Articles by Dieter Bohn
The MacBook Air is “the world’s thinnest notebook.” It’s ridiculously thin – .76 inches on the back and .16 inches at the front. It fits inside a manilla envelope – Jobs has one in an envelope now! 
It is INSANELY thin. UNNATURALLY thin. It has a full sized keyboard and display.
it has a 13.3, LED-backlit display. There is, of course, a built-in iSight camera. There is also a full-sized keyboard, “perhaps the best notebook keyboard we’ve ever shipped.” And yes, it’s also backlit.
The “very generous trackpad” now supports multitouch. There are even short videos explaining how the multitouch trackpad works on the MacBook Air.
It does indeed sport a hard disk – a 1.8″ hard drive, same as in the iPod. It has an 80gig as standard, you can also get a 64gb Solid State drive. The electronics, “a complete mac on a board” are tiny. The processor is an Intel Core 2 Duo, 1.6GHz is standard, you can go 1.8 GHz as well. The chip is 60% smaller than a standard 1.6GHz chip, and so Jobs has invited Intel CEO Paul Otellini to thank him for that incredible chip.
New feature: Remote Disk — allows you to use another computer’s optical drive to install software over the network. It’s an incredibly neat idea. Otherwise you can buy a USB superdrive for $99.
Apple claims that under medium to heavy usage you can get five hours of battery life.
- 3 pounts
- .16 – 0.76 inches
- 13.3 LED display
- full sized, backlit keyboard
- Multi-touch trackpad
- iSight
- 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo standard
- 2 Gigs memory standard
- 80 Gig Hard Drive
- Bluetooth 2.1 EDR
…..$1799, available in 2 weeks.
..That’s it folks, Randy Newman is coming on stage to perform for us now!
Jobs notes how everybody has tried and failed to get movies off the internet onto a widescreen TV. He admits that Apple TV was a miss as well, that people really want Movies, not an accessory for your computer.
“Apple TV Take 2: No Computer Required.”
- You can rent movies directly on Apple TV.
- Movies will be available in DVD and HD quality!
- Audio and Video podcasts
- Grab photos from Flickr and .Mac
- An entirely new user interface
The HD movies are a dollar more to rent.
The new interface on Apple TV is really slick – the shopping experience of looking for movies, music, and TV shows on your television seems very intuitive and fun. You can also browse and download any podcast in the iTunes podcast directory. Browsing photos is easy too – despite the fact that Flickr refused to serve up photos for Steve.
It’s a free software upgrade! …..AND they’re droped the price to $229. It will all be available in 2 weeks.
Jm Gianopulos, Chairman and CEO of 20th Century Fox, has announced that going forward, their DVDs will come with a “digital copy” that you can use in iTunes or on your iPhone.
They’ve sold 4 Billion songs, 125 million TV shows, and 7 million movies. However, that 7 million mark is lower than they’d prefer. So today, Jobs has announced iTunes Movies Rentals.
On board – every major movie studio! Steve presented them with a “and by the way.” They will launch with 1000 films by the end of February. They will be on iTunes 30 days after their DVD release. You can watch on iPhone.
You can also start watching within 30 seconds of downloading. You have 30 days to begin watching, then once it starts you have 24 hours to watch it. You can also transfer even as you’re watching.
Older titles will be $2.99, new releases are 3.99. It launches today and free software updates are available for all compatible devices (iTunes, iPods, and iPhones)!
Movie rentals will also be available in HD quality for $1.00 more (That’s $3.99 for DVD quality and $4.99 for HD quality). You can also shop for these movies directly from your television with Apple TV 2.
It’s a $20 upgrade to existing iPod Touch users – you can get
- Notes
- Maps
- Stocks
- Weahter
The new software will be preloaded in new Touches, but the cost is disappointing to current Touch users.
Steve jobs announced several new iPhone features in the keynote at Macword, including:
- Maps with location
- Webclips
- Customize Home screens
- SMS multiple people at once
- Chapters, subtitles, and languages in videos
- display of lyrics
The features fall very much in line with the previously leaked 1.1.3 update.
The new Google maps not only does location, but it also allows you to edit routes and add “pins” to the maps anywhere you like.
The SMS client allows you to send to multiple people, and the “thread” you create allows you to re-send to that same group multiple times.
There is a new “plus button” at the bottom of Mobile safari. Merely by tapping that “plus” button you can add any web shortcut to your home screen. Even better – web clips remember where you’ve zoomed and panned to – to customize the thumbnail on the home screen.
Jobs also confirmed the moving icons around the home screen does indeed use the “jiggly method,” which clearly indicates to the user that you’re in “re-arrange” mode.
The software update is available today and for free!
They’ve sold 4 million iPhones in 200 days – 20,000 iPhones per day on average.
On US Smartphone marketshare, the quarter ending in September, In its first 90 days of shipping it garnered nearly 20% of the smarpthone marketshare. They nearly equaled Palm, Motorola, and Nokia combined. Jobs expects they’ll do even better when the December numbers come out.
At today’s keynote, Steve Jobs announced “Time Capsule.” It’s a full Airport Extreme base station that also includes a “server-grade hard drive.” It is meant for wireless backups for notebooks. Time Capsule runs on 802.11n.
The 500gb drive version is only $299. The 1 terrabye model is $499. It will ship in February. “It’s the perfect companion product to Time Machine.”
We’re here and we’re live! The show got started a little late, but it’s still on, baby!
We won’t be fully liveblogging every moment, but we’ll be doing a big new post for every big new anouncement. Stay tuned! Steve is on stage now! He’s looking back at 2007, talking about the iMac, the iPods, and “of course the revolutionary iPhone.”
4 things to talk about today.
Thing 1: Leopard. They’ve solved over 5 million copies. Steve is talking about Leopard’s capabilities, its accolades over Vista. Microsoft Office is going native on Intel. It was Time Capsule
Thing 2: iPhone!
Google gone and got itself all dolled up for Macworld. I’m a big fan of the new tabs and an even bigger fan of the new http://igoogle.com, which is pretty much the only web portal I’ve ever bothered with (besides, of course, just the plain jane Google page). They take full advantage of Safari’s capabilities with neat AJAXification throughout. If you’re a Google user (and you know you are) and if you’re an iPhone user (and you’re here so that’s likely true too), it’s worth a look-see. There’s other improvements, including:
Customization of tabs
New and improved Gmail
New and improved Calendar
iGoogle for the iPhone – Official Google Mobile Blog: Google on the iPhone: Macworld Makeover
As long as we’re talking Google, check out this Christmas miracle:
The New York Times reports that, based on internal data from Google, more iPhones were connecting during Christmas than any other mobile device, despite the fact that industry figures show only two percent of smartphones worldwide as belonging to Apple. A few days after Christmas, iPhone traffic dropped below that of phones using the Nokia-backed Symbian operating system, but kept a second-place ranking. – Electronista | Google gains iPhone traffic, updates apps
…Looks like more than a few lucky folks received an iPhone for Christmas, no? That’s one benefit of Apple’s non-standard activation agreement – it’s a heck of a lot easier to gift an iPhone than it is any other phone in the US.
Above: a big yawner, courtesy of twob
It happens every year lately – a day or two before the big Keynote, some tiny site1 claims to have the outline of what Steve Jobs will announce. The supposed goods on the iPhone: 16gb at $499 (really going on a limb there), arrival in Japan in March, and the unveiling of the SDK. A full unveiling, actually, with lots of details.
All of which are pretty safe bets.
After the jump: the full supposed outline. Give it credit for being realistic — heck, give it credit for being boring. But do not, we hope, give it credit for beingreal.
1 Yes, we are a tiny site as well and we know you thought it earlier. Be Nice.
