Apple made several announcements at the .

• Apple today introduced new 12" PowerBooks and 17" PowerBooks with new aluminum alloy enclosures. Both notebooks feature a backlit keyboard with ambient light sensors, and built-in Bluetooth, while the larger one additionally offers built-in AirPort Extreme 54 Mbps 802.11g wireless networking and new high-speed FireWire 800.




• Final Cut Express ($300) is a new product based on Apple's Final Cut Pro and optimized for the DV format. It includes all the key features video editors need, such as the same interface and workflow as Final Cut Pro, powerful video editing tools, hundreds of special effects and easy delivery to DVD, web or tape.




• iLife is an integrated suite of its digital lifestyle apps, featuring new versions of iPhoto 2, iMovie 3 and iDVD, and the recently-released iTunes 3. It will be available for retail on January 25th for $49. Each of the updated iApps are available for download (except iDVD 3).




• Apple quietly introduced X11 for Mac OS X, which allows X11-based applications to run side-by-side with native Mac OS X applications on the same desktop. It is optimized to take full advantage of the Quartz graphics system to deliver hardware-accelerated 2D and 3D graphics and 3D animation through OpenGL Direct Rendering. The public beta of X11 for Mac OS X is available immediately as a free download, while the final version will be made available later in 2003.




• AirPort Extreme is the next generation of Wi-Fi wireless networking technology based on the 802.11g standard. Offering speeds up to 54 Mbps, AirPort Extreme delivers almost five times the data rate of 802.11b-based products and is fully backwards compatible 802.11b devices. The $200 basestation offers 54 Mbps data rates for up to 50 users, wireless bridging with up to four additional ones, and USB printer sharing. The AirPort Extreme card is $99.




• Keynote is a new presentation application for creating professional-quality presentations. It includes professionally designed themes, typography, image resizing, charts/tables, and cinematic-quality transitions. It is available immediately for $100.




• Apple has released a public beta of Safari, its new Mac OS X browser that was designed for speed and ease-of-use: "Safari's highly-tuned rendering engine loads pages over three times faster than Microsoft's IE for the Mac and runs Javascript over twice as fast." It features Google integration, a new bookmark paradigm, and "snap back" features.




• Apple also announced that it is entering 2003 with more than 5 million active Mac OS X users and more than 5,000 native Mac OS X applications: " This year also marks the first "All Mac OS X" Macworld Expo with every developer on the show floor featuring Mac OS X products."

by MacNN Staff