MWSF 2005

It's been a whirlwind this week.

San Francisco is once again a venue for innovations and new releases from Apple.

Yeah, yeah. I'm a Mac-phile. A Mac addict. An Applehead.

And yes, I was one of the few percent of the population of this earth that watched Jobs's Keynote 2005 via webcast. Not live though.

(It's 1:16AM and I'm a bit tired so I'll try to make this quick and short)

I saw the Keynote 2005 and I was excited with the new products that Apple top honcho, Steve Jobs, introduced. Not exactly mind blowing but it's enough to make me stick with Apple.

First were the softwares. Jobs introduced iLife 05 and iWorks 05.

iLife 05 is a media suite that allows you to view and edit movies, burn DVDs, and record music. iWorks 05 features two (only two?!?) applications: Pages and Keynote. Keynote is upgraded to version 2 and Jobs said there are added features of this and that. I couldn't related since I don't use Keynote but some at PinoyMac seemed really excited.

The other app in iWorks is Pages, touted to go up against Microsoft Word but some say it's more like Pagemaker than Word.

John Mayer went onstage to perform and demonstrate Garageband.

But the more interesting stuffs were the hardware.

Jobs introduce the Mac Mini; Apple's entry into the foray of "low priced" computers. The Mac Mini is supposed to be targeted to switchers and to those who would like to have it as a second or third computer at home. It's also said that it is targeting the iPod users who are using Windows. At any rate, $499 seems cheap to those in the US but when it was made known that it will be available here the basic Mac Mini will cost 38,000 pesos! But it comes with a 3 year warranty. Still, 38,000 pesos is probably too much. I know I can get a good PC clone at 38,000 pesos.

The second ware hardware that was announced was: (drumroll) the iPod Shuffle. The much rumored, lawsuit associated flash iPod was true after all! This was Jobs's "One more thing..."

As small as a pack of Juicy Fruits and probably weighs less than a pack of Juicy Fruits, it is sold in 512MB and 1GB and priced at $99 and $149, respectively.

A lot of people will complain that the Shuffle doesn't have any screen. It doesn't have an FM tuner. It doesn't have WiFi. Ok, the WiFi is too much but I know people will find faults with this thing. I know I did. But after hearing Steve Jobs explain the concept behind the design and the name I was sold.

The name "iPod Shuffle" comes from the feature in iTunes and in iPods that allows you to randomly play music. Apple decided that on such a small device an LCD screen would probably be near useless and according to their research most people actually don't bother using the screen. Hence, the Shuffle was born.

With slogans like "Life is Random", "Give Chance A Chance", "240 Songs. A million different ways", and "The unpredicatable new member of the iPod family", Apple main selling point is that the iPod Shuffle is to be used to play your [b]favorite[/b] tracks randomly. Something new every minute. You can of course skip through your playlist by using the controls but Shuffle is about letting it decide what to play for you. It has a click wheel that let's you control volume, play or pause, and skip songs.

More on my thoughts on MWSF 2005, the softwares and the hardwares. Gotta sleep.