Apple Computer launched two new software programs on Tuesday and signed up several electronics makers to adopt its Rendezvous communication standard.

Apple also said it would start to limit the use of its old operating system OS 9.

At the security-heavy Apple Expo in Paris, which was canceled last year in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in the United States, chief executive Steve Jobs also said he had no idea whether the battered computer industry had hit the trough of the downturn yet. "Maybe we're at the bottom, maybe not," said Jobs, as ever clad in jeans and a black turtleneck sweater. He added that he felt comfortable with Apple having over $4 billion cash in the bank and predicted that some of its competitors without such a safety cushion "are not going to make it."

Although a market research company on Monday lowered its forecast of global personal computer unit sales this year to growth of just one percent following disappointing "back-to-school" sales, Jobs said customer numbers at its own U.S. Apple stores had been encouraging last week.

"We've had 200,000 visitors in our 35 stores last week. We'll wait and see how it shows up in our results," Jobs said. The company is currently advertising heavily in the United States, encouraging consumers to switch from Microsoft-based personal computers to Apple.

Jaguar 'Finally Arrived' Despite its well-known brand, Apple is a small niche computer maker with its own operating software and a market share of around five percent, depending on the country.

Jobs spent most of his keynote speech dissecting Apple's new operating system 10.2, known as Jaguar, around which he had a series of new product announcements and partnerships.

Dismissing the previous two releases, 10.0 and 10.1, Jobs said that with Jaguar the operating system OS X "had finally arrived," being easier to use and sporting many new features.

On the issue of ease-of-use, he said printer makers Canon from Japan and Xerox from the United States had joined Hewlett-Packard, Epson and Lexmark in embracing its Rendezvous protocol that enables electronics products to discover each other automatically over a network and set up a connection.

"Every major printer maker has now adopted Rendezvous," he said, adding that the first printers will hit the shelves early next year.

Apple currently gives away Rendezvous to electronics makers and Jobs said Apple was considering making it officially "open standard," meaning that the code will be freely available without royalty payments.

Agree to Rendezvous Philips Electronics from the Netherlands, Europe's largest consumer electronics maker, also agreed to include Rendezvous in its future products, Apple and Philips announced.

"Wouldn't it be cool to listen to the songs stored on your iPod (Apple's portable player) over your Philips hi-fi set in your home," said Jobs. Other applications Philips and Apple envisage are the ability to view on a TV screen digital pictures stored on an Apple computer.

Jobs said he was talking to a lot of other companies, but declined to be more specific about possible future adopters of Rendezvous in the consumer electronics or computer industry. The protocol can work over any kind of network, but Jobs said he favored Apple's own wireless LAN technology Airport.

Jobs also launched two new applications, an improved calendar iCal and a synchronization tool called iSync for copying calendar and contacts information to cell phones, iPods and Palm handheld computers, all at the same time.

The first program is immediately available for download, while the beta version of iSync will come later this month. Both applications will be free of charge.

Jobs said that 24 months after introducing the Mac OS X, it had signed three million active users and was "right on target" to have five million by year-end. "That's 20 percent of our installed base. The next step is that we're going to remove the ability to boot your computer in both OS X and OS 9," Jobs said, citing high computer resource needs to maintain both options as the reason for the decision.

After January 1, new buyers of OS X will only be able to boot in OS X, he said. Users will still be able to simulate OS 9 under OS X, but Apple users at the Expo immediately expressed concern they would not be able to run a lot of hardware peripherals like printers.