Just as quickly as it came, the keynote by Steve Jobs that kicked off the 2007 World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC 2007) is over. Here is a quick summary:
EA Games coming back to the Mac platform and bringing a number of new games to the Mac platform. These include Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix, Command & Conquer 3, Battlefield 2142, Need For Speed Carbon coming out in July. Sports game such as Madden 08 and Tiger Woods 08 also coming.
id’s John Carmack did a demo of a new game engine called Tech 5 and a new game that will use it. Details were scarce but expect more to be be revealed at E3.
Then it was time to talk about Leopard, the next operating system from Apple. Some 300 new features will be included. Steve showed off a number of these at the keynote including:
- A new desktop featuring a new 3D look, a narrower dock, and Stacks that let you easily organize and get to your content.
- A new Finder that uses a sidebar. It lets you search other Macs on your local network and if you use .Mac, has a feature called Back to my Mac which lets you browse your Mac over the Internet. It looks a lot like iTunes and even comes with CoverFlow (which debuted on iTunes) to scroll through documents and even within a document.
- Quick Look which lets you instantly preview a document without having to open the corresponding application. It supports most popular file types and plug-in modules are available to developers to add support for new ones.
- Demonstrations of Core Animation (a new tool to create animations), Boot Camp, Spaces (what Apple calls its virtual desktop application), Dashboard, iChat (which adds tabbed chats and the use of the AAC format for audio), and Time Machine (backup software).
Leopard will ship in October for US$129. Only one version available (Although Steve Jobs had some fun introducing a Basic version for US$129 a Business version for US$129, an Enterprise version for US$129 and an Ultimate version for, you guessed it US$129).
Then it was time for One more thing: Safari has 18 million users a 4.9 percent marketshare. Now, Apple is bringing Safari to Windows with the claim that it will be the fastest Windows browser. Safari 3.0 which will ship with Leopard will also run on Windows XP and Windows Vista. A public beta of Safari 3.0 will be available from Apple later today.
And Steve did not miss an opportunity to talk about the iPhone. One last thing: Confirming earlier reports, the iPhone will go on sale on June 29th. Jobs went on to announce that Apple has come up with a way to let third party developers write applications for the iPhone. Applications will use the Safari engine, allowing them full Web 2.0 and AJAX capabilities. No SDK will be required.
And that wrapped up the Keynote.