RSSWWDC keynote: Some notable no-shows
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published June 9, 2008, 5:31 PM
With the spotlight growing every time Apple puts on a major show, many feel it would be nice if the company would leave some real estate open for some Mac-related innovations. The keynote came and went, and the Mac was absent.
There was a time when Apple's World-Wide Developers' Conference spotlighted a little device that used to be all the rage, called the Macintosh. But for the entire two hours of CEO Steve Jobs' keynote speech at Moscone Center in San Francisco this morning, the attention was on the 3G iPhone and the iPhone SDK 2.0.
As a result, what could very well be some key innovations in the next edition of Mac OS X, may not get much press.
Jobs did take a moment right at first to note the forthcoming upgrade, and to formally herald the arrival of its new code-name, "Snow Leopard." But from there, he stated the first demonstrations of 10.6 at work would be pushed off until after lunch. By that time, network reporters waiting out in the hallways would already have mounted their ENG trucks, heading for the editing room.
If there were to have been any new kind of Mac hardware, certainly it would have premiered during Jobs' keynote. Some were expecting a kind of developer-centric hybrid iPhone/Mac, which on some blogs had already been dubbed the "Mac nano," though it would have been a first for Apple to have released a development unit specifically for programmers.
Others cited a photograph of what appeared to be a screenshot of one of Apple's Web pages, though it's worth noting that its identity as an Apple Web page was never verified. The page's legitimacy is waning with each passing hour.
The photo showed what looked to be a slimmed down Mac Mini, beneath the heading, "Mac Fusion...Bridge the gap," alongside the Mac OS, Windows, and Linux logos. Below it was the phrase, "Leave Windows behind. Build your Apps for OS X." Apparently Photoshop CS3 for Mac still gets a lot of use.
There was also some speculation about the virtualization capabilities of Mac OS X 10.6, with some believing the "Bridge the gap" slogan may have been legitimate, even if the screenshot wasn't. This may yet pan out this week, even if it's not Apple that delivers the goods: Some are looking for the possibility that a Mac-based virtualization tool would be able to run Windows and Linux applications not within enclosed, virtualized desktops, as is possible now, but within their own native windows integrated into the Mac environment.
News has also yet to emerge about whether version 10.6 will discontinue Apple's support for the PowerPC platform upon which older Macs were built -- in other words, whether it's x86-only. We'll probably get formal word as to the system's release date, however, which is expected to be next January.
"There was a time when Apple's World-Wide Developers' Conference spotlighted a little device that used to be all the rage, called the Macintosh."
Actually...in the history of the WWDC (since 1996), there has been only *one* in which a new Mac was introduced, and that was the new Mac Pro in 2006 (an Intel model to replace the G5 PowerMac). Since it's mostly a *developer* conference, announcements tend to be related to things that are important to developers, such as new APIs or new features in the next OS, hardware changes (like the switch to Intel announced few years ago), and so on. And occasionally they'll use it to debut new products (most notably the iPhone last year, and perhaps the 3G iPhone this year, although with the SDK that also carries substantial interest for developers).
An event of more interest to consumers is the Macworld Expo (actually held by another company, but Apple has participated since 1997), during whose history several new products have been introduced: G4 laptops, Mac mini, iPods galore, and (this year) the Macbook Air. While the two events occasionally deal with the same kinds of things (especially depending on what Apple has been up to in the preceeding months!), the WWDC is really not as consumer-focused.
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|I agree with you, RobertM, and I really didn't mean to suggest that WWDC should be used to introduce new Macs. Rather, spotlighting Mac technology and development has been the show's principal purpose up to this point. Now that there's a new machine to develop applications for, that's changed -- and certainly a good chunk of yesterday's keynote was about the iPhone SDK. I'm just thinking it would have been nice if the Mac had deserved more than just a brief mention at the front of the speech.
-SF3
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|Yeah, I see what you mean. I suppose there wasn't anything terribly exciting going on in Macland (not that Snow Leopard isn't exciting, but as a hobbyist developer I don't think very much is of import to me! ... unless they have some killer new features still secretly up their sleeves), so they just focused on the iPhone platform as everyone had been expecting since they announced the SDK.
I suppose it's all a part of Apple "No Longer Apple Computer", Inc.'s expanding focus--including the renaming of their .Mac service to MobileMe since it can now really work without a Mac at all! (Though I'd much prefer it work with Thunderbird rather than Outlook in addition to Mail, but that's probably wishful thinking. Then I'd actually have a use for it...on both Windows and Mac computers, along with my Touch. :))
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|If someone was able to access that page, why didn't they take an -actual- screen shot? Obvious fake. (The use of trademarked logos from other vendors doesn't add to the legitimacy, either.)
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