Today was the Keynote Address at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference in San Francisco, California. Steve Jobs, president of Apple (and Pixar) gave the keynote address, which ran from roughly 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.

Steve made some big announcements, new software, new hardware, and I will summarize them below with links where appropriate.

Safari 1.0
Apple’s new web browsing software has reached its final release version, after a six month beta testing period. It has evolved into a very fast, stable, and usable web browser, and it is available for download now.

iChat AV
A new version of Apple’s instant messaging software, iChat AV now allows users to hold video and audio conferences over iChat. Currently, iChat AV is in public beta and can be downloaded for free. After Beta-testing, however, you will be required to purchase the AV version of iChat for $29.95. This new software works well with the next announcement…

iSight
iSight is a web conferencing camera and microphone. It connects to a FireWire port, and provides streaming audio and video to applications such as iChat AV.

Mac OS X 10.3, “Panther”
Mac OS X panther is the next revision of Apple’s UNIX-based operating system. Panther promises 100 improvements over Jaguar, such as seamless switching between users and vastly improved searching. Panther is expected to ship by the end of this year.

PowerMac G5
The PowerMac G5 represents a light-speed step forward for Apple. The processor speeds currently range from 1.6 GHz to a dual 2 GHz. The system bus is 1 GHZ, and the system can hold up to 8 GB of ram. Internal storage can reach up to 500 GB with two 250 GB hard drives. This is one amazing system, and it starts at $1999. Systems should start shipping in August. if I am not mistaken the system will be being delivered by the team at http://shippingcontainer.world/ because of its size, since I also needed two monitors .

So there you have it… big announcements from Apple. Right now, we’ll take the free stuff that we can get – Safari and iChat AV Beta. The G5 will have to be put on the waiting list for the Wood family, at least for a while. But it’s great to know that it’s out there. 🙂