Opening day at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference always marks the release of new products. Steve Jobs’ keynote rolled out two new 64-bit Intel Xeon-based systems, Mac Pro and Xserve. These new systems, based on Intel’s just-released Core Microarchitecture “Woodcrest” Xeon, replace the Power Mac G5 and Xserve G5, both of which were based on IBM’s PowerPC 970 series of 64-bit RISC processors. Apple’s Woodcrest Xserve and Mac Pro are state of the art for Intel 64-bit x86 design, but they cost considerably less than the lesser-performing PowerPC machines they’re replacing.The Intel-based Mac Pro and Xserve restore Apple’s tradition of keeping its high-end desktop/workstation closer to sync with regard to their base hardware configurations. Both have just one baseline model–each used to have three–with shared specs: Two dual-core Xeon 5100 Series CPUs with 4 MB of shared Level 2 cache; dual 1.33 GHz front-side buses, one per processor; 1 GB of 667 MHz DDR2 fully buffered DIMM (FBDIMM) memory with error correcting code (ECC), with room to expand to 16 GB when 2 GB FBDIMMs are used; two gigabit Ethernet ports; a single 300 gigabit-per-second Serial ATA (SATA) hard drive; and PCI Express expansion slots.Beyond this level, Xserve and Mac Pro baseline configurations diverge. The standard-issue Xserve comes with 1 GB of RAM, two 2 GHz Xeon CPUs, three 800 MHz FireWire ports and two USB 2.0 ports. Customers can configure Xserve to their preferences prior to delivery with processor speed upgrades to 2.66 or 3 GHz, 15,000 RPM serial-attached SCSI (SAS) drives, a low-end ATI PCI Express graphics card, a DVD burner and an additional 650-watt power supply. Apple claims that its on-line configure to order (CTO) system is much easier to use, more flexible and imposes fewer delivery delays. Apple refers to the inclusion of “lights out” management in Xserve, meaning that it can be managed even when powered down or when the OS fails to boot. In a briefing with Apple executives, no details of Xserve’s management hardware and software were offered; additional details may be available soon. Xserve is scheduled to ship in October 2006, with initial deliveries bundling the OS X Server Tiger (OS X 10.4) operating system with an unlimited client license. The standard Xserve will have a retail price of $2,999, which gives Apple’s rack server a favorable position among Intel-based rack servers. During his keynote address, Steve Jobs illustrated that Xserve costs a bit less than a comparable rack server from Dell. Competition among Core Microarchitecture servers will quickly drive prices down, so Apple’s price advantage will dwindle with time. Apple’s tradition is to keep systems at their original retail pricing rather than scale them down to match market standards. However, in comparing Xserve’s prices to those of other x86 servers, the unlimited-client edition of OS X Server must be taken into account. By itself, Apple’s server software costs $999, and is a bargain compared to commercial Linux and Windows Server.Apple equipped Mac Pro to compete squarely with established four-core x86 workstations built around Intel’s Netburst Xeon and AMD’s Opteron CPUs, and here Apple’s technical and price advantages are more apparent. The standard model has two 2.66 GHz Core Microarchitecture Xeon CPUs, an NVidia GeForce 7300 GT graphics adapter with 256 MB of video RAM, a 250 GB SATA hard drive, a 16x SuperDrive DVD burner with support for double-layer discs, and four PCI Express slots including one double-wide slot for advanced graphics cards. Key CTO options for Mac Pro include a range of graphics card upgrades that include ATI’s Radeon X1900 XT with 512 MB of video RAM, alternative CPU speeds of 2 and 3 GHz, AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR (extended data range) wireless, up to four SATA hard drives of 500 GB each, and a second SuperDrive DVD burner. While Mac Pro looks like Power Mac G5 from the outside, inside it’s a completely new machine. FBDIMMs do not push straight into the Mac Pro’s motherboard as most systems’ memory modules do. Instead, Mac Pro has the sockets for its FBDIMM on circuit cards that slide easily into special slots, obviating the common need to lay the computer on its side and maneuver sensitive memory modules into thin, stiff sockets. Mac Pro’s hard drives are mounted in slide-in trays. Four trays total are included with each Mac Pro so that experienced users can upgrade their systems’ storage: Four screws mount an off-the-shelf SATA hard drive to a Mac Pro tray. Empty trays will be available as separate components as well.The base configuration of Mac Pro, which Apple claims started shipping on August 7, carries a competitive retail price of $2,499.The keynote included a single, brief reference to Mac Pro and Xserve performance relative to Opteron, but no effort was made to support Macs’ vaunted superiority over Opteron-based systems with test results. There was a tacit nod to those wondering about Intel’s influence on Apple’s choice of suppliers. Jobs’ slides included a gratuitous beauty shot of an ATI graphics card. For now, at least, Apple is not altering its supplier relationship with ATI because of the AMD buyout. Apple has elected to keep the majority of the details of its upcoming Leopard release of OS X (version 10.5) secret, sharing them only with developers covered by Apple’s strictly enforced non-disclosure agreement. However, Apple did offer some intriguing details. Leopard will be a 64-bit operating system, but with a powerful twist: It will permit the blending of 32-bt and 64-bit code at the executable, object code and device driver levels. Microsoft’s 64-bit editions of Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server require the use of drivers specifically rewritten for 64-bit use. Apple’s approach avoids second-class customers with 32-bit Macs while allowing developers to take full advantage of the features unique to Core Microarchitecture. Apple carried 64-bit engineering from the OS kernel through the GUI and 3-D layers, creating incredible performance potential for visuals, and for core computing tasks that are slowed by rich graphical interfaces.Another standout among Leopard’s features is Time Machine, a highly accessible approach to file system snapshots for rapid recovery of deleted or unintentionally altered files. Like Windows’ Volume Shadow Copy, Time Machine tracks all of the file and directory changes that occur between snapshots. Users can specify a point in time and see the file system from any point in the file hierarchy as it existed at that time, or the time of the nearest snapshot. As is typical for Apple, the user interface for Time Machine is visually stunning and extraordinarily functional. When a user selects a folder, an Address Book card or any other Time Machine-tracked entity and presses the Time Machine hot key, snapshots are shown in a stack of overlapping windows. A GUI timeline at the edge of the screen lets the user scroll through time, and the user can skip back to the most recent snapshot whose contents differ from the present. Time Machine goes a step beyond point-in-time recovery with its ability to save snapshots on external storage. A Mac client with a USB or FireWire external hard drive can use Time Machine to maintain automatic, invisible incremental backups of modified files. Using this facility, a Mac that requires an internal drive replacement or gets a disk upgrade–say, a switch from a single drive to software RAID–can be restored using that external drive. Time Machine data can also be managed on client systems’ behalf by a Time Machine service that will be standard in OS X Server Leopard.Apple demonstrated ten Leopard features in all, but beyond 64-bit support and Time Machine, only a couple of features stood out. iChat has been enhanced to stream static images and Keynote (Apple’s presentation software) presentations as part of a chat. iChat has a remarkable and useful feature that renders the cluttered background behind a chat participant transparent, allowing it to be replaced by a static or moving image of the user’s choice.Core Animation is an addition to Apple’s collection of Core (meaning intrinsic) frameworks. Presently, Core frameworks exist for audio, images and data. Core Animation provides a very high-level, simple API (application programming interface) to automate smooth motion, in 3-D space, of multiple layers of arbitrary visible objects. Core Animation can also smoothly transition visible objects from one set of visual parameters–like brightness, contrast and transparency–to another over time. All of Core Animation’s rendering, even with dozens of layers in independent motion, takes place in real-time. The implications for next-generation user interfaces are too numerous to describe. Apple demonstrated a new version of the Universal Access accessibility feature set built into OS X. In addition to a braille device interface, a completely new text-to-speech engine renders unbelievably natural speech from ordinary text with changes in pitch, pauses and unambiguous consonants. In Steve Jobs’ keynote demo, the synthetic speaker seemed to take breaths at natural intervals. Considering the cost of natural-sounding text-to-speech solutions sold into commercial applications, Leopard’s Universal Access qualifies as a hidden “worth it for this alone” feature. You’ll have to hear it to believe it.Finally, very little was said during the keynote about OS X Server Leopard, but it has been given an overhaul in several important categories. Leopard servers deploy with the ease of desktops thanks to the new Server Assistant, and once new servers are on line, they automatically sense and configure Mac clients as they are plugged into the LAN. Leopard Server includes a new Wiki service, official support for the Ruby on Rails Web application environment, and completely reworked GUI management tools.Clearly, Apple’s been busy. It’s hard to believe that Leopard will ship next spring, but Apple aims to ruin Vista’s chance of gaining early traction. During the keynote, Apple convincingly demonstrated several specific Vista features and look and feel elements that seemed copied directly from OS X. While Apple is keeping most of Leopard’s details to itself, the message is clear: By the time Vista and Longhorn Server catch OS X Tiger, Apple will have pushed the goalposts all the way out to the parking lot. Software Development