May 16th, 2000

[4:40 AM] WWDC No-News: No New Hardware Product Announcements by Bryan Chaffin We said in our coverage earlier today that we would eat our words if today's keynote produced no new hardware, and that was exactly the case. Apple has not made any new product announcements at this year's World Wide Developer Conference outside of making WebObjects MUCH cheaper and officially delaying Mac OS X. Today's keynote did include a demonstration of a dual-processor PowerMac G4 billed as a technology demonstration. Dual-processor machines were predicted by the various rumor sites, but while shown, they were not officially announced. Indeed, nothing at all was announced in the way of new products. According to ZDNet: During a closed-door keynote presentation at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, Calif., Apple executives Mitch Mandich, Phil Schiller and Jon Rubinstein showed off the symmetrical multiprocessing capabilities of the next-generation Mac OS running atop a prototype dual-processor machine, sources said. The company hinted broadly that a multiprocessor Mac was in the works but declined to specify a ship date. So we [Editor's Note: By "we" I specifically accept all responsibility for our incorrect speculation] hereby officially eat our own words! The Mac Observer Spin: Wish fulfillment is a powerful force, and we desperately hoped that there would be new PowerMacs announced at the WWDC. This is because we feel that Apple is being hit hard in the perception arena in that they are still shipping 500 MHz machines as their fastest, almost 9 months after those machines were first announced at Seybold last September. Obviously this simply can not be helped by Apple or they would indeed release new machines. Apple is hampered by the fact that there are still problems in the processor development front by Motorola, and presumably IBM. We fervently hope that the AIM partners can overcome this shortfall as soon as possible. Apple needs to ship faster computers, period. Nonetheless, we were still wrong in our speculation that started yesterday that Apple would make some manner of new product announcement at this show. It was certainly a product of our own wishes coupled with what we still feell was sound reasoning. Too bad it just wasn't right. :-) Apple