Macworld Reflections.
Well Apple rolled out their new stuff at Macworld. And now is the time to buy their stock since the bottom is falling out on it.
- A new laptop that can fit into an envelope and has a multi-touch track pad that works like the iPhone (pinch zoom, etc). But for $1799? Give me a break. Not for 1.6ghz and 80gb. It’s pretty freaking sexy though. Commercial for it here.
- iTunes movie rentals. Very nice and something I’ll utilize because we watch 70% of our television and movies via our computer. But I’m a pirate so it’s moot to me.
- Some new features for AppleTV. But far too impractical and cost prohibitive for a large audience.
- iPhone updates with software and customizable displays. Still way too proprietary for non-Eddie Bauer wearing stock traders who ride in first class but can afford Apple. I’m not bitter.
- The one nice thing is the wireless hub (Time Capsule) that doubles as an external wireless hard drive.
It’s hard to top last year’s iPhone. Let’s be honest.
So while I’m not jazzed about any of these outside of Time Capsule, I do think there are some really innovative things that will come out of this and/or be built on by Apple or others in the future. The multi-touch track pad will more than likely be the wave of the future. And as I’ve mused on before, the future will be navigated by hand-held devices that we will dock with our television/computer. So these are steps in the innovative evolution of that stream. But for the average user . . . nothing revolutionary. Which I guess is understandable. My only fear is that they are going to over extend themselves and lose the level of quality and service that they’ve been famous for by having their hands in way too many things.
There are already rumors about next year . . . the tablet (oversized iPhone) that doubles as a monitor for your home desktop. But for now this is what we have.
And they still owe us a hardware update on the Macbook Pro.
Innovative? Yes.
Practical & affordable? Not for me.
Scott Andreas
Tuesday, 15. January 2008 um 1:53 pm Uhr
Dear Leader is getting a solid “meh” here.
Joe Kennedy
Tuesday, 15. January 2008 um 2:36 pm Uhr
See, here’s what I was thinking about in the shower last night. The old wireless media home– TV, Mac, Internet, etc. all linked wirelessly together, so I can watch all those DVDs I’ve burned that are on my external HD on my iMac, MacBook, or TV- without connecting them all together. And if the AppleTV doesn’t do that yet, it will. I know it can be done with PCs and such, and I’m sure it can be done with Macs. But I’m positive that if it can’t, it’s close, with the Time Capsule.
Argh, sorry for the random excitement that maybe that media-linked wireless apartment I’ve dreamed of may be a reality soon (for me, even).
Eric
Tuesday, 15. January 2008 um 2:42 pm Uhr
It’s not the 1799$ that’s crazy. It’s the 3098$ for the .2 gHz bump and upgrade to a 64GB SSD HDD. While neat, its not $1300 neat.
Eric
Tuesday, 15. January 2008 um 3:31 pm Uhr
MacBook Air doesn’t have a user-replaceable battery
jeremy bouma
Wednesday, 16. January 2008 um 9:44 am Uhr
don’t forget the ipot touch apps! i downloaded mine yesterday and the mail and google maps program are worth the 20 quid alone…
it goes without saying: apple rocks!
Matt Scott
Wednesday, 16. January 2008 um 2:44 pm Uhr
I agree, not particularly innovative this year. Nothing quite as revolutionary as an iPhone, or iPod, but I’m open to being (pleasantly) surprised by MBAir. The whole optical drive thing seems like either the success or breaking point of MBair, but we’ll see.