Here’s a quick and brief update of the announcements from the Keynote Address at Macworld today.
>Updates 1/15/08 (Evening): My second thoughts after some consideration.
Time Capsule, a backup appliance for use with the Time Machine backup feature in OS X Leopard. It’s an AirPort Extreme Base Station with a server grade hard drive. Sizes will include 500GB and 1TB at $299 and $499.
>I’ve never found backing up over wireless to be a very satisfying experience. Maybe this will be different but I see it as Apple wanting to grab a piece of the external drive market that Leopards Time Machine feature has generated.
iPhone has sold 4 million units or about 20,000 iPhones every day. The iPhone has almost 20 percent of the US smartphone market. Software Developers Kit (SDK) still coming in late February 2008. Latest iPhone software includes new and vastly improved Map features for iPhone as well as other new and improved features.
>This is part of the normal product development cycle but still some good enhancements.
iPod Touch will get five new applications. Mail, Maps, Stocks, Notes and Weather for a $20 upgrade fee. Upgraded over iTunes sync.
>These applications should have been included with the iPod Touch from the beginning. I would be a little pissed if I got an iPod Touch for Christmas and now “Uncle Steve” wanted me to pay $20 for the added applications.
iTunes Movie rental with over 1000 films by the end of February. Thirty days to start watching a rented movie and 24 hours to finish after you start. Rental $2.99-3.99. Watch on Macs, PCs, iPods, and iPhones.
>Sounds promising. The time limits are workable but I’m not sure about the pricing. Perhaps the price will fall a little with time. Will need to see how good the quality is.
AppleTV Version 2. Version 2 plays standard or “HD” movies and is able to access iTunes and the Internet directly with no computer required. Rent movies directly from AppleTV. Apple TV 2 is a free software upgrade. Price for Apple TV Version 2 will be $229 and will ship in two weeks.
>Much better offering but still not a home run. Glad to hear that the new firmware is a free upgrade to early adopters. I look forward to trying it.
MacBook Air, the world’s thinnest notebook. MacBook Air thickness runs from 0.76″ to 0.16″ (can fit in a manila envelope), 13.3″ widescreen LED-backlit display, aluminum with a Macbook black style backlit keyboard, built-in isight, multi-touch support on the touchpad, storage of 1.8″ 80Gb or optional 64Gb solid-state disk, 2Gb of memory and it features Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs at 1.6Ghz to 1.8Ghz which were specially engineered for this notebook.
Other features: MagSafe connector, USB-2, Micro-DVI, headphone jack, 802.11n WIFI, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. No Ethernet Jack or internal optical drive. New software feature called Remote Disk that will allow you to share another computers optical drive wirelessly. This borrowed disk can be used to install software or to read/write disks.
Shipping in two weeks with pre-orders available today with a basic price of $1,799.
>Not for those that want to use this laptop as their primary computer. It would be great for a road warrior who wants to use this as his travel computer. Biggest concern is the non-replaceable battery, as you couldn’t carry a second battery for added run time!
I don’t think I’d miss the optical drive much but no Ethernet port and only one USB port might be issues. However, like I said it is not a primary computer.
Very sexy with a wonderful design. Even so, price is a bit high in my opinion.
The announcements finished up with Randy Newman being rolled out playing the piano.
After having some time to consider what was announced I’m sure I’ll have more comments and posts.