via FastCompany

We pulled 11 comments from the 2001 release of the iPod and the 2010 release of the iPad. Can you tell which is which?

"I guess the negative reactions indicate that people expect miracles from Apple."

"maybe that thing is not revolutionary...but it shows best at what Apple excels over and over....DESIGN... this thing is so damn beautiful, that i'm already thinking about wanting one (not buying, wanting one!)...this is almost a sexual thing.."

The WSJ reports that Steve Jobs had a liver transplant two months ago in Tennessee. He is expected to still return to work later this month, even if only at a part time schedule.

And oh yeah, they also released new MacBook Pros. Very nice.

COO Tim Cook will take over for him until then.link. Here's the letter he sent to Apple employees.

Team,

I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.

In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple's day to day operations, and I know he and the rest of the executive management team will do a great job. As CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out. Our board of directors fully supports this plan.

I look forward to seeing all of you this summer.

Steve

Letter from Apple CEO Steve Jobs

Dear Apple Community,

For the first time in a decade, I'm getting to spend the holiday season with my family, rather than intensely preparing for a Macworld keynote.

Unfortunately, my decision to have Phil deliver the Macworld keynote set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed.

I've decided to share something very personal with the Apple community so that we can all relax and enjoy the show tomorrow.

As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.

Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause%u2014a hormone imbalance that has been "robbing" me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.

The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I've already begun treatment. But, just like I didn't lose this much weight and body mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it. I will continue as Apple's CEO during my recovery.

I have given more than my all to Apple for the past 11 years now. I will be the first one to step up and tell our Board of Directors if I can no longer continue to fulfill my duties as Apple's CEO. I hope the Apple community will support me in my recovery and know that I will always put what is best for Apple first.

So now I've said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this.

Steve

Apple is publicly opposing Proposition 8 and making a donation of $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign. Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees’ same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person’s fundamental rights — including the right to marry — should not be affected by their sexual orientation. Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8.

Unless you ABSOLUTELY need it, I suggest waiting on the QT 7.4 update that came out last week. It screws up AfterEffects and Final Cut for a number of users and that makes it a deal breaker for me.

Let's hope they get some of their developers back who have been so busy working on Leopard and the iPhone. Q.A. has been poor for such a flagship product.

C'mon Apple. You can do better than this. Quicktime is your baby!

There were a few changes right off the bat this year...

Instead of being in the North and South halls of Moscone Center, Macworld was held in the West and the South halls. Registration was in the West hall for the first time and things were a bit wonky. With some effort, I found the end of a long line of people for "express" badge pickup. Luckily for me, about a minute after I got in line, a Macworld employee told me and anybody else with a bar-code to follow him. Two minutes later, I had my badge and was in the door.

The show is huge this year. Lots of very nice (expensive) booths by vendors big and small. The EVE Online folks had a ginormous booth in the gaming area. HP, Canon, and Epson all had big setups. (Especially Canon. Their area was basically a miniature photo store.) Adobe and Google also had big encampments. Microsoft set up a really swanky bloggers lounge with couches and tables and lamps, art on the walls, WiFi, and bowls full of "Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac" M&Ms.

The energy was really great and there were scores of people lined up to see the MacBook Air. You can find plenty of really detailed pictures on almost all the major Mac sites, so I'll spare you. I have put a few of my own Macworld pix up on this flickr page but I'm not getting too forensic on the new laptop.

Another observation... I saw more people 6'6" or taller in one gathering than I think I've ever seen. (Not counting that Chicago Bulls game I went to.) Seriously, there were some insanely tall dudes at Macworld. After about the 8th or 9th one I saw, I was really starting to wonder what was up.

The "developers pavillion" areas were much bigger this year and as always were full of great software gems from smaller companies. Some of my best conversations were at these smaller stations because I was oftentimes talking directly to the guy or gal that had written the program. I always have a good time throwing them stumper questions.

Before I talk about Apple's new offerings, let's go onto the show floor and talk goods ünd services...

Gaming area was really nice. They had massive HD monitors showing all the newest from EA, Feral, Freeverse, Ambrosia, etc. I just loved the old-school style shoot-em-up Neon Tango from Freeverse. It looked gorgeous on the jumbo monitor. I also liked an aquatic themed game with animation style graphics. I can't quite remember the name. It was Aquariad or something like that. (Sorry. It was so crazy in the West Hall).

EA was showing the creature editor for Spore. Note: they were NOT showing Spore itself and were cagey as always about when it was actually going to ship. They said the editor would be released three months before the actual game drops. They hope that will be sometime in 2008.

EA was also showing Battlefield 2142 for the Mac.

Saw Guitar Hero for the Mac. Looked and played just like the console versions.

Lots and lots of iPhone protective skins and cases. Some of the skins were not just protective, but totally cool artwork to boot. Be sure to check out the ones from Gelaskins. Not only do they have wicked designs, but they give you matching wallpaper to download to the device.

Another company, Zagg, was selling their Invisible Shield product which protects your iPod or iPhone (or 2,000 other gadgets) from scratches and nicks with a thin clear sheet of the stuff they use to protect the leading edges of helicopter blades. They had this great sales schtick. They would get people to "go naked" and exchange their padded or hard shall case for an Invisible Shield. They would whoop it up every time somebody "went naked" (especially if the person was a girl) and would place the discarded case in a big bin at the front of their booth. (Kinda like the bins full of discarded glasses at the lasik surgery centers.) It was a funny bit and they drew big crowds with it.

Creaceed (formerly ExCider) was showing two interesting apps, a new version of Morph Age, their excellent morphing application, and Hydra a brand new HDR (High Dynamic Range) composition program. It's Leopard only and has a very polished interface and some neat features. Probably the best solution I've seen so far for combining images for HDR.

equinux was showing off the TubeStick hybrid, a digital and analog TV reciever/recorder that supports ATSC, QAM, and NTSC HD signals. I asked the sales rep to tell me how it compared to El Gato's EyeTV Hybrid and she said that the El Gato product does not receive QAM, which is what most of the digital cable boxes use, and that El Gato's software was written in Carbon and equinux's is built in Cocoa, which runs so much better on the Intel hardware.

Recosoft was showing off PDF2ID, a PDF to InDesign converter. I spoke with the developer and asked him if he could demonstrate the conversion on a document I had with me on a USB flash drive. I gave him a fairly complicated PDF of a season brochure I had done recently for a St. Louis theatre company. He started the conversion and as it churned away on my complex file, he kind of winced and covered his eyes, worried that the program might barf. In fact, the conversion to InDesign was remarkably accurate and only lacked some of the fonts I had used in the document. (Also, all of my images were converted to RGB from CMYK.) This is a very cool tool and I can't wait to see how it evolves from the 1.0 version I saw. They also make a PDF to Word conversion app for Mac and Windows.

xTrain had a big booth where they were demonstrating their video training product. They are different from Lynda.com in that they don't just use screencaps with voiceovers, they actually shoot and edit live footage with the instructors. They've got some good talent like Ben Wilmore and Dr. Russell Brown.

I bought a replacement battery for my 3rd gen iPod from FastMac for $15. (What a steal!) They had a tech on hand to diagnose and do repairs. Very cool. I almost bought a G4 upgrade board for my old G3 Powerbook.

I picked up demo copies of SnapzProX (full motion screen capture utility)and WireTap Studio (audio editor) from Ambrosia. They may have made their bones as a game company, but their utils are really great. They also had the best swag of the show, t-shirts for WireTap Studio that said "I'd tap that!" (oy...)

I spoke with the Epson "paper expert" and confirmed that although they gave all their papers spiffy new names, the actual product is still the same. For me, this means I can keep using the same ICC color profiles I had been using. You can find a conversion chart for all the names here.

Blurb had samples of their professional-quality "iPhoto style" books. The quality here is definitely a notch up from apple and prices start at $12.95.

I asked the guys at the Verbatim booth if they were going to start lowering prices on dual layer DVD media. They told me, quite candidly, that they didn't have very much competition, so there wasn't a lot of incentive to drop their prices. They then went on to tell me that I should try to find the product whenever it was on sale and that OfficeMax would be discounting them in the next few weeks. (Thanks for the tip, guys!)

Microsoft is showing the now released Office 2008 for Mac. I must confess it does have some really nice automagic features. Only time will tell if they are more help or hinderance. I'll let you know when I've had time to play with it more. Of course like all Microsoft products, it comes in several versions.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation was present again and had some great merch available for a small donation. I got a "Come Back With A Warrant" sticker and a roll of 4th Amendment tape. They told me Macworld donates the space to them and invites them every year. Keep up the good fight. For those of you who don't know about the EFF, they're basically like the ACLU for cyberspace. The organization was created 17 years ago by Mitch Kapor of Lotus 1-2-3 fame and Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow, and they provide legal defense for almost all of the major cases involving electronic rights. Toss a few bucks their way if you can. They are the ones leading the fighting against telecom immunity for wiretapping Americans.

A small software company called CodeFlare has reverse engineered the entire HyperCard 2.2 protocol and programming language and will soon be releasing TileStack which will be able to read your old HyperCard stacks. (Beyond Cyberpunk, anyone?!)

MyVu has been making eyeglass video displays for iPods and other devices for several years now. Their latest revision, the Crystal 701 has fantastic looking screens with VGA resolution in them. The product has matured nicely over the last couple of years and you can even get little prescription lenses to fit inside the unit since you can't really wear them on top of regular glasses.

The Rogue Amoeba guys are always a lot of fun. This year, they brought a giant inflatable version of their eponymous corporate mascot. I love all their products, especially Audio Hijack and AirFoil, which was recently upgraded with some slick features for transmitting any kind of audio to an Airport Express. (Not just iTunes!)

KBCovers had a nice selection of silicone keyboard covers and overlays for all the the Mac desktops and laptops. I bought a Photoshop cover/overlay that fits a Powerbook G4 as a gift for my SFO hosts.

Axiotron was back with the amazing Modbook tablet-Mac they first demonstrated a year ago. The units are finally shipping from OWC and the Axiotron folks had a giant booth with tons of sample units running all sorts of different software in tablet mode. These are real-deal tablet Mac laptops with Wacom enabled screens built right into their surfaces. Solidly built and full of killer features like a gps receiver, these are sure to be hot sellers. Frankly, Apple could learn a thing or two from the Axiotron engineers.

Late in the afternoon, I ran into Andy Ihnatko on the show floor just after he finished taping a live MacRadio broadcast. Knowing he is a master of Mac trivia, I asked him if he had heard the story of how Steve Jobs would relieve his aching feet after being on the trade show floor all day. He responded with the quote of the day saying "I think he stood on the necks of the proletariat with his hobnailed boots." Ouch.

On that note, I should probably talk a bit about the new goodies from Apple, starting with the MacBook Air.

First of all, it really is the thinnest damn laptop you could imagine. Need a better way to visualize it? Okay, take a penny and stand it on end. That's almost exactly how tall the Air is at it's thickest point. .76". During the keynote address, Steve tore open a manilla envelope and dumped out the MacBook Air.

This machine is clearly aimed at the business traveller who wants the absolute minimum modern computer he or she can tote around. It has no built-in optical drive, though a svelte external SuperDrive is available as an accessory. It can remotely use the optical drive of another mac. It has no ethernet port and no firwire port. (Whoa!) It also has a built in battery that cannot be replaced by the consumer. (Apple will gladly replace it for you for $129 if it dies.) It has a tiny little port door on the side/bottom with a USB, a headphone jack, and a mini-DVI connector for hooking it up to an external monitor. The touchpad has multi-touch capabilities and works just like the iPhone and iPod touch as far as scrolling, enlarging, rotating, etc. Apple has really nailed the multi-touch interface and the Air is a tactile wonder just like the iPhone.

In the display area for the MacBook Air, Apple had a couple of hanging mobiles made up of MacBook Airs strung together. Very hip and unlike last year's "iPod in a glass case" you could actually touch the units in the mobile.

Performance was solid, if not spectacular. Plenty of oomph for the average user who wants to surf, email, word process and run the iApps. It's got an internal 80gig hard drive that can optionally be replaced by a solid state 64gig unit. Neither of these would be large enough for me to use it on a daily basis, but that capacity is probably fine for the intended market.

The other product Apple announced that I'm really excited about is Time Capsule, an 802.11n wireless networked backup system with a 500 gig or 1 terabyte drive installed. Essentially it's Time Machine + Airport Extreme + a big-ass hard drive. A very nice product that I hope does well for Apple.

Along with iTunes video rentals from all the major studios, Apple also released a 2.0 upgrade to the AppleTV that allows for streaming of HiDef video rentals. I didn't get a chance to really check this out in detail, but the quality looked good. They were showing clips from Transformers that looked particularly nice. If I go back tomorrow for some follow-up, I may see if I can play with one for a few minutes.

Finally, Apple released a pack of 5 apps for the iPod touch for $20. These essentially give the touch app-parity with the iPhone. There is a lot of bitching and moaning about the $20 fee by iPod touch owners who feel the software should be a free update. I asked the Apple reps about this charge, likening it to the 802.11n driver they sold last year to enable the hardware that was already built into laptops and iMacs. As it turns out, this isn't a case of Apple being greedy grubbers who want all your money. New federal accounting regulations force them to treat the release of the new apps as a separate product. They can give out bug-fixes for free, but wholly new features are considered a whole new item for accounting purposes. Yet another unintended consequence of a wacky Bush-era law. (For those interested, I'm talking about the Sarbannes Oxley Act created in 2002 as a response to Enron, WorldComm, and their ilk.)

Now here's where it gets strange... Apple also released the 1.1.3 update to the iPhone which includes some new apps like a Google maps locator that finds your position by triangulating cell phone towers. But there's no charge for the upgrade and no problem with the accounting. Apparently this has something to do with the subscriber nature of the iPhone cellular service. Don't ask me, I'm not the accountant. (Call my dad, maybe he can explain it to you.)

One other story I'll tell from today and then I need to get some sleep.

For the last couple of weeks, I've been testing out the XO laptop made by Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project. (Read about it here.) These are the rugged little $200 wireless laptops designed for use by third world children. While I was resting my tired feet sitting on a couch in the Microsoft bloggers lounge, I pulled out the little green and white XO laptop and started writing some notes on it and browsing the web. It wasn't long before I started getting questions about the OLPC, eventually drawing quite a large crowd of people who were intensely interested in the unit. I did about a 10 minute show and tell including taking a snapshot of the gathered crowd with the OLPC's built in camera. I'm sure I could have sold 6 or 7 of them right on the spot. Maybe the OLPC folks should come to Macworld next year. I'm sure the Microsoft people were thrilled I was pimping for a linux based laptop that can't run a single Microsoft product. I didn't care. The Macworld attendees were thirsty for any information I could give them about the OLPC and how well it worked. Somebody tell Negroponte they need to bring back the "give one-get one" program. It was fun showing the screen with all of the icons representing the many available wireless networks all over Macworld. I may take it again with me if I go back and see if I get a similar response.

That's just about everything I've got from today. There are a few more items I still want to cover, but it's late and I'm wiped out from walking the floor all day. More tomorrow.

Film at 11.

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Macbook Nano/Thin? Macbook Touch? New Apple TV? Movie rentals/downloads from iTunes?

One thing is for sure, when his royal Steve-ness takes the stage next Tuesday for his keynote address, the entire industry will be paying attention.

As for my predictions, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that Steve Jobs will wear a black turtleneck sweater, blue jeans, and tennis shoes. (That joke never gets old, eh?)

As per usual, the Cluttered Mind will be on hand to scope out the scene and grill the vendors. This year's Macworld is shaping up to be one of the biggest ever. Both sides of Moscone Center are filled up with vendors and activities. Can't wait to see all the new goodies.

Steve's keynote will be on Tuesday, when I am in-flight, so I won't get my hands on the new goods until next weds when I hit the show floor. Check back here next week for photos and reviews of all the new toys I can get my hot little hands on.

Apple and Think Secret have settled their lawsuit, reaching an agreement that results in a positive solution for both sides. As part of the confidential settlement, no sources were revealed and Think Secret will no longer be published. Nick Ciarelli, Think Secret's publisher, said "I'm pleased to have reached this amicable settlement, and will now be able to move forward with my college studies and broader journalistic pursuits."

OnyX is a multifunction utility (maintenance, optimization, and personalization).

It allows you to run misc tasks of system maintenance, to configure some hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock, Dashboard, Exposé, Safari, Login window and of some of Apple's own applications, to delete caches, to remove a certain number of files and folders that may become cumbersome, to see the detailed info of your configuration, to preview various logs and CrashReporter-reports, to check the Preferences files and more.

One note, Onyx has not released an update for Leopard yet, so it's 10.4.x only for now until the next update. (Same is true for Cocktail, a similar util.)

It turns the static Google search box in Safari into a live predictive search experience that fetches top matches as you type them out, auto-completing your search term with the closest matches.

Inquisitor... it's like Spotlight for the web.

Start typing and websites pop up immediately, along with ideas to refine your search.

It'll autocomplete your words (is it reading your mind?) and you can add more search engines to Safari with customized keyboard shortcuts.

Oh, and it's free.

Amp up your web searches with this brilliant free tool.

For your first treat, one of the coolest music visualizers I've ever seen. It's called Magnetosphere and it's totally trippy. (And totally free!)

From barbarian software

Here is this thing that does stuff in iTunes. There is magnetism, there is gravity, but on top of all of that, there is awesomeness. Watch as all the dots and ribbons go bouncy bouncy when you play music and trigger this mo-fo of a visualizer. This is the future of visuals. God help you if you smoke the reefer cause you can kiss your productivity goodbye.

Speaking of which, the new iMacs are quite lovely. They look '70s retro-future to me. 'Sleeper' with style.

Apple today released a 5.0Mb update specifically for the new iMacs. (Wow, that was quick.)

Overall, I've gotta say, the new iron looks mighty sweet. I think I'll wait for the first revision and consider getting one. For the money I don't think you can do much better.

They actually took $200 off the 24" model and put out a better one.

Here are the basics so far:

New iMacs with a brand new enclosure made of glass, aluminum, and high quality plastic. (Much more recycle friendly.)

Specs: 20 and 24 inch models, FireWire 800, 400, three USB 2.0 ports, SuperDrive.

You can add RAM by removing a single screw.

Intel Core 2 Duo processors, up to 2.8 GHz on 24 inch model, up to 4 GB of memory, faster graphics (ATI Radeon), up to 1TB storage and Wireless-N.

First model available now: $1199 for 250 GB, 2 G processor.

New iMacs also have new wireless keyboard with special keys (Dashboard, Expose, Dimmer, Media Keys)

iLife '08 - Biggest update since iLife was first introduced.

iPhoto now has "events" so you can locate your event pictures more easily. Also added "hide photo" feature. (Very useful!)

More updates as they come in...

Major upgrades to .mac service, especially in regards to photos. Viewers can download high quality printable pics from your .mac galleries. Also direct photo uploads TO your galleries. Sync with iPhone, etc. (Better sync in general.) Looks like they have restored the ability to publish directly from iPhoto without having to use iWeb! (At least I hope that's what they were describing...)

New iMovie re-written completely from the ground up. Looks more like iPhoto. Skim video the way you browse pix. Direct YouTube upload feature built in to iMovie. Share movie via iTunes or .mac web gallery.

.mac gets a new Web Gallery and 10GB of storage for everybody!!!

New web gallery is TOTALLY KICK-ASS. Pushes Web 2.0 technology to its limits. Can't wait to get my hands on the software.

10 new themes in iDVD '08. Not a lot of other details.

iLife '08 priced at $79. (Or free with any new mac.)

Garage Band updated. Includes new Magic Garage Band feature. (No idea what that means.)

New iWeb (god I hope they improve it!) Includes Live Web Widgets, Google Maps. Build an index page, and simply drag your content. Personal domain support, theme switching is supported.

iWork updated as well. New Keynote and Pages versions with new features and themes. Keynote now has "Smart Builds" - easy animation for noobs.

Pages now has two modes, word processing and page layout.

New spreadsheet app: Numbers.

iWork '08 available today.

Mac mini updated with faster processors.

Engadget has pictures and detailed coverage here.

Winders users, let us know what you think of the new browser.

UPDATE: My own experience with the new Safari has been excellent. It is significantly faster than the previous version and seems to has dealt with some of the existing rendering bugs. I did have to remove the Taboo plug-in that reminds me if I try to close a window with multiple tabs. It needs to be updated for the latest Safari.

UPDATE 2: Several input managers need to be updated to work with the new Safari. These include popular ones like PithHelmet and Acidsearch.

Also, Apple has included an uninstaller that will restore your system to pre-Safari3 status. This is useful as the new beta updates a number of items behind the scenes including the dock and the WebKit framework that Safari runs on. All that being said, I'm still loving the new version.

From the press release:

iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can't wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price -- we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard's features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we're sure we've made the right ones.