And the webcast begins… I’ll be watching as it goes on an post the announcements as they come, as added updates to this post. Right now it’s just crowds and Elvis music–Jobs should be out momentarily. Looks like the mini-iPods are more or less a lock, from both the various confirmations from the rumor sites as well as the emphasis on iPod advertising at the Expo itself.

Initial announcements are being made, and they’re showing people videotaping, photographing, and using their laptop Macs to broadcast reports out. The rumor sites as well as others have people reporting on it at the site–some even have stripped their sites down to the bare text minimum to accommodate as many as a million hits in the next few hours as those without the bandwidth to watch the stream come by to read the blow-by-blow. This expo, every year, really is a Mac phenomenon. And it begins….

Steve began by acknowledging…me! Well, the more than 60,000 people from more than 100 countries accessing the webcast. Then he stepped right into the 20th anniversary bit, talking about and running the 1984 ad, to huge cheers (it really is a good commercial). On showing the commercial, Jobs quipped: “We couldn’t help ourselves.”

Jobs then went into his usual start-of-the-keynote recap of past news (OS X progress) and new app versions. The first was Final Cut Express (impressive little app for the price). Then came MS Office 2004; new features: “notebook” view in Word, palette fading, a slightly improved print layout view in Excel, and the “project center”–all of them rather unimpressive, small-potatoes improvements. Why would we want to buy this new version? And from what I hear, this will be the last version before MS discontinues the suite on the Mac platform–they seem to be going out with a whimper rather than a bang.

Then Jobs went on about the G5 Supercluster at Virginia Tech, showing a video about it made by Apple.

And whoops, there’s the G5 Xserve in a 1u form factor and an unlimited client license for OS X Server 10.3. There is a single-2GHz version and two dual-2GHz versions. And a new Xserve RAID array which will work on Windows and Linux servers as well). Apple is now aggressively going after the server market.

And now iTunes (first the stats): the music store has sold 30 million songs and sales are going up, and it has a 70% market share; the top spender at the iTunes music store bought $29,500 worth of music–and Jobs wouldn’t say who it was. 50,000 audio books sold. And other little stuff. New iTunes features: BillBoard music charts, 12,000 classical tracks (where are the orchestral soundtracks?), making half a million songs on the store.

And there’s another rumor confirmed: Pepsi and Apple will give away 100 million songs in Pepsi yellow bottle caps (1 in 3 will have a free song) in February and March (watch for a super bowl ad). Also the iTunes music store will be open in Japan by the end of January, and Europe a few months later.

And here comes iLife. iLife ’04, they call it–“Like Microsoft Office for the rest of your life.” With iTunes, of course. Then iPhoto 4 (what happened to 3? Did I miss it? No, it says “2” on Apple’s web site still–hmmm), with support for up 25,000 photos, smart albums, better slide shows with 3-D transitions, Rendezvous photo sharing, and some other features–but what about speed? Sure, it works fast on Jobs’ superfast Mac onstage, but how about on my 800 MHz G4 Powerbook? Frankly, I have been less than impressed with iPhoto in the past, and it will take a major speed boost to get me back to it. Admittedly, Jobs did a good demo of buying a song–fast–from the music store and then integrating it on the fly into an iPhoto slide show with cube transitions.

iMovie 4: a few improvements–some interesting new title effects, non-destructive clip trimming in place, audio scrubbing (playing audio as you drag the play head manually), importing video from an iSight camera, and easy interactivity with .mac accounts.

iDVD4: You can tell they’re (a) making all of them version 4, and (b) building up to a new iApp. But with iDVD, some new features of course, including a project map which shows a flowchart of how all the clips are connected; new transitions and themes; and better encoding for 2 hours of video on one DVD.

And here comes the new, fifth app for iLife…

GarageBand.

A “pro music tool for everyone.” It basically acts as a music recording, mixing and publishing app. Mixing: up to 64 tracks; 50 software (MIDI) instruments (including, for example, a $50,000 grand piano); 1000 audio loops and other audio effects; and different guitar amps. You can play a MIDI instrument, like a keyboard, into the Mac, switching instruments for each new track that you record to simulate a band, laying new live instrument tracks down over existing ones, and editing existing tracks. The 1000 loops includes all kinds of instruments, all sorts of pre-recorded music loops, so you could patch together music without even knowing how to play an instrument or owning one. Jobs did a fairly impressive demo of using the loops to make a new piece of music that could easily be used as background music for a film or slide show, or perhaps even just to serve as a composition in itself. Once you get your composition finished, it is exportable right into iTunes and the iPod. Pretty impressive little piece of software there.

Now for the price: Jobs compares it with a Windows suite patched together for $300, justifiably said to be much lower in quality than iLife–and Apple keeps iLife’s price down at $49, free on every new Mac. Coming out January 16th. Also Jam Pack (more loops, MIDI instruments, and effects) and a USB keyboard, each for $99.

Not too shabby.

And last (unless there is “one more thing”), the iPod. 730,000 iPods sold in the last quarter, 2 million in total, with sales shooting up; iPod market share is 31% in units, 55% in revenue, making the iPod the #1 MP3 player sold. Small news: the 10GB model gets upgraded to 15GB; new headphones for $39…

Jobs then focuses on the fact that some 60% of the market in MP3 players are flash-memory, talking about the cost and low storage ability for songs. Obviously leading up to the mini-iPods. Says they’re going after this market. And here it is:

The iPod mini: 4 GB of storage, rather than hundreds of MB on Rio and other players. Smaller (business card size, half-inch thick) thinner than other players–16x more storage in a smaller form for $250, $50 more than a Rio. And colors–anodized aluminum, in silver, gold, blue, green and pink.

Not bad–not the $100 price range people were hoping for, but still a very nice deal, and Apple has never had problems selling players at higher-than normal prices.

And now Jobs is wrapping it up, reviewing the whole keynote, and coming back to the 20th anniversary theme–but no “one more thing,” no anniversary special-edition Mac, no new speed bumps for the G5 (yet).

Nevertheless, a very interesting set of announcements–interesting for me as well, since I was going to get my school to buy iLife anyway. And now it’s 4am, and I really have to get to sleep!

It’s back–the web page at Apple which will host the webcast in another 24 hours or so. Know that you have to have QuickTime that can handle MPEG-4 (any recent QT will do). In the past, the streaming quality has gotten better and better. Not nearly TV broadcast quality, but more than good enough. If you have a satellite dish, the coordinates and frequencies are here.

Sorry I’m not able to blog much–hardly any political stuff over the past week, you guys must think I’m off my feed–battling a rather long-lasting, nasty cold, and my classes start tomorrow so preps are taking up time as well.

The MacWorld Expo in San Francisco is just a few days away, and many people expect a good many big announcements. For those of you who do not regularly surf the rumor sites, here is a quick list of the rumored announcements, and my wholly unprofessional assessment of their likelihoods:

Mini-iPods: The rumors began with the idea that low-priced iPods would be released, possibly as low as $100. The rumor was quickly snubbed as being impossible, as no news of a smaller form was out–but now, reports would have us believe–and this is considered a very high probability today–that Apple will be releasing mini-iPods, smaller than standard iPods, with only a few gigs of storage, with a variety of colors and styles. Probability: 90% or higher.

Software Updates: Expect new versions of a lot of software, including Final Cut Express 2.0, iMovie 3.5, iDVD 4.0, iPhoto x.x, and iTunes x.x. Probability: pretty much a solid lock for most of these.

New Apps: Rumors have been flying about a new application, probably an iLife app (though the long awaited “iWrite” or “Document” word processing app has been raised as well). Several rumor sites have teased, “we know what it is but we’re not telling,” which I translate as “we have no clue whatsoever.” They’re in the business of telling. Still, confidence is high that we’ll be seeing an addition to the iLife suite, most likely in the area of audio (many bets are on a music mixer). Probability: 90% or higher for the iLife app, 75% or higher it has to do with audio, 50% or lower odds on any other specific information.

“iBox”: Recent days have been filled with visions of a MacTiVo of sorts, a set-top box that would record TV shows digitally, making them accessible through your Mac network, and watchable on your Macs throughout the house. It might not have the ability to auto-schedule recordings like TiVo or ReplayTV, but it would have a DVD recorder to save shows if you no longer have room for them on your hard drive. It would also run iTunes and iPhoto, becoming a sort of digital media center for your house. Plug it into your TV and stereo set and you’re off. An interesting idea–though without auto-programming or (possibly) commercial-avoiding technology, it might not be such a TiVo- or Replay-killer. Still, a tantalizing prospect; Probability: I’d say 75%.

New G5s: Rumors have been out for some time about smaller, faster, cooler G5 chips from IBM, and that we’ll see speed bumps to the new G5 desktop line up to a dual-2.6GHz model. Could be. Probability: 60% for desktop G5 revs, 30% or lower for laptop G5s.

Anniversary Mac? In case you missed it, the 20th anniversary of the Mac (remember the Super Bowl ad, “1984 will not be like 1984”?), and some are prophesizing that a 20th anniversary edition will be out, possibly a new Cube. Probability: eeehh, maybe. I’d say 40% or less.

G5 XServes: In response to your “Huh??” the XServe is the server version of the Mac, used to head up LAN networks or act as Internet servers. These flat, wide, stackable computers currently run on G4s, and are expected to make the jump to G5s. Mostly a thing for Administrators to get excited about. Probability: not much of us non-admin types really care.

Apple did have a web page staked out for the QuickTime stream of the keynote by Steve Jobs, but it is currently not responding. It may come back in the next day or so, as Apple has regularly streamed these keynotes over the web. The keynote will start January 6th, 9am PST, that’s 2am Japan time on January 7th.

OK, these guys are beginning to tick me off.

I already blogged about the Neistat Brothers, but to summarize, these two guys bought an iPod, and after 18 months of heavy use, found that the battery started losing its ability to keep a charge (which should be an obvious consequence to anyone who uses rechargeable batteries), then got a bad tech rep (again, something everybody knows happens and should be aware of) who told them just to buy a new iPod, and then–belatedly–tried a third-party battery replacement, a very simple job, but were so inept that they wrecked their iPod and had to buy another.

Without doing any further research or taking any responsibility for their botched repair job, they wrathfully started spray-painting hateful–and incorrect–labels on iPod ads all over their city, claiming that Apple’s iPod battery is unreplaceable (untrue–it is, they just blew it) and only lasts 18 months (also not correct, it varies with use and the battery you get). They then filmed their acts of vandalism, and posted the film online, and that has become a cult hit.

Fortunately, the iPod remains a big hit, so no one seems to be taking these idiots seriously–except the press. Every few weeks or so I see the same story get repeated in some major newspaper, and the newspaper always takes these clowns at face value, without questioning their veracity or intelligence.

Just FYI, most Mac and iPod aficionados consider these guys to be bogus publicity seekers. So in whatever way you can, just ignore them.

You may have noticed I’m not commenting about politics much lately; a lot of that has to do with the fact that such commentary takes time, and my time has been kind of occupied lately, what with final exams and all. Today, we had the graduation ceremony (probably the topic of tomorrow’s post), and after that I had some errands to do.

One of them led to a rather unfortunate experience with Apple. I bought this Powerbook G4 (800 DVI) in April last year, so it is about 20 months old, and the battery is wearing down–less than an hour per charge now. Not too surprising, and not bad by itself–I use this thing rather constantly. The problem: well, you’d expect that having sold maybe millions of these computers, and that the batteries of a great many of them would be wearing low about now, that Apple would expect and meet the demand. For some bizarre reason, Apple failed miserably. No electronics shop I went to today had any in stock, and a few even said that Apple had even stopped making them.

The Ginza today. On Sundays, they block off traffic and it becomes a pedestrian avenue with tables for people to eat and rest.

So I figured, hey, Apple just opened a new store in Ginza! However, it was a bit of a trip over there, so I figured I’d call first (using my mobile, 10 cents a minute). First mistake. I wound up on hold for about 20 minutes, never to be answered. Apple Store Ginza seems to have skimped on either (a) people to answer telephone inquiries, (b) a voice mail system that gives you a hint of how long the wait would be, or (c) both. Quite frustrated, I nevertheless wanted the new battery for the trip home, so I went over–and met with more frustration. After plowing through the huge crowds and finding someone to help me on the 4th floor, they told me apologetically that they did not carry that battery. “But this is an Apple Store, isn’t it?” I asked. “You do carry Apple accessories, right?” And I explained the whole thing about how all the people who bought the same computer would be needing batteries about now. The salesperson at least had the grace to admit that they had been getting a lot of people asking for those, but they had only been open for one week, so….

He told me to go to the Genius Bar, giving me the full expectation that they would be able to grab such a battery from the repair people. So I went downstairs to the 2nd floor and waited 15 minutes for a spot and then 45 for the person to help me–all of which ended in his having me order a battery from the online Apple Store. If they answered their damned phones, they could have saved me two and a half hours and a hell of a lot of frustration and simply told me at the start. Now, they claim that the battery will be delivered in the next day or two–less than a perfect solution, as I will be out often–but looks like it’s the only way. Let’s hope it works.

One of the first things one might do in visiting Tokyo is to visit the Ginza district. Made famous in the post-war years by U.S. military personnel doing their shopping and entertaining, the Ginza has today become a kind of upper-class shopping district. To me, this meant that it turned out to be kind of boring. Department stores and boutiques are not my kind of thing, really. There used to be a McDonald’s when I first visited in 1983, but it was more or less banished for not being upscale enough (kind of like the Stanford Shopping Center has been trying to do to their McD’s for a long time). For a while, there was a Mrs. Fields’ Cookie shop there, and that brought me down from time to time. Otherwise, I just regarded it as another overrated, overrun, high-profile street.

But a few days ago a new shop appeared that will again bring me down to the area: an Apple Store.

Now, when I was born my family lived in Cupertino, and I have worked with Apple products since the Apple ][, the Apple ///, and the original Mac. So this store opening in Tokyo was a bit of fresh air–like some other reminders from home, like Costco. And I have visited Apple stores since the one at the Apple campus in Cupertino, and more recently the University Avenue store in Palo Alto.

This one beats them, flat out. It is an impressive sight.

First of all, they have location. The Ginza is not just upscale, it is very high-traffic. And somehow, Apple got a corner lot across from Matsuya Ginza, and kitty-corner to the Ginza Mitsukoshi, two famous department stores, landmarks on the Ginza. Their new building is an impressive structure with the white Apple logo emblazoned on the sides, as well as a rotating Apple logo on top. And it attracts a good number of visitors–the store was crowded in the mid- to late-afternoon.

Coming into the entrance on the first floor, you see something akin to many of the Apple stores, displays with all of Apple’s major products right after the checkout machines (all iMacs, of course). And one of the first things you notice is the staff. Lots of them. I don’t know if some Apple stores in the U.S. are like this, but I do know that it is very Japanese, to have so many salespeople walking around that even in a crowded store, you can easily and quickly find someone who is free to help you; this is typical of Japanese department stores in particular, and Apple did not miss the cue. People in black with Apple-logo shirts everywhere.

The next thing you note is that there seem to be some strange but alluring metal-walled Apple-logo spaces toward the back. I had to come up and look closer to see that they were elevators. Extremely nice elevators, with heavy, rimless glass doors–you could tell it was an original design. I commented on them to a staff member, and he replied, “yes, very expensive elevators.” An interestingly candid comment there….

So I decided to take the elevator up to the fourth floor and then work my way down from there. (The fifth floor, the highest open to the public, is dedicated to Apple Studio lessons, the paid lessons for beginners, switchers, and artists.) The fourth floor is where they have the software and many of the third-party hardware products–for example, they have in stock many of the Belkin products, including the new iPod microphone and media reader. The software, as can be expected for Apple stores, is a good selection, but not great, and is priced at the high end. To be frank, I do my software shopping online, using the mail-order houses. Disappointingly, Apple did not provide educational pricing at the store, either–only at their online shop. A new policy, evidently, as I was able to buy Jaguar for Academic from Yodobashi Camera not too long ago.

In the middle of the fourth floor, there was a table for the kids, and very nicely set up, too. A low, round table equipped with CRT eMacs loaded with kids’ software, with nice, modern-looking black ball chairs set around. Not too many kids in the joint, but they had found this place. A very nice touch.

Also on this floor is a bank of sixteen iMacs, with iSight and high-speed Internet connections, ready and available for anyone who wants to sit down for a spell and cruise the ‘Net with them. Not many open spaces when I visited, but with enough patience you could find a seat and have some fun.

Also, this is the first floor where you notice windows (not Windows, thank goodness–though they do have Virtual PC). It kind of makes you wonder how the glare from the sunlight might affect viewing on the iMacs–I forgot to check for blinds (it was dark out). The second and third floors are windowless, the second housing the Genius Bar, and the third hosting the Apple theater. That’s what leaves room on the outside for the giant Apple logo on the metallic side of the building.

Going downstairs, one finds something that seems very out of place for a shop: a theater. You see this from the elevator going up. It really looks like a movie theater, except for the size and the fact that there is a podium with a tech person giving explanations to the shows. Here is where they give the Introductory Presentations and the Workshops. The Presentations seem pretty much like commercials, introducing the lineup of Apple products. But the Workshops seem to be a very nice service, especially for newbies. The Workshops are free, from three to five of them given each day, each day having a theme (e.g., movies, music, photos). If you want more advanced lessons, you have to pay for the Studio Series.

One flight down from that is the Genius bar, with more Apple and some third-party products lined up (mostly iPods and Digital video equipment, cameras and camcorders). In the middle, there is a railed terrace looking down on the first floor. And to the back, the bar. I stopped there for some time, getting help (in English) for a few issues on my Mac. Consider it a free support center–if you can haul your computer down there, they will look at it and try to help you figure out your problem with it. A lot of people were bringing their laptops in and having them looked at. Come to think of it, I forgot to ask if they could give me some footpads for my Powerbook–one of them has gone missing….

As it turned out, I didn’t get too many actual answers. They had never heard of my problem with browsing networks before (sometimes shared folders, which should appear as network-globes-in-a-glass-box icons, instead show up as plain folders with the same names, but empty), nor could they explain why some of my students’ USB Flash memory sticks were not showing up on my Mac’s desktop. But the Genius helping me did give me some ideas about how to test out why my father in the S.F. Bay Area and I can’t get a voice chat going, so it wasn’t a complete wash.

I’ve never been too excited by Apple stores in the past, as they tend to have sparse merchandise and relatively high prices for third-party products, but the Genius Bar and the available accessories in the Ginza store will certainly bring me back. It is an excellent store; I recommend anyone in the Tokyo area to pay it a visit when you have the chance.

The good people at Mac Rumors (the best Apple rumor site, IMO) pointed out an excellent article in the New York Times Magazine on the iPod. The article speaks to both the commercial success of the iPod as well as its cultural impact. A very interesting read.

I should also note here that if you have been exposed to the Neistat Brothers’ film, “iPod’s Dirty Secret” (in which they play a recorded support call–possibly illegal–and show themselves spray-painting an untrue and anti-Apple stencil over posted iPod ads), keep in mind that these guys didn’t do their homework. After 18 months of very heavy use, their iPod’s battery drained out. After a single call to a Mac support person who turned out not to know all his stuff (hardly a new phenomena in the support industry), the Neistats concluded that (a) the iPod’s battery never lasts longer than 18 months, (b) it is not replaceable, and (c) you could only get a functioning iPod again by either paying Apple $255 or simply buying a new iPod, which they did.

In fact, the iPod’s battery lasts longer than that in most cases, even with heavy use; they just got a shorter-lived one. Many iPod users with the original 2-year-old iPod models are still reporting that their battery lasts 8 hours after that much time of normal use. Second, the battery is in fact replaceable, previously with third-party battery replacement kits costing as little as $50, and now through Apple itself.

Now that their errors have been pointed out after 50,000 people saw their movie, they belatedly posted that they tried a third-party battery (after their movie suggested no such thing existed), but they claim that it did not work–which tells as to how well one should research any third-party product, looking for reviews and user comments on which was best and how to install it. They also are now taking credit for providing a solution, while all they really did (at least, it appears they did–post hoc ergo propter hoc) was prompt Apple to provide battery replacement of their own, for (of course) a higher price than the third-party dealers. The Neistats still offer up their anti-Apple movie, now calling it a “documentation of our experience”–that note buried in a link.

Wow. This story is really quite impressive. It gives details on the Power Mac G5 supercomputer cluster formed by people at Virginia Tech. They bought 1,100 of the new G5 Macs, connected them in a massive cluster, and, within just a few weeks, writing their own software, were able to create from them the world’s third-largest supercomputer, at just a fraction of the cost of a supercomputer of similar size and power.

Shows what’s possible to do at the grass roots–and what potential Macs have, their power and ease of use, in the face of all the nay-saying criticism about them.

Here’s where it pays off to be a late adopter. Not that I wouldn’t want to snap up a dual 2GHz PowerMac G5 right this moment; it’s simply not time yet for me to get another desktop. I have that particular goodie slated for next year sometime. But that schedule might help me quite a bit. After languishing in up-to-1.4GHz G4 heck for quite some time, the 2GHz G5 was a big jump–but a bigger jump (in GHz, though maybe not percentages) is just around the corner. Apple has reportedly just acquired 3GHz PPC 980 chips to play with, and the next big processor jump is due within a year–one of the biggest, quickest turnovers in processor speed for some time. That’ll be the one I go for. By then, one might hope the G5 will have the major kinks worked out, though there might be some problems going from the 970 to the 980.

Apple seems to be speeding up in general. People were surprised enough when the iMac went G4, but the iBook? Now people are talking about the iMac going G5 in the near future (that’s a time-sensitive link)–maybe even January, maybe even a 1.8 GHz G5 chip. Yikes. This suggests that Apple is more willing to replace generations of chips more quickly than in the past–meaning faster Macs sooner, but also disappointed users as their recently-purchased marvels getting outdated even faster.

I’ve grown quite used to this myself. Seven years ago, I bought a just-released 120MHz Power Mac 6300, only four months before the 200MHz Power Mac 6400 model was released–for a lower price. And my present 800MHz 15-inch Powerbook G4–which cost me $3,200 last year–is nice and all, but today a 1.33 GHz 17-inch model is available for $200 less. Obsolescence is the norm, you just have to live with it.

As for Macs in general, people are beginning to see more and more reason to buy. While desktop sales have, in the G4 days, been waning, the G5s promise to snatch back much of that market share–like Mac laptops have done, shooting up to a 7% market share recently. People are beginning to see that Macs are cheaper–laptops immediately, and desktops in the long run. Mac speed is also getting favorable press, as several institutions are now choosing G5s to link together in supercomputer clusters, including 1,100 G5 Macs in a supercluster at Virginia Tech which will become the world’s 3rd-fastest supercomputer when finished.

Panther is also contributing to Mac success, getting rave reviews in the press. Even IT developers, notoriously disdainful of Macs, seem to starting to like it as Panther allows for easier interoperability with Windows networks, and developers see more to attract as well. And as Microsoft gets even tighter with its limitations in the name of security while proving porous in actual security itself, and as it hikes licensing fees and threatens to force large buyers to pay even more under new payment schemes, the Mac OS, based on UNIX, and requiring less maintenance and training, is beginning to look better and better.

Time will tell.

Right off, I will admit that I have an interest in finding this to be a nice machine, having just plunked down $450, including tax, for the little thing. That said, I think it goes beyond that bias to say that this is a sweet device.

The first thing that strikes you is the size; you always expect it to be bigger. The common measure, that it is about the size of a deck of playing cards, is pretty much right on. But the iPod also has weight–not too much, but enough to make it feel definitely solid–a feeling which is reinforced by the polished metal backing. I’ve had one other MP3 player, the one from Iomega, and have seen a lot more, and it is all to easy to find ones that are too big (the ones with capacities similar to the iPod) or even too small; this machine gives you the impression of being just the right size and having just the right heft to be a solid, and (very subjectively) a deservedly expensive piece of equipment. Remember in the first Jurassic Park movie, the kid finds the infrared goggles in the car? He asks the adult if he can play with them; the adult asks, “Are they heavy?” The kid answers “Yes,” and the adult replies, “Then they’re expensive. Put them back.” That’s what this feels like. Totally subjective, but that’s part of the experience.

One nice extra point was that the battery was about 75% charged, right out of the box. I hate getting a new toy, and then have to just sit and look at it, inactive, for several hours while it charges for the first time. The first thing I did, naturally, was to plug it into the computer. You set the iPod onto its base (also hefty for its size), and the cable from that ends in a FireWire connector. Now I have about 2,500+ songs from my CD collection saved on my PowerBook G4 hard drive. You plug in the iPod and two things happen: first, the iPod starts charging right through the data cable (Firewire cables have six wires, four for data and two for power); and second, iTunes pops up and the iPod starts synching. 10 or 15 minutes later, my entire collection has been transferred over with room to spare. That extra room can be used as external data storage–put anything you like into it. With a Belkin flash card reader, you can download your digital camera photos into it, a feature I could have used while traveling in Spain.

Open up the iSync application, and in a few minutes, my iCal calendar and Address Book have both been copied to the iPod as well. The beautiful thing is, it all just works. Smoothly. No bugs, no hassles, no figuring anything out; in less than 20 minutes, most of which I just spent surfing the web while the computer worked, all was done. It was ready to go.

The one hassle I expected was the expected limited ability, from one jog dial and five buttons, to effectively operate the machine, especially considering the fact that two and a half thousand songs were on the thing. But they did a very good job with this. It’s like a single, extended, hierarchical menu (it even has the menu font Apple uses). The jog dial (works like a trackpad, solid-state) acts as a scroll wheel; dial this way or the other, and you move up and down the list, quickly. Tap the button at its center and you move into the next submenu; tap the “Menu” button to move back. For example, choosing a single piece this way: Browse >> Albums >> Jurassic Park >> Theme From Jurassic Park. Very quickly, you can narrow down your selection. Feedback is given by little clicks, which you can mute if you like. And the menus are customizable; you can choose to have “Albums” in the top menu, for example, or turn off “Extras” (Address Book, Calendar, Games, etc.).

You can also arrange Playlists in iTunes; while on your computer, create a playlist (Command-N); let’s call it “80’s Rock” for the sake of the example. Choose a group of songs you want to play, drop them in, and you’re ready to go. Set the iPod back into the cradle, and it will automatically sync to the changes you made. Remove the iPod, and now just select Playlists >> 80’s Rock, and you’re there. You do surprisingly little looking around–disappointing at first, because playing with the dial and buttons can be fun.

The headphones are fairly good, better than any set of ear-pods I’ve used. And that’s important for me. Those pods never seem to fit my ears right, possibly due in part to the fact that I had one ear half-bit off by a St. Bernard when I was seven; plastic surgery repaired the worst of it, but the ear is still a bit off norm, so the pod can bite. These actually feel OK, however subjective that impression may be. The remote controller is designed well as far as shape, size, and layout, but the clip is disappointingly narrow; it barely holds on to whatever part of my shirt I clip it on to. They should have done better on that one.

The sound is also good, at least to me–I’m no audiophile, so what might be unacceptable to a connoisseur, sounds OK to me. I go by general quality and volume. My former MP3 player never was able to play loud enough; on the iPod, the loudest setting is too loud for me; and that’s OK by my book. And there are still lots of features I haven’t tried yet–using the calendar and address book in practice, trying out the random shuffle feature, or even finding the true extent of the battery life. More on that later.

I’ve only had it a day, but already I feel comfortable with it, and can use it without having to think or figure. So, first impression–a very nice little chunk of machinery here.

Not much time to blog tonight–I’m grading midterms. But I did have time to stop by the electronics store earlier and get myself an early Christmas present: a 20 GB iPod. I never buy big-ticket items on a whim, I always give myself at least a few weeks to mull it over, especially to avoid those impulse buys where a few weeks later you ask yourself, “why did I buy that thing?”

I’m not going to be saying that about this one. I made a mistake with my first MP3 player, an Iomega HipZip. Dang thing broke after just a few months, and not from rough use or anything. Just shoddy merchandise. The iPod is a solidly built little thing, worth the extra bucks. More about it later. Midterms now.

Apple is hitting its stride with its music initiative, and several new announcements today. First is the emergence of iTunes for Windows. I have yet to download this for my PC–I will very soon–but it promises to be a smash hit. It is a very high-quality program, incredibly easy to use, putting any other app for music to shame–and it’s free. Then there’s the Music Store, now available for the other 95%–and the two or three percent have bought 13 million songs up till now, making it the #1 music downloading service already.

And Apple is not wasting time doing its marketing right: together with Pepsi, they are offering 100 million free songs, codes randomly distributed in Pepsi containers. Very good move, IMO. Apple should be able to sell lots more where those came from. At 99 cents per song, the ability to buy singly at that cheap price or buy whole albums for $10–I’m buying my music there.

And I’m finally going to break down and get an iPod. Probably the 30 GB model. I’ve been teetering on the line, more on the not-buy side lately, but with the introduction of two new accessories, the microphone to make voice recordings, and the Flash memory adapter to store photos–well, that about did it. That’s my Christmas present for myself this year. Am getting it before I go to the U.S. so I can use the music and games on the flight over and back (watching DVDs on my Powerbook is limited to the battery life, not enough to stretch out for the 8- to 10-hour flight), and to hold all the photos I take on my digital camera without having to haul my laptop everywhere.

Oh, and Microsoft had an announcement today, too. They’ve discovered not one, but four more giant, gaping security holes in their operating system.

Cool.

Apple has announced it will release Panther on October 24th (25th in Japan); apparently the reports of it going Golden Master (ready to duplicate, press and ship) after version 7B85 were accurate.

Pricing will be $130 for new buyers (some retailers have that down to $100), but recent purchasers get an “Up To Date” break: If you buy OS X (or, presumably, a Mac with OS X) between now and the 24th, you can get Panther for “free”–a shipping charge of $20 will be levied. G5 buyers get in on the deal no matter when they bought their machines. This is an improvement over what happened with Jaguar.

And the educational version will cost $70.

A few more notes on using Panther. I experienced a few crashes while trying to play video files in QuickTime and iMovie, for example, and there was one problem recovering from a Virtual PC crash; no kernel panic, but app crashes and a system slowdown made me have to reboot in both cases. Also trouble playing a 640×335 QT movie file in full-screen mode–the playback was not at all smooth. Also, when I tried to use fast user switching in a different location from my first Panther experience, the rotating-block animation failed to materialize, except when I specifically called for the Login Window; if I tried a direct switch, a fade transition appeared instead. It might have been an environmental factor due to the different location.

On the interface, I find that with all the new ways to switch to new windows using Expose, and with the basic OS X addition of a hotkey for hiding other apps, the one single-step function that’s missing is the ability to clear all apps and have the Desktop only. You can temporarily clear the Desktop in Expose, but just temporarily; the app you were using when you typed F11 is still active, so to go to the Desktop, you have to click on it, then do a hide others, and still you have to type F11 again to finish the Expose move. Or, you can switch to the desktop using the Dock or Command-Tab, and then do a hide-others. But there’s no fast way to simply clear everything off the Desktop and have it active. That ability has been in Windows for some time; it might be time to get it for the Mac as well. (If it’s there and I’m missing it, someone please tell me–but if it’s there, it’s probably not too intuitively placed). Maybe Expose could include buttons or artificial windows to express options like this.

MacOSrumors is reporting that the response to the latest Panther build, 7B79, is highly positive and that the OS may be stable and ready to go Golden Master soon. AppleInsider, however, is reporting on builds 7B80 and 7B81 as having many new animations and optimization that increases install and interaction speed. Such new changes suggest that Golden Master may not be quite so near.

Meanwhile, on the hardware front, Think Secret is reporting that Apple’s share of the U.S. laptop market has jumped from 5.1% to 7.0%, and there’s good news in other areas as well: Apple’s U.S. desktop share jumped back up to 3.8% after dropping to 2.9% last quarter, and smaller gains were made in overseas market share, up .6% to 4.1% for laptops and up .3% to 2.3% for desktops. With the introduction of the G5, desktop shares should enjoy a jump similar to laptops in the next quarter.

There’s also an update on Tokyo University buying 1,150 iMacs–a better translation of the Asahi article on the intended purchase. Frankly, the translation software that Sherlock accesses is not all that good at translating Japanese to English–but it is much better at translating the other way around. Go figure.

By the way, the 640×335 QT movie I was trying to watch is the new theatrical trailer for Matrix: Revolutions. Very cool trailer. For some reason, new Matrix trailers are not being listed on Apple’s Movie Trailer page, despite the fact that QuickTIme is still the only video format being used. Kinda weird.

A comment came through on the post I wrote on Panther, and I thought the comment was worth its own post. The comment, from Paul, read as:

Apple has charged its users $129 twice, for two OS X upgrades (Jaguar and Panther), since the first version shipped; Microsoft has charged for XP just once, and XP Home costs less than OS X. So it’s safe to say it’s far more expensive to stay up to date with OS X than it is with XP, which has seen only free or low-cost (Plus! Digital Media Edition for Windows XP, $20) enhancements since it was first released. Apple, still playing catch-up, is charging a lot of money for the privilege.

Paul was right on the pricing, I thought XP Home was $300, not $200. But if one can get academic pricing on OS X, one can still get it on the cheap. And yes, the XP upgrade package can be had for $100.

However, if you wait three years between OS upgrades like you have to with Windows, you can upgrade straight from OS 9 to Panther–no one is forcing you to get 10.1 or Jaguar. That makes the price difference for the upgrade $130 for the Mac (no discounts considered) and $100 for Windows. Throw in educational pricing, though, and the Mac is in fact cheaper than XP! Also, for those who prefer not to break the EULA, Apple offers a family-pack version, up to 5 users for $200.

As for the “enhancements” Paul mentions, the vast majority are security updates that cover holes in the OS that shouldn’t have been there in the first place; the others are simple incremental upgrades. And OS X gets them free as well, they’re simply not so numerous, but provide much better feature enhancement. As for “Plus! Digital Media,” it’s paying $20 for stuff that comes free in OS X.

Still, even for those getting the new version of OS X every chance they get (like me–I paid for the original public beta and Jaguar), I feel that upgrading your Mac OS X is worth far more than XP, for several reasons.

First, the upgrades are more significant. I use Windows 2000 at school, and Windows XP at home, and aside from the improvements in appearance, there is really very little new that I see in XP that is useful to me. OK, they got fast user switching in the upgrade (I don’t use it), there’s a remote assistance feature Mac doesn’t support in-house (again I don’t use it), and you can see icons with visual document previews. Almost everything else they tout about the upgrade is simply new versions of tie-in apps like Explorer and Windows Media Player–not software I would call first-class by any means, and not upgrades that knock my socks off at all.

In short, by going from 2000 to XP, you got a nice facade makeover and a few new features, but really not much else.

But going from OS 9 to Panther, there is a world of difference. The changes were far more than eye candy–though OS X’s eye candy is fantastic, and beats XP’s hands-down. You also got superb functionality: a brand-new kernel, UNIX, providing much better stability and power. Quartz and Quartz Extreme, which make the eye candy work better and which compromise processor workload less. The Dock, which is far better than the Windows Task Bar and does much more. Expose, which handles window sorting and display with a panache that Windows can’t even come close to. Rendezvous networking, and all the other networking tweaks that allow for cross-platform access (Windows doesn’t even bother). The fast-find feature in the Finder window, now way faster in Panther. Fast user switching (executed in a cooler fashion than XP). Improved font management, fax controls, PDF viewing and authoring, compression, file encryption, and a ton of other stuff as well. Stuff like the Zoom option, which is great in OS X, but badly implemented in Windows. And stuff which Windows can’t come close to doing, like switching the main language of the operating system.

Next, there’s the large suite of free applications that come with the Mac OS:

iTunes — A truly fantastic MP3 player that puts WMP to shame. Intuitive, feature-rich, works beautifully with the iPod.

iMovie — If you haven’t used it with OS X to make movies, you don’t know how easy it is. Makes it possible to create movies with surprising levels of control and effects.

iPhoto — Not the best cataloging tool, to be sure–it runs slowly on all but the fastest Macs, doesn’t have very elegant file organization, and has limited photo editing controls. But it still is acceptable, despite being the least impressive of the iApps.

iDvd — The one iApp I don’t use, but it is way cool for doing what it does, making video DVDs at home with ease-of-use that Windows can’t give you.

iLife — An amalgamation of the prior four apps, but worth mentioning because of the suite functionality between those four apps, blending their operational abilities splendidly. OK, iLife isn’t free if you don’t get a DVD-equipped Mac–but $50 ain’t too steep for what you get. And if you don’t use iDVD, like me, then you still get the inter-operability of the other iLife apps, for free.

Mail — A very good email app, equal to Outlook Express and approaching Eudora. Just one upgrade away from being my default mail app. And the spam filter beats out anything in Outlook.

Address Book — Simple, but intuitive and interacts very well with other apps.

iCal — Does an excellent job; still not as feature-rich as it could be, but is strongly on its way.

iChat — Text, voice and video messaging done better than Messenger, with better inter-operability. I can’t tell you the hassles I’ve had making voice and video work well using Messenger on PCs.

iSync — Does what it says, and very well, too.

Safari — To wrap up the package, a strong new entry into the browser market. Unlike Microsoft, which at first offers a broken-down piece of c*** and then gradually makes it bearable, Apple presents good software straight out of the gate. I still prefer Mozilla, but Safari is far better than Explorer already, and like Mail, is one upgrade away from being my app of choice.

And with the Mac being virtually virus-free, you don’t need to shell out the bucks for a virus-protection program, which is absolutely essential for Windows machines.

The only thing missing is a suite of Office applications–and with Keynote in the bag, that suite is not far off, with Document and a spreadsheet app expected soon. And Keynote sells for $100, versus $230 for Powerpoint. A Mac office suite will likely sell for a similarly low price.

Add the general ease-of-use (as an example, look at the Find File process on both OS’s and you’ll see what I mean), the smooth inter-operability of Apple software & between hardware and software, and the lower maintenance needs–it’s no contest as far as I am concerned.

All in all, you get way more for your upgrades from Apple. And as for an upgrade every year, would you really rather wait three years to see great new improvements come out? Yeah, it’s a pain to pay–but you get far more bang for your buck.

UPDATE: Okay, the madness has died down, a little. For two days, traffic was at about 4,000 unique IP visitors per day, putting quite a spike in my stats. Yesterday, the traffic went down to “only” about 800, so the photos come back up. Enjoy.

I was able to use Panther recently, and am very impressed with this OS. Panther is the code name for Mac OS X, version 10.3. Even though it sounds like a small, incremental update (like Jaguar [10.2] before), there are big improvements to be found here.

First, speed. One of the main complaints about OS X is that it feels sluggish, especially on older machines. I have a Powerbook G4 running at 800 MHz–no slouch, but hardly top of the line–and OS X has always lagged a bit, with graphics not always drawing in as fast as I’d like. Fast enough, to be sure, but you lose some of the fast, snappy feel to it. Panther fixes that, more than Jaguar did. Things seem snappier, scrolling is better, everything looks and feels faster than before. My software opens faster as well.

Second, the biggest snazzy update is something called Expose (“Exposé” for those of you with browsers that can decode the accented “e”). Expose is a big addition. Have you ever had a ton of windows open, and want to switch more easily between them? Had ten images open in Photoshop and wanted to choose clearly which one to bring to the top? Or maybe you wanted to attach a document to email, but the icon on the Desktop was hidden behind a window and you had to move stuff out of the way? Expose fixes that by allowing all windows to reduce in size and present themselves so you can pick and choose which one to put on top–or clear them all off the Desktop momentarily so you can snap up that Desktop document and drop it in the window you choose. See the image (top) of the screen as it looks normally, and (bottom) when Expose spreads out the same windows:

The bottom image shows all the open windows retracting from each other, like spreading out papers on a desk to find the one you want. Very intuitive! And the graphics are pretty as well–the windows shrink and spread very smoothly, it’s a neat effect.

Along with Expose, another tweak is the application switch. Before, one could hold down Command-Tab, and could cycle through open apps in the dock. Hold down the shift key too, and you could reverse-cycle. Panther switches the cycling to an image in the middle of the screen, allowing for a click-choice as well:

The Finder has received many tweaks as well. Below is an image of the new window design. Note the quick-access panel at left; touted as a big plus, I am less sure of its usefulness. But a big plus for me is the upgraded search dialog in the upper right corner. Though it looks the same as in Jaguar, it is much improved. Before, Jaguar made searching easy–type in a search term and hit “Return,” and it would search the volume/folder for the term, including all subfolders within. Panther made two big improvements: first, you don’t even have to hit the “Return” key, it just searches as you type, a la iTunes. Second, the search itself goes by much faster. Jaguar made a Windows PC search seem glacial; Panther makes even Jaguar seem plodding. My Windows PC has a 1.8 GHz Celeron chip; despite having twice the apparent (in hertz) chip speed as my G4, a C: drive search on that computer takes up to five minutes; with Panther, the same search lasts only a dozen or so seconds.

One more nice touch is networking: it is now much easier to connect to a PC or PC network. Just click the “Network” icon in any Finder window (top left), and the connected machines are instantly visible as folders or volumes, with shortcuts that can easily be dragged to the Dock or Desktop for permanent open display. After the initial login is saved by the Keychain, connecting to a PC network is no different from browsing local Mac disks.

Another new Finder tweak is a long-missed feature from OS 9 and before, you can now assign a color to any icon. Instead of color-shading the entire icon, the filename instead takes on a colored button-like appearance. Sorting by color is now available as well. And in the contextual (right-click pop-up) menu, you have the added options of compressing (by using zip) the item, or “Toasting” the item–archiving to a CD-R using Toast.

Another cool feature is user switching (see images above left, and below). If you have more than one user account, you can run both at the same time. A small text menu at the top right of the screen drops down and allows you to quickly switch between users without having to log out first (you can also choose to have no password in secondary accounts, allowing for faster switching). The switch uses a very nice 3-D rotating-block transition effect straight out of Keynote, Apple’s new Presentation software.

Also, the speech technology seems very much improved. Before, I had a lot of trouble getting my Mac to understand me. In Panther, it hardly missed a word I said. Much smoother than before. There are new things you can do with it as well, such as display phone numbers from the Address Book on the screen–but it had a lot more trouble understanding which name I was saying, and often got the name and number wrong.

Those are the main changes that I’ve found immediately useful. I’ve quickly looked at improvements in the PDF-reading Preview app (better search, display and scrolling than before), Font Book (allows you to group and switch fonts used by the system), and found them mildly interesting so far. A lot of other stuff is here–Apple touts a hundred or so improvements–but many of them appeal to people with technically specific needs.

I only noticed one bug–I use the zoom feature (in the “Universal Access” control panel) quite a bit in the Computer class I teach; it helps a great deal to show my students the details of what I’m doing on my computer. (Throw in Virtual PC, and it’s even better–I don’t even have to use a PC to teach the PC!). But Panther has a small bug there–if I hold down the zoom keys (Command-Option-Plus) continuously, the zoom sticks at one point, and will not un-zoom; one has to visit the control panel and switch zooming off to get it unstuck. No biggie–you just have to tap the plus key instead of holding it down steadily, then the bug doesn’t happen. But that’s the only bug I found after prolonged use and testing. Not bad at all, for a pre-release OS–and no kernel panics or software crashes either.

All in all, a very nice set of improvements for the Mac. Pricing, alas, will likely be same as with Jaguar–$70 for education, $130 or so for others, and again, may have no breaks for upgrade as opposed to straight purchase. But then again, it is way cooler than Windows Home version, and costs about what Microsoft charges for an XP upgrade (while giving much more), so one cannot complain too much. Sure, you have to pay more if you buy every upgrade, but as I explain in a post a few stories upstream, you’re not forced to buy every upgrade, and even if you do, it’s worth the value you get. The official release was supposed to be this month, and now is “before the end of the year.”

Next April, Tokyo University, considered the best public university in Japan (think U.C. Berkeley meets Harvard), has decided to replace its inventory of IBM PC’s running Linux with brand-new iMacs (linked news article in Japanese) next April, when the school makes its 5-year hardware swapout.

The reasons given? Ease-of-Use, fewer problems cropping up, and less maintenance required. The university will replace 1150 of its current 1400 computers when it does.

Now, if only my college would do the same! We can’t even get reasonable maintenance for our PC’s, and the IT guys we hire to run our networks seem to be less than excellent at keeping things running right. They had no idea how to deal with Macs, either, even within the Windows environment. Several years before OS X came out, I asked if they could make the Windows network at school more open to Macs; they swore up and down that it was flat-out impossible. I asked them to look into it more; they said they did, and couldn’t find a way to connect my iBook to the system. So I had to rely on DAVE, a Mac program that emulated a PC network connection. But after two years of this intermediate solution, I heard that our IT guys were absolutely wrong: all along, Windows had a feature called “Services for Macintosh,” very evident and easy to find, that, when switched on, let me connect with no problem, without special software. Typical Windows network mentality: simply expect that Macs can’t do anything.

They were even more surprised when I showed them OS X, and how I needed their help even less. I could go to the Windows server myself and simply create a user account, and then OS X would do the rest. The upcoming Panther (10.3) version of OS X will make connecting even easier–no login dialog even, just open a network folder and boom, there’s the PC network. Cool.

Anyway, back to the Tokyo U. story: one thing this goes to show, an important why-to-get-Mac reason, is that while Mac hardware is still a bit more expensive than PC hardware (less so if you compare performance and quality, rather than simple GHz numbers), you wind up saving more money in training and maintenance.

About time more people started realizing this. Remember, when your IT guy insists that Macs are too expensive, s/he is arguing less about cost to the business and more about I-want-to-keep-my-job. It’s like asking a Safeway Manager if you should shop at Costco instead–self-interest gets in the way.

Three months ago I started trying out the early beta of Eudora 6 for the Mac. Eudora is, in my opinion, a much better alternative to Microsoft’s Outlook Express. The program’s main new feature is a very good Junk mail filter, which does a very good job of that. I also use the new mailbox drawer (opens to the side of any mailbox window), which presents a clickable list of all your mailboxes, allowing easy switching between my many mailboxes without having to open new windows all the time.

If you have a prior version of Eudora 6 for the Mac, and are using it in sponsored mode (free but with ads), and are enjoying the spam filter, then enjoy it for as long as the beta operates–because the new download (v. 6.0b31) no longer includes the spam filter in any but the paid mode ($40 for a 1-year license, with support). The older version should work, and there’s not much difference between the early betas and the new general release.

Me, I paid my $40–it’s a good program, and worth it–I now depend on the Junk filter, it makes the spam pretty much evaporate.

The PC version includes a format painter (a la MS Word, I presume), but lacks the mailbox drawer. All other features are shared. I highly recommend this program, especially the Mac version (which has superior layout to the all-in-one window design in Outlook).

Downloads are here.

Security. One of the biggest concerns for someone with a PC, using the Internet. You gotta have good anti-virus software. A friend of mine recently lost a big chunk of her data and had to re-install, then later re-format her hard drive, likely due to a virus attack. The IT dep’t. at the college I work for was recent besieged by the Blaster worm, and is constantly under assault by various viruses, Trojans and worms.

Me? I have no anti-virus software. Haven’t for as long as I can remember. And I’ve never been hit by a virus. Why? I own a Mac.

This article does a nice job of explaining, simply, why Windows is practically a magnet for such attacks. It points out that it’s not just because Windows is the most-used OS out there, but rather because Windows is full of security holes, a massive sieve, in fact. Witness the endless stream of “critical” security fixes that clamor to be installed by your version of XP. I know, I’ve been running XP on a Windows box next to my Mac for a year now. A major hassle in comparison.

And yet IT departments continue to claim they need PC’s running Microsoft’s OS and software. Why? Simple. They like their jobs. They know that if they install Macs, they will need fewer staff to maintain the system. IT staff have traditionally been hostile to Macs, claiming that they are more expensive (untrue, when you include IT maintenance), incompatible (also untrue, with Mac OS X providing network compatibility, most software being cross-platform with document interchangeability, and Virtual PC closing the remaining holes), and too bothersome for them to deal with. But the stories continue to filter through, when people get Macs and they not only work with the system, but they usually work better.

One of the best rumor sites for upcoming Apple Computer products is MacRumors. And what they’re saying about the future Apple CPUs is rather surprising.

For the past couple of years, the Mac has drifted rather listlessly in the Motorola doldrums, getting no faster than 1.4 GHz. Now, with the G5, we get an immediate bump up to 2 GHz, though that chip may max out at about 2.8 GHz. In a year, IBM’s PPC 980 chip will be running at 3 GHz, and will max out at about 5 GHz.

If that sounds like a lot, wait till you hear about the following two generations: the 990 (2005-6), which is supposed to range from 6 GHz to 10 GHz, and then the 9900 (2007-8) which, if you can believe it, will run somewhere around 20 to 25 GHz.

Yikes!

But that kind of follows Moore’s Law fairly well, and let’s remember that the features of the G5 were pretty damned surprising to many of us, and yet were indeed true. Still, 25 GHz. Man.