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This article first appeared in the September 2000 issue of the Louisville Computer News. It was written by Lee Larson.
In January and July, the focus of anyone who pays attention to Apple is on the MacWorld Expo. All the marketing, new products, and hype come together for three days twice per year. Since this is the Mac, there's also a good dose of devotion, fandom and almost religious zeal thrown in that's missing from other computer shows, except perhaps LinuxWorld.
I hadn't been to MacWorld in five years, and I hadn't been to a summer show since they moved it from Boston to New York's Jacob K. Javits Center. My schedule, time and inclination came together this year, and I found myself spending the late teens of July in Manhattan at MacWorld.
Apple tries its hardest to feed the mystique that they're the one company that's into computing because it's so cool being out there on the technological edge. "Think different!" Although I happen to think there's more than a little truth behind the image, I keep reminding myself that Apple is a big company that's trying to plug themselves into my wallet. There are many people, less cynical, who do believe. For them, MacWorld is akin to a rock concert.
Every rock concert needs a star, and the star of MacWorld is undeniably Apple's iCEO, Steve Jobs. For the last few years, Jobs' big shining moment has been the MacWorld keynote speech that kicks off the whole show. The keynote is where the big product announcements are made, and the summer MacWorld is where the new wares for the all-important back-to-school and Christmas buying seasons are introduced.
The keynote in New York was scheduled to start at 9:00 Wednesday morning, and people were already lining up by 6:00. It's certain some of them would have camped out overnight, had the Javits Center been open. After all, there were only a few thousand seats available, and anyone arriving at 8:00 wouldn't have one.
It was a rock concert line. At least two people had the Apple logo shaved into the backs of their heads-one in full rainbow colors. A short, plump woman was dressed as a blueberry iMac. Macintosh users groups from Europe and Japan were represented by not just one or two members, but by perhaps five or six, all proudly wearing T-shirts showing their group's name. Waiting people sat with networked PowerBooks playing multi-person games.
I had wheedled a press pass, so I didn't have to wait in the huge line snaking around the front lobby. Instead, I got to wait in another huge line in back. We were finally herded into the press section of the auditorium at about 8:45.
There we sat, with 1970's rock music blaring, staring at a fifteen foot tall Apple logo projected onto the back of a mostly empty stage. The music stopped. The crowd hushed. And with no more preamble than that Jobs strode onto the stage and said "We have a lot of things to show you." The crowd went crazy.
Jobs is the master of the product rollout speech. It's been said that he weaves a "reality distortion field" in the auditorium during his MacWorld talks, and this is not far from the truth. The crowd is on his side, and he obviously revels in the energy bouncing back and forth between himself and the faithful. He understands how to build the drama, and unveils software and hardware with the impeccable timing of a master magician.
One by one the new products rolled out. The new zero-button crystal mouse and full-function keyboard to replace the detested hockey puck mouse and keyboard with missing keys. Upgraded iMacs with lower prices and faster everything. Office 2001 and iMovie 2.0. Multiprocessor G4's that made a gigahertz Pentium III look silly in a PhotoShop race. They were on remote controlled carts that magically appeared on cue from behind the curtains. One fifth grader in the audience said it was easy for her to imagine R2D2, hidden under the cloth, holding the computers on his head as he rolled them out.
Things kept coming, one after another, each better than the last. Jobs stalked the stage like a cat, king of his domain. I thought of the line Jack Nicholson said as the Joker in the first Batman movie: "Where does he get those marvelous toys?"
Of course, being a master showman, he saved the best for last--the G4 Cube. As it appeared, there were audible gasps in the audience.
The new Macintosh G4 Cube is quintessential Jobs. It's a powerful piece of technology, elegantly packaged to inspire techno-lust. It just looks cool! Instead of the big tower case that takes up valuable real estate, this is an eight inch cube that packs the power of the tower. Equipped with the elegant new keyboard, zero-button mouse, flat screen Cinema Display and crystal speakers, the Cube is the most beautiful high end desktop system available. There's no fan, so it's totally and almost eerily quiet.
It seems the Cube is the system Jobs has been trying to build for years. His original Macs and the latest iMacs are fanless. His NeXT computer, introduced in 1988, was an elegant black cube, somewhat underpowered for its powerful NeXTStep operating system. The new off-white Cube is smaller, faster, and clearly powerful enough to run Mac OS X, Apple's imminent hybrid of NeXTStep with Mac OS 9.
The Cube is not perfect for everybody. There are no PCI slots, so it will only support one monitor, and it has only one processor. But, it offers more speed and larger displays than the iMac, with the features most users need built in. It ought to be a success.
As if he needed to do more, Jobs ended with one last amazing encore. Everyone in the audience would be given the new zero-button mouse on their way out the door. The days of the hockey puck are over.
Jobs stood waiting for the rolling applause he know would come. The audience did not disappoint him.
Streaming out of the auditorium, admiring our new mice, we couldn't help but notice the Apple elves had been busy during the keynote. Giant posters of the new products had magically appeared at all the Javits Center entrances. Apple's huge exhibition area on the Expo floor had dozens of Cubes, along with the other new products, all ready for test drives.
The new Apple products are on display at Apple's Web site (www.apple.com). Jobs' MacWorld presentation is also there in streaming QuickTime format.
Of course, the big news at the Expo was dominated by the Cube and Microsoft's announcement of Office 2001. But, with 400 or so other Mac developer's trying to catch some eyeballs out on the show floor, there were quite a few other interesting products. Here are a few of the lesser ones that caught my eye, mostly because they solve real problems about which I'm often asked.
Since all the new peripheral devices seem to support only USB and FireWire connections, there's obviously a market niche for adding the newer interfaces to older Macs. Several companies are marketing boards that add one or both to PCI-based PowerPC Macs and PC Card capable PowerBooks. The most complete line seems to come from RATOC Systems (www.ratocsystems.com). They have both PCI and PC Card boards to add just about any desirable combination of USB, FireWire and SCSI. Orange Micro (www.orangemicro.com) and Keyspan (www.keyspan.com) also have boards.
There are several possible problems with all these boards. First, connected devices often get their power from the USB or FireWire bus, rather than a separate power supply. This puts a larger load on the power supply inside the Mac, and some of the older machines can't support it. Second, you shouldn't necessarily expect to do something like video editing with the new FireWire connection on an older machine. The PCI bus may not be fast enough to handle the data transfer between the computer and FireWire card.
Thursby Software (www.thursby.com) has been slowly building up an impressive list of Macintosh networking products. Their niche is allowing Macs to share files with other types of machines over a local network.
Two of their older products are DAVE and TSStalk that enable file and printer sharing between Macs and Windows PCs. The difference between them is that DAVE runs on the Mac and TSStalk runs on Windows. DAVE lets the Mac see standard Windows "network neighborhood" file sharing and printing, while TSStalk lets the PC use AppleShare IP.
Thinking that DAVE and TSStalk are too complicated, they've introduced a new product called MacSOHO that installs on the Mac. It uses the older NetBEUI protocol, available on all Windows systems, to set up simple and efficient file sharing. It does not support printer sharing.
Rounding out their product lineup is MacNFS for file sharing between Macs and Unix machines.
One of the big holes in the Macintosh market has been an inexpensive uninterruptable power supply with good software. In particular, APC (www.apc.com), the leader in UPS systems for small computers has had dismal support for the Mac. Their PowerChute software for the ADB Macs has always been problematic and lacked the features of PowerChute for Windows and even Linux.
They've finally released pretty good looking software that works with their USB equipped Back-UPS Pro product. It requires a USB capable Mac running Mac OS 9.04.
SoftMac 2000 from Emulators, Inc. (www.emulators.com) is software that creates a virtual Macintosh on a Windows machine. It works with Windows 95, 98, NT and 2000. The catch is that you've got to acquire a real Macintosh ROM image from somewhere, and the only way you can legally get one is by buying a Mac.
On September 23, 1:00-5:00, the Art Software Group is sponsoring a creative computer software and book swap at Mastersons, 1830 South Third Street in Louisville. Graphics, music, audio, video or CAD, Mac or PC software and design software books qualify for this event. All software tools must be licensed to the individual or company offering them for sale, swap or barter. A form is signed by each vendor indicating they have removed the software from your computer and are selling the original licensed software. Cost is $20 for vendors and $5 admission. Proceeds donated to the WHAS Crusade for Children.
In addition, Microsoft will show Office 2001, Markzware will provide a document preflight seminar, Quark will show QuarkExpress 5.0 and Macromedia will give tips and tricks for Flash 5.0 and Dreamweaver UltraDev.
Brad Bishop will give a presentation about Appleworks 6 at the September 26 meeting of the Louisville Computer Society.
The Louisville Computer Society meets from 7:00-9:00 P.M. at Pitt Academy, 4605 Poplar Level Road, at the intersection of Poplar Level Road and Gilmore Lane. Everyone is welcome to attend. For more information, on the Web go to www.aye.net/~lcs, or e-mail lcs@aye.net.
The LCS also sponsors an e-mail discussion list devoted to Macintosh topics. To join, send e-mail containing only the word "subscribe" to macgroup-request@erdos.math.louisville.edu.
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