Wednesday, January 16, 2008

MacWorld 2008 Keynote live blogging the live blogs

04:22 (local time) Engadget seems down.
04:23 Techcrunch is doing a fine job, a wireless backup device.
04:24 Macrumourslive has a feed that updates part of their page regularly. iPhone SDK coming February.
04:25 Only my friend Andrew is logged in to iChat down here, I think he was here last year too.
04:26 New iPhone software today. I'm running iTunes with my iPod Touch to see if there's anything there yet.. no.Picture 1.png
04:27 TechCrunch just put up a picture, gosh Steve is wearing a black turtle-neck skivvy and jeans - what a surprise!
04:24 Some clouns at Cunning.tv claimed to be sending out video of this, but they're unreachable.
04:33 More iPhone software stuff, which has previously leaked. MacRumoursLive doing a great job.
04:35 Can't ping Engadget, not sure if that's normal. You'd think AOL's servers could handle this but no apparently. acblogs.web.aol.com.websys.akadns.net 18 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss
04:36 What! I have to pay to get a software update for my iTouch?
04:39 iTunes Movie rentals! Great, but when will it come to Australia?
04:42 Movies will be available 30 days after DVD release, hmm, that's not really moving technology forward, I thought this might replace DVDs. Just checked with software update, nope.Picture 2.png
04:46 Apple TV Take 2 No computer required. Just checked apple.com, there's still just something in the air. Gosh those AppleTV slides have a lot of words on them, I think Steve is loosing the plot in terms of minimalist presentation style. Perhaps he's got Bill Gates working for him now?
04:51 Engadget just reloaded, they have good commentary but I haven't been able to read it until now. They have a broken image in their page.
04:52 MacRumoursLive have ads in their feed. I guess that's fair enough.
04:55 He said there were four things to show: Leopard uptake success, iPhone success, iTunes movie rental, I count one important thing so far.
04:58 The Unofficial Apple Weblog is trying to load in my browser but going extremely slowly. Their coverage looks good but if you can't read it.. MacRumoursLive wins the liveblog hands down from here.
05:00 Apple TV update is free, well that's nice. Out in 2 weeks, so it's still got bugs.
05:04 "Fox wanted to make great movies, and get them into as many people's hands as possible" yeah but not until 30 days after physical distribution. They still don't get it, I'm surprised Steve went along with that backward step.
05:10 Worlds thinnest notebook! Now that's what we had a sleepless night for.
05:15 MacBook Air sounds awesome. I'm preparing my script for ABC Radio National breakfast.
05:20 First photos of the Air are up. Looks pretty ugly to me, are the keys really black?. Oh no, another video plug - Micro DVI. Converting units so it's 4mm to 19mm thin. You can "borrow" the optical drive from an existing machine (including a Windows box), very nice. 5 hours battery life - excellent!
05:26 US$1799 converts to AU$2002 (well, we'll see about that) Pre-order today, ships in two weeks.
05:28 I go to the Australia Apple store but it's down right now.Picture 3.png
06:04 I'm done. See you next year.
PS: I seem to be updating my iPod touch, not sure at what point it's going to ask for money..
Well done to MacRumoursLive for the best live blog of the 2008 MacWorld keynote.

4 comments:

Tony Stevenson said...

re: 30 day delay from DVD release to iTunes - don't forget it's about maximising $$ not giving people what they want! Of course I'd be happy to wait 30 days to be able to get the movie at a fraction of the price of buying the DVD (and the convenience of home viewing) - now all we need is better broadband in Oz.

Anonymous said...

I like the Air's illuminated keyboard and the gestural trackpad (which is enormous - not a bad idea). I'm not a huge fan of the tapered edge look, like the new iPods; I think this sucks personally and makes them downright ugly.

I'd rather have the same thickness (thinness?) and slightly rounded edges than that dinky looking mechanical pop-down port assembly. I wonder how long that will last mechanically in the real world?

No wired Ethernet!

The solid state drive option is great, but it comes with rather a big price-tag attached for *less* capacity.

Not having an in-built optical drive will take some getting used to, but if solid state USB drives keep getting cheaper and most software and media content is distributed via IP networking this will be less of a problem. Thinking more about this, the last time I used the optical drive on my Linux box was to rip some CDs, and before that, to install the OS! Everything else has been sourced from the 'net.

Peter Marks said...

On the Air's lack of optical drive, I think their solution, which works with PCs too is very clever. The amazing thing is that you can install the OS through this mechanism so it must be built in to firmware - reminds me of those boot roms you used to find on ethernet cards.

ben said...

Apple do sell a USB ethernet adaptor so you can have wired ethernet if you need it. As a restriction of USB 2 it doesn't do gigabit however, so I guess I see your point. Remember that this is supposed to be an ultra portable.