Of course Mark, this announcement by Steve Jobs at yesterday's meeting was a great boost to both Mac and Adobe:
dailynews.yahoo.com
Jobs pumps up the Mac faithful
By Matthew Rothenberg and John Batteiger, ZDNet
Apple delivered the first developer preview of Mac OS X's client version on Monday along with a wide range of announcements during its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, Calif.
Besides spelling out new details about its next-generation desktop operating system -- now slated to ship early next year -- interim CEO Steve Jobs used his keynote presentation at WWDC to announce the immediate availability of Mac OS 8.6 and offer a "sneak peek" of an interim OS upgrade code-named Sonata that is due to ship this fall.
In other news, Apple (Nasdaq:AAPL - news) unveiled a new iMac distribution deal with Sears Roebuck and Co. and debuted two new PowerBook G3 models whose processors use copper-based technology.
Mac OS X
Apple executives drew the most complete picture yet of Mac OS X, which they said will build on the Darwin core of Mac OS X Server and feature Quartz, a new graphics and windowing layer based on Adobe Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:ADBE - news)'s Portable Document Format. According to Jobs and Senior Vice President for Software Engineering Avadis Tevanian, the native version of PDF will add extensive compositing support, including built-in support for alpha channels.
On top of Quartz, Mac OS X will offer native support for "classic" Mac apps (formerly known as the Blue Box); a Carbon option for Mac OS X-optimized software; and Cocoa, which will offer native support for Java applications. Vice President for Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller demonstrated a revamped Finder and a Mail Viewer e-mail client running atop Carbon and Cocoa, respectively.
Tevanian said the preview version of Mac OS X, available immediately to WWDC attendees, includes Version 3.0 of the Mach kernel, the Quartz imaging layer and a new compiler. Jobs and Tevanian said that a second preview version will ship to developers in the fall. ......
Mark, I see you downloaded 8.6 yesterday. How are you finding it or is it too soon to tell?
All the best,
Michael |
