Apple boss Steve Jobs has unveiled the company's vision for 2005 - and it covers a whole range of new products. Many of the biggest items, including a cut-price iMac, flash-based iPod and the iWork apps suite had already been rumoured, but Jobs confirmed them in a keynote speech lasting almost two hours at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco.
More details are now emerging of the products announced in Jobs' speech. In summary, the big new announcements were, as expected, a flash-based iPod (the iPod Shuffle); a cut-price iMac (the Mac Mini); and an update for the ageing Appleworks suite (iWork). An updated version of the iLife suite of applications was also announced.
On the iPod front, the new player will weigh less than an ounce - and the smaller, 512MB version will retail at $99 in the US. Apple's UK store has also now been updated, to show the device will retail at £69 here - it will cost €99 in Ireland. Jobs said: "iPod shuffle is smaller and lighter than a pack of gum and costs less than $100. With most flash-memory music players users must use tiny displays and complicated controls to find their music; with iPod shuffle you just relax and it serves up new combinations of your music every time you listen." Of course, this may also be one of the most controversial issues - since no screen means no way to find specific tracks. The bigger, 1GB iPod Shuffle will cost $149, £99 or €149.
The Mac Mini is being touted as "the most affordable Mac ever" - and it certainly looks that way. $499 for a machine with a 1.2Ghz G4 processor inside and 40GB of hard disk space, $599 for a 1.4Ghz version with 80GB, will likely attract new customers - and the tiny size of the computer, along with its brushed silver exterior, will also prove a likely selling point. In the UK and Ireland, the machines will start from £339 or €519. It's available in the US on January 22, and a week later in the rest of the world.
Jobs described the relaunched iLife suite as "far beyond anything available on a PC, and is a must-have upgrade for every Mac user". It includes newly-updated versions of iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD and GarageBand. In the US, it's to retail for $79 - in the UK, £49, and €79 in Ireland. Meanwhile, iWork - the Appleworks replacement, made up of two key apps, Keynote and Pages - will cost £49 or €79 in the UK and Ireland, and $79 in the US. Keynote is Apple's presentation software; Pages is described as "word processing software with style".
Apple's store is proving exceptionally busy at the moment, with frequent timeouts, as many customers rush to get their hands on the new goods. Read more for full details and updates...
Video: Watch Keynote Stream
Screenshot: Mac Mini | Steve holding Mac Mini box | iPod Shuffle | Shuffle Review
View: Official MacWorld thread | MacWorld Expo | MacWorld
View: Apple homepage | Apple press releases
News source: Apple Insider | MacCentral
More details are now emerging of the products announced in Jobs' speech. In summary, the big new announcements were, as expected, a flash-based iPod (the iPod Shuffle); a cut-price iMac (the Mac Mini); and an update for the ageing Appleworks suite (iWork). An updated version of the iLife suite of applications was also announced.
On the iPod front, the new player will weigh less than an ounce - and the smaller, 512MB version will retail at $99 in the US. Apple's UK store has also now been updated, to show the device will retail at £69 here - it will cost €99 in Ireland. Jobs said: "iPod shuffle is smaller and lighter than a pack of gum and costs less than $100. With most flash-memory music players users must use tiny displays and complicated controls to find their music; with iPod shuffle you just relax and it serves up new combinations of your music every time you listen." Of course, this may also be one of the most controversial issues - since no screen means no way to find specific tracks. The bigger, 1GB iPod Shuffle will cost $149, £99 or €149.
The Mac Mini is being touted as "the most affordable Mac ever" - and it certainly looks that way. $499 for a machine with a 1.2Ghz G4 processor inside and 40GB of hard disk space, $599 for a 1.4Ghz version with 80GB, will likely attract new customers - and the tiny size of the computer, along with its brushed silver exterior, will also prove a likely selling point. In the UK and Ireland, the machines will start from £339 or €519. It's available in the US on January 22, and a week later in the rest of the world.
Jobs described the relaunched iLife suite as "far beyond anything available on a PC, and is a must-have upgrade for every Mac user". It includes newly-updated versions of iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD and GarageBand. In the US, it's to retail for $79 - in the UK, £49, and €79 in Ireland. Meanwhile, iWork - the Appleworks replacement, made up of two key apps, Keynote and Pages - will cost £49 or €79 in the UK and Ireland, and $79 in the US. Keynote is Apple's presentation software; Pages is described as "word processing software with style".
Apple's store is proving exceptionally busy at the moment, with frequent timeouts, as many customers rush to get their hands on the new goods. Read more for full details and updates...
Video: Watch Keynote Stream Screenshot: Mac Mini | Steve holding Mac Mini box | iPod Shuffle | Shuffle Review View: Official MacWorld thread | MacWorld Expo | MacWorld View: Apple homepage | Apple press releases News source: Apple Insider | MacCentral
The "headless" Mac - so called as it comes without a monitor - got top billing. This tiny new machine will cost as little as $499 and will be available later this month. The Mac Mini, as it's being called officially, features a slot-loading optical drive, Firewire, USB-2, ethernet, analogue and digital video out ports and will ship in two models - the $499 1.25Ghz one with a 40GB hard drive, and a more expensive, $599 model with a 1.4Ghz processor and 80GB drive. Both have G4 processors and will be available from January 22, said Jobs. The Mac Mini comes in a tiny box and is obviously being design as the sort of computer you could buy for any purpose - and then practically forget it's even there. Its height is around half the size of an iPod mini, and Jobs described the gadget with the rather clunky acronym "BYODKM" - or bring your own display, keyboard and mouse.
At the end of his speech, Jobs turned his attention to the flash market for iPods. "The iPod mini worked," he said, referring to the boost it had given sales; flash-based sales over the same time had dwindled, meaning the next step for Apple was to go after the flash market. As such, the iPod Shuffle - to weigh just an ounce - will be the next extension for the range. It will run for 12 hours on a fully-charged battery - charged up through a USB-2 connection. The gadget will come in two sizes - a 512MB one retailing for $99 or a 1GB model for $149.
Also announced was the inclusion of an iPod jack for easy plug-and-play support in Mercedes cars. Apple, Jobs said, sold more than 4.5 million iPods over the holiday season - as he held up the 10 millionth of the machines, saying "thank you" to the audience for helping make the gadget such a success. The firm expects to sell 1.25 billion songs a year through its iTunes Music Stores - 230 million have been sold to date. Jobs briefly mentioned the iTunes-equipped Motorola mobile phone which is expected to be launched - but he didn't give a demo of this hardware.
The successor to the ageing Appleworks was also confirmed, as expected. iWork will include two applications, according to Jobs: Keynote and Pages. Keynote 2, which uses Apple-designed themes, animated text and so on for interactive and self-playing slideshows. Jobs claimed he uses the software for everything now - and said it would deliver cinema-quality presentations. It can also output Flash files.
Pages "does it all", the audience was told: it was described by Jobs as "word processing with a sense of style". It includes paragraph styles, multiple columns, advanced capabilities for typography and footnotes - but its centrepiece, Jobs claimed, was 40 templates featuring placeholder images and text. Simply insert your text and images to create a stylish document. The iWork suite will go on sale at $79.
Jobs also announced a number of new features for the next OS, Tiger, including the Dashboard widgets app; improved Mail and iChat programs; and an updated iLife suite.
Tiger, the new release of Mac OS X, is due to ship within the first half of the coming year, Jobs said - well ahead of the next version of Windows. It's going to include some 200 new features in all - among them improved connectivity with Windows, built-in RSS support for Safari and synchronisation with .Mac accounts. Tiger has already attracted controversy, with Apple suing some members of the Mac community after a beta version of the OS leaked onto the web. Mac OS X 10.3, known as Panther, has already been hugely successful, according to Jobs - it currently has more than 14 million active users, he claimed.
Also highlighted as part of Tiger was Spotlight, the planned new search app which will come with Tiger. It will show up files, folders, as well as e-mail messages and contacts - a concept Windows users are becoming increasingly familiar with with a number of Desktop search programs being launched. Jobs took a stab at those systems, claiming the Mac OS version was much better designed. Things, however, didn't entirely go to plan, as Tiger threw up a bug during the demonstration. "That's why we have backup systems here," the Apple boss joked.
The next version of Apple's Mail.app was also given a public demo. It has had a total overhaul and has been integrated with Spotlight, with claims it can search over 100,000 different mailboxes - enough, surely, for the most e-mail addicted of users. It's expected to feature Smart Mailbox, which create links to incoming messages based on keyboards which have been set up; and it will have a photo management interface for images received over e-mail.
The new OS will also feature Dashboard - a technology which has been attacked for copying the success of the popular Mac OS X add-on, Konfabulator. It's a widget-based app, allowing users to add on a whole lot of features straight to their desktop. Among them, Jobs announced, a calculator, stickies notes, iTunes controller and address book. There'll also be a stock tracker and dictionary, as well as a weather widget allowing users to find out the forecast direct from their desktop.
A new version of Quicktime - v7 - is also expected to ship with Tiger. The largest upgrade to Quicktime in seven years, this update to v6.6 will include full-screen overlay - finally - and live resizing windows. It's also going to support the H.264 codec which is expected to be used with next-generation DVDs. Elsewhere on the multimedia front, iChat v3 was demoed by Jobs - it will support up to 10 people in a simultaneous audio chat, he promised, and will also use H.264 for videoconferences of up to four people.
Apps throughout the popular iLife suite are in line for an upgrade, Jobs said. The suite includes iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD and GarageBand at the moment. iPhoto will gain features including support for MPEG-4 videos, the high-end RAW image format and subfolders as well as a quick thumbnail view and a calendar, allowing pictures to be viewed by when they were taken. The popular iMovie program will see a High-Definition update, with the addition of support for HD video for the first time. Jobs claimed 2005 will be the year when HD video takes centre-stage in the home with more and more hardware supporting it. For iDVD, support has been added for all writeable formats such as +R, -R, RW and so on, and it'll be easier than ever to create a disc with one-step creation added in. The software has also had 15 new themes added. GarageBand, meanwhile, will feature eight-track recording, real-time music notation, pitch and timing fixing and a vocal transformer. Jobs also promised users would be able to create their own loops - the features of the new software were demoed on-stage by John Mayer. The suite will go on sale on January 22, at $79 - and it will be included for free on all new Macs. Final Cut Express, the high-end video editing suite, will also be updated, with the addition of LiveType technology for animated tiling and Sountrack for customised music.
Mac Mini Info
Mac mini will be available in the US on Saturday, January 22 and worldwide on Saturday, January 29 through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com/ukstore), Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorised Resellers in two standard configurations.
The 1.25 GHz Mac mini, for a suggested retail price of £339 (inc. VAT), includes:
• 1.25 GHz PowerPC G4 processor;
• 256MB of 333 MHz DDR SDRAM, expandable to 1GB;
• 40GB Ultra ATA hard drive;
• Combo (DVD-ROM/CD-RW) optical drive;
• ATI Radeon 9200 graphics processor with 32MB video memory;
• One FireWire 400 and two USB 2.0 ports;
• 10/100 BASE-T Ethernet networking and 56K V.92 modem;
• Internal support for AirPort Extreme wireless networking and Bluetooth;
• DVI or VGA out (adapter included), composite/S-video out with optional adapter; and
• Built-in speaker and headphone/line out.
The 1.42 GHz Mac mini, for a suggested retail price of £399 (inc. VAT), includes:
• 1.42 GHz PowerPC G4 processor;
• 256MB of 333 MHz DDR SDRAM, expandable to 1GB;
• 80GB Ultra ATA hard drive;
• Combo (DVD-ROM/CD-RW) optical drive;
• ATI Radeon 9200 graphics processor with 32MB video memory;
• One FireWire 400 and two USB 2.0 ports;
• 10/100 BASE-T Ethernet networking and 56K V.92 modem;
• Internal support for AirPort Extreme wireless networking and Bluetooth;
• DVI or VGA out (adapter included), composite/S-video out with optional adapter; and
• Built-in speaker and headphone/line out.
Build-to-order options and accessories include up to 1GB of RAM, SuperDrive™ (DVD±RW/CD-RW), AirPort Extreme Card, internal Bluetooth module, wired or wireless Apple Keyboard and Apple Mouse and the AppleCare Protection Plan.
Stick with Neowin for continuing updates throughout the evening. Jobs' speech is due to be webcast at 2am GMT (9pm EST, 6pm PT).
(i know i am very poor on photo retouch)
I think its perfectly sufficient for what most ppl will use that Mac for.
Last edited by 54805 on 12 Jan 2005 - 11:48
Ha Ha parkker, your ignorance made me chuckle. The fastest computer in the world is clocked even lower, at 0.7 GHz (Link). 1.25 GHz is plenty for a PC.
lol.
LOL, SVT how could you miss that?
Who said I did miss it?
Not until/unless we get a low-end version of the G5 will Apple have any worthwhile "mainstream" offerings.
While I agree that in terms of value this isn't really ideal, it is cool. For $500 you can get a far faster PC with a monitor and better video (and a keyboard and mouse to boot). But you can't get one that's 2 inches tall.
It's also a good upgrade solution for those using older G3 and lower-end G4 Macs. In fact one of my housemates might consider one of those to replace his aging Mac.
ok....first of all, the Mac Mini doesn't come with a piece of crap DELL CRT monitor because apple doesn't use CRTs anymore...they made the switch quite some time ago to their line of Professional TrueColor LCDs, which as standalone units are worth their value in the LCD markets....when DELL does bundle a Professional TrueColor LCD with their entry lvl systems in the $500-600 range, and apple still hasn't, then you all can complain about it. Secondly, apple's wireless keyboard/mouse duo retails around $100...admittedly expensive (especially when you have to add $50 for an internal Bluetooth transmitter) however...why would anyone switching from PC want to buy a mac keyboard and mouse? My grandparents would just say "Ah, who needs that? I've already got this one there from the other machine. And this one has 2 button clickers".....so, who would want to use the Mac mouse if it were retailed with the Mini Mac? It only has one button clicking, PC users would have hernias and throw them against the walls in their primal anger, lol. Comparatively the low end system on the Dell site now is a 2.4 GHz PC running windows xp Home (ewwww)....look up the rest of the specs yourselves if you care. It costs $449 (with the $50 mail-in rebate) and comes with a monitor (CRT-17'') wired keyboard and mouse, a 48x CD drive (not the spiffy-keen Combo Drive [CD&DVD] the the mac mini comes with) a 40 GB HD, and an integrated Intel Graphics chip (...in other words a POS mobovid card, while the Mac mini comes with an "ATI Radeon 9200 with 32MB DDR video memory"---not a bad card, little low on the memory, but plenty fine for playing World of Warcraft)
doesn't seem like too bad of a deal to me. : P
Give me a CRT over an LCD anyday. LCDs are still too slow and too inaccurate for gaming. When OLED's out, I may reconsider, but not until then.
Ok, I actually intend to buy this, as to expand my horizons if you will, so I'm not limited to working on and around a PC, just in case the time comes in the near future where I have to work with a Mac. Everybody I have told about the Mac Mini, who is over 35 (not the most tech smart people in the world) thought Apple wasn't selling new computers. They know Apple from the days of RISC and x86 and those mobile phones they used to build houses with. Retarded....I think the majority of parents are blissfully unaware of Apple Computer, Inc.
with all of the hype in the last 4 years over Apple's stylish gear....you sure about this? I mean...come on, even my grandparents know what they're up to these days...they bought my brother an iPod, and own a new G5 iMac (got sick of their old PC).
although it's great that it supports h264. get this ported to other platforms quick too and they might expect a large take uptake of the codec, for once.
a feature nicely lifted directly out of outlook2003, might i add.
and here's me thinking there was 1.87 USD to the GBP. 499 USD = 265.6445 GBP, 599 USD = 318.9139 GBP. There's that apple being all US centric again.
he wouldn't, wouldn't he! he'd be lying, again, of course, but then we expect that. the price for iLife is fairly good though, although i'm sure that'll translate to 80 GBP
which they'll no doubt overcharge for. still the choice not to buy over-inflated apple prices is a good thing. All they need to do now is open up the entire hardware to third parties to design, manufacture, and sell again. It's not like apple make a great deal of revenue on the mac line anyway.
already plenty of discussion on the origins of this (ie, stealing the idea directly from microsoft, not for the first time in either direction). it's worth noting that msn desktop search, google desktop search, jeeves desktop, etc etc etc all come for free, and work incredibly well without the need for an os upgrade.
sorry.. did it actually support ANY dvd formats prior to this announcement?
thumbs up for this from me. Garageband sounded like a good deal when it first came out, and this update makes it look even better. A great intro package for anyone getting in to music production.
overall it's good to see apple announcing so many new products and product updates in the short space of a year. some of them are minor, and should really've been in the products from day one (quicktime fullscreen support for example) some of them are major, so good work.
Last edited by 25229 on 12 Jan 2005 - 00:07
This is not: we support show "Full Screen" in "QT Player."
So sad... you are pathetic, misinformed, ignorant Mac troll.
the point is quicktime has not supported full screen playback, hardware overlay or not since... for ever. which for a media playback tool, from a media specialist like apple is quite rediculous. Sure, you could purchase the full version of quicktime, or if you knew what you were doing you could even generate a nice apple script to play stuff back fullscreen. but i'm as surprised that it's not even used an overlay until now.
and the best part about the keynote so far... is steve crashing the first bit of software he demonstrates... aah. complete system lock up! sign me up for some of that! rofl
currently quicktime free doesn't allow playing back of media files fullscreen straight from the install (it's possible to create a script or html to do it.. ala fullscreen trailers @ apple.com), even the full version of the product which does play full screen still doesn't use a hardware overlay (according to what steve said in his keynote).
now, it's not a hard concept to follow, if you know what you're talking about, i can only assume you don't. so quit with the "So sad... you are pathetic, misinformed, ignorant Mac troll" childish messages.. it's always a sign that people don't know what they're talking about when they have to resort to attempts at personal insults.
Radish™
and at the bottom of the page the (2) is explained: 2. Do not eat iPod shuffle.
thanks for pointing that out apple
edit: oops... Devil Fish already commented on this
Interesting marketing strategy to sell with iLife 05, OS 10.3, and others, but not with a keyboard or mouse. Maybe it will end up being like the G4 iMacs and their speakers; they start off wihout them, but throw them in later
The Cube was expensive. Very expensive. The Mac mini isn't. Oh, and nice try at a joke, but this case design is very different from the Cube's.
"Do not chew iPod shuffle."
Priceless!!!!!
Needs a freekin' display. Even a one line display will be fine
New iMac:
Yay, just like the cheep PC's... YOU STILL HAVE TO BUY A MONITOR! Apple should have made a 550-600$ all-in-one.
can you engineer them? any better? drop it
There's an extra in " View: MacWorld Expo"
(for mac fanatics: I am a mac user :rolleyes