Apple Opens WWDC with Tiger-Sized OS X Improvements

The most visible clues to the contrary are the enormous black banners displaying the new Tiger OS 10.4 software. The pithy copy reading "This should keep Redmond Busy," and "Introducing Longhorn," make clear Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) intention with their latest point upgrade -- Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) , eat dust.

Rock-Star Jobs

The atmosphere in the auditorium is (if cornily) thick as a rock show the moments before Jobs takes the stage, and the performance that follows is choreographed to the second. In signature jeans and black t-shirt, Jobs begins the keynote speaking of Apple's success to date.

"There are now 3,500 registered developers in 44 countries [on Apple's Unix-based OS] -- some countries I didn't even know existed," Jobs jokes.

Jobs continues by boasting that Apple has opened 80 retail stores in the past three years and sold a quarter-of-a-billion third-party products just in the last 12 months.

"So if you have a product and it's not in our store, let's talk," Jobs says to the SRO crowd.

Praise the Apple

Jobs goes on to praise the work the company has done in gaining shares of the music industry with the introduction of iTunes Europe and iPod's continued dominance over the MP3 player market, now earning over 50 percent of the world market.

Plus, he points out, there's now AirTunes for the home stereo, and if you can afford one of those shiny Beemers, no more messy tape adaptors for iPod motorists.

Jobs laments that the company hasn't yet reached the 3-Ghz processor mark, although he noted that the dual-2.5 G5s still run circles around the fastest PC. Bummer news aside, with the push of a button, voila, the much rumored all-aluminum displays rose magically from the floor. Sleek, spatially efficient, with dual-USB and dual-FireWire connections, these new displays come in the usual 20- and 23-inch sizes.

But there's more. As Jobs put it, today is huge day for big -- or something like that -- it's hard to pay attention to quotes when you're staring at a 30-inch display that can illuminate 4.1 million pixels. There is one catch though. The 30-inch requires a new graphics card , the Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA) GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL, which only runs on the Power Mac G5s.

Taking Tiger Mountain by Spotlight

From there follows a litany of software developers who take the stage to show their stuff. There's an impressive demonstration of a new virtual guitar studio app for iTunes called Guitar Rig that emulates various classic amps and pedals. The beautiful new Myst 4 Revelation is demonstrated, and developers at Maya announce that finally their industry-standard 3D software is ready for OS X.

But the most captivating software showcased Monday is Apple's upcoming OS 10.4, or "Tiger." Set for release in early 2005, the new 64-bit OS has over 150 new features, of which Jobs tackles a handful for the audience.

He starts with Tiger's Spotlight Search Technology, a new search app that will more or less replace the Finder. Spotlight works like the search function in iTunes. By integrating search bars into individual apps, and one into the menu bar, keeping track of files and folders is now a relative cinch.

For instance, one can type in "Paris" into the menu Spotlight, and up comes every file that relates to the query, from e-mails to address-book entries to Microsoft Word documents to movies that were filmed in the City of Lights.

"It can read the copyrights," Jobs points out. Searches can be streamlined specifically (like all JPEGs with the title "dog" and only those saved in CMYK). Queries also can be saved in smart folders that automatically update.

QuickTime Safari Dashboard

QuickTime's new codec, H.264, then gets a showing. Ratified for the next generation of HD-DVD players, H.264 is the first fully scalable codec. It can go from high-definition to 3G cell phones, producing four times the resolution at the same data rate as MPEG4. After some deserved gloating, developer Frank Cassanova challenges Windows Media Player to "bring it on."

Next comes Safari's RSS, but not as much clapping for this one, taking a wait-and-see attitude toward its claims to refine Googling.

Adding to Panther's Core Audio, Tiger also will include core-video and core-imaging functions that can do many of Photoshop's and Motion's functions in real time. Hundreds of filters are included and layers can be manipulated without any loss of information. It's rather stunning -- must be that new Nvidia card.

Jobs then rolled out Dashboard, a handy app described as "Expose for widgets" -- In other words, smaller apps like the calculator, stickies, clock and so forth can pop up in a second and disappear in a second so they don't get in the way of whatever one considers "real work."

iChat also sees impressive improvements in Tiger. Now 10 people can simultaneously conduct an audio chat, while as many as three now can communicate together using H.264-enhanced video, sporting a cool 3D triptych-like GUI.

For the developers, probably Tiger's most nifty application is Automator, a scripting program that even made some sense to a nondeveloper like myself. With hundreds of actions already built in, scripts can be written, stacked and saved for later use.

Now, if I only I could script my crappy old VW into a BMW...