By now Steve Jobs’ announcements are pretty old news. I tuned in yesterday evening and found announcements of a new desktop powerhouse, the Mac Pro and a preview of the some of the features of the upcoming OS X 10.5, code-named “Leopard”. The Mac Pro is hardly a big surprise, it is both the logical next step as Apple moved to replace all its machines with Intel machines and has been expected for a while now. What I am really excited about is the new OS. I haven’t listened to the keynote speech (it is supposed to be available to view on the Web but I couldn’t get it to work) but I have been watching some of the videos showcasing new features and new software and it is pretty cool.
Mostly I am excited about some pretty ordinary things. Mail and iCal have been upgraded and I am pretty excited about those upgrades, even if the upgrades to Mail are not new features. Mail will now include a built in feed reader and support for stationery (for a change this is a feature MS Outlook has supported for a while now). I am looking forward to being able to format my mail messages a little more dynamically. Interestingly Mail will include a notes feature and a tie in with iCal’s to-do lists. There are some other items that look pretty interesting and which are new to OS X. One of these is Time Machine which is a lot like Windows’ System Restore, although far more user friendly. It automates backups of your data and allows you to go back in time on your machine and restore lost or deleted data using a very cool 3D interface.
I have downloaded a few clips from the keynote speech from PodTech and will listen with great interest although if anyone knows where I can download the video of the speech or stream a reliable version, I’d love to watch it instead.
One thing that wasn’t announced was a new iPod and I am grateful for that. I just got my iPod in January and I would be a little bit disappointed to have my iPod made obsolete so soon. At the same time there may well be a new one unveiled at MacWorld next year and if the rumours are true, it could be awesome. For now, I’m good.
Technorati Tags: ical, ipod, keynote speech, Leopard, Mac OS X 10.5, mail, mac pro, steve jobs, time machine, wwdc
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What do you think?