As happens every year at this time, the Macworld Conference & Expo tends to dominate our inSync column. There’s usually lots of introductions of new products, but this year’s event, which is taking place all week at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, may well include some of the most significant announcements from Apple in quite some time. Here’s a rundown of the top stories, most of which came by way of the keynote address, given by Steve Jobs:
- Yes Virginia, there is an Intel-powered Macintosh! New Intel-based dual-core 1.83GHz 17-inch and 2GHz 20-inch iMacs are shipping immediately. These include widescreen LCD displays, 512MB RAM, slot-load 8x double-layer SuperDrive plus built-in AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth 2.0. The 17″ iMac comes with a 160GB hard drive, while the 20″ comes standard with a 250GB drive.
- Intel-based MacBook Pro laptops will replace the PowerBook line sometime in February. Two dual-core models with 15.4-inch displays were announced, both with SuperDrives, built-in AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth 2.0. These are the MacBook Pro 1.67GHz with 512MB RAM/80GB hard drive and the MacBook Pro 1.83GHz with 1GB RAM/100GB hard drive.
- On the software side, Apple announced iLife ’06 with updated, enhanced versions of the popular iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD and GarageBand applications plus a new iWeb app. Also coming is iWork ’06 with several significant enhancements to the Pages and Keynote functions. To support GarageBand 3, Apple is also releasing a “World Music” JamPack with over 12GB of sounds and music, 3,000 Apple Loops and over 40 software instruments.
- Apple expects its “pro” applications (Logic, Final Cut, Motion, etc.) to all be fully MacIntel Universal Binary-compatible by March.
- OS X 10.4.4 was announced; the new version includes a number of fixes for problems, as well as cool new Widgets.
