Kicking off Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, Steve Jobs started his keynote address by giving an award to Intel CEO, Paul Otellini, as a thank you gift for his extraordinary work in helping Apple transition to Intel processors in the past year.
Next, Bing Gordon, founder and chief creative officer for Electronic Arts, announced four new games to be available in July for OS X. The games are Command & Conquer III, Battlefield 2142, Need for Speed Carbon, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Gordon showed a demo of the Harry Potter game.
Later this year, EA will ship Madden NFL 08 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 for the Mac at the same time the game releases for other platforms.
The biggest teaser came from iD Software (Doom and Quake) when they showcased their secret project which would be made available on the Mac. id Software CEO and co-founder John Carmack was there to announce the introduction of a brand new game engine that they have been working on for next-gen systems. Carmack demonstrated the new engine with a racing demo. And from his description of the mechanics and detail, it sounds like it could be groundbreaking:
“So the last couple of years at id we’ve been working in secrecy on next-gen tech and a game for it … this is the first time we’re showing anything we’ve done on it publicly. What we’ve got here is the entire world with unique textures, 20GB of textures covering this track. They can go in and look at the world and, say, change the color of the mountaintop, or carve their name into the rock. They can change as much as they want on surfaces with no impact on the game.”
Aside from the demo, Carmack was pretty mum about the details, stating that:
“We’re going to be showing on a Mac, PC, PS3, and Xbox [360] at E3. We’ll have another Mac announcement at E3.â€
Jobs went on to discuss Leopard, Apple’s next generation OS X. He then showed off the new features of Leopard. All developers in attendance got a copy of Leopard, while the official release is set for October with a price tag of $129.
Jobs then discussed the Safari browser by announcing a new version of Safari to run on Windows. The Windows beta is available today at apple.com/safari.
The keynote was then closed by an announcement about the iPhone. Jobs touted the full version of Safari available on the iPhone and welcomed developers to use the Safari API to write apps for the iPhone.
So how do ‘Quake 4′ and ‘Doom 3′ run on the new Santa Rosa chipset-equipped MacBook Pros? Well, they’re being put to the test at BareFeats.com to see just how fast the new and improved 3D gaming speeds really are. This current round of testing pitted the 15″ MacBook Pro 2.4GHz C2D against various other Macs including the new 13″ MacBook 2.16GHz C2D, and needless to say, it didn’t disappoint.
“The new MacBook Pro with the GeForce 8600M runs 3D accelerated games significantly faster than the previous model with the Mobility Radeon X1600. As you can see, Quake 4 ran 60% faster and Doom 3 ran 38% faster.”
 ”…if you are a hard core gamer, you won’t be disappointed by the new MacBook Pro. But for maximum FPS, the Mac Pro with the Radeon X1900 XT is still the “Top Gun.”
Only two desktops outperformed the new MacBook Pro in the speed tests. Their charts show that the Mac Pro 3.0 “4C” with the Radeon X1900 XT outperforms the newer competition. The second “fastest” is the iMac C2D 2.33GHz G7600.
They’ll be posting a series of test results during the next few days.
Over the Edge (OTEE) has announced Unite 2007, a conference for users of the Unity game engine. It will take place Oct. 10 - 12, 2007 at the San Francisco Film Center in the Presidio, in San Francisco, Calif.
Unity is a versatile 3D game development and simulation-building tool that enables developers to make games that can be deployed on Mac OS X, Windows, Wii and the Web using a rich visual interface. It’s been used to create commercial games, educational tools and more.
“Unite 2007 is a three-day technical conference to offer attendees a chance to learn more about Unity and the Unity Web player directly from the experts. Developers, artists, producers and anyone else interested in Unity is encouraged to come.” [via: MacWorld.com]
Registration is open now, and early-bird discounts run through August 10, 2007.
Developers conference? We don’t need no stinkin’ developers conference (WWDC) to pull out our big guns! And these updated MacBook Pros are big guns indeed.
A 2.2GHz or 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. Next-generation 802.11n wireless. Gorgeous upgraded displays. Wickedly fast NVIDIA graphics. Now available in 15- and 17-inch models starting at just $1999. Start your engines.
The 15.4-inch machines also use mercury-free LED backlit displays, a step in the right direction as Steve Jobs mapped out in his landmark environmental roadmap. The 17″ MacBooks are still on LCD, according to the release. Jump to see the full specs.
“The seasons bring with them spectacular visual effects, including the flash of lightning during a mid-summer thunderstorm and the lazy drift of winter snowflakes. In addition, your Sims react to the changing temperatures in many ways, from the seasons’ subtle effects on their relationships, moods, wants and fears, to the new temperature gauge that tells you how warm or hot they’re getting.”
Other new features include:
The ability to grow fruits and vegetables which they can eat or sell for extra Simoleons.
Save dinner’s leftovers.
Sims can also generate food, or earn a few Simoleons on the side, with the new fishing skill.
Six new career paths: adventurer, gamer, music, law, journalism, and education.
If you’d rather simplify all of a Sim’s needs, try getting them infected with Plantism. The affliction typically occurs when your Sim is spraying a large garden with insecticide during a lengthy session (make sure the garden is outdoors, not in a greenhouse). When they become a Plant Sim, their needs will become sunlight, water, and love, and they will be able to produce baby Plant Sims by themselves.
Ben Rudolph over at the official Parallels Inc. blog just posted some footage of Quake 4 running on Parallels Desktop 3.0. As we reported, Parallels is a virtual desktop environment that allows the simultaneous use of Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. Peep the stunning footage below or at Ben’s blog post.
Apple’s wrestling and wrangling may be over. Months of speculation over whether Apple would allow third party application integration into their forthcoming iPhone may come to a close at WWDC 2007 on June 11-15.
The New York Times reports that Apple plans to change its tune and may announce the release of a software developer’s kit (SDK).
“A person briefed on Apple’s plans said that at its software developer conference this month, Apple intends to announce that it will make it possible for developers of small programs written for the Macintosh to easily convert them to run on the iPhone.” [via: New York Times]
Steve Jobs’ seemed to hint at this also, last week at the D: All Things Digital conference .
“He said Apple was ‘looking for ways to make it possible for developers to create software for the iPhone.’”
The iPhone’s success relies partly on how open it is to third party software, and there is no doubt Mr. Jobs is well aware of this. But he isn’t keen on letting every wet-behind-the-ears-mom-and-pop developer into his exclusive iPhone party, either.
“Mr. Jobs said last week…’Poor software…is what undermined the Japanese consumer electronics industry.’ And by that same token, software is what will give the iPhone what he said would be a five-year lead on the rest of the handset industry.” [via: New York Times]
Since January, Steve Jobs has cited the tendency of security and stability issues as the main reasons for not opening up the iPhone. But in order to compete with Palm and Microsoft Smartphone software, they will have to open up to independently developed apps. We’ll find out next week at WWDC if Apple will indeed sing a sweet tune to developer’s ears.
It’s been announced that the iPhone officially goes on sale on June 29. To hold you over till then, here are the three new iPhone commercials in all their glory.
“Calamari”
“How To”
“Never Been an iPod”
If I had to choose one favorite, I think it’d be the “Calamari.” That whole watching Pirates and then checking for local seafood restaurants scenario is a COOL way of showing its features and functionality. Being able to do all that at the touch of a screen is a killer selling point.
The iPhone itself looks beautiful…sorry I can’t say the same for that annoying “mushroom, mushroom” transition music.
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Tommy and the Magical Words 1.1
Over the Edge (OTEE) has announced 
