The Macworld Keynote every year is like an extra holiday to Mac fans. Others just don't seem to understand. Steve Jobs stands in front of us, in his mock turtleneck and jeans, and preaches about the current and future Mac plans. This is an event that even the naysayers pay attention to.
The biggest news of the day was the new PowerBook, now known as the MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro features include a built-in iSight camera, IR Sensor, Apple Remote, ATI Radeon x1600 video processor, and a new, innovative magnetic power plug. All the normal I/O ports are included, with the exception of Firewire 800. I am not exactly sure why it was omitted.
Out of course is the IBM PowerPC chip, in is the Intel Core Duo. Intel's new Core Duo is a big shot in the arm to the aging PowerBook, said to be four times as powerful as the PowerBook G4's 1.67 Ghz processor. I didn't think we would see the Pro line get updated this soon, but it sure is nice. The Core Duo is two processors on one chip, and is very fast in speed tests. Now all that is needed is the flood of native software.
MacBook Pro is a lame name. Let me say that again: MacBook Pro is a lame name. How about iBook Pro, or PowerBook Core Duo? Sure the "Power" is gone, (no longer a PowerPC chip) but it has been a PowerBook for so long. Either way, it was a nice "one more thing" ending to this year's keynote.
In time, the MacBook Pro name will grow on me. Still, PowerBook Duo 2 would be a fun name, and a nice nod to the original Duo. It wouldn't make much sense, but that is beside the point. I am sure Apple thought long and hard on the name, and MacBook Pro was the best one. The iBook will likely become just MacBook.
Also on the hardware front is the Intel based iMac - sans the "G5" part. This comes with a 2.0 Ghz Intel Core Duo. Not a big surprise. Jobs himself announced the introduction of Intel based Macs in 2006. It is not often hardware is ahead of schedule however; the original announcement was for June 2006.
This also means that the Mac OS X is running on Intel hardware - and is stable enough for public consumption. This is only a good thing, as more and more developers will be making Universal Binaries. Just like the transition to PowerPC, this transition to Intel is going to be rocky for the "Pro" Mac users. The general use Mac audience is going to be the first to benefit once again.
Article comments
1 - Aaman
Apple's seems to have run out of innovation cojones for the iPod - the big announcement was a remote
The Intel chips means Apple has a second (third? nth?) chance to standardize motherboards and chipsets, as well as open up to third-party makers, a la the IBM PC - too bad it's at the end of the PC age.
2 - Ken Edwards
I really doubt we will see standard motherboards. The chipset from Intel seems like a good bet to be standard, but I think the motherboard is still going to be good old proprietary Apple.