Apple Reporter

Apple Inc today announced the completely redesigned, “greener”, iMac in a presentation to journalists at its campus in Cupertino, California.

The company reduced the number of screen choices from three to two. iMac is now available in 20″ and 24″ versions, priced starting at $1,199 and $1,799, respectively. The new iMac is encased in a single piece of brushed aluminum, with only a single screw visible on the exterior, used for memory module upgrades. Glass is also used in abundance, making the machines “highly recyclable,” according to a statement by Steve Jobs.

Included also is the new Apple slim aluminum keyboard, with a thickness of just .33 inches at its base. A redesigned Apple Wireless Keyboard was also announced.

The new iMac can be configured with up to 1 terabyte of internal storage and up to 4 gig of RAM. 802.11n WiFi, capable of transfer speeds up to 5 times that of 802.11g , iSight camera, five USB ports, Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire 400/800 ports are included standard.

With all of the performance and feature enhancements mentioned, the design of the machine stands alone among any competing machine on the market, appearing more like a centerpiece on a desk than a personal computer. The company’s use of recyclable materials such as glass and aluminum highlight the company’s continued focus on “cleaning up” the historically un-environmentally friendly business of computer manufacturing. In January, the EPA rated Apple notebooks the most eco-friendly.

The iMac is available immediately through Apple stores and online.

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Microsoft announced another delay of Office 2008, stating the popular suite will be available next year, rather than the second half of this year, as stated in a press release at MacWorld in January. The company cited quality issues for postponing the release, and will miss the crucial holiday buying season as a result.

Since there are few other major software packages remaining to make the jump to Apple’s Universal platform, based on Intel chips (Adobe Creative Suite 3 was the last - and well worth the wait), today’s post will focus on the growing number of free alternatives to MS Office that are gaining ground in terms of functionality and compatibility.

NeoOffice - Based on the Sun-supported OpenOffice.org program, NeoOffice is the closest alternative to MS Office available today. And it’s supported by donations. Although the program opens as a “Suite”, rather than Office, which has standalone Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc. the package has a fairly short learning curve, and offers the highest cross platform compatibility of the major Office alternatives.

ThinkFree Office - ThinkFree office has developed a very functional alternative to the MSOffice, augmenting it with an online version allowing users to create, share and store documents online for free, with up to 1gig of storage. For basic documents, or for users who are hesitant to pony up the several hundred dollars for MS Office, this is a solid alternative. However, certain features of both Word and Excel are not supported by ThinkFree. For example, Track Changes does not translate between Word generated and ThinkFree-edited docs. In addition, I noticed certain formulas generated in Excel do not open in Calc, the ThinkFree spreadsheet program.

Apple iWork - Apple’s Keynote and Pages are excellent alternatives to PowerPoint and Word, in terms of simplicity and features, but they cannot be considered true alternatives to Office. For Mac users giving presentations that will not need to be converted into PowerPoint, Keynote is simply a more elegant way to give a presentation - and the audience will see the difference. Rather than the cluttered, texty orientation of PowerPoint. It will change the way you present. However, when converting to PowerPoint, much of the clean formating and transitions are lost.

In Pages, it’s much the same. Document formatting is much cleaner. The entire interface is more intuitive, even for complex layouts. But documents are saved in .pages formats, and need to be exported to .doc format to be read by Word. Complex formatting almost never transitioned accurately. In addition, Tracked Changes from a Word doc do not translate to Pages, so it is difficult to edit a Word doc in Pages and send it back to a Word user if you want them to see changes. Apple’s next version of iWork, which could be released as early as next week, may solve many of these little compatibility issues that prevent iWork from being used in multi-platform environments.

So why wait for Office ‘08? If system slowdowns and crashes of Office 2004 have you at your wits end, try one of the low-cost alternatives. Although there are quirks in most of them, most provide a reliable, fast alternative to the bloated incumbent productivity suite.

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Apple is inviting members of the media to an event at its One Infinite Loop campus August 7 at 10am. Members of the media did not receive the usual white email, but instead were called by Apple spokespeople.

Speculation is rampant that Apple will use this event to announce new iMacs, and possibly the new version of iLife. Touch screen iPods, perhaps?

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Apple Inc reported yesterday that sales of Macintosh desktop and laptop computers were up 33 percent over the same period last year, delivering over 1.7 million units in the company’s third quarter. This is in addition to the 9.8 million iPods the company sold during the same period, an increase of 21 percent from a year ago, according to a press release on the Apple web site.

The positive news comes on the heels of a disappointing first weekend of iPhone activations, which send the company’s stock into a downfall, losing almost 6 percent in a single trading session. Some estimates had pegged activations as high as 500,000 in the first weekend of availability, starting June 29th. However, AT&T announced last week that number was actually closer to 150,000.

In the same press release, Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO stated, “iPhone is off to a great start—we hope to sell our one-millionth iPhone by the end of its first full quarter of sales—and our new product pipeline is very strong.”

Posted by Leigh Fatzinger OnMessage Blog

From Ideum in Corrales, NM, a clever new app called RSS Mixer that enables users to combine up to 10 RSS feeds into a single feed, viewable as a web site, web widget, Apple dashboard widget, or iPhone optimized page. Below is an example of the dashboard widget version which combines a few RSS feeds (including Apple Reporter) into a nice clean view of recent posts. Click here to see the web view of the feed. The iPhone optimized version has a very similar view, and loads and scrolls through feeds quickly.

RSS Mixer is still in prototype mode, so expect a few bugs. That said, the few Mixes I attempted performed well, on all supported formats.

The much anticipated WWDC is here, and Steve Jobs made one of many cool announcements: a new animated OS for apple. The software he used to illustrate the point, a disc burning software named Disco, blows smoke while it burns. Why is that cool? Because if you blow into your Mac’s built in microphone the smoke blows across your desktop. It’s not only animated, it’s reactive animation. Very cool.

At the annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Jobs will probably show off Leopard, a Mac OS X update due in October that he has promised contains “top secret” features. But perhaps the most important feature is one that has been overlooked by many Apple fans: a new set of tools for building program interfaces called Core Animation.

I can’t wait until Monday for the official unveiling of the rest of the features. Look to Apple Reporter to get the scoop.

Source

UPDATE: THIS CONTEST HAS BEEN CANCELLED.

I am creating a new masthead for Apple Reporter. That little “talking bubble” is getting so passé now that Apple Reporter is gathering momentum (and readers) don’t you think? There are some guidelines to follow, of course, and a deadline, and of course, prizes! So what’s the scoop? (more…)

Who has the industry clout to bring Steve Jobs and Bill Gates together for an appearance on stage in what is an industry first? The Wall Street Journal, apparently. Their columnist, Walt Mossberg, has achieved the impossible: bringing Jobs and Gates together on stage at the Wall Street Journal’s D5: All Things Digital conference. What I would give to be in attendance there!

This is an historic moment in the technoverse. Two industry titans, normally at odds, playing nice for a day? Unheard of.

The tech titans from Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. didn’t even appear together when they announced a partnership that helped Jobs save Apple at Macworld in Boston 10 years ago. (Gates teleconferenced in remotely, appearing on a screen looming over Jobs.) It could be the first time they’ve been together in such a setting since Jobs famously interviewed Gates as a possible suitor for Apple’s new computer in an onstage version of the “Macintosh Dating Game” back in 1984.

So when is the big day? Wednesday at D5 is when computer junkies everywhere will get this rare treat. And what will be the big topic for the day? That is a hotly contested secret. Chic geeks everywhere are hoping for a true dialog on operating systems, the future of computing, the possibilty of bridging the Microsoft / Apple gap, future plans for each company, and so much more. Whether or not they delve that deeply into their 20+ year rivalry and look that closely at their respective futures remains to be seen.

I’ll update this post with links to transcripts and video of the historic meeting when they start appearing online after Wednesday’s momentous occasion.

Source Slashdot | Gates and Jobs to Share A Stage

DON’T FORGET TO ENTER THE MOD YOUR MAC CONTEST! CLICK HERE!

On the feeds this week is the announcement from Volkswagon of their marketing campaign for the Volkswagon Golf. Currently being rolled out in Europe is the new campaign for the Golf, which they are now referring to a the iGolf. that’s right, they are touting their car as completely iPod intergrated, down to the name. so what does the iGolf console look like? Check it out:

One of the drawbacks, of course is the label on the car. With iGolf printed everywhere, everyone will know there is expensive equipment inside they could possibly steal. Other than that, it’s a groovy thing, baby, dig it. To read more about the campaign in Spain, go to the Spanish campaign website here.

It is possible that a release date of June 11 has been confirmed for the much anticipated iPhone. On CNET today a blog was posted that Cingular has confirmed the release date to CNET. If you contact Cingular directly, they do in fact, confirm the date of release, although they don’t have any further information. The date makes sense - it’s the opening day of Apple’s World Wide Developer’s Conference, so it fits.

Update: Or Not. According to suppliers of the components, the iPhone will not be ready in time for a June 11 release.