It's that time of year again: Steve Jobs' webcast, people! And get prepared, because the reality distortion field will get you again, have no illusions.

Also, something new: poking fun at Microsoft's Longhorn delayed release. "We're having fun with that in the lobby," said Jobs, referring to promotional posters located in the Moscone West convention center that take a swipe at Microsoft's next version of Windows, code-named "Longhorn." The banners read "Introducing Longhorn," "Redmond, start your photocopiers," "This should keep Redmond busy" and "Redmond, we have a problem." Gabriel Radic, managed to grab one of the pictures before they were taken down, see it on his blog at timbru.com.

Enough humor. Let's get to the goodies. The very stars of the show are two in number (well, beside Jobs).

• First is the next version of Mac OS X, code-named "Tiger," will ship in the first half of 2005, according to Jobs. "Other people are [still] trying to copy Panther," he said.

Tiger will debut about 150 new features, including the ability to fully support 64-bit processes, finally make use of some of the core architectural improvements introduced last year with the PowerPC 970 CPU that serves as the heart of the Power Mac G5 system. Also new is a search technology called "Spotlight" that Jobs said "is years ahead" of Microsoft's new operating system -- it works similarly to the song search technology in iTunes, and can find files and content in standard formats.

Another key technology in the new OS will be Core Image. This a new graphics processing library that will be introduced with Tiger that drew a comparison from Jobs to Core Audio, Mac OS X technology that enables developers to more easily manipulate sound and digital signal processing elements. Core Audio and its companion Core Video technology processes graphics using the Mac's graphics hardware, using floating- point precision and the ability to support real-time filters. Core Video was also instrumental in the development of Motion, the motion graphics design package that Apple introduced at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) 2004 trade show in April.

Other highlights are Ichat AV's new technology based on H.264/AVC (Advanced Video Coding), also known as MPEG-4 Part 10, Safari doing RSS, a new Konfabulator-like feature called Dashboard, Automator for easy scripting, VoiceOver the spoken interface, furher .Mac Sync and 64 bit Unix under the hood.

• The other star is introduced with the lines "A huge day in the history of big. The new 30-inch Cinema HD Display" and "Big ideas need a big canvas. The new Cinema Displays." and you simply have to see it yourself. At 2560 x 1600 pixels, "the 30-inch Cinema HD Display is so big, it requires the next level of graphics technology. The NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL graphics card delivers, with the most advanced graphics engine available for Mac. This card, designed specifically to support the dual link DVI connection, delivers 2560 by 1600 resolution. Even better, it can drive two 30-inch displays, giving you the ultimate creative canvas."

Serious drool alert, people, take care.