The floodgates of Apple’s R&D departments flew upon us today and shocked us all. The buzz and publicity the keynote has attracted has made both geeks and consumers froth with excitement and made the Intel transition sound unimportant.

Evolving into a consumer electronics company

Today Steve Jobs introduced the new corporate name for Apple Computer; “Apple”. Onstage Steve concluded that Apple is no longer just a computer company with the assortment of non-computer products that they sell.

Steve also made it clear once onstage that the keynote was not going to be centered around Macs and Mac OS X. That meant the rumors concerning iLife/iWork ‘07, additional Leopard previews, octo-core Mac Pros, Intel Core 2 Mac Minis, etc. did not come true. Alex Lindsay of MacBreak made an interesting point that

1. Apple did not have enough time to release all products expected to be released in an (already extended) two-hour keynote.
2. Apple wanted to make clear that the iPhone was the big announcement and not for it to be clouded by additional product announcements concerning Mac and Mac OS X. (Such as the ROKR and iPod Nano Keynote).

And as Apple is spreading its focus across the consumer electronics industry, it now has new competetives it never had before, such as Palm and RIM. Apple’s strong foundation with a large user-base and a strong will for innovation, they should have no problem.

More Mac-related product announcements soon?

Even though Steve said he wasn’t going to talk much about the Mac platform today, chances are the traditional announcements won’t go forgotten and they will introduced a few weeks from now after the buzz over the iPhone and AppleTV settle. However, it appeared as if the demo Mac was running a newer version of Keynote with new text effects, including spark and the ‘pass-through’ effects, and new graph gradient textures.

The iPhone is the iPod Killer

Whoever thought the iPod killer would be a product made by the company who made the iPod? Steve made it clear the Zune sure wasn’t going to be the iPod killer, as some thought when they heard of the Zune. But today’s iPhone announcement ended up embarrassing Microsoft and its Zune player and just shows how Microsoft is always a copier and never an innovator.

The Consumer Electronics Show and Macworld Conference & Expo coincided today. However, even with CES’ large popularity and publicity, most of the news from today’s CES news coverage was overshadowed with the revolutionary announcements in San Francisco today at Macworld.

I talked to people here who have seen the Apple phone and they were practically frothing with excitement. But even if it were more reasonably priced, it will be primarily attractive to early adopters and those who either have to replace their existing phone or whose cellular contract is up.

An iPhone without a phone?

The downside to the mobile phone market is becoming compliant with each independent wireless provider and saturating each wireless provider’s market share. While I wasn’t surprised at all, I was disappointed that Apple chose not to partner with Verizon and Sprint to captivate more potential buyers who are already in contracts with other wireless carriers. Even if Apple gains serious market share in Cingular’s product line, it will still not make a major impact in the overall market because of the large percentage of consumers in the United States who are customers of other wireless providers, such as Verizon and Sprint.

Besides, an iPhone without the phone would be successful by itself, with built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Multi-Touch widescreen, and OS X-based. It would be very disappointing if Apple were not to eventually develop a similar product just as an iPod. People who are loyal customers to other wireless carriers and who don’t really need a phone won’t buy an iPhone, so a large market would be left untapped.

A stronger foothold in the movie industry

With addition to each of the exciting product releases, Apple has made partnership with Paramount pictures to provide over a hundred movies available on iTunes, growing the content available on the iTunes Movie store dramatically and becoming a leader in the downloadable movie industry. Paramount pictures is the second major studio to partner with Apple to sell downloadable versions of their movies. Paramount is a big studio to partner with, and it will sure trigger many more partnerships with other major movie studios.

The AppleTV will revolutionize the way many get their movie content, instead of paying subscription-based services or renting movies at their local Blockbuster, they instead just decide what they want on the couch and buy it through the iTunes store.

Partnership with Apple Corps.?

Steve seemed to really push the Beatles today, playing ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ and a few other Beatles hits during the keynote. I doubt he would be promoting music that they do not currently sell on the iTunes store during the Macworld keynote, so chances of a new Apple Corps. partnership would be very likely considering the facts.

Also, the shedding of the term ‘Computer’ from Apple’s corporate name is symbolic not only of their new strides in consumer electronic innovations, but also the end to their disputes with Apple Corps. While we may not ever understand the complete details of what went on after their last settlement, but it looks as if their bruised relationship is beginning to heal.

This pretty illuminating graphic screams that they are ready to kick some ass in 2007 and onward. Apple has not looked this good since 1984 with a solid beautiful operating system, a great product line of desktop and laptop computers, a great foothold in the consumer electronic and music industry, and an-ever brighter future.

From an analytical point of view, Apple’s obviously got some fantastic products yet to be released to call the iPod and all of its Macintoshes “just the beginning”. Personally, I am on the edge of my seat to see how Apple is going to make 2007 the beginning of a new era for Apple. 2006 was a great year for Apple to lay a solid foundation for Apple to build on with Leopard, the iTV, HD content on iTunes, and new iPods (widescreen). But as always this time of the year, we just got to wait and see because nothing is for sure until Steve announces Macworld’s infamous “One more thing…”

After following the MacRumorsLive.com live coverage and watching the Quicktime keynote stream, I had some mixed feelings about Apple’s decision to hide some of the new Leopard features. The Leopard Sneak Peek showed off only a few features that will be found in Leopard and there was no ‘One More Thing’ product at the end of the keynote. I understand why Apple hid some of the new major features, but I was expecting a few more features to be demoed at WWDC.

However, I was very impressed with the new Time Machine backup solution and the new version of iChat. Finally Apple is creating a backup solution for Mac users who don’t own .Mac. I love Time Machine’s transparent UI and its intelligent backup system that looks like the perfect backup solution for every Mac user. The new iChat seems to deliver some of my most-wanted features for iChat, including tabbed-chatting, remote-client control, presentation tools (iChat Theater), and iSight effects. These two are so far my favorite new features for Leopard, and I cannot wait to see what’s next for the next version of Mac OS X.

After thinking about the keynote, I finally understood Apple’s game-plan for Leopard when it comes to a release date and new features. Apple originally had the release date for Leopard around late 2006 to early 2007. But thanks to “our friends up North”, Apple was forced to push the release date back behind Vista’s already delayed release day. Its obvious that Apple has to unleash Leopard after Vista hits the shelves to prevent Micorosft from copying some of the major features to be found in Leopard. Apple’s decision to keep some of the features unannounced is very smart, and it is another example of how important it is for Apple to keep these features from being leaked too soon.

Steve and his friends made several jabs at both Microsoft and Vista the other day, criticizing their lack of innovation, pointing out the obvious similarities between Vista and Tiger, and also the hilarious intro video featuring the PC explaining to all of the Mac OS X developers to take a break so Vista can catch up. Bertrand Serlet (the one who you could hardly understand, yet you felt compelled to laugh at every one of his jokes and jabs at Vista) explained Apple’s thoughts on Vista during the keynote and compared screenshots of Vista and Tiger. At the end of his explanation, he showed the new Windows Vista logo and related the logo to the fact that even though Vista has a new appearance, it is still a Windows OS.

On the flip side, its seems as if Microsoft is still struggling with Vista to make it ready for its upcoming release in early 2007. I have not given Vista beta 2 a spin, but I have heard from many that Vista still feels like like beta software, and the new Aero GUI really kills the performance when activated. As I cruised the Windows Vista feature list, I understood why Steve and Bertrand were pointing their fingers at Microsoft for copying all of Tiger’s features. It seems like every new feature that was introduced in Panther and Tiger are also being introduced into Vista. Bertrand and Steve were 100 percent right, Vista is just an impersonation of Mac OS X, and some of the “new” features for Vista have been included in OS X since the 10.0 Public Beta in 2000. I think the poster in the WWDC hall that said “Leopard: Vista 2.0″ pretty much explains both Apple’s and my feelings towards Microsoft’s progress with Vista.

I’m on the edge of my seat to see how this competition unravels into 2007. I have a feeling Leopard will certainly “Blow away Vista”, but lets hope the “Top Secret” features that Steve mentioned will really be good enough to have been “Top Secret”. My guess is a new Finder, Safari, refined UI, and some new apps will be some of the Top Secret features in Leopard.

The Get a Mac website also argues that “You can even run Windows software”, with the words “Boot Camp” not found anywhere within the article. The picture with the article adds more suspicion to the fact that there is no Parallels icon in the dock. Is this just a coincidence or does it another clue that Apple may include a virtualization feature in Leopard?

Apple has many ways to go about this; they could:

• respect Parallel’s Desktop for Mac OS X and distribute and develop Boot Camp as their method for Windows on a Mac.
• forget Boot Camp and buy Parallels Desktop to distribute as their own product.
• forget Boot Camp and develop their own virtualization application.
• buy Parallels Desktop and package Parallels Desktop and Boot Camp within Leopard and integrate the two so that they run from the same partition.

Wolf believes that Boot Camp is going to be responsible for the dramtic increase in market share of the home market in the US, mainly because many Windows users said they would switch to a Mac if it could run Windows programs. This positive news also mentions that dual-booting Windows and OS X might also trigger the Halo effect, which has yet to come into play for Apple. And now that iPods are more popular than beer to college students, the number of Macs sold to college students will also dramatically increase.

But this market share increase will not fully kick in until 2007-2007, when Leopard is announced, the 1st generation bugs are fixed, and consumers start to discover that Macs run Windows and OS X.

Lately, the next-generation Windows operating system has been receiving a lot of press due to Microsoft’s decision to publish .ISO images of Windows Vista Beta Two on their website, available as a free download for MSDN and TechNet subscribers. Due to reports, this version of Vista is much more stable and is much more refined compared to Vista Beta One. The new Windows Vista Aero interface is the most publicized feature included in Vista and is receiving most of the attention in the tech rumors, lately. The reason for this big hype and commotion over Aero is a result of the entire Windows user-base being deprived of an appealing OS environment. While the new glass window interface is quite impressive, there is nothing drastically different or better from the Aqua environment.

Two months away from WWDC, new rumors are speculation about the new Mac OS X operating system are showing up. One of the speculated larger updates in Leopard is the new Finder, with a streamlined interface and integrated Spotlight and meta tag organizing and searching. Other new features include animated icons and animated desktop backgrounds, transparency options for the dock, speed increases for Spotlight and Dashboard, ability to place Dashboard widgets on the desktop, iChat with tabbed conversations, iPod integration within the operating system and Finder, a new VNC application, full-screen applications (Safari, iTunes, iMovie), VOIP integration, and improvements to speech recognition, Universal Access, and Inkwell. There are also rumors of a new kernel, many speed improvements to the entire OS, collaborative features of documents over the internet, a newer version Front Row, and Boot Camp dual-booting.

It seems as if this majority of this competition between Leopard and Vista seems to be focused on the graphical user interface. Tiger’s GUI is far more superior to Windows XP’s GUI, but Microsoft has raised the bar with the new Aero interface and Apple has a lot of work to do to refine and perfect Aqua. Apple has a very strong reputation of making the most beautiful operating systems and hardware available to consumers, and if Vista were to make a better-looking user interface than Apple, Apple would lose that priceless reputation. I expect Apple to look into the glass window interface and make the UI more interactive and “alive�. If Apple were not to choose to use the transparent glass look, they will at least unify the entire windows to a solid, sleek metal look similar to the iTunes 6 appearance.

Vista seems to lack new features not found in Tiger, even though Microsoft has been working on Vista for almost six years. Vista’s new features include the sidebar and widgets (Dashboard widgets), Flip and Flip-3D (similar to command+tab app switching and Exposé), improved searching (Spotlight), a window preview in the taskbar (similar to the dock), new (annoying) security features, speech recognition, software updates in OS, and Internet Explorer 7. Absolutely no new features in Vista that aren’t available for use in Tiger. This shows two things: Microsoft can’t innovate and Apple has a great advantage for time and experience to innovate and develop more features into Leopard.

One of the primary features in Leopard will be dual-booting, and I’m sure Apple is working hard on getting Vista to run under Boot Camp with no issues. Apple now has an advantage over Microsoft that Microsoft cannot get from Apple, and that is the ability to dual-boot Mac OS X and Windows on the same piece of hardware. They both can compete to innovate and develop the best OS, but in the end, Apple users have the opportunity to use both of the OSs, while Dell and Hewlett-Packard owners cannot enjoy the luxury of dual-booting into both OS X and Windows. That is what is so great about Boot Camp, we all have the opportunity to choose what OS we want on our system, whether it be Vista or Leopard. We can all use the strengths of both operating systems to get our work done, and eventually there will be no reason to use Vista when Windows programs can seamlessly run within OS X. It was a very smart move on Apple to include this option in Leopard, and it will definitely pay off in the long-run.

And as the WWDC gets closer, the future of where Leopard will start to become clearer. Windows has come back as a decent operating system in Vista, and it is up to Apple to really amaze everyone with an amazingly fast, secure, fully-featured, beautiful new version of Mac OS X.

Apple is giving these employees a severance package of two months salary. It will settle all claims on June 9. When contacted, Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesperson, said, “We have re-evaluated our plans and have decided to put our planned support centre growth in other countries.�

[Via Times Of India]

Steve Jobs announced only a couple months back that they would make a drastic change from IBM PowerPC processors to Intel’s chips. While the Mac Mini was introduced in 2005, I have a feeling that it is going to be a major focus for Apple in 2006. With Intel Inside, the Mac Mini can become a powerful media-center and digital hub. I am sure Apple has some exciting announcements to come, and those are definitely going to help expand Apple’s market share.

An article by Stowe Boyd, titled “The Year of the Mac“, makes clear points that 2006 will become the year of the Mac. Stowe makes that point that businesses will slowly move away from Microsoft with Web 2.0. And don’t forget how about Internet Explorer, I predict that sites are going to start not supporting Internet Explorer, and that will really hurt Microsoft.

His second point is that Apple’s fight for the living room media-center is strong, and will become a huge success in 2006 as Apple puts Front Row in more Macs and DVR capability, such as the Mac Mini. And don’t forget how much the Intel processors will help, better battery, faster speeds, and better and slimmer designs.

So, let’s hope that this prediction comes true, and that 2006 will become “The Year of the Mac”.

The Microsoft community is all hyped up for Microsoft’s next operating system, Windows Vista. Microsoft’s slogan for Vista is “Bringing Clarity to your World”. But looking at the specs and images of Vista, I’m not too impressed. Vista looks totally identical to XP, except with a new theme built-in. The sidebar and graphical interface seem appealing, the consistency of the glass theme is very nice. The Virtual Folders is nothing new, just average thumbnails that have an icon that looks like Apple’s. But looking at the specs and overall appearance of Vista, I don’t see why it’s that great and why people would want to upgrade from XP to Vista. Microsoft claims that applications are going to become less “unresponsive”, but who really believes that?

Apple has yet to release any information about Leopard, but rumors have it that the Finder will be redesigned around Metatags and Spotlight.

Some say that Mac OS X has the worst GUI of all operating systems out there. I would disagree, but I do believe that it could be greatly improved. iTunes 5 brought a new look with it, a cleaner, lighter metal look. It makes sense that this is the look that Apple will begin to use in the future. The UNO theme is my idea of Leopard’s GUI.

When talking to people, they complain to me that using a Mac is so much more difficult than an “ordinary” computer. I remember getting that idea when I first switched, but found out later how simple and elegant Macs are. The most complaints are about closing and opening applications. In Windows, all you have to do is hit the big “X” to close a window, so maybe Apple should think about changing the way you quit applications. It’s very confusing to learn about quitting, and new windows, and closing windows. If Apple could make it a bit easier for switchers to learn, it would help a lot.

I predict that Steve has something in the works that is really going to make Leopard shine over Vista. I’m really looking forward to a solid, clean, fast, and full-featured Leopard.

Microsoft just sat and watched Apple totally succeed and dominate in the music downloading market, and they don’t want it to happen again. But is Apple already planning for as big of a bang as they have had with music? I think so…

I have strong beliefs that Apple is very smart, and has all of this planned out. We are just beginning to see the beginning of another craze, the future of the Internet: On-Demand video and TV.

ABC has been pretty successful with their hit TV shows, but iTunes doesn’t offer a lot of selection for TV shows. CBS and NBC have struck a deal with DirecTV to sell shows for $.99 cents, and everyone believes that CBS and NBC are also in talks with Apple for CBS & NBC content available on iTunes.

The Future:
You are waking up to a song playing on your iPod or your Mac. You drive on your way to work, while you are listening to your local news and national podcasts from your iPod that is plugged into your car. At home, you can play the videocast of your local news station. You can be able to stream live video from anywhere, listen to Internet radio, and purchase music, TV shows, and music videos.
The TV will no longer exist. A PowerMac and a Hi-Def screen will replace the old tube TV. All media will be on-demand, and with Hi-Def codec and highly compressed formats will enable you to download full-length movies and TV shows.

With Front Row, Apple has shown where they are headed, the Media market. With all of this new technology and the potential of podcasts and Wi-Fi and music and video purchasing, Apple even makes it clearer that they are headed for the Media.