August 7th Mac Event Updates

The new iMac is here and the changes are listed below:

• Aluminium casing like the rest of the Mac product line.
• Intel “Santa Rosa” Processors included with standard 800MHz bus speed.
• ATI HD 2400 XT and PRO graphic cards replace previous X1600 cards.
• 8x Super Drive becomes the standard.
• Glossy displays with a thick black border(Sorry photographers and video editors, you can’t choose!).
• iLife ‘08 included.
• As expected, Apple dropped the 17″ model and continues to have only the 20″(1680 by 1050 pixels) and 24″(1920 by 1200 pixels) versions.
• Keyboard redesigned to suit the new iMac, looks very Macbook-ish.
• Includes Wireless-N standard along with 802.11 b/g.
• Does not include new Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, continues to use Bluetooth 2.0+EDR.
• iSight still located where it was earlier, still bundled with Apple Remote.
• The 24″ model can be configured as an option to get Core 2 Extreme 2.8GHz processors, the fastest mobile processor yet.

The Mac Mini gets an update(changes made public on the Apple website) and gets 1.8 and 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo Processors.

iLife ‘08, iWork ‘08 replace their predecessors.

Changes in iLife ‘08:

• New iMovie(promises a lot, remains to be tested) with extremely fast video processing. Interface gets a face lift. Camcorder to DVD in 30 minutes is what Apple guarantees. Supports many more standards now, including HDV and AVCHD. Better organisation with Events categorisation. Allows user to convert videos for best possible playback on the iPod, iPhone, AppleTV and YouTube.
• iPhoto gets Events, a new organisation technique. Photos taken on a particular day get added as an event and a new event on the same day can be separated with a single click. Better search options. Finding photos is a little easier. Excellent new templates for printing albums and book covers.
• GarageBand gets Magic GarageBand feature that lets you play with instruments before you actually start working. Other feature changes are minor.
• Apple said it continues to have iDVD only because of it’s popular demand. Encoding becomes faster, video after encoding has better quality. It includes 10 new animated themes, the menu editor becomes easier to use at the same time being more customizable.
• iWeb. Now allows you to create web widgets to include on your site or allow others to download. Built-in support for Maps and AdSense from Google. Photos in albums now get a new comment feature that should have always been there.

Changes in iWork ‘08:

• Pages gets a Word Processor. Doesn’t look even close to being a Microsoft Word alternative, it’s a Mac-style word processor with features that glitter but don’t perform. Instant Alpha lets you remove photo backgrounds with one click, really handy feature. Includes the ability to track changes, has 140 new templates(to what extent, I do not currently know) and is compatible with Microsoft Office(surely says something!).
• Keynote was good. Now even better. Excellent new animations, movement of objects is now very easy and Keynote presentations can be saved to be PowerPoint compatible. Neat, but again remains to be tested.
• Numbers. A new addition but a welcome one. It’s Apple’s long-awaited spreadsheet tool. The thing boasts of being able to perform advanced functions without the user’s manual input of formulas. It looks nice, but is it enough to replace Excel? We’ll know soon enough.

.mac gets an update:

• It now allows you to share content from all iLife and iWork applications through your .mac account on the web.
• Let’s you send photos from your iPhone which are automatically synced with iPhoto before you reach home.
• It now offers 10GB of storage but costs $99 a year. Lets you backup your stuff online and now lets you download your .mac mail via IMAP.

Thus, the Apple Event really saw some progress and fortunately we saw the iPhone only once on screen. The iLife and iWork suites seem to have enough new additions to entice me to upgrade but .mac won’t be where I go to backup and share my stuff.

August 8th, 2007 No Comments posted in News by abhishek :

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.