Steve Jobs' keynote address on Mac OS X 10.4 ("Tiger") at WWDC

   You can view a QuickTime movie of Apple CEO Steve Job's Apple
Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address on Monday morning at:

   http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc04/

   Jobs' speech was exciting. As San Jose Mercury News columnist Dan
Gilmour writes
<http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/010540.shtml>:

>It's always useful to turn on the deflector screens when entering a
>Steve Jobs keynote speech. Because Apple Computer's chief executive
>almost always has something dazzling to show, and because he does it
>better than just about anyone else in the technology business, he
>creates a legendary "Reality Distortion Field" that makes even
>hardened skeptics nod their heads in awe. Such was the case Monday
>at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco ...

   As Dan goes on to note, this keynote address showed off some
intriguing products and technologies. Even some Windows support
providers and users will be interested in Apple's new 20" and 23" LCD
displays, which work with standard DVI video on many newer PCs, as
well as search technologies which presage similar technologies to be
integrated into the next generation of Windows within a few years.

   A few highlights from Jobs' keynote:

   - The next major release of Mac OS X, version 10.4 ("Tiger"),
     is scheduled to ship in the first half of 2005 (i.e., most
     likely around a year from now, if the current schedule holds):

       http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/

   - "Tiger" will include a technology, called "Spotlight,"
     for quickly searching large numbers of local files:

      http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/spotlight.html
      (home page, including a link to a page briefly describing the
      underlying metadata and search technologies, and to a QuickTime
      movie demoing Finder search -- see the P.S. below)

     Apple claims this technology is 'years ahead' of the similar
     technology Microsoft is developing for its next-generation OS,
     code-named "Longhorn", expected in 2006 or 2007.

     Apple will be integrating Spotlight-based search into the Finder
     and Apple applications such as Mail; third-party developers
     can also add it to their own applications.

     In comparison, the following are a couple of representative
     articles on "Longhorn"'s emerging search technologies. In
     fairness to Microsoft, these technologies are more ambitious
     than Apple's Spotlight, and involve the creation of an
     entirely new, metadata-rich filesystem:

     http://msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn/understanding/pillars/WinFS/default.aspx
     http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3356031
     http://www.searchengineguide.com/beal/2004/0204_ab1.html

   - "Tiger" will also include a feature named "Automator", which
     attempts to make it easy for non-programmers to create
     "workflow" scripts for automating common tasks:

       http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/automator.html

     Once again, the Mac OS X Finder and some of Apple's own
     applications will be accessible to Automator scripting, and
     third-party developers are being encouraged to add this
     capability to their own applications.

   Based on the limited - and presumably well-scripted :-) demos that
   Jobs showed in his keynote, the user interfaces for both Spotlight
   and Automator appear to be thoughtfully designed.

   - Finally, in the July/August timeframe this summer, Apple is
     introducing a new set of large LCD displays, in 20", 23"
     and 30" (!) sizes:

       http://www.apple.com/displays/

     The 30" display works only with Power Mac G5s equipped with
     a special video card.

Aron Roberts
Workstation Software Support Group

P.S. Apple offers a QuickTime movie demonstrating just one of the
ways in which its Spotlight search technologies can be accessed in
"Tiger", via a Search icon in the Finder's menu bar.

  Because this movie by default is displayed at a very small size,
here's how Mac OS X users (at least) can view it at a larger size:

   - Open "QuickTime Player" from the "Applications" folder.

   - From the "File" menu, select "Open URL in New Player..."

   - Paste or type the direct URL of the movie, below, into the
     "Enter an Internet URL to open:" text box:

http://images.apple.com/movies/us/apple/wwdc2004/apple-tiger_spotlight_512.mov

   - Click "OK".

   - From the "Movie" menu, select "Double Size".

   - Click the "Play" button.

   Windows and Mac OS 8/9 users may be able to use a similar technique for

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Received on Tue Jun 29 15:15:52 2004