As many of you know I am an Apple computer fan. So todays keynote by Steve Jobs at Macworld was something that I was eagerly awaiting. One of the big announcements last year was that  Apple would be moving to Intel based processors this year. Currently they are using IBM processors and in the past they have used Motorola processors, this move to a mainstream chip maker was a big news. There was a lot of speculation that the iBook which is the company’s lowend notebook computer would reap the benefits of the new processors. I personally thought that would of been a good way to go, as it could potentially bring in new customers who have tried the lowend dells notebooks and were looking for something more.

Interestingly enough there wasn’t a webcast of the keynote address as there had been in previous years. So I ended up reading the play by play from the macrumorslive.com site that used an AJAX application to update the page dynamically. So I read the page every sixty seconds when it refreshed to see what announcements had been made. Of course they mentioned the iPod which is Apple’s bread and butter. In the fourth quarter of 2005 they sold 16 million of them. They announced a new FM module for the iPod which is something that it has kind of needed for a while now. I know not everyone thinks that it was needed, but for someone like myself that doesn’t watch much TV and rides the train to and from work, getting some news through an FM station would be nice from time to time. However this wasn’t the part of the keynote I was really interested in, I wanted to hear about the new hardware/computers that would be switching to the Intel platform and how they planned on dealing with the applications that were written for the PowerPC platform.  So lets talk about the software first and then we’ll move to the hardware.

In the software arena Apple has introduced a couple of things that should make the Intel/PowerPC based applications easier to deal with. First they have created what they call the “Universal”.  This allows applications to be written in such a way that they will run happily on both the Intel and PowerPC platforms. Currently Apple doesn’t have a lot on there site about it, but I’ll take a look at the developer site and see if I can’t dig some more information up on it. Secondly they have created an application called “Rosetta”. Apple calls Rosetta “The most amazing software you’ll never see.” As far as I can tell it is a PowerPC emulator for the Intel platform. Of the two I am more interested in Universal. It seems to me that writing applications in Universal broadens the appeal of your application and keep people that just bought a new Mac last year much happier. Now on to the hardware.

I have to admit that I was quite surprised by Apples choice of hardware to revamp. First they retrofitted the iMac with the new Intel core-duo processor. They claim that the machine is now twice as fast as the previous model. However I haven’t been able to tell if the processor is 64 bit or not, which the PowerPC G5 chips are. It does seem like that iMac might just be the right machine to prove that the Intel platform is completely viable. Second is the end of the powerbook line and the start of the MacBook Pro line. It had been a while since the Powerbook got a serious revamp, however discontinuing the line and starting the MacBook seems to be something that was completely unexpected. Apple claims that new MacBook to be 4 times faster then the previous Powerbook. It has the same streamline design as the powerbook just now with the Intel Core Duo Mobile processor. Of all of the features added to the new notebook I’d have to say the one that grabs my attention the most is the MagSafe PowerCord connection. Now the power cord is magnetically connected to the computer so if someone trips over the cord, it is pops out not damaging the computer.  While the new hardware is always exciting, we will have to wait and see if it performs as promised.