Macworld Keynote
January 20th, 2008My friends and I anticipate and watch Apple keynotes like normal people watch sports. We know all the players, we can each recite the likely strategic moves. We all saw the leaked video of the iPhone 1.1.3 update, the supposedly leaked keynote outline, etc.
And this year’s keynote was highly anticipated — maybe not like last year’s iPhone keynote, but something like that is few and far between. This was a solid keynote with solid launches of new software and hardware. Here’s my two cents on Tuesday’s events.
iPhone 1.1.3 Update
Some great updates in here: ability to add web pages as home icons, pseudo-GPS with Google Maps and the ability to send SMS messages to multiple receivers. But still no search? Seriously? And while i was wildly excited about the ability to manage music via 1.1.3 with iTunes 7.6, you can still only tie the iPhone to one library, which means you still cannot load up the iPhone with music at home and plug it into your work machine and listen to the music through iTunes.
I suppose the reason for this is that if you’re listening to music through iTunes and someone calls, you’d have to eject the iPod before answering the call (likely missing the call). I’m not saying that’s unreasonable, but I’d still prefer to be able to carry one device instead of two.
Time Capsule
Great stuff. I don’t have a use for this personally, but laptop users sure do. I have a hell of a time getting Faith to backup her iBook because of the effort involved. I’m still not using Time Machine though since it’s such a dog on my G5′s old video card and because my backup drive is the same size as my boot disk.
iTunes Video Rentals + New AppleTV
I’m still not seeing the opportunity for video via iTunes. I never bought a movie through iTunes because they were nearly the same price as DVDs for something that’s more difficult for me to watch on a TV. We have a video dock at our place, and a few times we’ve bought episodes of Lost that we missed. But we watch them and then delete them. It’s pretty unlikely I need to see the show twice. Movies are different — when I buy a movie I might only watch it once a year or so. Or maybe I want to take it to a friend’s house. Good luck doing that with an iTunes movie.
If iTunes movies were cheaper to rent than higher quality video store rentals, or more convenient than renting a movie from OnDemand I could see using it. But right now it’s still not compelling. The only way I can see renting a movie from iTunes is for flights, and that’s it.
As for AppleTV, I’ll pass on that too. On those rare instances when I need to get media onto my TV, the video iPod dock works fine. AppleTV isn’t going to replace my cable box, or my DVD player. It’s a shame the AppleTV doesn’t have a DVD player in it — then it would be an easy decision to choose it next time I upgraded. But right now it feels like I would be paying $229 for the privilege of renting movies from iTunes. No thanks.
MacBook Air
While I love the potential for a machine like this, I don’t think this machine is it (yet). If anything, it feels like a cross between the Powerbook 2400 and the G4 Cube. Limited features and expandability at a premium price. If they can get a faster processor into it, a larger hard drive and a second USB port, I’d consider it as my next work machine. But that’s unlikely, and all things considered I’d still probably prefer my 15″ MacBook Pro.
I’m actually really surprised it didn’t include nationwide broadband. While I don’t think much of Amazon’s Kindle, I am envious of that kind of connectivity on something larger than my iPhone screen. If this had wireless nationwide broadband, this would be the must-have laptop. But right now it feels more like 2/3 of a MacBook at 5/3 of the price.