It turned out most of the speculation was correct, but with each new product/update, I couldn't help but think of several shortcomings (but I'll include the benefits to show the flipside):
- Time Capsule
Basically a hard drive used wirelessly to store Time Machine backups, at $299 for 500GB and $499 for 1TB. Because it's much harder to make your own backups to a drive that's half the price. (Sure the 500GB MyBook I linked isn't wireless, but you can just connect it to a single computer and share it over the network with all your machines)
- iPhone Updates and iPod Touch Apps
They first unveiled some new features for iPhones (I still don't know how 4 million people plopped down $400 + the cost of a 2-year AT&T contract for that thing) like mapping with location determined by cell towers and WiFi hotspots. Also there's now 9 customizable homescreens. But iPod Touch owners get to upgrade and get 5 new apps: mail, maps, stocks, notes, and weather for another $20! Seriously? They had to charge more for that? Lame.
- iTunes Movie Rentals
This sounded like it could have some potential. They actually got all the studios on board with it. And it's $2.99 for old movies, $3.99 for new releases. Not terrible, but not really that great either...a subscription service (ala Blockbuster, Netflix) is still a significantly better deal. And Amazon Unbox charges the same amount or less (i.e. Batman Forever is $1.99 for rental, and those can be downloaded to your Tivo as well) and also has the same expiration rules on rentals (start watching within 30 days, and once you start it you have 24 hours to complete it). HD rentals cost $1 more, so $3.99 for old movies and $4.99 for new releases. I wonder how many people would pay the extra for HD, especially considering if you're watching through a computer, the difference between the DVD-quality stream and the HD one is really going to be very small. I also wonder how this whole service is going to hold up, given that not a lot of people have blazing fast internet connections. Are people going to get stuck at "Buffering..." screens?
- Apple TV Upgrade
Finally, an announcement that I was impressed with! The new version of Apple TV now does not require a computer connection as the first version did. And they lowered the price from $299 to $229. Combining this with the movie rentals news, they should be pushing a lot of these out the door. And it will still sync with other Macs for music, pictures, etc., as well as some new features like Flickr integration. And yes, existing Apple TV owners get the upgrade free.
- MacBook Air, as described by Engadget:
The 0.16-inch thin MacBook Air -- a laptop so thin it fits in a manila envelope. The new machine features a full-size keyboard and LED-backlit 13.3-inch display with built-in iSight, and the new larger trackpad supports multi-touch gestures. Just like the iPhone, you'll be able to pan around, pinch to zoom, and rotate with two fingers, and move windows with a flick. Apple got the size down by using the same 1.8-inch 80GB drive that's in the iPod classic, but you'll be able to order a 64GB SSD instead. The Air eschews optical media, but there's a separate external you can snag for $99 and Apple's also announced a feature called Remote Disk that'll let the Air get data off the optical drive in any PC or Mac running the Remote Disk software. Pricing starts at $1799, and the Air will be shipping in two weeks.
That description pretty much covered all the details. I don't know why you'd spend so much money to have the thinnest notebook when it's not as small as cheaper 12-inch notebooks with similar specs. What's the purpose of it being so thin? I guess the cool factor justifies another $600. The multi-touch trackpad is an interesting idea, but I really don't see what the practical uses of it would be. How often do you need to spin pictures or maps around on the screen? I do have to say it gets some impressive battery life for such a small notebook though.
I do have to admit that MacBook Air looks pretty damn sleek though:
Posted by: junosand on Jan 15th, 2008 | 4:06pm