Wow, the keynote has already come and gone and with it has brought some pretty nice updates and new gadgets from Apple. I am gonna go over the highlights and what I personaly think. Since I wasn’t able to attend I am going by the current live blogging that was done by TUAW. Lets get started shall we?
1. Time Capsule - Apple’s new NAS (Network Attached Storage) which is a full Airport Extreme Base Station (router) and internal storage of 500GB to 1TB of space to use with Time Machine in Leopard. I am actually pretty excited about this. PolyVector and I have been looking for a TB solution and they easily get up into the $400-$500 range. With Time Capsule this also would remedy our need for a new N router as well. I think this will be something we’ll be getting after the move.
2. iPhone and iPod Touch Updates - The iPhone’s SDK will be available in late Feb. which will bring official no-need-for-jailbreak 3rd party applications. The iPhone’s Home screen can now to customized with new shortcuts using WebClips for Safari. Google Maps now has triangulation using Skyhook Wireless and cell towers. This could be a very useful feature when trying to find new places around town. Chapter navigation, and subtitles have been added to the iPhone’s video playback. As for the iPod Touch, for a $20 upgrade (free with new iPod Touches) you get Mail, Maps, Stocks, Notes, and Weather. Maps will include the new triangulation.
3. iTunes Movie Rentals - You can now rent new releases and library movies in standard and HD through the iTunes Store. New releases will be $3.99 and $2.99 for older. You will have 30 days to start watching and 24 hours to finish.
4. Apple TV - While the rumors of a Blu-ray or HD-DVD drive were false (was kind of hoping for that one) the Apple TV now has the ability to connect to the iTunes Store and download and rent movies without the need to sync to a Mac or PC. That’s kind of spiffy. Flickr and .Mac support has also been added.
And lastly, the BIG announcement!
5. MacBook Air - Now this is a cool little notebook. It is a 13.3″ widescreen MacBook that is only 3lbs. and 0.16-0.76″. I could go on with the stats, but really, just go check out the page. It is super sleek and definitely an awesome idea for people who need to be a little more portable than even the MacBook can provide. The only downside to this for PolyVector and myself is it uses the same video as the current MacBooks and at a $1799 starting price our real upgrading needs comes to graphics.
The keynote video is not up just yet, but I’ll post it as soon as I can snatch a link.
Update: The Macworld 2008 Keynote has been posted. Enjoy! In addition to the stream you can download the keynote via iTunes as a podcast.
6 Comments
The thing I like the most is the Time Capsule. Its quite under priced in my opinion, which is AWESOME.
The MacBook Air is VERY over priced, which I guess kinda makes up for the price of Time Capsule.
But I’m wondering if you can partition the Time Capsule’s Hard Disk Drive so you can boot operating systems for it or have separate partitions for different back ups.
Nice review by the way Skunkie.
I heard on NPR today that Apple is going to put out a smaller laptop/notebook unit with no hard drive - only memory chips and/or flash memory. Is that the MacBook Air?
The MacBook Air is a very thin notebook, but it indeed has a HDD. Though you can opt for the SSD (Solid State Drive). Which is basically yeah Flash memory.
Laptop makers such as Samsung have been selling laptops with SSDs for the last year and change, but really, they’ve yet to decrease in price enough to become anything more than spendy geeks’ wet dreams.
The Macworld announcements were somewhat meh this year. We all pretty much knew this stuff was coming just by looking at the industry and seeing where Apple stood to make money in the tech market(s).
Well, no one said Apple was the first to use SSDs, and personally I don’t think it is a real solution for storage at this point simply due to price and size.
While I don’t particularly find the MacBook Air a solution for my needs, I am still excited about a few of the announcements despite the rumors predicting correctly. I dunno why people get all excited over the rumors, and then when Apple actually releases what everyone was hoping people say “The Macworld announcements were somewhat meh this year.”. I mean what do you really want? Something unexpected or something that was rumored and neat-o? Maybe a combination? I think we did get that this year as I never saw any rumors of an Apple NAS.
All in all I am pleased with what was announced and not disappointed in the slightest.
While I already have a MacBook and wouldn’t really have a need for an expensive new MacBook Air, I think the really impressive thing here that everyone seems to be skipping over is that this is the first multi-touch computer ever. This is the beginning of a huge change in input devices, the first real change since the mouse.
I’m excited :)