Macintosh, Mac Apps, iPhone, Steve Jobs, Apple

MacWorld 2008 Thoughts and Comments

by Juan on January 15th, 2008

They MacWorld Keynote is a little less than an hour away. The Apple store is down, there’s a teaser on the front page of the Apple web site that features the “There’s something in the air” slogan. The whole Mac community is buzzing. All of us eagerly awaiting what Apple will unleash on us. Some will have lighter wallets tom.

There’s a lot of coverage for Macworld already, since I’m not there I won’t compete with that. Instead I’ll post my reactions here as I get information as well. We’ll see if I end up giddy or disappointed after the keynote is over. Stay tuned…

Ok, the keynote is done. Here are my thoughts. Steve said he wanted to talk about 4 things.

1. Leopard - The most successful release of OS X ever. Sure, Leopard is great, I haven’t adopted though because of some issues. I’m also wary of disrupting my set-up. So this one isn’t such a big deal.

Along with Leopard’s discussion came time machine and that backing up still needed you to plug-in an hard drive every time. Hassle. Enter Time Capsule. It’s a wifi base station with a hard drive in it. You can back up to this using time machine. Cool! This one got me excited. Why? Coz I’m a lazy bastard. I hate plugging in things and unplugging them. So this makes life easier. Easier life = happier me.

Time capsule isn’t priced that bad either. 500GB = $299, 1TB = $499.

2. iPhones - The SDK will ship in Feb. In the mean time some new apps are available as an update. Maps with location, Webclips and the ability to customize your home screen. Multiple SMS too. Not really exciting. 3rd party apps can do this. I also can’t relate since iPhone is still not officially available here so I decided not to get one yet.

iPod Touch will receive new apps too. Mail, stocks, notes, weather and maps. That’s great! No?!? Why? $20 bucks for an upgrade. That sucks.

3. iTunes - Movie rentals are now a reality. This is good in my opinion. Major studios are onboard. Touchstone, Miramax, MGM, Lionsgate, Newline, FOx, WB, Disney, Paramount, Universal and Sony. Library titles at $2.99 and new releases at $3.99. You can watch from a Mac, PC, iPod and iPhone. You have 30 days to start watching and 24 hours to finish it.

This is good for me since I mostly watch movies once. Unless I really really like it then I buy it. The bad thing, not yet available here. We’ll see if the iTunes GC works here.

4. MacBook Air - Ahh.. what can I say. I wet my pants. It’s ridiculously thin. It fits inside an envelope. It’s got a full-size keyboard, backlit at that, a 13″ screen, 1.8″ 80GB hard drive and an option for a 64GB SSD. Damn..

One of the great features that I’ve seen is the Remote Disc. It allows you to “borrow” the optical drive of a Mac or PC and install from there. That’s cool.

All in all, the keynote was ok. Nothing really really spectacular. The hype got the best of it but the MacBook Air will be talked about more in the coming days.

I can see why the stock tanked. It’s in the 160 levels. People expected more. Then again we really might be expecting too much.

It’s 3:30 a.m. here in Manila, I’m dizzy already. I will write more about this tom.

Share This

Related Stories

MacWorld 2008 Predictions
Leopard Tips From MacWorld
Office 2008 Installation Issues
Apple’s Final MacWorld
Pre Macworld Thoughts

POSTED IN: Commentaries, Juan's Posts