Rumours had been circulating for months about the goodies that Apple might unveil at this week's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco. A new professional Mac? The new OS X 10.5 operating system, known as Leopard? What about a new iPod? Or perhaps even, some speculated, the appearance of an iPhone.
By the time Apple chief executive Steve Jobs took the stage to deliver his presentation, the frenzy of excitement which usually surrounds his keynote speeches was again in evidence: a hall thronged with journalists and fans, while hundreds of thousands of enthusiasts gathered online to try and keep up with announcements. In the end, though, they got what they expected and no more.
The crowds at WWDC are, by the event's nature, Mac developers, and Monday's announcements were squarely aimed at the professional user. The centrepiece product was the high-level desktop Mac, the Mac Pro.
Based around a pair of dual-core Intel Xeon (Woodcrest) processors, Apple is not joking when it calls this the fastest Mac ever: the quad core machine can run at up to 3GHz, and its 64-bit Core 2 Duo architecture means that it's future-proofed for some time yet.
"Today the Power Mac is going to fade into history," said Jobs.
The built-to-order Mac Pro should operate at up to twice the speed of a Power Mac G5, according to Apple, and includes eight FB-DIMM memory slots, support for nVidia and ATI graphics processors, along with space for four hard drives and a pair of optical drives. It will also be backed up by a new version of the company's server product, Xserve.
The "standard" Mac Pro set up will set you back £1,699 including VAT. American buyers get the same for $2,499, which works out at just over £1,300 before any sales taxes.
Cheese grater look preserved
But although the interior may be radically different, nothing seems to have changed on the outside. Just as the iMac switched to Intel without ditching its form, so the old PowerMac "cheese grater" look has been used for the new Mac Pro with only a few tweaks. Why has Apple, a company that prides itself on innovative design, stuck with old styling? Observers say it is partly to assuage the fears of the hardcore Mac faithful, and partly because the design works - it is, after all, the same basic shell that has been banging around Cupertino for years.
There wasn't just hardware on show: Apple also previewed a selection of features from Leopard, the latest incremental version of the now five-year-old OS X system.
In what surely counts as a case of preaching to the choir, Leopard was trailed with a selection of Microsoft-taunting slogans ("Microsoft has a cat, too. A copycat," "Hasta la vista, Vista" and "Redmond, start your photocopiers" were among the jibes which might prompt the company to start thinking about hiring some new copywriters). The idea, for those unable to spot the campaign's subtle approach, was to point out that Microsoft's long-delayed Vista - which is not expected to reach consumers until after Christmas - has many features that OS X rolled out years ago.
True enough, many of the "breakthrough" developments heralded by Vista are already standard in OS X, and Mac fans have a right to crow about such advantages. But some were left wondering whether a return to Apple's old-fashioned competitor baiting is really a productive strategy - especially considering the fact that Boot Camp, which allows users to dual boot OS X and Windows on the same Mac, has proved so successful that Apple will include it in all copies of Leopard.
Building virutal desk tops
But this is just a small part of the changes afoot in the new version of the core operating system. The headline features of Leopard revolve around a handful of ideas new to the Mac platform.
Time Machine, an automated backup system, is set to take care of the enduring problem of users who fail to back up their data. Running constantly in the background, the system keeps track of changes, and should allow users to recover deleted or corrupted files, as well as rebuild their machine as it was at a specific point in time.
Another major development is Spaces, a way of building virtual desktops for running groups of applications. Users can split their machine into different desktop clusters - particularly useful as a way of handling multiple windows inside OS X. While virtual desktops are already standard on many other machines, Spaces seems well designed and put together.
There were other new features unveiled, too. Developers and users will find it easier to build new Dashboard widgets, there will be better integration of Spotlight search functions, and extra facilities for Mail and iChat. Other special features, said Jobs, were being kept under wraps - in case they end up in Vista.
But despite all the talk, this product is not yet ready. Leopard, said Jobs, is due to arrive next spring, though given Apple's penchant for setting deadlines that can be beaten, it would be no surprise to see it unleashed by next January's MacWorld conference, in San Francisco.
Those expecting anything more were disappointed. Privately, Apple had already scotched chatter of any new consumer-level releases, and given the niche audience of developers, the gossip of new iPods and iTunes products seemed premature.
The real triumph, of course, is that the event marked the last part of Apple's switch to Intel chips.
With the Mac Pro, Apple has put the final pieces of the Intel puzzle into place and, despite a few casualties along the way, has completed the transition inside 14 months without much of a hitch.
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