Treo 600

WWDC 2006 & New at Apple

Posted on August 7, 2006

I just finished watching the keynote from the Apple World Wide Developer’s Conference 2006 (WWDC). I think I wet myself. First off, just go watch it. It is so worth your time (about an hour). They show off all the new stuff and of course there is some Vista bashing. For those of you who don’t care as much or don’t have time, I’ll list what I thought was simply amazing at the WWDC and recently at Apple.

1. Mac Pro - The PowerMac G5 is no more. It is now the Mac Pro. It features quad-core Intel Xeons at up to 3.0 GHz, 16GB of memory, and 2TB of disk space. It’s freakin’ nuts. (O, and it’s cheaper than a Dell with the same specs and $800 cheaper than a G5 that had half the speed and a quarter of the disk space.)
2. Displays - The Apple Displays didn’t change that much except for one thing. Price. They now start at $699 for the 20-inch model. It’s only $999 for the 23-inch and $1,999 for the 30-inch. You might be saying, “It’s still freakin’ expensive!” Ture, but the 30-inch just dropped $1,000 in price, so I’m happy.
3. Mighty Mouse - The Mighty Mouse is now wireless! It made me really, really happy. Now at $69, it’s still a little expensive for me to go buy one, but it’s cool.
4. Spaces - Spaces is like the Xwindow system for Linux. (I love Fedora 5 by the way. It’s the nicest Linux I’ve used so far, but it’s still Linux…) You can have 4 work spaces and move between them. You can also show all of them and drag windows from one to another. It’s really cool, just go check it out.
5. Core Animation - Core Animation look amazing. I can’t wait to use it. It’s like Flash and Quartz, only in 3D space and easier. It looks awesome. You have to go watch the keynote to see it in action.

   Basically everything I saw in Lepard looks amazing, but I’ll just hit on two more.

6. iChat - The new iChat and Mail look amazing and I must say I am looking forward to them the most. iChat now has integrated tabs and a new, cleaner look. It features real-time video effects during video chats. You can show a presentation or slideshow right in iChat while you are chatting. My personal favorite is Backdrop. You just step outside of the shot and tell it you are about to use a backdrop. It figures out what the background is and you can ad pictures or video behind where you are to make it look like you are green screening… only you’re not! It’s awesome.
7. Dashboard - The new Dashboard include a sweet tool called Web Clip. You can use any website as a widget. Like if you wanted to watch an eBay auction, you just drag the page to Dashboard, crop it to where ever you want it and now you have a live little clip of that page everytime you load Dashboard. It’s freaking sweet. I want it now.

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