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The Expo Is On

January 11th, 2005

So we’re having to do with live text-blogging-style reports from the Expo on the various Mac sites (you can find them at MacSurfer). MacMerc will have photos up very soon.

So far: Tiger is on schedule and, among the 200 new features (probably a dozen or two actually of interest to most people), it has a killer search engine called “Spotlight” which puts the new Google and Microsoft desktop search engines to shame. iTunes gets across-the-board upgrades to all its apps. And iWork is a reality, with the “Pages” word processing app and Keynote 2–together priced at $79, which would be $20 less than the Keynote app has been priced alone up until now.

And then there’s the biggest announcement so far: the iMac Mini, priced at $499 and $599, with a 1.25 GHz/40GB HDD and 1.42 GHz/80GB HDD, both with the G4 chip, analog/digital video out, Combo optical drive, Firewire, USB2, ethernet, and Panther/iLife included–and from reports, it is very, very small. In a brushed-metal enclosure, square-shaped and two inches tall (no reports on the width and depth measurements aside from that it can “fit into the palm of your hand”). This will make the Mac very competitive in the low-end market.

And then there’s the iPod Shuffle (early photo), the tiny version (pack-of-gum sized, one ounce) of the iPod mini, a flash-memory iPod without a screen per se; the two models are 512 MB of memory for $99 and 1GB for $149.99, shipping immediately. So far, almost everything at this expo has been predicted by the rumor sites–few surprises, but probably a lot of happy campers out there. Probably in an hour or so the Apple web sites will be updated and the rest of us can see this cool stuff–but not quite yet. And I am dead tired and have to go to sleep.

Update: Okay, I stayed up just a bit longer. The Apple web site now has everything up. The iMac Mini looks like a small white bento box! I keep looking for the umeboshi. Those who live in Japan will understand.

Heck, I wasn’t planning on it, but I might even buy one of these things…

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  1. LM
    January 12th, 2005 at 09:02 | #1

    I just love this new stuff from Apple… It’s hard to believe that they fitted a computer inside a that box!

    I love your blog.
    LM

  2. January 13th, 2005 at 13:24 | #2

    I suspect the Mac mini will be a *very* big seller in Japan, even more than in other Apple geographical areas.

    Apple just released very impressive figures for the first quarter:

    http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jan/12results.html

    I am just waiting for the first press release from Apple announcing a huge backlog for the mini in the next few days….

    Also, like your blog about Japan.

    Marc

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