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In a surprise move, Jobs announced Keynote, a new presentation application
for Mac OS X that he revealed he secretly used to create every public
presentation he gave through 2002.
Keynote features a variety of typographic effects; graphics features with
full alpha-channel controls and compositing capabilities that tap Mac OS Xs
Quartz imaging technology; and built-in tools for creating a variety of
multimedia-rich tables and charts. A Themes feature lets users apply a
variety of looks to presentations.
Keynote supports a plethora of graphics formats, includes an extensive
graphics library, and comes with a library of 2D and 3D transition effects that use Quartz and OpenGL technologies. It uses an XML-based open file
format, and imports and exports PowerPoint presentations, PDF documents and
QuickTime files.
Keynote runs on Mac OS X 10.2 and is available now for $99.
Jobs also showed off more tightly integrated upgrades to Apples range of
consumer-friendly multimedia applications—iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie and
iPhoto—and announced that the software will be bundled under the moniker
"iLife" and will ship Jan. 25. iLife will be bundled free with all new Macs;
while current Mac owners will be able to download iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie
free, the iLife bundle with iDVD will retail for $49. "Were going to do for
digital-lifestyle applications what Microsoft Office did for productivity
applications," said Jobs.
On other consumer fronts, Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product
Marketing Philip Schiller demonstrated Final Cut Express, a new, easy-to-use
version of the companys Final Cut Pro video-editing package, available now for $299.
Jobs also touted Apples recent efforts to lure Windows users into the Mac
camp. He said that for December, the companys 51 retail stores in the
United States generated $148 million in revenues; 50 percent of the
computers sold via the outlets were to Windows "switchers," he said.
Repeating a key Apple theme of the past couple years, Jobs continued to
promote the companys ongoing campaign to migrate the platform from the
classic Mac OS to the Unix-based Mac OS X.
In an announcement that will please audio professionals whove hesitated to
leap to Mac OS X, Jobs announced that DigiDesigns Pro Tools audio-editing
application will finally ship this month for Mac OS X.
Meanwhile, Jobs aimed a thinly veiled barb at Quark Inc., whose XPress
page-layout package is now the major professional Mac application still
available for Mac OS 9 only. "The Mac OS 9 transition is basically over,"
Jobs said. "Weve got a few laggard apps—we all know which one were talking
about," he said, provoking laughter from the crowd.
Jobs predicted that 9 million to 10 million users will have standardized on Mac OS X
by the end of 2003.
Building on Apples vow to end Mac OS 9 booting in new
Mac models, Jobs announced that all new versions of Apples application
software will boot in Mac OS X only.
(Editors Note: This story has been modified since its original posting to correct an editorial error; the 17-inch PowerBook was originally identified as a 1MB PowerPC G4 processor, instead of a 1GHz PowerPC processor.)
