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.

Mossberg Like Apples Latest iPods, iTunes

The Wall Street Journal’s Walter Mossberg and his colleague Catherine Boehret have been testing the latest iPods and iTunes for a few weeks, and in their review they note how Apple has risen to the challenge of the upcoming Microsoft Zune. Overall, they like what they see and hear:

Our verdict: the new iPods are more versatile and less costly than ever, but the new iTunes software is an even bigger improvement, although it has one big downside — its coolest new feature is so graphically demanding that it doesn’t work right on some older computers.

It’s hard not to dig hardware that was already great and has always been superbly integrated with its software, and now you get a lot more storage space for the same price and a 60% brighter screen, too. But so what if the iTunes Cover Flow feature is graphics-intensive? That’s why it looks so cool. Anyway, shed the DRM nonsense that winds its way through iPod/iTunes, and the iPod would actually deserve its runaway popularity. -Eric