WWDC Panther Preview [Archive]

MacRumors

Jun 23, 2003, 03:54 PM

Apple demonstrated Panther (http://www.apple.com/macosx/panther/) for the first time today.

Jobs touched upon a number of new features in Panther:

Finder (http://www.apple.com/macosx/panther/finder.html) - Now metal with a "user-centric" model. Screenshots depiced a new area for volumes/iDisks/folders on the left hand side. The action menu gives you access to labels and other contextual comamnds.

Exposé (http://www.apple.com/macosx/panther/expose.html) provides an easy way for users to find windows in their clutered screens. The demo of Exposé drew oohs and aahs from the crowd as the windows move out of the way in a fluid motion.

Fast User Switching (http://www.apple.com/macosx/panther/fast_user_switching.html) - lets you switch between accounts without quitting running applications. It also adds a bit of Apple Flare - with your old screen rotating out on a 3d cube.

Mail (http://www.apple.com/macosx/panther/mail.html) - the new version can organize by "threads" rather then individual emails. Performance is also improved.

FileVault (http://www.apple.com/macosx/panther/file_vault.html) - offers security for your home directory.
Preview (http://www.apple.com/macosx/panther/preview.html) - is noted to be the fastested PDF viewer around - which would be a significant improvement over the current incarnation. Fast text searching also included.

Font Book (http://www.apple.com/macosx/panther/font_book.html) - the new Foot Book lets you install, preview, search, activate and deactivate fonts you need.

Faxing (http://www.apple.com/macosx/panther/faxing.html) support throughout Panther.

Xcode (http://www.apple.com/macosx/panther/xcode.html) - for developers - faster build times, predictive compile, distributed building, and more...

MovieGuy

Jun 23, 2003, 03:55 PM

A release date would have been nice.
Sign me up for a pre-order!

dethl

Jun 23, 2003, 03:58 PM

I just bought my dual 2 ghz G5, and I couldn't get anything out of them on whether or not us G5 buyers would be getting Panther free when it comes out. Blah!!!!

Oh well, thank god theres a student discount.

avus

Jun 23, 2003, 04:03 PM

Expos…~, not Expos!

I believed that Steve demo'd everything 10.3 on the PowerMac G5 as it was blindly fast!

wildmac

Jun 23, 2003, 04:11 PM

places.....

I sure hope that left-column in the new finder is collapsable!!! I sure would hate to see that all the time!!!!!!

Fredo Viola

Jun 23, 2003, 04:13 PM

Yaaaay! G5! Yaaaaaaay! The machine is gorgeous and the specs make me feel a little queezy. I'm filled with the gruesome desire to squeeze this citrus into the eyes of the AE pc-users at the Adobe AE forum. They've been so nasty these last few months. Now we may have a solid chance of kicking some ass!

Ananna

Jun 23, 2003, 04:15 PM

I watched the play-by-play in the MacRumors chat channel, as well as watching a couple of other sites update their pages automagically (MacMinute, MacRumors, MacMerc).

One question, of course, is does anyone have a link to the SteveNote for the "rest of us" who couldn't watch it live? It sounded fun.

Feature request for MacRumors IRC client: ability to turn off join/leave/nick-change messages.

Everyone did a wonderful job, though I was sort of bummed that people glossed over a lot of information as "geeky stuff" or just plain "wow" without any real description of what was going on. This included the websites. But I guess beggars can't be choosers, and it was nice to watch you go wild over the presentation.

And having looked over Apple's website (and watched the G5 Introduction movie -- slick stuff!) I can see why you were so blown away. Panther is going to be something really special, I think, teamed up with the new G5s (and I assume there'll be a powerbook G5 announced within the next six months or so) is going to really make the Macintosh an even *more* special platform to be on.

The prices are too high, of course, for both the hardware and for the software. But I can't say that I'm complaining. It is all worth it. Early adopters pay for the R&D that the rest of us enjoy later on. We appreciate it, we really do. :)

G4scott

Jun 23, 2003, 04:16 PM

Font Boot? Uh, Typo...

Overall, I'm very excited about Panther, and especially XCode... Sounds fun.

G4scott

Jun 23, 2003, 04:19 PM

Originally posted by Ananna
The prices are too high, of course, for both the hardware and for the software. But I can't say that I'm complaining. It is all worth it. Early adopters pay for the R&D that the rest of us enjoy later on. We appreciate it, we really do. :)

For Panther, I might be able to understand a bit of griping about the price, but for the features you get, I'm sure it'll be well worth it... But as i said before, Apple needs an OS subscription plan, like they have for some colleges...

Now the G5's are very competitively priced. You can't get a windoze system under 2k that can beat the 1.6ghz G5 in features, expandability, performance, and coolness, without stealing it...

rhpenguin

Jun 23, 2003, 04:20 PM

Well it looks good and it seems as if they are making some real improvements to it. Seing as how I am a recent switcher an operating system upgrade from the Microsoft side just brings more of the same. But this seems like theres a few new goodies in there. Appearance on this also looks better than those screenies that surfaced on the weekend so already its a step forward.

My only question about this is, will use users of the G3/G4 be left out in the cold on Panther? Will this be a G5 exclusive?! AHHHH I NEED DETAILS!!!

But at the risk of rambling on for pages and pages all I can say is lets go Panther!!!

dialectro

Jun 23, 2003, 04:21 PM

The ease of switching users is fantastic, and the visual cube twisting of the GUI is simply awesome. Beats the hell out of the Longhorn twisting the GUi upside down preview.
Way to go Apple!!

Java

Jun 23, 2003, 04:25 PM

Dude, if I can get ride of Suitcase and just use Apple's font software, that would be awesome. Would easily pay the $129 just for that.

Ohh, and to fax and receive faxes (with anti-alias on the fax), oooooh ya.

Now we are talking Steve.

I guess I can now tell Microsoft to kiss my fax :D

aafuss1

Jun 23, 2003, 04:29 PM

I think the fast user switching will be a welcome adiition for many additions-just like the featuire of the same name but adds a cool old screen roatating. Also great to see that the Finder now has a iTunes style interface-and intergrated faxing and the return of labels. The Font Book looks quite interesting.Expose should be the most cool addition to the Mac OS yet.

jwthomp

Jun 23, 2003, 04:49 PM

Has anyone read or heard of when Panther (wow I almost typed Jaguar.. ;) ) seeds will be available for download from ADC?

Cheers,

Jeff

digital1

Jun 23, 2003, 04:52 PM

Today I am proud to be a Mac nerd. :)

Freg3000

Jun 23, 2003, 05:15 PM

Originally posted by digital1
Today I am proud to be a Mac nerd. :)

I concur. I also think we need to make June 23 an annual holiday-when Apple surpassed PCs in speed. :)

macnews

Jun 23, 2003, 05:31 PM

Originally posted by Java
Dude, if I can get ride of Suitcase and just use Apple's font software, that would be awesome. Would easily pay the $129 just for that.

Ok, does anyone know more about font book? If you have suitcase you may want to check because you may already own it. IF (a big if) I am remembering correctly Font Book comes with Suitcase. The version in Panther may be updated and more fancy but can it replace Suitcase? From the keynote presentation I didn't see much more than a preview option and install option. This still doesn't allow me to easily MANAGE my fonts. I also didn't see anything there to fix damaged fonts. I would love to see Panther fix some of the font problems/issues, I mean do we really need 5 different locations for fonts (4 if you take out classic).

Don't get me wrong, I am not praising suitcase. I would LOVE to see some better (doesn't need to be suitcase, font agent, etc. level) font management included with the OS. At the very least I would like suitcase, font agent and others get their stuff together and do a good job managing fonts in a multi-user environment like OS X is!

jfruh

Jun 23, 2003, 05:43 PM

Does anyone know anything more about the "built-in" x11? How integrated will it be -- to the level of the current Classic environment?

jf

Billicus

Jun 23, 2003, 05:50 PM

I assume it is going to work on all Macs that currently support Jagaur? My concern is that the updates will keep getting bigger, all the while my iMac's HD is the same old 13 GB and the graphics card, processor speed, etc. and getting any faster either. I just want to know how soon some of these OS X updates are going to quit working on older Macintosh computers like mine.:( Oh well, seems time to get a G5!:cool:

jettredmont

Jun 23, 2003, 05:57 PM

Originally posted by wildmac
places.....

I sure hope that left-column in the new finder is collapsable!!! I sure would hate to see that all the time!!!!!!

I agree 100%!

I suspect it is, like the toolbar is ... Having it there all the time takes up way too much space if you have multiple folder windows open at once.

makkystyle

Jun 23, 2003, 06:37 PM

First off, thanks to the mods on the MRChat IRC this afternoon. I knew the show had to be pretty cool when three lines in a row it was "wow" "Wow" "WOW"!! I was LMAO when I heard "the crowd there is cheering!" at the sight of the graphical user switching. I can't wait for and ADC seed!!!

I'm just glad I finally understand why all the app windows were so small on the leaked screenshots... EXPOSE! This just looks incredible. I think I'm going to have to get my sister to become a student developer also ;) I DEFINITELY know what my grad. present is going to be!

pascalpp

Jun 23, 2003, 06:54 PM

Originally posted by dialectro
The ease of switching users is fantastic, and the visual cube twisting of the GUI is simply awesome. Beats the hell out of the Longhorn twisting the GUi upside down preview.

dialectro-

where can we see the longhorn preview you mentioned?

VIREBEL661

Jun 23, 2003, 06:54 PM

Looks extremely powerful... Once again Apple the leader in OS development... We'll see poor implementaitons of some of these features in windoze long from now... It is a VERY good day to be a Mac user and fan!:D

VIREBEL661

Jun 23, 2003, 06:55 PM

Some have complained that it's a paid upgrade again, but I'll definitely buy it...

CheekyGit

Jun 23, 2003, 08:17 PM

Originally posted by rhpenguin
Well it looks good and it seems as if they are making some real improvements to it. Seing as how I am a recent switcher an operating system upgrade from the Microsoft side just brings more of the same. But this seems like theres a few new goodies in there. Appearance on this also looks better than those screenies that surfaced on the weekend so already its a step forward.

My only question about this is, will use users of the G3/G4 be left out in the cold on Panther? Will this be a G5 exclusive?! AHHHH I NEED DETAILS!!!

But at the risk of rambling on for pages and pages all I can say is lets go Panther!!!

I wish they would have mentioned the system requirements for Panther. I still have a Pismo G3/500 running "Jagwire". I hope I can run Panther on it. I'm sure it will run on my PB/667 and PM Dual1Ghz. Oh well I guess I will see when I get it.

CheekyGit :D

Beigean

Jun 23, 2003, 09:35 PM

i hope the toolbar-collapse button on the top right of the panther finder window works the same as in jaguar. i'm old-fashioned when it comes to the Finder and prefer working in a more OS 9-like environment. anyone else use the X finder toolbarless?

daftna

Jun 23, 2003, 09:38 PM

Has anyone found out if that themes system pref will allow switching from the metal finder or bring back the pinstripes in the title bars?

pascalpp

Jun 23, 2003, 10:26 PM

hey folks-

if you're like me, you find yourself drooling over some of the new features in Panther. Since I can't play with them hands-on yet, I keep viewing certain parts of the keynote stream over and over again.

Here are reference movies which just show the segments on Exposé and Fast User Switching. These should work for as long as the stream is online.

Exposé
http://www.pascal.com/misc/expose.mov

Fast User Switching
http://www.pascal.com/misc/fastuserswitching.mov

Put on your bib and enjoy!

PowerBook User

Jun 23, 2003, 10:27 PM

Panther does look good. I wouldn't be surprised if there are a lot of new features that weren't even mentioned. For example, I don't think Steve said anything about quicker speed, but it should be quicker. Also, I would assume X11 will be a final version and included with the OS. Also, http://www.apple.com/macosx/panther/finder.html says that you can securely delete files. That's interesting. I wonder what other new features there are that weren't announced.

Wombatronic

Jun 23, 2003, 10:27 PM

Anyone else underwhelmed by the 10.3 demo? Lest I be taken for a whiner, I really liked just about everything else about the keynote, but most of the 10.3 "features" seemed like cheeseball shareware apps:

Finder: Toolbar moves to the left side; finder therefore "user-centric". Yay?

Exposé: For those people who don't know about cmd - `or those who got bored with the genie effect.

Fast User Switching: Any of you share your macs? I don't. Pretty though. I hope this lays the foundation for multiple simultaneous users on different displays (like whatever iPal nonsense is currently floating around :)

Mail: Glad it is getting better... :) Really want a "doesn't steal focus just because .mac is down" feature. Threading is really nice (though to sound like a whiny unix dork: "it has been in gnus forever" :)

FileVault: Er... Yay? Unlikely to be used by non-business types, imo. Likely to be improperly used by business types. Corporate laptops are the [only] target?

Preview: Sweet. Something I am happy about. Now if I could just get some decent eBooks...

Font Book: Who is this for? Graphic artists? Don't they have their own font stuff? ;)

Faxing: E-gah!?! Who still does this? Seriously? Are there just some businesses that are stuck with legacy equipment? Why should Apple encourage this behavior? :)

Xcode: Looks really neat, but I don't see how this is an OS upgrade. Happy nonetheless. Anything that makes development easy helps on many levels.

If there are things that I am missing, I would love to get excited. I am really hoping for some cool speed-ups, but I don't really see anything on the same level as, say, Rendezvous or QE.

Comments, Ridicule?

shadowfax

Jun 23, 2003, 11:19 PM

did it really say that FreeBSD 5 was coming with it?

tpjunkie

Jun 23, 2003, 11:24 PM

I just wish it wasn't a $129 upgrade :( how long do you think it'll be before my father who's a teacher can get a free copy like apple did with jaguar?

MOM

Jun 23, 2003, 11:50 PM

I also noticed that nothing was said regarding speed improvements. Perhaps they are minor or still too much in a state of flux to comment on. On the other hand maybe I missed any remarks because even on my DSL line the Quicktime stream was horrible, like the days of old before MPEG4. Has anybody been able to watch without constant drop-outs?

Either way, I don't want to come across as not satisfied. I think Panther looks like a great upgrade. The iChat features alone can be worth it if you have an oversea's freind/relative with a good net connection. I'm also very excited about preview. I've always felt that scrolling through PDF files, even on my 867MHz G4 at work was painfully slow. (Hey Adobe, could you start optimizing apps for Macs before Steve is forced to add Photoshop capabilities to iPhoto?) I remeber when Gateway came out with their comparison of their flatpanel frankenmachine to the iMac and PDF scrolling and web surfing were some of the bad spots for the Mac. Apple has clearly taken noticed and responded. Hurray for the good guys ; )

Oh, yah, the G5 looks good too </extreme understatment>

venture160

Jun 23, 2003, 11:50 PM

i wonder if it will be avail on the web again like a developer leaking or something like they did with the origional beta versions of osx.

MOFS

Jun 24, 2003, 04:34 AM

Originally posted by Wombatronic
Anyone else underwhelmed by the 10.3 demo? Lest I be taken for a whiner, I really liked just about everything else about the keynote, but most of the 10.3 "features" seemed like cheeseball shareware apps:

Finder: Toolbar moves to the left side; finder therefore "user-centric". Yay?

Exposé: For those people who don't know about cmd - `or those who got bored with the genie effect.

Fast User Switching: Any of you share your macs? I don't. Pretty though. I hope this lays the foundation for multiple simultaneous users on different displays (like whatever iPal nonsense is currently floating around :)

Mail: Glad it is getting better... :) Really want a "doesn't steal focus just because .mac is down" feature. Threading is really nice (though to sound like a whiny unix dork: "it has been in gnus forever" :)

FileVault: Er... Yay? Unlikely to be used by non-business types, imo. Likely to be improperly used by business types. Corporate laptops are the [only] target?

Preview: Sweet. Something I am happy about. Now if I could just get some decent eBooks...

Font Book: Who is this for? Graphic artists? Don't they have their own font stuff? ;)

Faxing: E-gah!?! Who still does this? Seriously? Are there just some businesses that are stuck with legacy equipment? Why should Apple encourage this behavior? :)

Xcode: Looks really neat, but I don't see how this is an OS upgrade. Happy nonetheless. Anything that makes development easy helps on many levels.

If there are things that I am missing, I would love to get excited. I am really hoping for some cool speed-ups, but I don't really see anything on the same level as, say, Rendezvous or QE.

Comments, Ridicule?

I know what you mean. I use my iBook mainly for playing games, writing projects on AppleWorks and listening to iTunes, so most of these features are useless to me. I don't even hav the internet (I'm only a student!).:rolleyes:

Sol

Jun 24, 2003, 06:48 AM

One of the most surprising things was the XCode demo. Why? Because it utilized distributed computing to do its thing. It was mentioned that this was achieved with Rendezvous so maybe this is the shape of things to come with all high-end applications. I hope Final Cut Pro (and Express) will one day offer the option to use the rest of the Macs in a network to render its effects faster.

AppleMatt

Jun 24, 2003, 07:43 AM

I thought the Panther demo was good, definately, but I do agree that there seems to be too few features that I would find useful that compel me to upgrade.

UI speed will be of benefit, faster PDF's will be fantastic, but that's all I will get out of it.

Many of the features (that I won't find so useful) seemed to be things that should really have been in 10.2, ie labels, fast user switching etc.

Here's hoping they add a lot more stuff.

AppleMatt

gbojim

Jun 24, 2003, 10:26 AM

One thing you all should remember is the Panther demo was aimed at developers and pro users, and the software at this point is developer preview ie - not yet alpha let alone beta.

I don't know how many consumer features are built in - my programmer won't be back from WWDC until the weekend so we'll have to play with it next week. But she said the copy she was playing with was really sweet.

One thing I can say for sure, for people who work on multiple apps simultaneously like software developers, graphics designers, web developers etc. expose itself will make Panther a bargain at twice the price.

And XCode rocks.

AppleMatt

Jun 24, 2003, 11:28 AM

Originally posted by Sol
One of the most surprising things was the XCode demo. Why? Because it utilized distributed computing to do its thing. It was mentioned that this was achieved with Rendezvous so maybe this is the shape of things to come with all high-end applications. I hope Final Cut Pro (and Express) will one day offer the option to use the rest of the Macs in a network to render its effects faster.

Definately, this is something I'll be keeping a close eye on.

I also would like to see it come into lots of other things, there are a few G3's on my network sitting idle.

Originally posted by gbojim
One thing you all should remember is the Panther demo was aimed at developers and pro users, and the software at this point is developer preview ie - not yet alpha let alone beta.

That's a very good point. The one thing that did stick out is the fact that Apple's own internal tests highlighted UI, boot speed and login time as major focus areas, but there was no real mention of these yesterday.

It is called World Wide developers conference after all :D

AppleMatt

Ja Di ksw

Jun 24, 2003, 11:45 AM

Does anyone know if people who buy computers now (especially the new G5's) will get Panther free when it comes out, or at least at a discount?

IJ Reilly

Jun 24, 2003, 12:04 PM

A couple of points I may have missed in all the hubub:

(1) When will Panther ship?

(2) Will it be 64-bit?

(3) Will Apple ship a 64-bit version of 10.2.x before Panther?

beatle888

Jun 24, 2003, 12:18 PM

Wombatronic

Jun 24, 2003, 12:21 PM

Originally posted by AppleMatt

It is called World Wide developers conference after all :D

AppleMatt

This is precisely what worried me. How does work on Finder UI, Expose, FontBook, Preview, Mail, Fast User Switching, etc... impact developers? Is any of it nearly as relevant/fundamental as Rendezvous / QE / Inkwell / Other 10.2 stuff?

Aside from Xcode, (and maybe filevault?) I don't see anything that is going to change how/what people develop for OS X. Had they exposed an API/support for something like their Xcode grid computing, *that* would be impressive (and change what/how people develop).

As it stands, a lot of 10.3 just feels like an average week on versiontracker...

Wombatronic

Jun 24, 2003, 12:41 PM

Originally posted by beatle888
the expose comment you made makes me shake my head. go ahead and hit your command ` buttons and cycle through the windows. i'll gesture and click on the exact window i want.

apple is waisted on some.

Geez... Wasted on me, huh? I guess I'll try not to let the door hit me on my way out...

Listen, if there is a target market out there for expose, great. I suppose Apple needs to make those people happy. I, personally, don't see anything in expose that

1. Couldn't be done as a SW app.
2. Will impact developers in any way (except allow them to have messier UIs)

I guess you do have a point though, which is that some things (eg: cmd - `) just don't do it for some people.

(related question: do any of you actually use cmd - `? If not, why not?)

whooleytoo

Jun 24, 2003, 12:46 PM

pascalpp

Jun 24, 2003, 12:56 PM

Certainly WWDC is a Developer conference, but the opening keynote has a much larger audience than just Apple Developers, especially when Apple announces ahead of time that they'll be previewing the next version of Panther, something that every OS X user is looking forward to. Steve is certainly aware of this, and so the keynote contains some things that are targeted more specifically at developers (e.g. XCode) but the bulk of it is aimed at every Apple user.

The sessions following the keynote which make up the real meat of the week-long conference are where Apple really speaks directly to its developers. Those sessions are much more technical and are not geared toward the general Mac audience.

NNO-Stephen

Jun 24, 2003, 01:06 PM

Originally posted by venture160
i wonder if it will be avail on the web again like a developer leaking or something like they did with the origional beta versions of osx.

it's all over the place. bit torrent mostly. it's been on the net since the niht of the 23rd.

pascalpp

Jun 24, 2003, 01:07 PM

From a user post over at MacSlash:

Jobs said "before the end of the year." I was at the Pasadena, CA store and the store manager read off some items after the presentation from an official Apple email saying Panther would ship in September. The email had to have been prepared for this presentation because it included other items concerning the shipment of iSight to the stores.

September? Yay!

Vonnie

Jun 24, 2003, 04:02 PM

MacBidouille has some screenshots of Panther available.

screenshots (http://www.macbidouille.com/article.php?id=119)

Scheduled booting is back!
Secure deletion: if you are really paranoid you can do a 35 random data pass on your files :-)
A "configure IPV6" button seems interesting :-)
The nice activity monitor (that appeared in the rumors)

A more refined Aqua. I noticed:
new look for tabs
sunken buttons
no stripes in window bar
the toolbar is a little bit more bright than the content of the window. (gives a nice subtle contrast)

gbojim

Jun 24, 2003, 04:44 PM

Originally posted by Wombatronic
This is precisely what worried me. How does work on Finder UI, Expose, FontBook, Preview, Mail, Fast User Switching, etc... impact developers? Is any of it nearly as relevant/fundamental as Rendezvous / QE / Inkwell / Other 10.2 stuff?

Aside from Xcode, (and maybe filevault?) I don't see anything that is going to change how/what people develop for OS X. Had they exposed an API/support for something like their Xcode grid computing, *that* would be impressive (and change what/how people develop).

As it stands, a lot of 10.3 just feels like an average week on versiontracker...

Actually, I thought they did a pretty good job of choosing hilites that are pertinent to consumers and developers.

Finder UI - Being able to quickly add and remove folders full of project files into the left hand pane and always have it there will probably save most developers 15-30 minutes per day - excellent.

Expose - Finally an intelligent way to handle the 20, 30 or more windows that are often used when programming. Right now it's a toss up between closing a bunch of windows and having to re-open them every few minutes or paging between everything using keyboard shortcuts. Think that many windows is ridiculous? - the project I was working on this morning involved 15 source files all getting updated basically at the same time, 8 data files feeding the app also getting updated at the same time, 4 pdf reference manuals and 3 terminal windows at different working directories.

Preview is going to be awesome for finding stuff quickly in those wonderful 1200 page reference manuals.

Fast user switching - it will only take a second to switch from developer account to testing account.

Mail - One of the main forms of communications between the development team - adding threads is excellent.

Not sure about font book - I guess that is aimed more at the creative crowd.

You forgot iChat AV. This is going to be great for pulling together a quick meeting when you actually want to see the other people's faces. That way you can actually see if they get what you are saying.

There is also info being presented in the sessions about BSD 5, XCode, X11 and a ton of APIs not mentioned in the keynote.

I know there is a lot of stuff to do things like this from versiontracker and such, but one thing to realize is developers generally do not want to install shareware and freeware on their development platforms. Too often you end up chasing some problem with your code that is caused by one of these wonderful little apps.

Sorry for the long post, but hopefully you're not as worried now.

evolu

Jun 24, 2003, 05:02 PM

am i missing any reference to the new quicktime codec pixlet? I can't find any info on it around. Looked great-ish on the stream...

Flowbee

Jun 24, 2003, 05:43 PM

Originally posted by evolu
am i missing any reference to the new quicktime codec pixlet? I can't find any info on it around. Looked great-ish on the stream...

Good question. I was wondering just how regular 'video un-professionals' like myself might benefit from Pixlet technology.

Sol

Jun 28, 2003, 09:27 AM

I think Pixlet will be part of something like an iPod for video. The better than DVD resolution lends itself well to widescreen displays like the Apple Displays as well as plasma screens, LCD TVs, etc. It would also be a good format for recording digital television but there would surely be restrictions to doing that.

Maybe there will be a new tape format to support it, much like DV25 has MiniDV tapes. Apple could design the tape mechanism as an external peripheral that is FireWire native (unlike all the external hard-drives of today). The tapes could be used for backup of data as well. Speed would be faster than MiniDV but slower than a disc.