[ekehler]

"Ironic that a half-baked iWork 06 coincides with an announcement that Office will be developed for Macs for the next 5 years."
It might not be that Apple has given up on iWork. MS's continuing application support, at least for the foreseeable future, is essential (or, at least, very important) to Mac OS X's continued growth. Apple is switching all of their machines over to Intel in the next 12 months and it would be a huge 'negative' if MS decided to not invest the resources to make fat binaries of Office et al. I think Jobs probably did whatever he had to to secure MS's 5-year commitment -- possibly agreeing to delay adding significant new functionality to iWork for another year or two.
(I'm not really that fond of Office -- I'd much rather use something like iWork, if it had a good spreadsheet; oh well -- the market dictates what's important, I guess.)

[pcharles]

For some reason, that what those lab suits are nicknamed!

[pdrayton]

In reply to:

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Instead of improving the free web site tools that comes with your subscription, it's now assumed you're going to pay $180 a year for full .Mac functionality (iLife+.Mac).

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Your not getting it right. iLife '06 is a one-time fee, not per year like .Mac.
iLife '06 functionality will continue even when iLife '07 and iLife '08 are released.
Many people get iLife with their new Mac. Many others pay to upgrade just once. Most people don't buy iLife every year.

[dannsh]

There is no guarantee that functionality will continue with every upgrade.

[roadwarrior]

Personally, I'm still using AppleWorks, and will continue to do so until either it stops working entirely due to Apple dropping Rosetta entirely, or until a reasonably-priced, full-featured, easy-to-use, and stable alternative comes from someone that isn't based in Redmond.

[heisetax]

Apple has a history of ripping off their early adopters. Most don't remember that they charged the earilest of adopters, the Mac 128 ones of over 20 years ago were charged at least $1,000 to upgrade to a Mac 512. So charging $49 to change to an universal binary is very low priced in their history of ripping off their early adopters.
I'm glad to see that I am not the only one that feel the lack of FW800 makes this a non-Pro model. I missed the lack of a DL DVD burner is also a negative point that can be fixed with a new replacement burner. This should have been an unneeded expense. The FW800 correction is not as seemless. The choices are either an express card, new size of the old PC Card, or staying with the more usuable G4 PowerBook. The first choice is a little sloppy for a new supposed stat-of-the-art laptop. The second can only last for a short time until they are eliminated.
I will not be an early adopter of the IntelMac as my 30" display will work on both my 17" PowerBook & MDD PowerMac for some time to come.
Bill the TaxMan

[hmurchison]

In reply to:

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There is no guarantee that functionality will continue with every upgrade.

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When has Apple ever removed functionality from a paid piece of software that once existed? Rarely if at all. Now the flipside is that newer versions of .mac may contain functionality that requires the latest version. That's fair.

In reply to:

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I'm glad to see that I am not the only one that feel the lack of FW800 makes this a non-Pro model

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Bollocks. Adding FW800 doesn't suddenly make a laptop a Pro model. That's the koolaid talking. I consider laptops with dual cores and dedicated graphics to be the modern day equivalent of a portable workstation.
FW800 = 100MBps folks. eSATA supports up to 300MBps without the need for bridge chips. While the MBP doesn't have eSATA it's a connection with much more potential than what FW offers IMO.

[b_baggins]

Definition of a fair price:
The price the buyer and seller were both happy with at the time of transaction.

[shadowbox]

You forgot about one of the biggest losers:
People that just bought the iMac released a couple of months ago. Most people that buy iMacs are home users. Meaning they use their computer for Web browsing, E-mail, iLife apps, and Office. Most of these apps are already written for intel. Office runs fine in Rosetta. (So they say.) I would be upset if I just bought the latest G5 iMac.

[jdb8167]

In reply to:

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Adding FW800 doesn't suddenly make a laptop a Pro model.

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I agree. If anything the existence of the ExpressCard/34 slot makes it a Pro machine since either FireWire 800 or eSATA could be added using the expansion slot. Unfortunately, I don't think either one exists yet but I also think it is clear that they will in the near future.

[restiffbard]

here's a thought, perhaps Steve spent a lot of time on iLife cause that's the part of the Mac that he loves the most? When he gets up there and starts grinning while he tosses together a podcast do you think he's grinning cause he sees dollar signs or because he really does think this is the coolest thing ever?
I think he just really likes the software and likes showing it off to us. He knows next to nothing about FPUs or SpecINTS or any of that hardware mumbo jumbo but he sure knows a thing or two about having fun. That's why all the geeky nitty gritty comes to us at WWDC through a specialist and the consumer fun stuff is done at Macworld by Steve himself.

[Nobody]

In reply to:

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[...] And so it was that the iPod, usually at the center of any Apple news event, went through the day without a single update or new release. [...]

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http://www.versiontr...fo/macosx/12478
/forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif

[hayesk]

In reply to:

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You forgot about one of the biggest losers:
People that just bought the iMac released a couple of months ago. Most people that buy iMacs are home users. Meaning they use their computer for Web browsing, E-mail, iLife apps, and Office. Most of these apps are already written for intel. Office runs fine in Rosetta. (So they say.) I would be upset if I just bought the latest G5 iMac.

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Why? They got the machine they paid for. If they're not happy with the functionality it provides then they shouldn't have bought it in the first place.

[kenaustus]

While a lot of people don't get excited about iLife the simple fact is that iLife sells a lot of Macs to consumers that actually take the time to look at a Mac before buying "another PC". It's one of the two critical Apple apps (the other being Front Row) that puts a Mac way ahead of a PC in a switcher's eyes.
Look at the PC users that have an iPod. They use iTunes, which is probably their first peek at a Mac app and they like it. When they look at a Mac while thinking of a new computer they will want to see the rest of iLife and 06 will get them excited if the salesman is any good. I think Steve was wise to spend both the R&D money and the Keynote time to push iLife. I've already ordered it and will be showing it off to friends.
Minimal iPod time? Good. There are plenty of opportunities to show off iPods and there was a real need to bring the focus back to Macs and what they can do.
iBooks & Mac minis? Will they really wait for the single core processors? Probably, but I would have liked Intel to push for the slower Duo in them by cutting the price difference to a point where Apple would bite. There is still time for the two to come out as a Duo.
Adobe? They have a lot of work ahead of them and they need to deliver, both in the pro and Elements apps. Their biggest problem is probably bringing every things up to today's standards - especially if they are using a lot of very old code. And, yes, Photoshop does take a long time to load.
Overall I think Steve J accomplished what he set out to do with the Keynote. Lots of stuff delivered now and a lot more coming by the time WWDC rolls around.