Steve Jobs' Macworld 2003 Keynote	SIGPC Vol. 7, No. 1 Jan. 9, 2003

by Scott Tilley

Apple kicked off 2003 with the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. The highlight of the show was the keynote presentation by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. There were several very interesting announcements (and some interesting things left out). On the software side, Final Cut Express, iLife, Safari, Keynote, and X11 were introduced. On the hardware side, Airport Extreme, and 17" and 12" models of the PowerBook were unveiled. The giant 17" PowerBook is truly innovative.

It was supposed to be a boring Macworld, devoid of any interesting new announcements. Instead, Macworld San Francisco 2003 was full of innovative new products. Although there was nothing revolutionary, there were several evolutionary additions to Apple's software and hardware offerings that should keep Mac enthusiasts happy for the rest of the year. And it might help Apple's ongoing "switch" campaign aimed at getting Windows users to move to the Mac.

The keynote presentation by Steve Jobs was broadcast live using MPEG4 via QuickTime 6. The Apple servers must have been pretty stressed: it was said there were over 50,000 high-bandwidth users receiving the stream from San Francisco. And of course many others trying to download the new software from Apple while it was still being announced -- truly "just in time" software.

From my perspective, the most significant announcements can be split into two categories. On the software side, Final Cut Express, iLife, Safari, Keynote, and X11 were introduced. On the hardware side, Airport Extreme, and 17" and 12" models of the PowerBook were unveiled. I personally don't use Final Cut (an application to create digital movies), and X11 has been available from other sources for a while (although not in such an easy-to-install package). But the other announcements definitely caught my attention, including the updates on Apple's financial results and ongoing advertising campaigns.

Updates

Mr. Jobs began by giving an update of Apple's activities from the last two quarters. He said there are now 51 retail stores in the US, which resulted in $100M profit. The switch campaign continues to attract a lot of visitors to the Apple Web site: 7.8M unique hits, of which over 5M were Windows users. It is unclear how many of these visitors were just casual browsers interested in reading a little more about Apple, and how many are really serious about making the investment to switch to the Mac.

The iCal and iSync applications were released just before Macworld. Charges for .Mac will continue, even though the user base has dropped to 250K for the $99 / year service, down from 2.5M users when it was free and called iTools. The iPod has captured 40% market share of portable MP3 players in Japan. The rumored announcement of a video and/or color iPod failed to materialize. Nor was there any mention of new Rendezvous capabilities. I found the latter rather disappointing, since I was looking forward to connecting several computers together via Rendezvous for sharing iTunes music libraries.

The OS X 10.2 operating system continues to gain momentum. There are now over 5M people using it, and this number is predicted to grow to 9M+ by the end of the year. To emphasize the importance of OS X to Apple, Mr. Jobs announced that new applications would no longer have to boot into OS 9. For the laggards out there, 2003 would really seem to be the time to migrate to OS X.

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iLife

There are four "i" applications that form the core of Apple's digital hub: iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD, and iMovie. iTunes 3 has been available for some time; iPhoto 2, iDVD 3 and iMovie 3 were announced during the keynote. These four applications are now much better integrated, and taken together are being sold for $49 (starting January 25) as the iLife application suite. I was a little surprised that Apple did not decide instead to make the iLife package available for free to .Mac subscribers. (To me, iLife sure sounds a lot like AT&T's "mlife" wireless service.) In Mr. Jobs own words, "We are going to do for digital lifestyle applications what Microsoft Office did for productivity applications."

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Safari

One of the pre-show rumors did come true: Apple unveiled a branded Web browser called Safari. The browser is based on the KHTML open source rendering engine. It was touted as a "turbo browser for OS X", and Mr. Jobs showed benchmarks indicating that Safari was 3x faster than Internet Explorer. I have been using the freely-available beta and can attest that Safari is very fast indeed. It sports a minimal user interface, has an integrated Google search bar with a "snapback" feature for going back to the page with the first search results, and a much improved mechanism for managing bookmark favorites.

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Keynote

A new presentation application called Keynote was introduced by Mr. Jobs as being "built for me". He said he had been using a beta version of Keynote for his keynote presentations for most of 2002. I think Apple is treading a little dangerously here, since Keynote will compete directly with Microsoft PowerPoint. (As does Safari with Internet Explorer.) Keynote uses XML as its native file format, and can import/export PowerPoint files. It is already available commercially for $99. Some of the unique features of Keynote are fully anti-aliased scalable text, Quartz-based graphical transitions and effects, and the ability to export to PDF and QuickTime. There are 12 built-in themes provided, targeting the traditional Apple user base of artists and educators.

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The New PowerBooks

Without a doubt, Mr. Jobs received the most attention from the audience when he announced two new additions to the PowerBook line. Most of the Mac rumor sites had discounted any new PowerBook announcements, so this was something of a surprise to everyone. The first PowerBook model introduced has a stunning 17" display (running at 1440 x 900 resolution), the same one found in the newer widescreen iMacs. Although the notebook now weighs 6.8 lbs, somehow Apple managed to keep the machine to just 1" thick (actually a smidgen thinner than the current PowerBooks). The processor remains a 1GHz G4, but there is a new graphics chip (NVIDIA GeForce 4 Go with 64MB). The new PowerBook has shed its titanium casing for anodized aluminum. There is even a new backlit keyboard with an automatic ambient light sensor -- very useful for working in a darkened room or on an airplane (assuming you could fit the 17" behemoth onto one of those small fold-down dinner trays).

Steve Jobs unveils the new 17" PowerBook
(Photo courtesy Apple Computer)

The new PowerBook has built-in BlueTooth (which many people in the audience cheered), and a new 54Mbps Wi-Fi chip that supports the 802.11g standard. This can be used in conjunction with the new "Airport Extreme" base station, which also supports 802.11g. The new base station sells for $199, which is $100 cheaper than the current 802.11b version. An added extra for the new base station is that OS X users can print wirelessly to USB and Ethernet printers connected to it -- something that I'd make use of a lot. To improve reception, the antennas have been moved to the display lid; Mr. Jobs said the new PowerBook had reception as good as the current industry benchmark -- the iBook. The new PowerBook will be shipping in February for $3,299.

At the other end of the scale is a new 12" PowerBook, which I assume it meant to replace the aging iBook. The 12" model will sell for $1,799, beginning in two weeks. It sports most of the features found in the current 15" PowerBooks, such as an 867MHz G4, a combo drive (a SuperDrive is optional), and a roomy 40GB drive. The 12" model is 1.2" thick, but weighs just 4.6 lbs. I think this model will prove to be very popular.

Mr. Jobs said repeatedly that 2003 will be the "year of the notebook for Apple". With new machines like these, powered by OS X, he may just be right. It will be interesting to see how Apple can continue to differentiate the PowerMacs from these powerful portables.