Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s)
The big news from the keynote presentation from Steve Jobs today at the Moscone Center in San Francisco was the announcement of the highly anticipated ultra-portable laptop – the MacBook Air. This computer is as thin as .16″ and the full thickness when closed is .76″. Whoa. Still has all the bells and whistles! (13″ screen, 80GB hd, 2GB ram, built-in iSight camera, backlit keyboard, multi-touch track pad, 802.11n wi-fi, Bluetooth 2.1, and some cool software that allows you to access/use an optical drive on a network computer – Mac or PC!)
They’re pretty pricy, but also a pretty amazing little product. You can even get it with a solid-state drive (flash drive), which might give you more battery life, but definitely is super fast and less parts to breakdown.
Other announcements included a new wireless router (AirPort Extreme base station) that includes a hard drive for easy network access, and Time Machine backups. It’s called Time Capsule, and is available in 500GB or 1TB. And, the iPod Touch received some software updates, allowing iPod touch owners to access Mail via their iPod as well as some other “essentials” (weather, stocks, etc).
The other big announcement involved iTunes and the AppleTV. iTunes sells movies, but not all that well. Not compared to how they do with music. The AppleTV has done OK, but not that well. Well, now the newly lower-priced AppleTV gives you access to much more movie content which can be rented and immediately watched on your AppleTV. Movie rentals are $2.99 and $3.99 for 24 hour rentals. HD movie rentals are $4.99. You can also purchase music directly on your AppleTV now as well.
I’m still waiting for Apple to fully get into the TV business and release a real AppleTV. We should start saving up now, cause I know it’s coming! 🙂
Fun stuff today from Apple. Not sure I’ll be getting any of it soon, but those MacBook Airs will sell faster than anything Apple has ever made. Even at that price (starts at $1799). Just watch and see.
[for more coverage, see the archived live coverage page from Macworld.com.]