MacWorld 2008 Keynote Anaylsis and Wrap-up.

Apple kicked off MacWorld ’08 by playing New Order, Gorillaz and Kanye West.  The conference area can hold up to 4000 people at a time.  Of course Apple couldn’t resist kicking PC’s in the provable balls by using MacWorld to launch their new ad’s and of course the Mac fan boys lapped it up.

Steve kicked off by stating the normal sales figures for last year including the five million copies of Leapod delivered in the first three months, 20% of the Mac OS X base installed leopard, this has been the most successful launch of an platform upgrade.
They then reflected on the successful year for Apple by presenting press coverage of leopard and good support from developers including the Microsoft Office upgrade.
The announced the upgrade of their Airport Extreme products by launching the “Time Capsule” which backs up your data wirelessly in a 500GB and 1TB version.

During the coverage with various live bloggers using twitter the less than stable web app crashed leaving many bloggers in the dark.

The iPhone got an upgrade to 1.1.3 with multiple sms messages, Google locations, web clips, customise the home screen and “lyrics” which Job’s demonstrated  personally on stage. The features appear largely consistent with what was previously leaked on iVirtua.

Webclips (website bookmarks on your home screen) will remember where you zoomed/panned to which could be handy for many iPhone/iTouch users.

Google has been quick off the blocks by announced improvements to its applications for the iPhone. Of course, that depends on whether or not you have been insane enough to buy that wallet-crushing O2 contract.

iPod Touch users will be happy to note that they get five new applications Mail, Stocks, Notes, and Weather however they have to pay a $20 upgrade which in my mind is disgraceful and very un-apple like.

iTunes Movie Rentals is also coming with all the major movie studios on board including Touchstone, Miramax, MGM, Lionsgate, Newline, FOX, WB, Disney, Paramount, Universal and Sony the movies are available 30 days after DVD release which is a first for a movie rental company.  Universal is a shock as Viacom and Apple recently fell out over pricing.

Users of the service will have 30 days to start watching. 24 hours to finish (DRM anyone?) and the cost will be $2.99 for Library titles and $3.99 for New Releases, international Apple lovers will not get to use this until later this year.

Apple TV will be upgrading this time there’s no need for a computer and you get HD quality with Dolby 5.1.  You’ll also be able to get your pictures from your .Mac and Flickr accounts directly on your TV.  You can of course sync with iTunes if you want to and of course you’ll be able to rent movies directly from iTV.

When you rent your movies from iTunes you’ll also be able to see what others users have rented bringing the Amazon like recommendation system to iTunes.

Jobs also demonstrated downloading a rental and watching and of course he got it a blazing fast speeds (not that you will mind on your 2MBbps broadband connection.
You can now download music can from iTV and sync it back to your iTunes application on your PC or Mac.

The basic iTV will cost $229 which is down from $299 and the update will be free to download.

Jobs was accompanied on stage by Jim Gianopulos, Chairman and CEO of Fox “Fox wanted to make great movies, and get it into as many people's hands as possible. Consumers wanted the same thing”, of course no one can beat Jobs at the thing he does best. FOX CEO: “Video rentals aren't a new thing, but Apple is doing it in an intuitive, insightful, etc way. This will be a transformative version of the rental model”.

And of course Jobs released the much hyped “MacBook Air”, Air comes in at a stupidly priced $1799 (and thats what it starts at!).  Anyway apart from its slim looks and multi touchpad nothing is really new and the specs are really just the same as the MacBook.  Personally I was disappointed with the result and was hoping for an Asus EEE PC comparative but much better, unfortunately Apple decided that everyone wants to buy an overprice laptop.

And that was it, the event ended with musician Randy Newman.
MMA