The delayed streaming webcast is now available at the Apple site. Click thru and watch Steve introducing the amazing new Apple products. Broadband and the Apple Quicktime Player is absolutely necessary and you’ll need to set aside about 45mins to an hour to view the entire webcast.
If you’re a mac fan or an aspiring one, watching the MacWorld keynote will blow you away and start those saving budgets going toward your next mac purchase. It smells like a good year for mac… we’ve included some highlights from the keynote speech for you if your schedule is too busy for you to sit around to watch the complete keynote speech, with emphasis on the new software to come from Apple for 2005.
Some Of The Bits Worth Mentioning
During the keynote speech Steve points out the following points worth noting:
- Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, scheduled to ship in the first half of 2005; Steve demos the stunning new ‘Spotlight‘, Tiger’s built-in search engine that utilises meta data tags to quickly find anything on your computer;
- New Album Artwork screensaver integrated into Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger that finds all iTunes Album Artwork and compiles it into a full screen full of Album Artwork;
- Apple Mail update in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, with Spotlight integration and slideshow ability to view all images from all your email accounts and integrated iPhoto import facility within Mail itself, preview of Smart Mailboxes, real-time updating mailbox;
- Quicktime 7 scheduled to launch with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, major update to Quicktime in a decade, that utilises H.264 compression codec which is being adopted as a standard for the next generation DVDs;
- iChat in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, extends audio conferencing up to 10 people simultaneously, video conferencing up to 4 people simultaneously using the H.264 compression codec;
- High Definition Video (HD), integrated into Final Cut Express HD,, which now ships with LiveType and Soundtrack, available from February 2005;
- iMovie 5, now edits HD video;
- Kunitake Ando, President of Sony shows up at MacWorld 2005 to talk about Apple’s collaboration between Apple and Sony to make 2005 the year of HD video in the home, admits that Apple makes great applications that works seamlessly with Sony and jokes that Apple should continue to make great applications and not video cameras;
- 2 new Jam Packs for GarageBand, totalling 4 Jam Packs;
- Keynote 2, part of the iWork’05 is a major update of Keynote which was programmed before Mac OS X and iLife; Keynote 2 now takes full advantage of Mac OS X, advanced typography and iLife integration including several new themes, compatible to AppleWorks, Flash and QuickTime output;
- iWork’05, introduces Pages, an awesome desktop publishing tool, that supports advanced typography, multiple columns, text and paragraph styles, footnotes, tables of contents, tables and charts and spell-checking, shipping with 40 Apple designed templates; iWork’05 is fully iLife integrated; compatible with AppleWorks and Microsoft Word and supports PDF output;
- iTunes 4.7.1, re-tooled iTunes Essentials with better search capabilities; introduced Autofill to function with the new iPod Shuffle that automatically build a playlist of the precise size of your iPod Shuffle’s capacity;
An increase in Apple shares have also been reported since the MacWorld 2005 keynote speech.