Evening: A few more thoughts on the Apple intros:
I'm not sure the public will go for the new sage color. It looks pretty nice, but a primary iMac selling point has been "cute"... sage may please the Martha Stewart set, but not traditional iMac buyer.
One of the major changes heralded by the original iMac as simplified naming. Now the line has mushroomed into the iMac DV, iMac DV+ and iMac DV Special Edition. Geez.
I've heard some chatter about the Cube appealing to business. I don't see it--business will immediately see much better value in the dual-processor G4s. Rather, the Cube strikes me as being designed for gamers. As such, it should've included the Radeon graphics chipset and a hybrid DVD/CD-RW mechanism. Ah well... splitting hairs, I suppose.
As I mentioned earlier, Apple had to release multiprocessor machines to compete. As was glazed over in the keynote and oft-repeated in the media, the 'classic' Mac OS can't take advantage of the second processors in any quantifiable way, besides in applications like Photoshop written to take advantage of them. It's worthy of (very minor) note that while Apple hasn't offered multiprocessor machines in three years, the API hasn't remained stagnant. The OS's nanokernel was rewritten for multiprocessor machines at least a year ago, which translates into improved performance in common system tasks (e.g. using the Finder). It's only a bit, but it might give a little hope to would-be MP G4 owners.
Apple's tried high-density 'shove video and everything else under the sun into one plug' connectors before, in the original Power Macintoshes. They were a certifiable Pain In The Ass. They lasted through that original motherboard generation alone, largely because of this fact. C'mon... it took long enough to get VGA-out built-in. Why go back? Argh. I should probably read the specs, eh? It does indeed have VGA out, in addition to the new composite connector.
I couldn't get through to see the live keynote stream--big surprise. Earth to streaming vendors: if the Web was as unreliable as streaming media, no one would use the Web today. Streaming exists today on luck alone. Why is a certain five-year-old media player one 'major' revision lower than my 16-year-old primary operating system?
btw, thanks for the certification, Iain.
