Macworld Keynote Roundup

Dennis Faas's picture

Another year, another black mock turtleneck and jeans! That's right, Apple CEO Steve Jobs again thrilled crowds at Macworld 2008 with his style, and most of all his hardware. Although this year -- by comparison -- was a bit tame, Apple still managed to deliver some revolutionary ideas.

  • MacBook Air: An Ultrathin laptop, MacBook Air is 0.76 inches at its thickest point, comes with an 80 GB hard drive, 2 GB of ram, an 802.11n wireless card, and only weighs 3 pounds. The computer also has the smallest Intel chips ever made! The trade-off? It will lighten your wallet by about $1,799. (Source: news.com)
     
  • Time Capsule: Yawn...this one almost put me to sleep when I heard about it, but of course it still has a 'cool' factor. The Time Capsule is a wireless router and external hard drive all-in-one. It looks a little like the Mac Mini, but the storage on this little honey is outstanding. The 500 GB model will sell for $299 and the 1 Terabyte model (that's 1024 GB, or 1,000,000,000,000 bytes) sells for $499.
     
  • iPod Touch: The newest member of the iPod family will now support maps, email, stocks, and weather. If you are a first generation iPod Toucher, Jobs announced you will need to shell out $20 for the upgrade, which earned Apple's CEO some rarely heard groans and boos during the speech.

Moving On!

  • iPhone Upgrades: The iPhone will now come with maps that can triangulate your position and locate you within a reasonable margin of error. Of course you can find your location right now with Google Maps Mobile, but why not put a little extra on the iPhone? You can also customize your iPhone's main screen and put anything you want on it, such as web pages, applications etc.
     
  • iTunes: iTunes is getting movie rentals, and every major studio is onboard! The iTunes store will start with over 1,000 titles available for rent by the end of February. Jobs also claims that if you have a modern broadband connection you will be able to watch the movie on your computer within 30 seconds after rental. Once rented, you have 30 days to watch the movie but only 24 hours to finish the film once it's started. Rentals will cost three to four dollars depending on whether it is a new or old release. (Source: edgesuite.net) You will be able to watch the films interchangeably on your iPod, iPhone, computer or....
     
  • Apple TV: "Apple TV was designed to be an accessory for iTunes and your computer," Jobs said, adding "that's not what people wanted. We learned that what people really wanted was about movies, movies, movies...So we're back, with Apple TV Take 2." Now you can rent movies in regular of HD format, as well as download TV shows, music and podcasts. No PC or Mac necessary just bring the content directly to your TV! The new Apple TV is priced at $299.

But that's not all! The new set-top box can access your photos on Flickr or (dot)Mac, and watch videos from YouTube directly on your TV. In addition, Fox CEO Jim Gianopolous was on hand to announce that users will be able to upload a digital copy of Fox movies onto iTunes for use on the iPod with video support. The only DVD available to do this at first will be "Family Guy Presents: Blue Harvest", but I am sure as time goes on more and more studios will finally do what customers have been screaming about for years now.

So those are the major announcements for MacWorld 2008. I guess they can't blow your socks off every year.

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