For the most part, I can't write about the news at Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). Except for the keynote, all of the sessions are covered by a Non-Disclosure Agreement that attendees sign when they join the Apple Developer Connection.
Fortunately, there was quite a bit of news in the keynote. Last year the keynote was called a fireside chat. As attendees entered the hall a cozy fire in a beautiful, private library area greeted them. This year -- nothing. There was no music, no video, and none of the oversized Think Different posters that have adorned the walls of Apple conferences for years.
Before it began, this keynote had a different feel. Sure, some things were the same. As always, after the VIPs, media, and special guests are seated, the doors open and the attendees run to their seats. The stampede settled, people started creating local AirPort networks, and waited for Jobs and the anticipated preview of the upcoming Jaguar release of Mac OS X.
The video screen set the scene with the interior of a beautiful church while the hall was filled with the sounds of a powerful organ playing Bach's "Toccata and Fugue" in D minor. As smoke filled the stage, a coffin was elevated into place. Steve Jobs walked onstage, a somber look on his face, and moved to the casket. He opened it up and lifted an oversized Mac OS 9 box.
In his eulogy to Mac OS 9, Jobs made it clear that although consumers would be using Mac OS 9 for a while, developers should move on to Mac OS X. He pointed out that Apple had already done so. Recent applications from Apple such as iPhoto are only available on Mac OS X.
This is the obvious next step in the evolution of Mac OS X. Last year Apple began to preload the OS on all new Macs. In January, Mac OS X became the default OS on all new systems. Jobs reminded the audience that a year ago there were about 500 shipping applications for Mac OS X and this year there are more than 3,000. Now that some of the core applications the target audience depends on (such as Microsoft Office and Adobe's Photoshop) are available for the new OS, Apple can be more aggressive about moving developers and consumers to adopt and use Mac OS X.
Jobs said, "The next step is ten only. It's time to drop nine. Everything at Apple is ten only." The remainder of the keynote was a demonstration of why, if you haven't made the switch yet, you will want to when the next version of Mac OS X is released in late summer.
Phil Schiller was brought onstage to discuss some of the new additions in Jaguar (code name for Mac OS X 10.2) and who they were targeted at. In addition to the existing Mac user base that Apple is trying to shift over to OS X, there are three key markets Apple has identified.
Schiller began by pointing out that Apple is the largest vendor when it comes to shipping Unix desktops. There are already compelling reasons for Unix users to use Mac OS X, but Apple has identified some requirements of this core audience. Jaguar will update the Unix it sits on top of to Free BSD 4.4. In addition, GCC will move from GCC 2 to GCC3. Kerboros will be integrated into the OS for security support and there will be client and server support for LDAP that Apple calls Open Directory. In addition there will be improvements to the Internet and printing stacks.
Schiller next addressed the requirements of Windows users who are checking out the platform. For them, Apple is providing SMB browsing and sharing, VPN, Active Directory support, and an improved Microsoft Exchange support in Apple's Mail client.
Finally, Schiller talked about the needs of the education clients. Last week Apple announced the aggressively priced G4-based eMac for education. During the keynote Schiller talked about the software that will support these boxes.
Jaguar will include a Simple Finder for kids to simplify their access to applications and documents. For managing a classroom full of eMacs, Jaguar will have support for workgroup management and printer sharing. Jaguar will also have NetBoot and NetInstall. If you start up a Mac with the 'N' key pressed the Mac will boot off the network.
Many users have special needs -- Apple's Universal Access provides zooming audio assistance for those who are visually impaired; visual cues for those who are hearing impaired; and alternate input methods for those who may have difficulty with chord inputs (more than one key pressed at a time) and accurate mouse manipulation.
Next, Jobs introduced Avie Tevanian to talk about the development tools Apple is providing. Tevanian explained that the move to GCC 3 will give full C++ compliance, including support for the standard template libraries. As for Apple's IDE Project Builder, there will be an improvement in the performance of generated code, and the redesigned multi-window UI will be much more full-featured.
Another area Apple is addressing is compile time. Tevanian said that although the Cocoa Objective-C compile time is pretty good, the Carbon developer compile time is not acceptable. Apple is already seeing some improvements and expects more before the tools are released.
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Tevanian then gave the developers advice on how to build a better Mac OS X application. You've heard much of this advice before, but as Tevanian pointed out, he's still seeing these same issues crop up. The recommendations were:
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Jobs returned to the stage to present the features of Jaguar. Some of them had been mentioned earlier in the keynote, but Jobs did what he is best at: he explained why you will want to have these features on your computer.
He began with enhancements to the Finder. The long requested Spring-Loaded Folders are back. The Finder now has integrated search capabilities. In his demo of this feature, Ken Bereskin described this as "the Finder that can find."
Searches can be simple or fairly complex, built out of as many criteria as the user wants to add. Once you have a list of found items, you can click on it and see its path. In the past, you had to open up Sherlock to search for files.
Next Jobs introduced a demo of Sherlock III, explaining that much of the value comes from providing services over the Internet. The demo of the Internet tab of Sherlock III looked an awful like the popular, Cocoa shareware application Watson. You could search images, track packages, check your stocks. In News you could look for news and then view the story as perfectly rendered HTML within Sherlock.
The demonstration of QuickTime 6 was impressive. QuickTime 6 will be integrated into Jaguar. It features MPEG4 video and AAC audio compression. One of the most interesting parts of the demo was when Frank Casanova showed the Instant-on streaming. There was no waiting for a buffer. Casanova clicked through an Enya video. Where he clicked, it just played. As a final touch he scrubbed back and forth through the video and it was immediately responsive. Jobs next showed off the Universal Access features mentioned above.
Apple has also worked on improving Quartz. They've taken the compositing, transparency, shadows, and other features and hardware accelerated them. Now 2D, 3D, and video will all go through OpenGL and everything will be hardware accelerated.
Jobs cautioned that this will require at least AGP 2x and 32Mb, so some of the older machines won't be able to take advantage of this. But, he added, the recent eMac and iMacs support it. This is a clear answer to the requests for porting OS X to Intel. Apple is able to take advantage of their unique position of controlling the hardware and the software. For years this was perceived as a negative. More recently, Apple has shown the advantages of knowing exactly what hardware will be running their software.
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Next, Jobs alluded to the hundreds of millions of dollars Apple had spent on Newton technology. The first thought that may come to your mind is that he's talking about introducing an Apple-branded PDA. No, Jobs was introducing a technology they call Inkwell.
This integrates handwriting recognition into text components. If you enable handwriting recognition, any application will recognize the input. A demo showed how graphics artists can enter text using their graphics tablet. They don't need to put down their pens. A second demo was just silly. Inkwell works with text entry into the Terminal as well. If you thought down and dirty coding meant using the Terminal window, you can now be outdone by programmers who write code in the Terminal by hand.
The coolest part of the new version of Mac OS X is Rendezvous. Apple is proposing the technology as a new standard. In many ways, it's the ideas that Sun was trying to create with JXTA. Sun was never able to get the message out in a clear enough way that people could see JXTA's potential.
Apple's demo communicated what Rendezvous could mean in about ten minutes. Jobs explained that the key to Rendezvous is to have computers discover each other and share stuff. Rendezvous is dynamic discovery for IP that requires no user configuration.
Jobs demonstrated an iTunes enhancement. He began using iTunes when his "son" came "home." His son opened up his TiBook and, after a short discovery process, Jobs was able to see and play the music from his son's computer. Jobs stressed that there is no copying of music; it is being streamed from his son's machine to his own.
In addition to working on how machines communicate with each other, Apple is working on improving how we communicate. Mail has been improved with intelligent spam filtering that can be taught, and more sophisticated rules for handling you email. Auto-merged mailboxes allow you to look at a single inbox and see the messages from all of your inboxes in one place. You can also choose to look in each mailbox separately.
Message threads are now highlighted so you can easily find related messages. Mail can playback QuickTime movies and the security in Mail has been improved. Address Book has also been improved so that it can serve as a single database for people. Searching has been dramatically improved, as has the editing of records.
The final feature highlighted in the keynote was the new i-application, iChat. Jaguar will have instant messaging (IM) built in. Apple's version is actually officially compatible with AOL’s IM. You won't need to subscribe to AOL for the service. The interface is an Aqua bubble interface where the chatters appear to have comic strip like bubbles containing their conversation. There will be a presence indicator in Mail so that if you get email from someone on your buddy list you will know if they are using IM.
After the demo Scott Forstall again addressed the developers. He mentioned that there had been many requests to allow non-Apple applications to sport the metal look and feel of the iApplications. He then showed how easy that is to do now in Interface Builder.Usually there aren't any hardware announcements at WWDC. At this one there was a hardware pre-announcement. Jobs noted that to use a Mac as a server you just bought the fastest PowerMac available and used it as a server. He then announced that on May 14, Apple will introduce a rack-mounted server. Also, corresponding to the Jaguar release, there will be a Jaguar Server release with some server-oriented features on top of those to be released with Jaguar.
Daniel H. Steinberg is a podcaster, author, editor, trainer, and developer at Dim Sum Thinking. He co-authored the book Zero Configuration Networking: The Definitive Guide.
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