Going into this year's Macworld Expo SF, the question on everybody's mind was: How will Steve Jobs pull it off?
Last quarter, Jobs first had to face dismal sales of his latest pet project, the PowerMac G4 Cube. Then he announced Apple's first losing quarter since he began his tenure as CEO in 1997. If he wanted to assuage fears that Apple was entering another period of decline, analysts warned, Jobs would need to drop some serious bombshells at Macworld.
In terms of total concussive power, however, Jobs' Tuesday keynote speech seemed less like an all-out rocket attack than an artful fireworks display: interesting, yet difficult to interpret. I, for one, went away from the event with as many questions as answers — questions not just about Apple and its strategy, but also about the future of the computer industry as a whole.
A real coup for Macworld might have come in the form of a surprise early release for the Mac OS X, Apple's much-anticipated Unix-based operating system. But no such luck.
There was in fact a significant operating system update released for Macworld: Mac OS 9.1. This latest iteration of Apple's current OS introduces a few minor features, along with improved overall stability. It was available on Apple's servers shortly following Jobs' Tuesday Macworld keynote.
But surprisingly, throughout his talk Jobs made no mention of OS 9.1. Instead, he opened his keynote with his standard OS X demo, retreading the usual UI features and stopping only periodically to point out the latest gizmos that had made it into recent builds.
Make no mistake, the new operating system shows a lot of promise. But despite Jobs' announcement of an official March release date, this retread of the same OS X road show we've been seeing for the past year only served to underscore the fact that the real thing still ain't here yet.
More wasted effort: Jobs devoted a lengthy segment of his address to iTunes, Apple's new music software. Available as a free download from Apple's site, iTunes offers MP3 playback, streaming and encoding, as well as a graphical "lightshow" to accompany the music.
In other words, it's an MP3 player. We've seen similar players for years, and not just on Windows, either. The Mac has them, too. In fact, an examination of iTunes reveals that much of its code seems to have been borrowed from SoundJam MP, one of the more popular existing Mac OS players.
Since it's free, it's sure to be appreciated. But why spend 15 minutes talking about an application that otherwise isn't really all that distinguishable from its competitors? What's so special about an MP3 player?
Jobs picked up the proceedings again, however, with an undisputed gem: Apple's new laptop. Fast, sleek and light, with a titanium case and a DVD-ROM drive that loads like a car stereo, the PowerBook G4 seems poised to go head-to-head with Sony's VAIO sub-notebooks.
There were new, faster PowerMac G4 desktop machines announced, as well. And in answer to the critics, all of them will be able to burn CDs right out of the box.
To enhance this new capability, Jobs unveiled new user-friendly CD burning software, both for data and audio discs (the latter a component of iTunes). With these efforts, Apple seems to have achieved the goal of making CD media as easy to use as floppy disks.
One problem — you'll need to buy a new PowerMac to do it. So far the software won't work with any third-party drives. And don't expect to use the PowerBook G4 either; no CD-RW option will be available for those machines. (Why not?)
Casting a further cloud over the release of the new PowerMacs, Jobs warned that the fastest of the new chips — the 733 MHz PowerPC G4 — would be in short supply. That means that, while some models are available immediately, the high-end Macintosh is likely to be heavily backordered when it finally ships in February.
And that's too bad. Because here's where Jobs' speech really started to get interesting.
One of the features of the new top-of-the-line Mac is a unique peripheral, a genuine industry first. Teaming up with Pioneer, Apple plans to ship its systems with a new type of drive, one Jobs calls the "Superdrive." Not only does it read CDs and DVDs, it also writes both CD-RWs and DVD-R discs.
That's right, DVD-R. As CD-R is to the audio CD, DVD-R is to the DVD. It's a medium you can write to on your computer, then play back in any consumer DVD player.
And it gets better. Jobs announced that every Mac equipped with a Superdrive would ship with a copy of iDVD, an amazing new software package from Apple that makes authoring DVDs as simple as drag-and-drop. Drag a Quicktime movie into iDVD, burn it, and in can be played from the resulting disc at a click of the remote. Or, drag across a folder full of digital still images, and you've got an instant slide show.
It's like desktop publishing for video — and it's all part of Apple's new vision. (And after all, in this depressed PC marketplace, vision is what it's all about. Somebody's got to have one.)
The Apple of 2001 sees its Macs in a new role, one Steve Jobs terms a "digital hub." Digital video, digital cameras, PDAs and digital stereos: With a host of new digital consumer electronics products now on the market, the only device uniquely suited to act as go-between for all of them, Jobs reasons, is the personal computer. And in that market, consumer-oriented Apple is uniquely positioned to take a leadership role.
Sounds good. For Apple, this seems as solid an idea as any upon which to build a future.
Of course, it remains to be seen whether there's truly a mass audience for home-brewed DVD movies. But Jobs' announcements Tuesday had me thinking about something else, as well.
Right now, anyone in the entertainment industry will tell you we're in the middle of the biggest intellectual property crisis in history. Napster is still in court, but MP3 is here to stay. And you can bet the movie industry is sweating bullets hoping that what's going on in the music industry doesn't come to bite them next.
That's the popular wisdom, anyway.
But now, consider Steve Jobs. Not only is he CEO of Apple Computer, but he also runs Pixar, a top-grossing movie studio with ties to the Disney Corporation. I can't imagine he'd plan any strategy that would anger his friends in the entertainment industry the way Napster has done.
So maybe I'm way off base here — but I'm a little stunned. Did Apple really just announce not just MP3 software, but also platform-wide CD burners, and the industry's first cost-efficient means of copying DVD movies, all on the same day?
What does it all mean, Steve?
