I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
Well the day arrived and as expected the FlashMac was announced as the MacBookAir.
Some really cleaver stuff here like Remote Disk where you can install from a shared PC Optical Drive, multi-touch trackpad looks great. Wireless migration also very clever.
Disappointments are that the video card will only drive a 24″ monitor, and you get the feeling that as soon as you lay out your $NZ5k+ for the 64GB model there will be a 128GB SSD. One USB is going to be a pain so you’ll carry a hub in your bag I guess. But of course I’ll get one.
I tried to upgrade my Touch. Clicked the link, started the process, had to upgrade iTunes, clicked the link again, think I paid this time for real (maybe I paid twice - not sure - was around $NZ27 from memory), upgrade downloaded, I think it said hit sync, screen gone, hit sync. Nada. So my Touch upgrade was unsuccessful. Boo.
A bunch of questions though. Love your thoughts.
- When will the new MacBook Pro’s be announced.
- Will their be an Air Pro?
- Does having a USB drive on my existing airport extreme give me wireless Time Machine like Time Capsule?
- Where is the server side bits for iPhoto and iTunes. How do me and wifey have a single server side photo library on TimeCapusle? This is a big hole. Especially with smaller SSD disks.
- When will we have movie rentals in NZ?
- How big is a movie? How long will it take to download? What will the downloading the stream cost on NZ dataplans? Will one movie blow your broandband data cap?
Great see a lot of innovation. Still AAPL went down 6%. Hopefully not for long. Some analysts are calling $225.
blog
Rod, glad to see you seem under whelmed as that was my impression when I read online Jobs presentation details. I guess spin only goes so far.
The MacBook Air I don’t see as earth shattering. I have a HP 2510P which is the same weight has a bigger disk and runs for 6.5 hours. Plus it has a DVD writer built in. Its easy to build the worlds thinest notebook if you leave stuff out.
Wireless backups, now there is a revolutionary idea. Who wants to do backups at wireless speed? This is what USB backup disks are for.
The only think that excited me was more apps for my Touch and now you have gone and spoilt my day by saying it did not work when I am in the middle of downloading it.
Whats the bet I can get it to work from Windows?
In answer to question 4.
The specs for the Time Capsule show you can use it as network storage so you should be able to put all your photos (and music?) on there and share them. We have an iMac and MacBook Pro and I often open up the iPhoto library held on the iMac from my MacBook Pro over wifi.
Rod I got my software update for the Touch working fine (on Windows the best operating system to run Apple devices on!)
The MacBook Air is _exactly_ what I was looking for. Time to replace the 12 inch PowerBook which is now about 4 years old. What I wanted was a small laptop that I could take travelling. It needed to be light, have enough storage for my projects, have a decent sized screen and keyboard and great wireless. I never plug anything else into the laptop apart from my iPod to recharge it so 1 USB port is fine. I see the Air as a second machine to compliment your desktop machine. With good syncing of documents to a server you should be able to just log off your desktop, grab your Air and head out the door.
“4. Where is the server side bits for iPhoto and iTunes. How do me and wifey have a single server side photo library on TimeCapusle? This is a big hole. Especially with smaller SSD disks.”
I agree in this point. I have a feeling Apple are moving this way but it seems to be taking so long for them to get there. I just makes sense for them to make the Airport or Apple TV the server and pump it full of disk space. Maybe we have to wait another year for this?
Always worked on the fact that a standard quality DVD movie is around 5GB although that was 12 months ago.
I agree, very under-whelming - I summed it up from an NZ perspective here: http://stuart.amanzi.co.nz/2008/01/16/macworld-keynote-for-us-in-nz/
I’m with Glen. My son has been angling for my PowerBook G4 to take with him to university in 4 weeks time and I’ve held off order a MacBook pending the rumoured thin-Mac. Now it’s here and, on first glance, does everything I need. True portability (read: low weight and long battery life). Good networking (read: wireless plus also USB/Ethernet dongle for clients without wireless networks in their offices). Good disk (read: I need 5-10GB for all my work, so 80 is plenty for me). I can’t remember the last time I used the DVD drive, and normally backup to .Mac so that’s fine as well. I’ll prob place my order tonight….
Never underestimate the ability of blind faith to redefine one’s requirements for “the perfect machine” based on Steve Job’s proposed solution.
Personallly, I’m rather dissappointed. In short it’s over-priced, under-powered, dishonest in its design, large in footprint, and requires you to carry around a bunch of hubs and dongles to make it versatile. It’s the Cube all over again.
One good thing though, it does spell the end of FireWire.
Check your CC bill btw, a co-worker has been billed twice for the Touch update and still has nothing to show for it. TV update doesn’t appear to be here either.
Today’s kool-aid tastes luke-warm ;)
Hi Neil, yeah, sharing photo’s is easy, but I don’t know of a way to have the USB drive on the network as the central store.
Rod,
I did the same as you to update my iPod touch, selected the upgrade, told me to update iTunes, did that, then selected the upgrade again. Synced. Didn’t work!
To fix my problem I had to restore my iPod touch on the Mac I bought the upgrade on and make sure you rename the iPod to something new (don’t restore from a backup if it asks you). Then sync again as a new iPod and all the apps appeared. Not good by Apple, we shouldn’t have to do this but at least I’ve now got what I paid for.
Neil
Some more updates from Engadget on the Apple TV:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/15/apple-tv-take-2-ipod-touch-and-iphone-yep-more-details-her/
* Your average HD movie download for the ATV is going to be about 4GB — but if you’ve got a reasonably fast connection it should start streaming and playing within a minute.
* Standard SD movies should be a bout 1.2GB.
Dermott - does your HP run OSX? ;-)
I have to confess although some of the windows hardware is getting nifty form factors, the thought of actually paying for a Windows-only device makes me feel ill.
The missing server version of iTunes drives me nuts. We use mt-daapd in the office which works amazingly well, but it’s read-only — you can’t set metadata from within iTunes, just play tracks and browse playlists.
A server version has to be on the way, though — but I’ve been expected it for years already …
Lance, “does your HP run OSX?” - no why would I want it to do that? Its for use in the world of business, its not a consumer notebook.
Just noticed that the Mac Air has no ethernet port so you have to use a usb ethernet connector if you want to connect to a network. Of course you could use wireless but you cannot get decent speed out of wireless. It will be fine for emails.
The other downside of a number of these small notebooks regardless as to whether they run Vista like my HP or OSX is that an increasing number of them run 1.8 inch hard disks which are quite slow. Even SSD drives have speed issues under certain types of processing according to Toshiba.
It just proves that there is no silver bullet with IT.
I suspect a number of people will buy the Mac Air and then find out all the things that were left out which make it so thin.
Apple have withdrawn the iPod Touch upgrade within iTunes. Now you get a “remind me later” option.
Must be buggy!