I thought some of you might want to read what David Pogue has to say about the MWFS. You might also want to read his regular column in the NY Times. The link is somewhee below. Marta HKAD In a message dated 09.01.2003 15:42:38 Uhr, NYTDirect at nytimes.com writes:
> >Circuits from NYTimes.com >Thursday, January 9, 2003 >------------------------------------- > >1. From the Desk of David Pogue: More on the Macworld Expo >2. This Week in Circuits: Hot Rodders Go High Tech >3. State of the Art: Apple Thinks Big, and Small >4. Now Playing: Reality Without the Downside >5. Online Shopper: Mysteries Made With Partygoing Sleuths >6. Game Theory: Into a Time Tunnel With a Dinosaur Computer >7. How It Works: Automation Take the Strain Out of Animation >8. What's Next: A Heart Monitor That Dials for Help >9. Roaming Abroad: A Cellphone Roamer in Latin Lands > > > > > > > >1. From the Desk of David Pogue: More on the Macworld Expo >========================================================== > >As I mentioned in today's printed column in Circuits (see: >http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/09/technology/circuits/09stat.html?8cir), >this week's Macworld Expo was a doozy. Apple unveiled dozens >of software and hardware products, creating a wave of happy >feelings among the 88,000 attendees -- and a challenge for >columnists who have only 1,300 words to describe it all. > >The truth is, my report was over 2,000 words long in its >first draft. What a shame, I thought, to have to cut so much >interesting secondary information -- and what luck to have >an e-mail column where I can put it! > >Here, then, is what I would have added had I had the space, >with quotations from the printed review for reference. > >* "Apple had a lot of products to unveil." > >Including one I didn't mention: an iPod snowboarding jacket. >It's a black windbreaker-like shell, co-developed with >Burton and made of triple Gore-tex, that includes a snug >pocket for your iPod music player, a channel that lets the >headphone cable emerge at your collar, and even soft-touch >Play, Next Track/Previous Track and volume buttons right on >the sleeve. At $500, not many people will buy this jacket -- >but it's a delicious, jaw-dropping exercise in fanaticism. > >* "The parade began with gracefully improved versions of >Apple's flagship multimedia programs." > >Apple's iMovie 2 software has been consistently declared the >easiest to use video-editing software on the market -- even, >grudgingly, by Windows PC magazines. The new version, iMovie >3, lets Mac moviemakers adjust the volume of a soundtrack >along its length, so that the background music, for example, >doesn't drown out an interview subject. It also introduces a >feature Apple wittily calls the Ken Burns Effect, which lets >you bring still photos to life in your movie by smoothly >panning across them, slowly zooming in or both. (Mr. Burns >made this technique famous in his documentaries on, for >example, the Civil War.) > >Apple also demonstrated new versions of iPhoto, its software >for organizing, displaying, e-mailing and printing digital >photos, and iDVD, which now lets Mac fans create DVD's whose >menus look astonishingly like the ones on rented movies. >Best of all, iMovie 3, iPhoto 2, and the existing iTunes 3 >(for organizing and playing music files) are all free >downloads. If you want the new iDVD, you must buy it for $50 >on a DVD that includes the other three programs, in a boxed >multimedia suite Apple calls iLife. > >* "[Apple] took the wraps off of a new, Mac OS X-only Web >browser called Safari. Its three most important features are >speed, speed and speed." > >But those aren't the only features. Safari is loaded with >sweet ideas that demonstrate how much stagnation we've >experienced since Microsoft won the browser war. > >For example, a button called Snapback takes you instantly >back to the Web page whose address you last typed (or whose >bookmark you last clicked). The point here is that, after >burrowing from one link to another in pursuit of some Google >result or Amazon listing, you can return to your starting >point without having to mash the Back button over and over >again. It's brilliant. > >* "The new PowerBook introduces 802.11g, a new version of >the Wi-Fi wireless networking technology that's become so >popular among laptop lovers in coffee shops and airports." > >As I noted, Apple is the first computer company to include >802.11g -- but that's a blessing and a curse. The industry >standards committee hasn't even finished defining this >standard. But that's OK, says Apple. If the protocol changes >when 802.11g is nailed down later this year, its new cards >and base stations can be updated via a free software >upgrade. > >The beauty of 802.11g is that, unlike the confusingly named >802.11a, it's backward compatible with the thousands of >existing wireless "hot spots." Yet it gets the same 54- >megabits-per-second speed -- a perfect compromise. > >Note, though, that none of this does anything for your Web >browsing, because modems, cable modems and D.S.L. >connections are themselves far slower than that. All of this >extra speed is designed for transferring data between >computers on your own network. (Note, too, that you attain >those speeds only when within 50 feet of the base station. >As you wander farther, file transfer speeds drop.) > >* "Apple did show off new laptops that lay claim to >superlatives like 'biggest,' 'smallest' and 'first.'" > >The two new PowerBooks I reviewed are, by the way, the first >Macs that can't start up in Mac OS 9. > >Mac OS 9 programs still run on these laptops (in the so- >called Classic simulation mode) -- you just can't start up >in Mac OS 9. This decision is designed to illustrate, to >software and hardware companies, that Apple is dead serious >about switching to Mac OS X for good. For Mac fans with >older scanners, specialized dial-up medical programs and so >on, though, this decision could cause some grief -- or >trigger some shopping for other Mac models while there's >still time. > >----- > >Feedback Forum > >What from the Macworld Expo interested you most? >http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?50@@.f16bec4 > >----- > >Visit David Pogue on the Web at: >http://www.davidpogue.com -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "The New York Times Direct" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Circuits: More on the Macworld Expo Date: Thu, 09 Jan 2003 15:27:17 -0500 Size: 10807 Url: http://www.math.louisville.edu/pipermail/macgroup/attachments/20030109/7b9b12af/attachment.mht
