First Hand Reports on WWDC’s Leopard 9A466

With WWDC in full swing, few first hand reports of Apple’s Mac OS X Developer Build of Leopard have been leaked. The reason for this is that beyond the keynote, the remainder of Apple’s conference is under a strict non disclosure agreement. A few tidbits, however, have been posted publicly online:First Hand with LeopardOne blogger posted these positive impressions

• Mail is really great, seems super fast• Spotlight much more responsive, no pauses as you type• Safari seems faster and now has that styled text editor as in FireFox (used in blogger for example)• New Finder, not as new as I had expected, seems solid and sensible.• Coverflow everywhere, yeah, whatever..• Quickview is useful I think, certainly seems fast.• Time Machine looks like it works really, really well.The blog post, however, has since been removed. Meanwhile, a few forum posts (unverified) report the following about the new Leopard beta:

• Completely new mail client. Much faster, better calendar support, keep notes• Stacks are fantastic.• Dock works fine on the sides, 3D but the icons are sideways (proper) with shadow. Looks awesome on the side.BenchmarksA Geekbench submission benchmarked new Developer Preview of Leopard on a 3.0GHz Mac Pro (Score 5335), which didn’t show a substantial difference compared to results from similar configurations on Mac OS X 10.4.9.Requirements?This post lists the requirements of Leopard that are listed in the ReadMe that comes with the developer’s preview:

• an Intel processor or a PowerPC G4 or G5 processor• a DVD drive• built-in FireWire• at least 256 MB of RAM for a Power-PC based Mac and 512 MB for an Intel-based Mac (additional RAM is recommended for development purposes)• a built-in display or a display connected to an Apple-supplied video card supported by your computer• at least 6 GB of disk space available, or 8 GB if you install the developer toolsAs a developer build, this may or may not reflect the final requirement set for Leopard.-Eric

New MacBook Pro’s!

At last, here are the new Santa Rosa-based Apple MacBooks, loaded with faster Core 2 Duo processors. Same design but with LED-backlit LCD screens, increased processor speeds, more memory and zoomtastic NVIDIA 8600M GT graphics at the same $1,999 and $2,499 prices. And all this shaving 0.4 pounds off its weight. Full specs and information about the also-revamped 17″ with optional 1920-by-1200 screen model after the jump.

The new 15-inch 2.2GHz base model includes now 2GB of main 667MHz DDR2 memory as well, while the 2.4GHz model increases the size of the hard drive to 160GB.

15-inch 2.2 GHz MacBook Pro
$1,999
2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
1440 x 900 resolution
2GB memory
120GB hard drive1
8x double-layer SuperDrive
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with 128MB SDRAM

15-inch 2.4 GHz MacBook Pro

$2,499.00
2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
1440 x 900 resolution
2GB memory
160GB hard drive1
8x double-layer SuperDrive
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with 256MB SDRAM

17-inch MacBook Pro

2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
1680 x 1050 pixels
2GB memory
160GB hard drive1
8x double-layer SuperDrive
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with 256MB SDRAM

Steve Jobs declares 2007 to be “one of the most exciting” in Apple’s history

During last week’s conference call in which Apple announced preliminary 4th Q earnings, Mr. J apparently also declared 2007 to be “one of the most exciting new product years in Apple’s history.” While we already know about some things like the iTV, we don’t have much else to go on but unconfirmed rumors of iPhones and 6G wide and/or touchscreen iPods.

For now, the real significance here is Steve’s bragging about 2007’s lineup. In the past he’s declared ‘the year of the notebook’ or ‘the year of HD’ but he typically did that nearly mid-way through the year when most of us knew it already anyway (Update: my bad, I thought he made those announcements at WWDC, not Macworld), but that was at least while they were launching product. Now he’s just strutting Apple’s stuff. Here’s to looking forward to finding out what they have up their sleeve. -Eric

Steve Jobs’ tough options

This week’s ouster of William W. McGuire as chairman and chief executive of UnitedHealth Group Inc. provided an inescapable sign that no executive is too big to be toppled by the stock option scandal – despite having many fans in the boardroom and on Wall Street.

That news also could rekindle a question: Is Apple Computer’s iconic CEO Steven P. Jobs truly safe?

“I don’t think there is anybody who is too big, too important or too rich to go to jail. That applies to Steve Jobs as well,” said Paul Hodgson Sr., a senior researcher for the Corporate Library. “If he has done something wrong, he has got to go, regardless of the situation.”

But, Hodgson added, “I haven’t seen enough evidence either way that Jobs is involved or completely uninvolved in this situation.”

Trading on Wall Street suggests investors believe Jobs will weather this crisis. After tumbling as low as $50.67 in mid-July, Apple’s stock is up nearly 50 percent. It got a boost this week when the company reported quarterly earnings that easily topped forecasts.

So far, the widening national scandal into whether companies rigged stock options to give executives and employees a head start to profits has entangled at least 140 companies, including dozens in Silicon Valley.

This week, the top two executives of Harford County encryption company SafeNet Inc., CEO Anthony A. Caputo and President Carol D. Argo, resigned as a result of a probe into options. So did the chairman and founder of computer chip supplier KLA-Tencor Corp.

Consulting firm Sapient Corp.’s co-founder quit as chief executive and co-chairman in a broad management shake-up. And last week saw the abrupt departures of two well-known Silicon Valley CEOs: George Samenuk of McAfee Inc. and Shelby Bonnie of CNet Networks Inc. McAfee, a leading maker of computer antivirus software, fired its president, Kevin Weiss.

But UnitedHealth’s McGuire is the biggest head to roll in the corporate scandal so far. Under McGuire’s guidance, the Minnesota company’s stock climbed more than 50-fold, performance that some investors hoped would insulate him from the scandal.

Like McGuire, Jobs is seen as an integral part of Apple – the visionary and image-maker who rebuilt Apple into Silicon Valley’s fourth-biggest company. Barely two weeks ago, Wall Street analysts sighed with relief when Apple disclosed that an ongoing internal review had concluded that Jobs was “aware of” stock options abuses but didn’t do anything that would force him out.

The company said Oct. 4 that it found “no misconduct” by current managers, but it did point the finger at two unidentified former executives. Jobs also apologized for the abuses that “happened on my watch” but were “completely out of character for Apple.”

Apple’s terse and vague disclosure left many unanswered questions about Jobs’ role and the tainted options he received. Some experts have challenged the company’s spin that “he did not benefit” from tainted options he received, triggering one critic to call for Jobs to cough up $85 million in income. Shareholders could ferret out evidence they could use against Apple in court.

And still looming is the worry that federal investigators could reach darker conclusions about Jobs’ role than the company did, experts say.

Jonathan Moreland, director of research for InsiderInsights.com, said Apple failed to relieve his anxiety.

“How many people feel relieved when they find out they have a tumor?” he asked. “You only feel relieved when you find out that the tumor is benign or at least treatable.”

Anxiety about whether Jobs’ fate has been simmering for months. In late June, Apple disclosed that its internal review had uncovered “irregularities” in the prices of options granted to Jobs and others.

Apple has yet to detail which of Jobs’ two options grants were tainted.

Most of the suspicion has centered on one of the largest grants in U.S. corporate history: 40 million options, adjusting for splits in the stock price, in January 2000.

If Jobs’ grant had been pegged to the price on the day he was appointed permanent CEO – rather than a week later when Apple’s stock hit a monthly low – his immediate paper profit on the options would have been $168 million less.

A month after Apple’s initial warning, the company said it probably would have to restate profits since the fall of 2002, news that sent its stock tumbling 8.6 percent in the next few days.

Days later, media reports also spotlighted suspicious options grants made under Jobs’ watch to top executives at the Pixar animation studio, which was sold to Disney in May.

Apple’s former general counsel Nancy R. Heinen also reportedly has retained criminal defense lawyers since she stepped down in May.

Former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey L. Pitt complimented Apple’s disclosure Oct. 4 from a “big-picture point of view,” saying it quelled much of the uncertainty for investors grappling with how to price the stock.

Will the eBook finally replace paper?

Why isn’t there an iPod for electronic books (eBooks)? And where’s the eBook equivalent of an iTunes store? Last week Sony launched two products in the US that it hopes will address both issues. The Sony Reader is a paperback-sized device with a six-inch screen that can store about 80 eBooks, or hundreds on a plug-in memory card. The $350 (£185) Reader is joined by a new online service, Connect, which offers more than 10,000 eBooks from publishers such as Simon & Schuster, Random House, Penguin, HarperCollins and Harlequin (www.sony.com/reader).
So is the eBook market finally coming of age? Nick Bogaty, executive director of the International Digital Publishers Forum (IDPF, www.idpf.org), says: “I’ve always said that four factors need to be in place for the market to take off. You need a device that makes reading pleasurable, content at the right price, a great selection of content and eBooks that are easy to use. We’re definitely getting closer to these goals.”

On the face of it, an eBook is an attractive proposition, not least because it can offer features difficult or impossible to find in a printed book, such as hyperlinks, multimedia content, cut and paste, high degrees of interactivity and updated content. It can be downloaded and read instantly, and publishers don’t have to transport huge volumes of books around the country and store them in warehouses. It can be read on a PC, a PDA, a smartphone or a dedicated device, like Sony’s Reader. But despite these benefits, even Bogaty admits that eBooks are still a cottage industry. The US market was worth about $15m in 2005 and sales for the first half of the year totalled only 907,000. In 2004, US firms published 2.3bn books worldwide; only 0.1% of them were eBooks.

The eBook sector has faced four major hurdles: construction, cost, content and culture. Constructing a reading device is much more challenging than making a digital music player, says Bill McCoy, general manager of Adobe’s e-publishing business: “Music has been digital since the CD, so it’s quite simple to do. And digital players use a very simple interface – headphones. An eBook reader needs sophisticated display technology and a long battery life.”

Screen clarity

Paper remains the best medium for text reading, and until recently it has been hard to offer similar clarity on a screen. But the development of e-ink technology, which uses millions of black and white microcapsules on a screen, from the E-ink Corporation (www.eink.com) has dramatically improved text on a screen. Sony’s Reader uses e-ink and the company says its battery will last for up to 7,500 page turns.

Dutch electronics giant Philips has developed a prototype rollable electronic display and a Philips spinoff, Irex Technologies (www.irextechnologies.com), markets a rival eBook device, iLiad (about £440), which includes Wi-Fi. So far, Apple has not made the iPod an eBook reader as well. When asked if it had eBook plans, the company said: “We don’t discuss unannounced products. Our iTunes store offers thousands of audio books.” Daniel Duris has developed iPod eBook Creator, an unofficial tool for converting text files into iPod eBooks (tinyurl.co.uk/rrw4) and iPrePPress (www.ipreppress.com) publishes iPod eBooks for students.

The eBook sector is also trying to address one of the biggest issues – standardisation. There is a plethora of eBook file formats (Adobe, Sony, Microsoft, Mobipocket and eReader all use proprietary file formats), reader software and digital rights management (DRM) systems. The latter is used by the book publisher to control how the eBook is used, for instance, restricting its use to a unique device or offering limited copying facilities.

The IDPF, an international trade and standards forum, has members from the publishing, software, retail and electronics markets, including Adobe, Amazon, Microsoft, Sony and Random House. In the spring, it plans to release a new open file format, .obe, and a standard Zip-based file container, which Bogaty believes will help drive the eBook industry: Adobe’s McCoy thinks the market will shake down to two file formats: Adobe’s .pdf and .obe.

However, few expect there to be a common DRM. “There are just too many patents involved in DRM technology,” notes McCoy. What’s more important is how eBook publishers implement DRM technology. Sony’s previous eBook device, the Librie, was panned for using a DRM system that deleted commercial books after 60 days. “Consumers will be looking for a more flexible DRM so they can move content around,” says McCoy.

Kevin McKiernan, director of business development at US textbook distributor MBS Direct, says, “Textbook publishers have put a lot of added value material into books, and they can’t see how that transcribes to a comparable digital product. There’s also concern about the Napster effect [before Napster became a legitimate online music service].” Publishers are likely to err on the side of caution and some form of time limit, to allow for browsing before purchasing or library loans, is likely to be implemented. Sony’s Reader allows eBooks to be read on up to six different devices and the company says there are currently no plans for releasing time-limited eBooks.

So who’s using eBooks? Leaving aside database-type products and technical manuals, the answer is a wide range of readers. “All major publishers have eBooks, and that includes front catalogue as well as back catalogue. Around 60 to 70% of the New York Times bestseller list is available in eBook form,” says Bogaty. Romantic novel publisher Harlequin (Mills & Boon in the UK) is a strong supporter of eBooks. “Although they’re a tiny portion of our business now, we see it as a growing and relevant area to our customers,” says Malle Vallik, editorial director of new business development. “Our customers are women and women don’t embrace technology because it is cool. They choose technology when it benefits them – and our eBook readers are embracing this format because there are benefits: selection, convenience, immediacy.”

Holding water

Textbooks are seen as a major growth market. Only 900 of the 150,000 titles MBS Direct handles are eBooks at present, but McKiernan says there’s a lot of interest, not least in the distance learning market. “Students are very mobile and it’s easier to store books on a laptop than carry them around.” Most eBooks are the same price as the printed version or lower, in some cases 50% cheaper.

It used to be said the printed book was such a part of our culture that eBooks would never catch on, but Bogaty disagrees. “People read so much electronic text now – most of my newspaper reading is done online – that this argument no longer holds water.”

But even the most ardent eBook fan doesn’t expect paper books to become obsolete: “They’ll co-exist and we’ll see publishers offering combined packages, so customers get the best of both worlds,” says McKiernan.

-Eric

Zune and iPod Photo Comparison

“I got face time with a Zune this weekend and decided to look at how the form factor compares to the 80GB iPod I picked up a few days ago. The Zune weighs considerably less than the iPod, although I didn’t have a scale on hand to get exact comparison. It felt like the Zune was more comparable to my Cingular 2125 phone, while the iPod weighs quite a bit more.

Screen size on the Zune is a slightly larger 3-inches, but you don’t get a real sense for how much difference that makes till you see it next to the iPod screen.

Zune comes in just barely longer than the iPod.
iPod is slightly thinner than Zune, which makes the weight difference even more surprising. Album art looks great on the Zune Click “Read More” to see pics. -Eric

Navigation through albums is highly intuitive, although you wouldn’t know it from this photo.

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