Before we get into the meat of this article, one quick announcement. The January MMOOS (Maine Macintosh Owners and Operators Society) meeting will take place Tuesday night, January 18th, at 7:00 PM in the Multi-Purpose room on the second floor of Brunswick High School. There’s no better way to start the New Mac Year than by making new friends and becoming more “Mac friendly”. Plan to attend.

Now, let’s quickly examine my peerless prognostications as to the announcements made at this week’s MacWorld Expo. I think I did pretty well (at least as well as a weatherman).

First, Mac OS v10.4 “Tiger”. Yep, Tiger’s still on track for release in the “first half of 2005”. No definitive dates were divulged at the Expo, but I did have a chance to roam around a Mac running Tiger for an hour, and all I can say is. it’s “GRRRREEEAAT”! This prediction was a “gimme” and doesn’t count towards my score.

It’s not called the “iPod flash”, but the “iPod shuffle” was introduced and is shipping right now (good luck finding one). A good start for me. One for one. While we’re on iPods, however, there was no increase in the iPod mini’s capacity from 4 GB to 5 GB. So, I’m quickly one for two.

There were no “speed bumps” to present Macs announced, but the year is young. We’ll call this one a draw for now. Still one for two.

Sure enough, the iLife suite of digital lifestyle applications received a major update, called (duh) iLife ‘05. It will be available on January 22nd for $79, and I’ll have a full review the following week. I also had a chance to give iLife ’05 a spin and, in a word, it’s awesome. Great. I’m now two of three.

However, there was no Apple-branded, FireWire-based, GarageBand connection accessory announced. Drat. Back to 50%.

There’s still hope. Apple announced “iWork”, the eventual replacement for the venerable AppleWorks productivity suite. iWork contains Keynote 2.0, a major update to the PowerPoint-like presentation application, and a new, stylish word processor called “Pages”. iWork will also be available January 22nd for $79, and I will review it shortly thereafter as well. Back to three-for-five.

Finally, Apple did in fact announce (to be available on Januarty 22nd as well), the $499 “Mac mini”. How mini? Three pounds, and about the size of a stack of five CD cases. Four for six. Not bad. More on this mighty mite next week.

© 2005 Peter F. Zimowski