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Steven Jobs is one of this century's most important individuals as he is as
much responsible for the growth of the individual or personal computer as software giant Bill Gates. In his keynote address to the convention he boosted of the achievements of the company with the iMac and introduced the new G3 pro then there was the glint in the eye of the kid who used to select his employees by determining what computer games they like to play. If you think computers are all business then think differently, because Apple Macintosh has set its sights on making their equipment the best game machines around. The iMac ships with several outstanding games and now Apple has made some interesting deals with game developers including ID Software makers of Quake to create some extraordinary capabilities in its hardware. These hardware capabilities are increasing largely as the result of licensing OpenGL from Silicon Graphics which will enhance 3D graphic programming support.

If that wasn't enough Tuesday morning Connectix, a software company responsible for developing the low cost Virtual PC which permits Windows to run on Mac computers introduced a piece of software costing $49 US that requires a single click of the mouse to install on a G3 computer and permits the computer to then load into its CD player any Sony PlayStation game which means in a single $49 purchase the Mac owner now can rent a game from a video store or buy one of over a thousand games designed for this game playing device. To top this little cope off the G3 actually plays the games better then they play of the Sony machine. The reason of course that this is possible is that the Sony Playstation uses a PowerPC processor so the game code runs native on the Macintosh.

This year's convention seems to be focusing on the vast capabilities of the growth of the processor power of the new G3 processors but there is also a great deal of interest in the new operating systems that are moving right along on to a Mac near you. OS 8.5 was an enormous success with over 2,000,000 copies sold and has followed it up with a free upgrade 8.5.1. The next upgrade, code named Veronica is expected at the end of February and though it would seem appropriate for it to be 8.5.2 which is what it is now labeled as it is so much of an upgrade that it will be OS 8.6. But the real promise is of course OS X scheduled for the coming summer which can on a server support network booting which would mean iMacs could be made without hard drives and come up off a server.