MiniWorld 2005

Print Action, Feb 2005 by Bolan, Zac

To most people it could have been any dreary Tuesday morning, but for Mac enthusiasts around the world January 11 was a day of reckoning, just as the opening of MacWorld is every year. This love-in devoted to all things Apple is always kicked off with a keynote address by their controversial and charismatic leader, Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

Hoards of cold and damp zealots started lining up three hours before the 9:30 am keynote. As the big moment drew near, the clouds parted, the mist evaporated and sunshine warmed the crowd.

You would not think that the CEO of a tech company -holding a paltry five per cent market share - could influence the weather, but Steve Jobs is not just another executive. Inside, and on cue, the lights dimmed and a ceremonious hush fell over the crowd. To thunderous applause, Jobs bounced onto the stage.

Apple's stock price more than doubled in 2004, largely on the strength of its market-defining iPod. And while little has changed in the company's Pro CPU line-up, snags in the supply chain have been eliminated and product is again reaching the design and prepress community in a timely fashion. But what would Steve Jobs pull out of his hat for 2005?

Software, software and more software

Following his tried-and-true format, Jobs began his keynote with a review of Apple's recent accomplishments in both the retail and software sectors. When Apple initially launched the Apple Retail store concept, many felt its boutique approach to retail would further isolate the Mac from the masses. Instead the reverse was true. Apple Store online and retail outlets have successfully co-existed with legacy Mac dealers in most markets and have incrementally expanded Apple's customer base.

Jobs then launched into the future of Apple's OS X operating systems with a demonstration of OS X Tiger (10.4). The substantial upgrade boasts more than 200 new features and will provide full 64-bit memory addressing while continuing to support 32-bit applications. Both 32- and 64-bit Tiger applications can use hardware-accelerated math functions when running on a G5 processor. This translates to greater overall speed and performance enhancements from a user's perspective. The graphics community should take special note of Apple's Core Image technology, because it gives developers unprecedented image-processing performance and accuracy.

Next came the much-anticipated roll-out of iLife 05, Apple's digital lifestyle software hub. iLife 05 includes updates to iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD and Garage Band. iTunes remains the only free component of iLife 05 and seems to run on its own upgrade schedule.

Jobs continued with software by unleashing iWork on his captive audience. This long-overdue replacement for its aging Appleworks suite marks an interesting change of direction for Apple. iWorks consists of Keynote 2, an update of Apple's popular presentation application aimed squarely at Microsoft Powerpoint users, as well as an entirely new application called Pages.

It is apparent that Pages is more than a simple word processor. Apple has incorporated significant layout tools into the application and provides templates to allow an unsophisticated user to develop attractive layouts for brochures, newsletters and other communications/marketing uses. It will not be long before print projects are designed in Pages and end up in your prepress workflow, particularly as the iWorks suite is also priced at an aggressive $99 level.

Jobs calls Pages "a word processor with style". I call it an ingenious stab at the low-end MS Word and Adobe InDesign market. A spreadsheet application is noticeably absent in the iWork suite. Apple has left this bone for Microsoft as Excel becomes further entrenched as the Photoshop of numbers.

Finally some hardware

Few were surprised when Jobs unveiled The Next Big (little) Thing. Online rumour mills had been working overtime in the weeks preceding MacWorld. There had been much talk in the Mac community about Apple releasing a strippeddown Mac aimed at converting the PC user at a fraction of the cost of a higher-end Mac solution. But even with this foreshadowing, a collective "oooh-aaaah" washed over the audience as they marveled at the diminutive Mac mini - a triumph of industrial and ergonomie design.

Smaller than a box of Kleenex and priced at $629, the entry-level Mac mini sports a 1.25ghz G4 processor, 256mb SDRAM and a CD-R/DVD Combo drive in a 6.5-squareinch by 2-inch tall footprint. The Mac mini is a BYODKM product, as Jobs exclaimed "Bring your own display, keyboard and mouse." While addressing the low end of the CPU market, Apple positioned the Mac mini as a good alternative for a second computer, allowing the buyer to reuse old monitors, keyboards and other peripheral devices.

Mac mini specifications may not hold a candle to Apple's G5 workstation line-up, but the performance is surprisingly snappy when running Mac OS X Panther (10.3). After winding down the keynote with a cacophony of product trumpeting, Jobs then uttered his now infamous and hotly anticipated words...