my to do list, everything. Call me unhappy…

I really dig today’s Diesel Sweeties. So that’s what that articulated neck is for… 🙂
more…

Sorry–I lost something when my machine went down and that news item got corrupted. Anyway: 14″ iBooks are here today. New iMac will be here on Thursday for display and for sale in two weeks. Firesale pricing on old iMacs and on the DVD-only iBook. And iPhoto is available for download.

Steve’s getting hoarse, I think. Now I’d like to end by talking for a few seconds about our strategy. One word: to innovate. We have been busy in the last 12 months and innovating while most of our competitors have been retrenching and laying off. Why? Because I think we can see the future…. Hey, there’s no “one more thing!” Good. My fingers hurt.

An email from a reader about the new iMac. Frank Himsl thinks “It looks like a small, expensive flat screen perched on top of a $15 electric tea kettle.” Here’s another question, how easy is it to keep clean?

Genentech has placed an order for 1000 of the new iBooks (one of their execs is on the board at Apple).

The base is 10.5 ” in diameter. Expandability: four screws on the bottom–will hold up to a gig of memory and an Airport card. Antennas built into the display. Three models. 15″, 700 MHz, 128 MB, 40GB, CD-RW: $1299. Next: 256 MB and a combo drive, $1499. Last: 800 MHz, 60 GB, and a SuperDrive: $1799. Moore’s Law in action, folks. Superdrive model available January, midline Feb, $1299 in March. (Learning curve effects to support the low price models.)

It’s an all-in one… “This is the opportunity of the decade to reshape desktop computers.” “What I think everyone else is going to do: We could have taken a hacksaw to it. But there’s nothing flat about it… and there would be cable mess and we’d have to slow everything down.” “Let each component be true to itself.” A box rises from the stage, the flat screen pops up–and there’s this half round thing underneath. The flat panel is on a chrome arm. One touch move and swivel, the display stays parallel…180 swivel. The disk drive is a slide out tray. The ports are arranged across a 60 degree arc in the back. It’s about 6 inches tall. The power supply is built into the base, no brick. Unbelievable.

“Lastly, let’s talk about the iMac.” Ad roll (stalling). Even though we’ve all seen these about a million times before, some are still classic (“There’s no step 3,” “It’s not easy bein’ green…”). “A three year evolution, and I’m really amazed to report we’ve sold 6 million iMacs. But today we’re going to say goodbye to that iMac. We’re going to introduce a brand new iMac designed from the ground up.” Flat screen…”and we said Yes.” 15 inch LCD screen standard (applause at Tysons). “This is the official death of the CRT today.” G4…”and we said Yes.” At 700 or 800 MHz. “It speeds up everything in the Digital Hub.” Superdrive…”and we said Yes.” “And as of today the discs are $5 apiece.” nVidia GeForce 2 MX with 32MB memory and 24bit at all resolutions. 5 USB, 2 Firewire, internal speakers and Apple Pro speakers in two of the three models. “What about the design?”

Now the hardware. The iBook. $1299 –> $1199. The middle model, the DVD model is going to be eliminated. Everyone wants the 600 MHz Combo Drive unit and we’re going to sell it at $1499. New model: 14-inch iBook. Still 1.35″ thick, under 6 pounds, and 6 hours battery, slightly larger, at $1799, with combo drive.

I lost my sharing update: web, easy into iTools, slide shows with crossfades and music. “Now how much should we charge for this amazing application? For Mac OS X owners, it’s free.” New ad for iPhoto: “Baby Jack.”

“I’ve saved the best for last.” Hardbound book. InDesign or Quark and design the book? “No, let’s not do that. We’ve built a page layout program into iPhoto that’s completely automatic. It lays all these photos out in a book automatically, I do nothing. I can say how many pictures on a page I want. It actually looks pretty darn cool. Can type text right in.” Crowd reaction in Tysons: “This is great.” (There are now about 150 people here.) Click “Order Book,” it connects with servers at Apple and lets me order my book on line without ever leaving iPhoto. More 1-Click buying. Amazon’s raking in the royalties today. “When you click this you’ll have your hardbound book in about one week with your photos. There’s never been anything like this before.”

Here’s that workflow again. Click Import, can automatically erase after import… “It looks a lot like iTunes, doesn’t it?” Libraries of photos and photo albums. “I’ve got over a thousand photos in here, and I can scroll through it really easily…” He shows zooming out for a few hundred on the screen at a time. Can view by film rolls (applause, oohs in Tysons Corner). Photo albums–“playlists for iPhoto.” Editing: How do I crop? Button down, drag, and click Crop. Great transparency effect. Constrained aspect ratios for auto cropping, movable crop window. Or for a DVD, 4×3 aspect ratio… Spoke too soon about limited editing, can also convert to black and white or rotate, or do redeye. Can also pick other apps to open in. “Unfortunately I don’t have Photoshop running in X yet” (laughter, applause) “so I’ll go into Preview.