More and more, Apple is becoming the digital media company, not just the
computer company it used to be. Apple sold 32 million iPods last
year compared under 5 million Macs.
To date, Apple has sold 42 million iPod, 850 million tracks
through the iTunes Music Store (iTMS), and over 8 million videos.
The hottest selling video right now is a 15 minute Rose Bowl
wrap-up produced by ABC Sports and ESPN.
In new content, Steve Jobs announced that Saturday Night Live
content is now available through iTMS.
Jobs also announced a new $49 wired remote and FM tuner for the
iPod nano and video iPod. Also, Chrysler has announce "major iPod
support" and expects to sell 3 million cars with the option of iPod
support this year. Jobs says that 40% of cars sold this year will
have an iPod option.
Software
This is Macworld, so the focus next shifted to the Mac.
Aperture, Apple's post-production software for digital images, is a
huge hit with professional photographers. It's not only powerful,
but also easy to use and fast.
There are over 1,500 widgets available for Tiger's Dashboard,
and Apple announced several new ones: Google search, Address Book,
snow conditions, a new calendar, white pages phone numbers, and
sports (in conjunction with ESPN).
These new widgets are included with the Mac OS X 10.4.4 update,
which is freely available today.
iLife
iLife '06 remains "miles ahead of anything on the PC" and has
updates for all five modules. iPhoto is now "incredibly fast" and
supports up to 250,000 photos. New are full-screen editing,
comparison views, and one-click effects.
iPhoto books are better than ever with improved printing, and
Apple has added calendars and cards to the mix. iPhoto '06 also
adds something new - photocasting. Photocasting allows you to
select which photos you want to share, uploads them to your .mac
account, and makes them available via RSS feed. This sounds like a
great way to share your photos with others who use iLife 0'06.
iMovie
iMovie introduces animated themes, and now allows you to work on
more than one project at a time. Other new features include export
to iPod and video podcasts.
iDVD
The 2006 version of iDVD supports widescreen and adds "magic
iDVD" - just drag your content and let iDVD master the disc for
you.
Perhaps the nicest feature of iDVD is support for third-party
burners, something Apple has never done before.
GarageBand
If ever a product needed a new name, GarageBand is it. Yes, it
has all those wonderful features for mixing your own music, but for
2006 it adds a host of new features related to podcasting.
GarageBand adds voice enhancement and ducking, which
automatically reduces the level of your music track during speech.
It also lets you record iChat interviews to create your own
podcasts.
GarageBand has gone well beyond its music roots and may well be
the best podcast studio software on the market.
iWeb
iLife is "all about expressing ourselves creatively," and the
Web is one venue where we do that. iWeb is designed so anyone can
create beautiful web pages easily. It may be time to retire Claris
Home Page here at Low End Mac.
iWeb lets you work with all your digital media - photos, movies,
tunes - and works in conjunction with .mac so you can publish
personal pages, blogs, share podcasts, etc. It even handles RSS so
others can subscribe to your podcasts.
iLife '06 remains US$79, and a five-user family pack retails for
US$99. iLife '06 is included with all new Macs.
iWork
iWork adds 3D charts, integrated image editing, and the ability
to create tables that perform calculations.
Hardware
Apple sold 1.25 million Macs during the holiday quarter and
close to 5 million during 2005. Apple promised to ship the first
Intel-based Macs by June 2006 and complete the transition within
one year.
As widely rumored and suspected, Apple unveiled the first
Intel-based Mac today. But it wasn't the Mac mini or iBook, which
most had seen as the most likely candidates.
iMac 2006
Surprisingly, it's the iMac that's the first shipping Macintel
model. Spec for spec, feature for feature it's pretty much what
Apple introduced in October. The big difference is the presence of
Intel Core Duo CPUs instead of G5s.
The 17" iMac has a 1.83 GHz Core Duo and retails for US$1,299.
The 20" model runs at 2.0 GHz and retails for US$1,699. Mac
OS X 10.4.4, iLife '06, and iWork '06 are entirely native for
Intel, and the Pro apps will be native in March.
Apple and Microsoft tell us that Microsoft Office for Mac runs
just fine under Rosetta, Apple's PowerPC emulator for Intel-based
Macs.
Jobs also told the audience that the entire Mac line will be
Intel-based by the end of the calendar year.
One More Thing
The PowerBook G5 never saw the light of day because the G5
offered less performance per watt than the G4 (0.23 and 0.27
respectively). The new Intel Core Duo offers vastly improved
performance per watt - 1.05, which is 4-5x what the PowerPC
processors offered.
With that transition from PowerPC chips to Intel, Apple is
abandoning the PowerBook name. The new 15.4" MacBook Pro will ship
in February. It's Apple's thinnest PowerBook yet, and the screen is
its brightest - as bright as the 30" Cinema Display.
Like the iMac, the MacBook Pro has built-in iSight and a
receiver for Apple's remote. Front Row software will be included
with the new notebook computer.
The MacBook Pro will be available in two configurations: 1.67
GHz for US$1,999 and 1.83 GHz for US$2,499. Although that may not
sound like much of an improvement, the Core Duo processors will
make the MacBook 4-5x as fast as the 1.67 GHz PowerBook G4.
Low End Mac hopes to offer profiles of the new iMacs and
forthcoming MacBook Pro later in the day. 
