Steve Jobs wows the crowd: new Macs; Mac OS X Server

Steve Jobs, Apple's iCEO, surpassed himself yesterday, giving his most outstanding keynote address to date. Of course, he was helped by having some great products to talk about and some spectacular demos (that all worked flawlessly). Here are the highlights:

The keynote started with an "ad" that featured Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Hal apologizes for the Y2K problem and comments that Macs are the only computers free of it. It was funny and effective. And you can download it from Apple's web site.

After that, Steve introduced Apple's new line of Power Mac G3s. They certainly look different and, like the iMac, they are definitely not beige. And they are fast: with a copper-based 400MHz processor, ATI Rage 128 and FireWire. They will also support Silicon Graphics' OpenGL graphics library (to be included in a future version of the OS). Prices start at the same price as the old G3s: $1599. Two new monitors (Studio Displays), which look almost like an iMac, are designed to work with it. The flat panel display has been redesigned to match the overall look of the other 2 monitors.

The FireWire demo was especially cool. FireWire is essentially a replacement for SCSI (which is not included with these new Macs; although you can be an SCSI card to add the capability). It is much better than SCSI: it uses no terminators, no ID numbers and has much beyond a 7 device limit. And it is faster. The demo showed a drive (coming soon from VST) that can fit in your pocket and directly mount to the desktop as soon as you plug it in to the FireWire chain (no external power is needed).

And, if you are like me and like your Mac easy to open up, you'll love the new G3. One press of a button and a door swings open that reveals the entire inside of the machine.

Missing from these new Macs (taking a cue from the iMac) is a floppy disk drive (although Steve did not mention this in the keynote).

[Note: Steve inadvertently described the new G3 processors as from Motorola and Intel. He meant to say Motorola and IBM.]

Next up was Mac OS X Server (due to ship in February). What especially caught my attention is that it is network bootable. This means that you can startup a client Mac connected to the server from a System Folder on the server. The client Mac can do this even if there is no System Folder on its own drive. In fact, it doesn't need a hard drive at all (a "true" network computer!). Steve showed 50 iMacs connected to the same server, all independently running QuickTime movies at high frame rates - all over the server. Wow!

Mac OS X Server also includes the Apache HTTP web server and WebObjects application server.

Steve also briefly mentioned Apple's forthcoming FinalCut Pro video editing software (and a version of it is showing at the Apple booth).

Steve next emphasized the Mac's commitment to the game market, especially noting the forthcoming Quake Arena. He also showed Connectix' Virtual Game Station emulator (detailed here in an item below).

Finally, Steve revealed the new iMac revision. It comes with a 266MHz processor, a 6 GB drive and costs $1199 ($100 less). And it comes in 5 fruity colors! By the way, the iMac sold over 800,000 units since it first shipped, 32% to first-time computer buyers and another 13% to Intel users.

A slew of press releases with still more details are available at Apple's web site. If you look at only one, check out "Apple Launches New Desktop Lineup for 1999."