wednesday 10 january 2007
Dear All -
Firstly, very best wishes to all of you for a very happy and rewarding 2007. Secondly, thanks to those of you
who sent cards to me at Christmas - they adorned our house until Twelfth Night last weekend. And, as always,
a warm welcome to new readers of this newsletter, going out to around 400 people now around the globe - most
of you are clients - thank you.
On to the news from San Francisco:
Each year Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer, Inc (but see below) gives 2 or 3 major announcements of new
products from the company. The first of 2007 was in San Francisco yesterday, at the annual MacWorld conference
and exhibition.
This year he announced two major products - the Apple TV and the Apple iPhone:
Apple debuts iTV as 'Apple TV'
Apple TV enables users to receive movies wirelessly, displaying them on a TV across the home. The new Apple
offering includes three networking standards (g, b, and n) Video support up to 720p HD Video, and includes a
40GB drive to store video. The device features an Intel-based processor to work with video, music, and photos.
Apple TV can autosync content from one computer and stream content from up to five computers, automatically
syncing most recent movies and storing them on the hard drive. The new device does not store streaming content
on the hard drive, and ships with a simple Apple remote that allows users to wirelessly surf trailers while
connected to the internet.
Apple "reinvents the phone"
The iPhone is a wide-screen iPod with finger touch controls that also functions as a mobile phone, camera,
and an internet communication device."This is a day I've been looking forward to for two and a half years,"
Jobs said on stage in front of the keynote attendees. "Every once in a while a product comes along to change
the industry. Apple has been fortunate to introduce a few of these: the Mac in 1984; the iPod in 2001. Apple
will introduce three revolutionary products of this class. Wide-screen iPod with touch controls. The second
is a mobile phone. The third is a break-through internet communication device. All of those in a single
device. Not separate devices, but a single device called iPhone. Apple reinvents the phone."
It looks amazing and, if it works, it just made very out-of-date ALL so-called "smart" phones on the market.
See a picture of it at http://www.apple.com. Availability in Europe late 2007.
Other announcements
In smaller announcement Steve Jobs also introduced a new Airport Extreme device for spreading the network
around your house or office. Much faster, new connections, and it uses the latest version of WiFi.
The Apple iTunes Store has now sold over 2 billion songs, 50 million TV shows, and 1.3 million full-length
movies. the iTunes Store is now the world's biggest music retailer - outselling even Amazon. The iTunes Store
now features the world's largest catalog with over four million songs, 250 feature films, 350 television shows
and over 100,000 podcasts. Beginning today, iTunes has added more than 100 movies from Paramount Pictures
You will have noticed that I haven't mentioned computers so far, and nor did Steve Jobs. In fact he is
re-naming the company Apple, Inc - to reflect the fact that it is now a consumer electronics firm rather
than just a computer company. Announcements about the new version of OS X - OS X 10.5 "Leopard", updated
computers, and updated software were entirely absent - but are expected in the next few weeks at smaller
events. Leopard is rumoured to debut on 24 march - the sixth anniversary of OS X's launch.
Other news from other companies
Following the recent announcement of Office 2008 for Mac to be released later this year, (as a Universal
Binary which means that MS Office will run a lot faster on the new Intel-based Macintosh computers),
Microsoft today released Office 2004 for Mac 11.3.3 Update - which includes all the other updates. Get it
by running the Microsoft Automatic update program in your Applications folder.
Roxio have released version 8 of Toast Titanium - a utility for burning CDs and DVDs, adding to the Apple
intenal disk-burning abilities. Whilst on the subject of CDs I see that OS X 10.4 does now allow the burning
of multi-session CDs - so you can now add to a CD - burn data to it more than once. See
http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/burnmulti.html
Quark have released version 7.1 of their software.
And especially for writers:
For Mac users who enjoy the simplicity of a typewriter, but live in the digital world. WriteRoom is a full-
screen, distraction-free writing environment. Unlike the cluttered word processors you're used to, WriteRoom
is just about you and your text. Requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later. Find it at:
http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/product/writeroom
Posterino (from http://zykloid.com/posterino/) allows you to create posters and postcards from your images,
and allows you to place pictures how you like on the "paper".
And for those of you who would like help with seeing things on the screen, Apple, and other companies,
provide a number of magnification tools - have a look at: http://www.apple.com/accessibility/vision/
OK, that's it for the moment! Any questions? Let me know. Remember, these newsletters are archived on my
website at http://www.themacdoc.co.uk/pastemails.html. Hmmmm, and I notice that the For Sale pile is growing.
Have a look at http://www.themacdoc.co.uk/marketplace.html for all sorts of mostly second hand items which
may be of interest.
Best wishes to you all, and thanks for being Mac users
hugh