Category: Macworld

Macworld 2007

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 10, 2007

Just a few quick general impressions from the show today.

iPhone and AppleTV

First, iPhone and AppleTV are two huge new platforms for Apple to develop and deserved the spotlight today. That said, not really being able to touch or to truly get a “live” demo of the iPhone was a bit of a bummer. I guess this is why Apple usually doesn’t release products that aren’t done.

[Jan 10, 2007 – David Pogue gets a hands on with the iPhone – “Typing is difficult”

The AppleTV seems to be on the surface of things a great platform for Apple to develop. That said, I think they may need to do some convincing to those of use with HDTVs. While photos look great on this device, video was …lacking. Maybe it’s the fact that I was looking at a 42″ HD set from less than 3 feet away, but video looked kind of horrible. I’m not sure if it is the device or the video, but man, it didn’t look good.

Fanboy Whining

No Macworld would be complete without a little complaining. I know we’ll see it soon, but I really, really wanna see what Leopard looks like. I get that two big products were introduced today, but what’s shipping from today? Typically, we get a little software to play with before the hardware ships, so I’m bummed that we didn’t get iLife ’07 today. I suspect that it is tied to the features in Leopard we haven’t seen yet.

Finally

From a visit to Macworld perspective, Macworld is pretty boring. Folks at home are getting as much of a hands on experience as we are at the show. However, the AppleTV and iPhone launch are the most significant new directions we have seen from Apple in years. Exciting times, indeed.

More pictures from the show

CES Macworld

Back to Seattle

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 12, 2006

Whew…. finally made it to the plane. I took BART this morning to the airport and naturally it was late getting me there. I’m finally getting a chance to kick back for the first time in a few days. CES and Macworld were hectic and my social calendar was pretty full while back in San Francisco for the first time since the move to Seattle.

I’m hoping to get the remaining posts up from CES and MacWorld by the weekend, so stay tuned true believers. Also, I’ll have a bit more in-depth look at the new features of iLife ’06 as it should be sitting on my doorstep when I get back

Apple Macworld

MacBook Pro hands on

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 10, 2006

I ran the new MacBook Pro (is it me, or is this a really bad name) through the paces today. My first reaction was that the machine was pretty snappy. I loaded up iPhoto which had about 6k pictures on it, rendered a couple of HD transitions in iMovie and then loaded up a demo in GarageBand and everything seemed to fly compared to my 1.5 Ghz G4 laptop. It wasn’t until I loaded up Photoshop that things began to slow down. Rosetta is pretty amazing, but Photoshop felt about the same speed on MacBook Pro as it did on mine. All things considered, once apps are rewritten for Intel Macs, they will run very quickly, but performance for non-optimzed apps was reasonable, if a little slow.

The big question that remains is battery life. Steve glossed over it with no real numbers attached to performance and the Apple rep that was there said that they are still tweaking it in the lab, but battery life will be “competitive.”

I put my order in this morning, so I’ll let you know when I get it. It’s about time Apple got back into making kick ass laptops.

Apple Macworld

Macworld gallery posted

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 10, 2006

A few pictures from the Expo today. Enjoy. I’ll be posting some hands on reviews of the MacBookPro and the iApps later this evening.

View Gallery

Apple Macworld

Intel ad posted

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 10, 2006

It’s good to see Apple reigniting the Mac vs. Windows wars, ugh.

Check it out.

Apple Macworld Portable Entertainment

Macworld Announcements

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 10, 2006

MacBookPro – same form factor as current, but 4-5x faster. No word on battery life, but this seems to be part of the focus, so we’ll see. Gosh, I wonder what they’ll call the new iBook?

iMac iNtel – didn’t expect this one at all. Not totally sure it makes sense, but it smells like the Apple of old (quadra – centris – powermac) replacing a product a couple of months after they’ve introduced one. Oy, glad I didn’t buy the iMac last fall.

iLife ’06 – this one was an easy one to call. Apple is the company that benefits the most from podcasting at this point and people were shoehorning their apps to do what they wanted for awhile, now they do it out of the box. New iApp – iWeb for website, podcast, vodcast

radio tuner/remote for iPod – cool implementation of a relatively unnecessary feature. Does anyone still listen to terrestrial radio anymore?

More details later. I’m off to go hands on.

Apple Macworld

Macworld Expo Today

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 10, 2006

I’ll be at Macworld Expo today following Steve’s exploits post keynote (I’ll be following MacRumor’s live coverage as it’s generally not easy to get into these things). I’ll report back later this evening about the day’s new products and hopefully give a good hand’s on report.

iLife ’06 and Intel Macs seem to be the consensus and most obvious and it makes the most sense to tweak iLife at least slightly towards people creating content for the iPod. .Mac is going down this morning during the keynote, so expectations are are high that it will also receive some tweaking, my guess, again, better enabling content creation for the iPod (podcasts, vodcasts, etc).

Here are other predictions out there –
MacRumors rumor round up Gizmodo Rumor Roundup Kevin Rose (digg.com)
Mac Plasmas?