With one of the years most important computer events out of the way, I take a look at what was announced at this year's Apple Keynote and see what it means for the industry and consumers.
Opinion: why is the Macbook Air a full 300 pounds (600 dollars) more expensive than in the US?
2008 Apple Keynote - Steve Jobs ('There's something in the air')
The Apple keynote with Steve Jobs (often referred to simply as 'Stevenote') has become something of a legendary affair in recent times. It was used to announce the release of the original iPod and pretty much every major product release since. Of course apple have also taken to doing interim events for news that can't wait for the annual keynote, but its still the keynote that where apple set out it stall for the coming year.
With that in mind the banners at this years Apple Expo have had the rather provocative phrase '2008 There's something in the air'. The Apple faithful and rumor monger took this to mean further confirmation that there was almost certainly some sort of the highly wireless Apple sub-notebook on the way and to be honest that was the only solid rumor on the whole run up to the event.
So what happened then?
Well the big news is that Apple did in fact release a Flash RAM based sub-notebook. What it lacks in storage this machine will make up for in performance, battery life, noise reduction,size and weight. As an ultra-potable laptop it should be very easy to lug around and I think there will be no-end of journalists and traveling consultants putting their order in right now (me included!).
Of course that much Flash RAM doesn't come cheap and its of absolutely no surprise that the machine is pretty pricey at starting at $1799 and rising to $3100 (top end) but many people will happily pay the extra for the form factor and increase reliability of such a machine. For those of us in the last decade there is also the option of an 80GB hard disk (the same Apple use in their 80GB ipods) which should keep the price down a little bit! You can find all pertinent specs below.
Other key features:
Apart for the big plus of a SSD (Solid State Disk, the Flash RAM) this machine also has some other attractive features for your hardened road warrior:
Fullsize keyboard
13.3" display
Backlit keyboard
LED backlit screen
Core Duo 1.6 & 1.8Ghz processors
0.76" thick (making it thinner that the thinnest SonyTZ)
Multi-touch trackpad
802.11n
Bluetooth extreme (2.1)
Five hours battery life
Very environmentally friendly!
Anything Else?
Of course there were a number of other announcements at the Expo which are news worthy. The sections that follow cover some of these:
Market Share
iPhone gained 20% market share of the smart phone market in the first 90 days of release
Time capsule
One of the first announcements was the new backup storage solution built specifically for Apple's Time Machine software
AEBS with a server-grade hard drive built into it specifically for Time Machine
Sold in 2 versions, a 500GB drive and one with a 1TB drive
500GB model costs $299 and 1TB model costs $499
Time Capsule will ship in February
iPhone
There will be a fairly major update to the iPhone firmware which will give it a much more capable SMS client, location based Google Maps and also a native development API for native applications (good for mobile application developers everywhere!). Other updates include:
Being able to add web bookmarks to the iPhones home screen
Being able to re-organise the home screen and create multiple home screens
iPod Touch gets the same Apps as iPhone (mail etc)
Apple TV (take 2)
To go with their new iTunes movie offerings Apple will release their new Apple TV product which will allow users to rent movies directly from the iTunes music store. This will be a DVD/HD quality service marking a major upgrade to the quality of content available. Apple will also add more content providers to the store. The new features of Apple TV 2 will also be available as a firmware upgrade for the current units.
Office 2008
This mainstay of the Apple world will be released today (15/01/2008)
Another year gone
Well thats it for another year. In general it looks to have been a cracking keynote and it set Apple up nicely going in to 2008 as a company focused very much on high quality mobile platforms. It'll be interesting to see what is announced through the rest of the year. I, for one, am keeping an eye out for the iPhone 2!
With one of the years most important computer events out of the way, I take a look at what was announced at this year's Apple Keynote and see what it means for the industry and consumers.
