MWNY 2000 wrap-up
It has been some great 3 days for the Mac platform and community. As usual,
I'll simply list the most important announcements made and give some comment
on a few things..
Hardware
- New Macs from Apple: New line of iMacs,sporting more HD, up to 50MHz more
speed and 4 all-new colors. (Indigo, Ruby, Sage, Snow (I don't count the new
Graphite as a new color))
PowerMac G4's now have dual processors in the 450 and 500MHz versions and
cost as much as the single chip versions did. All have bigger harddrives.
All feature Gigabit Ethernet ports. (1000BaseT)
The new PowerMac G4 Cube, seemingly aimed at gamers, is a 8" cube, without
any PCI slots, but with a limitedly upgradeable AGP slot (needs 7" cards,
ADC port (probably) and little heat production). The new design is very nice
however, I'm sure quite a few will sell of these.
New optical, full-surface button mouse in a decent shape and a new 108 key
full-sized keyboard now ship will all Macs.
- 3Dfx shows retail Voodoo5 cards (5500 PCI), graphics are stunning, performance
remains to be seen. Voodoo 4 to follow soon, AGP versions possible (otherwise
a driver hack for PC cards)
- ATI announces Rage 4XL and RADEON for Mac in September, expect all the desktop
Macs to feature these after a revision at Seybold or similar. Radeon is awesome.
- Creative Labs confirms Mac versions of their Soundcards and MP3 players
(Nomad line), first products to ship soon.
- Apple introduces new monitors, featuring new plugs (ADC, Apple Desktop Connector
or so). One plug for video, USB and power supply. Success remains to be seen
(I'm admittably not convinced at all). Screens are nice though.
- Various new CPU upgrades from different manufacturers, among them for Powerbooks
1400 and G3, 2MB G4 upgrades, MP G4 upgrades.
- Other varied USB and FireWire products and accessories.
Software
- Mac OS X public beta delayed until September.
- Photoshop updates to MP enhanced plugins.
- Apple updates iTools and launches iMovie 2.0, with new and improved user
interface for even more ease of use.
- TONS of new games, among them: (released) Diablo 2, Baldur's Gate,
Deus Ex, Asteroids and (announced), Rainbow 6: Rogue Spear, Vampire, Pop-pop,
Rune,Heavy Metal: FAKK, 4x4 Evolution, Sin, Majesty, Star Trek DS9: The Fallen,
Fighter Storm, Warcraft 3, and many more.
- Quake 3: Team Arena demo axed for keynote (along with ATI RADEON and Rage
4XL demo)(still it has been announced)
- Peter Tamte and Microsoft team up to bring more games to the Mac, Halo for
Mac confirmed