MacWorld 2008 Keynote Thoughts From JC

January 15th, 2008

Special treat for the Webomatica readers. You may remember Apple expert JC, a regular commenter who waited in line for the iPhone last year and sent me live updates. Well, this year he attented a MacWorld keynote in person for the first time. Here are his thoughts:

First, a note about the Keynote experience in general. I’ve heard a lot of friends tell me over the years that you really do need to see a Keynote live to fully appreciate it. But it took today to convince me how true that is. There really is nothing like it, and any Mac fan really owes it to him or herself to go at least once.

Now that I’ve gone, I feel really stupid for not having gone before. Especially since I live here. I think from now on, I’ll make it a point not to miss this again as long as I’m still here in the City. After all, it costs less than an arena rock concert with crappy sound and a bunch of old farts who can’t sing anymore. Plus, you get the whole week’s worth of conferences to boot. And you can write it off, anyway.

Waiting in line was a typical Apple affair. Extremely nice and polite people. You’re almost guaranteed to make a new friend or two. I got in line at 3:15 am, and I was about one hundred people from the front. Not so bad, but I may go just a bit earlier next year. People who have done it many times said that it gets earlier and earlier every year.

The room is huge. Bigger than it looks on the web cast. The cameras are placed just right so that they’re not in anyone’s way. There are two extra screens on the sides of the middle of the room, to help those closer to the back. The sound and video presentation was top notch. Incredible, in fact. Every word audible, but nothing was too loud. All in all, it’s a true event, not just a guy talking. Seriously, even if you were watching someone less talented than Steve, you’d still think it was a great show. Even Paul Otellini came off looking good. And that’s hard to do.

Then there’s the keynote itself. I’ll break down the four announcements quickly. Keep in mind, I just left the room, so I don’t have all the details on these things yet. These are just my thoughts during and immediately after the speech.

1. Time Capsule — great idea. I’m glad Apple is encouraging more people to use Time Machine. The price points seem right. One question that entered my mind: What about all of us who already have an Airport N Base Station? Will USB disks finally be supported? Or did they disable this so that they could sell the Time Capsule? I hope not.
2. iPhone SDK and update — Pretty much what was leaked a few weeks ago. Adding Wifi to the cell towers for triangulation was a nice little touch that no one saw coming. Makes location finding possible on the Touch. Can’t beat free on the iPhone update. $20 for the Touch? Well, that’s that old problem of improving a product after selling it. I suspect that was an SEC regulation of some sort, just like it was with the N update on Airport cards a few years back. Remember, the iPhone revenue is worked out differently, so they can add features for free. Wanted to hear more about the SDK, but I suspect that will be coming sooner, rather than later.
3. iTunes rentals — Again, pretty much exactly what was expected, with the twist of HD. I’m cool with all of it, especially having all the major studios on board. I don’t like 24 hours to watch, but I guess Steve had to give something to the studios. I’ll deal for now. I think it’ll relax eventually. One thing I noticed — rented movies can be transferred from Mac to iPod or iPhone. Rentals can be done directly on the Apple TV. But it doesn’t look like you can rent a movie on the Apple TV and then continue watching it on an iPod. He went out of his way to say that Music, TV Shows, and music videos could be synched from Apple TV to a Mac. No mention of movies. There also doesn’t seem to be an option to buy movies on the Apple TV directly, which is weird. Maybe I missed something. Need more details. At the end of the day, it’s a free software update for me, which makes me really happy.
4. MacBook Air — Not interested in this at all for myself, but an important product for Apple that will sell well. A bit underpowered for the price, but that’s what you pay for ultimate portability. The manilla envelope thing was classic Steve. Can’t think of a better way to present that to the world. The coolest thing about MacBook Air for me is the Multi Gesture track pad. Can’t wait until that ends up on the 17 inch MacBook Pro.

All in all, a great Keynote full of announcements that didn’t cost me anything for once. I get free updates to my iPhone and Apple TV. Randy Neumann was the perfect musical guest. Looking forward to next year’s already.

Well, that was fun to read, certainly for those of us well beyond reach of the Steve Jobs reality distortion field. There’s one product in there I’m planning to buy, myself. Thanks a bunch JC!