What a week. This wrap-up is a general comprehensive look at the past week's Macworld Conference and Expo. I won't be covering the products in detail here as I hope to put out a Podcast in the next couple of days to go into detail on the new products.
All in all, I must say that it was one of the most incredible weeks I have had in a long time, as well as one of the most frustrating weeks.
Hey everyone. Wow. Today has been an incredible day. To have the opportunity to cover the Keynote in person was amazing. But more amazing were the people I met today. This is one serious networking event for all Macheads. Forget the fact that I was able to personally meet the likes of Phil Schiller, Jonathan Ives, and countless other Apple celebs, but the absolute highlight was getting the chance to meet 2 people that I feel I have known for ever. When you spend as much time geeking out in the technology world as I do, some names and faces just seem synonymous with the tech crowd. A couple of those people are Laura Burstein and Desmond Crisis. They were totally cool and real. I enjoyed getting the chance to spend some 1 on 1 time with both of them. They were a trip. Maybe I'll get a chance to hang out with them some more at the party tomorrow.
I had originally planned to do out first podcast tonight, but man - this place is exhausting!!! There is just waaaay to much to do and see. I will try to get that podcast in sometime this week, and it will cover everything to date. Stay tuned for more!
Keynote coverage delayed since the WiFi and GPRS signals everywhere were blocked. But here it is!!!!
Spotlight:Talking about Spolight wannabe's like Google and MSN. Demo of spotlight, pretty darn slick! Spotlight is FAST. Amazing what this new feature can do. Searching over 100,000 images from Corbis that are loaded on the Mac. It searches the drive for metadata as well. OOOOPS! Demo poooped, Steve flawlessly switches to his backup system. Crowd cheers! Ouch, another app crash, but nothing major, he keeps truckin through the demo. Finder: Smart folders absolutely kick ass. Searching capabilities rule. WOW, new screensaver that can grab images like album art and make a screen saver out of all of them.
Mail: Mail is integrated with Spolight. LIghtning fast searching through emails. Smart mailboxes from Spotlight integrated into Mail. Wowsa, new slideshow button integrated into mail windows. Clicking will show you all images in the email as a slideshow right within Mail. You can automatically add the photos from Mail into iPhoto. INCREDIBLE integration with the system apps.
Quicktime 7: QT6 has had over 330M copies downloaded. 98% downloaded to WINDOWS clients. Live resizing, MPEG4 compliance, 24ch surround sound, full HD play. H.264 codec adopted by Blu-Ray and HD DVD. AMAZING picture quality, on screen controls. Steve playing an HD movie. Resizing and scaling on the fly without a hitch. F L A W L E S S . Sound quality in U N R E A L. This is going to REVOLUTIONIZE the video industry.
Dashboard: a place for widgets to live. showing off the widgets - AWESOME! Widget tool bar pops up under the main dock. UNBELIEVABLE widgets. Steve showing off the widgets live. Just an amazing amount of widgets that have actual REAL every day functionality. This is going to be HUGE. Konfabulator will never see this kind of integration and functionality. The integration with the OS is just rockin.
iChat: Made it even better for Tiger. Extended audio conf. to 10 people, video added multi-party conf. with 4 people using H.264 compression. Live demo: WOW - full screen looks AMAZING. Reflections below the participants on the tabletop are realtime. This is incredible.
Introducing FInal Cut Express HD: Priced at $299 ($99 upgrade) and available in Feb. 2005 the year of HD video editing.
iLife '05: Major upgrades of all apps.
iPhoto - Better organizing & searching, more formats, more powerful editing, Added project folders. Added calendar view. Supports MPEG4 movies. Supports RAW format native. Editing is much nicer, pics run across the top and added an editing dashboard. SWEEET! Almost a mini-Photoshop within iPhoto. CRAZY level of editing options. Advanced slide shows. New way to make books. Live Demo: Searching & organizing capabilities are improved dramatically. Editing of the images is just insanely easy. Ablility to straighten photos is amazing, grid pops up on screen and you can make the image level to the horizon or anything else. Slide shows kick ass. New transition looks like a water ripple is sweet. New book making abilities are impressive. WAY more advanced than previous versions. You can order photos from iPhoto for only $.19 a print (half the previous price). Books can be ordered 8.5x11, 8x6 or 3.5x4 in both hard cover or soft cover.
iMovie: Dramatically faster, non-destructive trimming, more transitions, mpeg4, magic iMovie, HD support. Live Demo: running HD movie right from a camera through iMovie. AMAZING picture and sound quality. Images are unbelievably life like. Demoing new SONY HD Prosumer camera FX1. HOLY JEEPERS!!! Introducing President of SONY: Kunitake Ando!!! Kunitake is praising and commending Apple and Steve Jobs saying how much admiration he has for Steve. This is amazing folks, history in the making. Kunitake cracking a joke about Apple just sticking to software apps. :-) Crowd is laughing. Kunitake wants to work together with Apple on making HD the standard format for the future. Kunitake struggling with the English language, but making his point well heard. Even cracking jokes about making products with lower prices.
iDVD: 15 new themes. Animated drop zones. 1 step DVD creation. Supports ALL DVD formats. Live Demo: New themes are smokin hot. Moving video within video. Fantastic! Better than most Hollywood DVD's!!!
Garage Band: Covering the Jam Packs. Introducing "Orchestral Instruments" Jam Pack. Up to 8 track recording, real-time music notation, pitch and timing fixing, recorded tracks are now as flexible as software instruments and loops, create your own loops, vocal transformer. Introducing John Mayer to demo Garage Band!!!!! Demoing music notation. OMG! This is like having Finale inside Garage Band! This is absolutely incredible. John Mayer crackin a joke about not winning a Grammy for playing the piano. Crowd cheers. Now they are fixing notes manually by dragging them up and down the notation scale. WOW. Coolness. John Mayer about to start jammin on the Guitar. OH YEAH BABY! ROCKIN!!!! He is playing Neon. Recording live 2 guitars and vocals into Garage Band!!!! WOOOOT!!!! Crowd is rippin and cheering. 4 tracks recorderd LIVE. Playback is flawless. Now soloing and muting tracks to demo GB. That was awesome. Absolutely rockin. Priced at $79. On sales Jan. 22, 2005. FREE on all new Mac's.
iTunes: no updates. Sold more than 230M songs to date. Selling at 1.25M songs per day. iTunes at 70% market share. 15 countries. 70% of global music market. Sold over a million prepaid cards since Thanksgiving. iTunes Essentials has been retooled.
What a Keynote! Some of the media were actually not allowed to sit at the main event, and were crammed into a room with a video feed. Yours truly was in fact up front and personal. Jaron, that son of a gun, got 2nd row seats thanks to a buddy that procured the seat for us. Some of the famous faces in attendance were Al Gore, Robin Williams (the comedian), the usual Apple Executives, and some dreamy folks like Laua Burstein. Overall, it was one hell of a keynote. On my way to the show floor to get some more juicy video and interviews. Stay tuned! I will be uploading Day 2 pics and maybe even some video teasers later tonight. Cya!
So here we are, FINALLY! Jaron and I arrived early this morning at the Moscone Center to pick up our credentials. All was looking GOOD and life couldn't be better except for a few glitches. Having media access definitely has it's perks. However, it also has it's downside. As media, we get full access to pretty much everything at the conference (except Hands-On sessions). The catch is that if a conference or session is sold out, we can't get into that either. So being the super-nerd techie Systems Engineer that I am, I wanted to attend todays Power Tools Session on Mac OS X Server Advanced Administration. Guess, what? SOLD OUT. Hence, I am hosed. There were other sessions that were sold out as well. Only a few of the creative sessions are still open. I went to the Dreamweaver session and almost fell asleep. I can't handle that all day.
Those pranksters @ the Joy of Tech are at it again!!!
http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/636.html
Hey folks,
So I am finally in San Francisco after an exhausting day of travel. It has been an interesting day to say the least, but it all seems trivial at this point. I have finally arrived at Macworld!!! Just about to get my 2nd wind and head out for some of that famous asian cuisine.
Among today's more interesting events, I finally sat next to someone on a plane that I could actually hold a decent conversation with. I had the fortunate pleasure to sit next to a gentleman by the name of Scott Mace, an independent tech writer, editor and audio interviewer. When I sat down, I had placed my Moveable Type 3 Bible (by Rodgers Cadenhead), on the seat in-between us. Scott glanced at it and mentioned he was a TypePad user. What are the odds of running into another blogger on a plane? I guess these days it's pretty good if you are flying into SFO. We also started talking about PodCasting. Strangely enough, we happened to listen to the same PodCasts, Adam Curry's Daily Source Code among one of them.
Amazing how in such a big world, something like blogging and podcasting can have such a tremendous effect on building relationships with people you don't even know. It truly does make the planet feel a lot smaller. I look forward to keeping in-touch with my new-found blogger buddy. Bloggers of the world must unite! Maybe we could actually take over the world (or at least put some common sense into it). :-)
Hey folks...just wanted to make a final post before heading out to Macworld in San Francisco. Gonna be airborne all day tomorrow, hopefully we won't hit the bad weather. I would like to remind you to make sure you check in every day for the latest and greatest updates straight from the Macworld floor! At then end of the day, my colleague (Jaron Brass) and I will be putting together a podcast full of Mac goodness. Gonna be a great week!!! Let the fun begin...
Hi everyone. In anticipation of the increased traffic, I have created a feedburner account to better manage the site. If you are using an RSS News Aggregator (such as Pulp Fiction, Net News Wire, etc), please change your Bisonium.com feed to http://feeds.feedburner.com/bisonium immediately. Thanks!
Thanks to the Unofficial Apple Weblog for the great tip!
Free Sampler Album from Apple:
Apple is offering a free iTunes New Music Sampler to iPod owners and users of the iTunes Music Store (an iTunes Music Store account is required).
Some people think that you have to restore your iPod to factory settings in order to get this sampler but you, gentle readers, need not go through the pain of erasing your iPod’s contents and resyncing. This direct link to the album only requires one click, so what are you waiting for, go get it (this link will open iTunes).
The sampler currently features the following songs and artists from Universial Music:
I have downloaded the tracks, but I haven’t listened to them, so proceed at your own risk.
There are just some things in life that people must take a stand on. Big business playing dirty is one of them. It appears that Monster Cable, makers of those ridiculously expensive audio and video cables for your home entertainment systems, is on a legal rampage. Someone forgot to send their attorneys to the class on trademark law.
Monster has recently been filing lawsuits against pretty much any company that uses the name "monster" in their product, regardless of whether that company or product is competing in the same space. How someone can confuse the movie Monster's Inc. with Monster Cable is beyond me, but that is what is happening folks. They are going after companies big and small. Companies such as Disney can afford to do legal battle with Monster, but the little mom and pop shops cannot. This is just one more example of our legal system gone wrong. It is time that these big business bullies be taught a lesson.
What needs to happen is for the judicial system to not only toss out every one of the cases that are frivolous, but to file charges against the company for filing such a frivolous lawsuit in the first place, and wasting tax payers money. Penalties should not only include the legal and court costs, but carry a sentence of no less than 90 days confinement in a nice state penitentiary for the CEO and legal staff. Suspension from their state bar would be a good bonus for the attorneys as well. If we stepped up to the plate and responded to these lawsuits in this fashion, I can guarantee you that companies the likes of SCO would think very hard before filing their lawsuits.
For the time being however, it is my recommendation that you - the people, stand up against this ridiculous company in the form of boycotting their product. Help the little guy trying to make a living survive and stand up for your rights.
From our buddies at Engadget.com, this is a must have for me. I sure hope it works with a Mac!!!
Uniden 5.8GHz Bluetooth home cordless phone:
Uniden’s ELBT595, in addition to being just your usual cordless phone with Caller ID, speakerphone, and answering machine, pops in Bluetooth capability so you can use your landline with your favorite BT headset. It also has a USB connector with downloadable software included (what it’s for we don’t exactly know), but if you want to walk around your house and look like you’re talking on a cellphone, then this is for you.
[Thanks, Philipe]
Apple has yet AGAIN filed another lawsuit, this time against Think Secret for disclosing trade secrets. Can anyone blame them? Here's what a lot of people just don't understand about WHY Apple keeps things so hush hush. It's actually quite simple and logical if you think about it. Marketing costs money. LOTS of money. When Apple creates the anticipation that surrounds an event like MacWorld, the end result is an enormous amount of PR that would otherwise cost Apple big bucks. Instead, they create the buzz, and in return get huge FREE coverage and huge savings. That all trickles down to the bottom line, which is good for investors and good for Apple. Another downfall to spreading these rumors is that it could have the exact opposite effect. Ex. A lot of people are now EXPECTING a pizza box headless iMac as a result of these rumors. Knowing how fickle Wall Street is, if this turns out to be bogus, the financial world in turn, dumps their Apple stock. NOT good.
The other side of this fence is that when you sign an NDA, you are bound to keep your mouth shut. Otherwise, what is the point? If Apple doesn't pursue the source of these leaks with a vengeance, then other people will eventually divulge information without giving it a second thought. Internal employees know better than to talk (Apple security is quite anal about this during orientation), but on occasion there is an idiot that feels compelled to feel special by bragging about things that nobody else is supposed to know. Whether the source of these leaks is an internal employee or developer is uncertain, but rest assured, they are gonna get hammered when they get discovered. Sux to be them...
Well folks, it is almost that time of year again - Macworld San Francisco!!! The rumor mills are in full effect with Mac sites across the globe reporting everything from an iPhone to a pizza-box headless iMac. We've all been bitten by those false rumors before (Apple PDA anyone?) but one can only speculate and wish for some of these rumors to be true.
Whatever happens, you can count on two things: 1) Macworld will be better than ever this year with a BUNCH of new and exciting products. 2) Bisonium.com will be bringing you daily reports live from the Mac World floor. We will be there in full force to report on everything from the Keynote address to the seminars, to the expo. Make sure you check the site DAILY for the latest news during Macworld. Also be on the lookout for the first ever Bisonium.com podcast which will be a combined tag-team effort with my colleague, Jaron Brass. It should be an exciting show and we are looking forward to bringing you the best the show has to offer.
Big news in the Apple world. Looks like we have several things to rave about today. The first is a nice new G5 Xserve sporting dual 64-bit 2.3 GHz PowerPC G5 processors with over 35 gigaflops of processing power per system and the industry's fastest front side 1U server system bus, running at up to 1.15 GHz, providing up to 9.2 GBps of bandwidth per processor and up to three 400GB drives, achieving a groundbreaking 1.2TB of hot-plug storage. Whew! Talk about a run-on sentence!
To accompany this new bad boy, Apple finally decided to ship XSan, a high performance, enterprise class Storage Area Network (SAN) file system priced at the industry's most aggressive price point of $999 per client and per server. Pretty tight indeed.
And most surprising - price reductions on Apple Cinema Displays! The 20-inch Cinema Display and 30-inch Cinema Display HD are now US$999 and $2,999 respectively, $300 less. The 23-inch Cinema Display HD also got a price reduction -- it's now $1,799, $200 less.
Xserve [Apple]
Cinema Displays [Apple]
Happy New Year!
New Year, updated blog. As many of you know, I had temporarily stopped blogging last year. There is a long story behind that which is just too long to get into. Lets just suffice to say that some people and companies in general are clueless about technology and can't seem to understand the benefits that something like blogging can bring to an organization.
Well, this is MY blog, and I publish on MY own time (just as I did before). Therefore, I am re-instating the blog and making some radical new changes to how and what we publish. If you have a problem with it or don't like it - TOO BAD. Deal with it or stop visiting the site.
I will continue to bring you up to date on the newest and coolest news in the blogsphere as usual. The biggest change will be in commentary. Where possible, I will try to not simply just repost what you can find everywhere else, but rather interject some insight that may have been missed by the original publisher, or completely original content when possible.
The other major change will be some more in-depth coverage of topics in the Mac community. Specifically covering things on a more technical Systems Engineer level. We will occasionally be bringing you new technologies and applications to help in your daily routine, as well as answering some of those more difficult questions that you may have been wondering about.
I am also currently evaluating the possibility of creating a weekly PodCast for your listening enjoyment. I find PodCasting to be extremely useful and beneficial, especially when you are short on time and can't read the blog every day, you can use that down-time in the car to catch-up on everything. Stay tuned for more updates on the PodCast.
That pretty much covers it folks. I hope you enjoy the site and keeping checking back often as I will be updating the look and feel and implementing new things on a constant basis. I am going to try and re-open the commenting abilities and see what happens. If the comment spam gets too unbearable again, we will have to deal with it at that time. For now, feel free to comment! If you have suggestions, as always, please feel free to .
