• A new ultra-slim (but non-sub) notebook “Macbook Air”: Check
  • 13 inch, LED screen.
    • Check
  • Penryn based, 2.2 or 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo CPU.
    • I guessed too high here and it’s miniaturized Conroe based. It’s a pity that, miniaturized Penryn would have been most excellent.
  • Solid state drive: 64 or 32Gb.
    • Only partially correct since Apple surprised me by having a hard drive option. Cost is really the killer on this one.
  • 14 hour battery life.
    • Yeah, don’t I wish. Personally the 5 hour battery life on the Air, particularly since the battery is non-user replaceable strikes me as a little low. I’d gladly have taken an extra half pound of weight for a denser battery.
  • No optical drive, no Apple-branded external drive.
    • No optical, check, but there is the unneccessarily crippled external drive option; why restrict it to be Air exclusive? That’s just dumb. I can only surmise that Apple really doesn’t want to sell these.
  • Wireless only internet (802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth, possibly AT&T wireless).
    • Check, minus the AT&T wireless.
      
  • 3 USB ports, 1 Firewire 400, no Firewire 800 (possibly no Firewire at all).
    • Again, I wish. While I was correct about no Firewire, I did expect at least two USB ports.
  • Multitouch trackpad opens some new options, but nothing too radical.
    • Check
  • $1700
    • “And the actual showcase price is $1,799″ - I was damned close
  • “Most beautiful, lightest Mac ever”
    • Nope
  • “Unbelievably thin”
    • Check
  • Shipping mid-late February, units on display at Macworld.
    • Check
• New Macbook Pro, simple speed bump with Penryn chips. Possibly Macbook updates as well, but I doubt it.
  • No mention of the Macbook Pro at all (probably to avoid stealing Air’s thunder), I was surprised.
• New displays add built-in iSight, drop prices, increased panel quality.
  • Nope, although damn it all they should have been updated. Apple displays are really falling behind the market (although that’s not uncommon).
• Microsoft Office ‘08 demo. Many thanks to MS for making a new, universal binary version of Office.
  • Thanks to Microsoft, check, but no demo.
• Statement about how X% of all (important) applications are now universal binaries, “transition to Intel now truly complete.”
  • Not in so many words. He did say that all the major apps are not Intel native however.
• Statement about the adoption rate of Leopard, “our best OS ever, with the fastest adoption rate ever.” Making fun of Vista.
  • Check, but without the Vista bashing.
    
• Statement about market penetration of iTunes, iPod and iPhone. “And we’re just getting started.”
  • Didn’t happen, although some of the market penetration numbers for the iPhone were given.
• No iPhone 3G, but new firmware (possibly demoed). Possible iPhone memory bump to match iPod Touch.
  • Check on the firmware & demo, no iPhonespec bumps however.
    
• iPhone SDK mentioned, give timeline, talk about how cool it is, but no deep in-depth demo (will wait until WWDC for that)
  • Check
• Major iTunes video related announcements. Video rentals (48 hours, $3.50) with all major studios on-board. New television content, variable pricing, NBC possibly back on-board (doubt it). Video quality of all iTunes videos will be increased, previously purchased videos can be upgraded for $2.
  • Movie rentals, with all major studios, but with only 24 hours and the pricing is $2.99 and $3.99 (for library & new releases respectively, I guessed in the middle). I was a little surprised at the lack of mention of any changes to the television content available. Apple obviously wants to repeat their music dominance in video and television would seem like an important thing to stress as available when on the subject.
• All iTunes tracks go DRM free with increased audio quality.
  • Sadly didn’t happen, hopefully soon.
    
• Announcement of new music deals with Indy music studios.
  • Didn’t happen
    
• Announcement of timeline for Beatles music on iTunes.
  • Also didn’t happen
    
• AppleTV update, new version is both an update of the original AppleTV and adds Airport Extreme features to make it a true digital hub. Sadly no DVR features.
  • Semi-check. I was right that there is an updated AppleTV and that the update would be fundamentally just an upgrade of the existing AppleTV software (making it backwards compatible with the Rev 1 AppleTV), but the Airport Extreme features I predicted ended up being rolled into a different product alltogether: Time Capsule.
• Biggest Macworld ever, “thank you”
  • Nope
• Sadly no Newton 2.0/Tablet announcement, yet.
  • Check
• “Boom!”
  • Check
• “One more thing”
  • Oddly no, no last minute surprise

Overall I was surprised at how close I was on a lot of the predictions. As for my reactions to the announcements, well:

I’ll be very curious to see how well the Air does on the market. My initial reaction to it is that it is a beautiful piece of engineering, a technical triumph, but more of a proof of concept than a commercial product. I understand the need to compromise when you’re working on a form factor like the Air, but I’m not sure that all the compromises made were well chosen.

The Air actually reminds me a lot of the old G4 Cube, both share exquisite design, but also a lack of ports, power and upgrade-ability while retaining a steep price. The Air’s non-user replaceable battery (even if it is easy to replace) also strikes me as a real sticking point. While the Cube was a commercial failure, only time will tell how the Air will fair.

In regards to the other keynote announcements, I think they’ve being unfairly underplayed (mostly because everyone is so distracted by the Air).

Apple is obviously pushing the video front very hard and doing a pretty good job of it too. The refinements to the AppleTV make it a considerably more appealing product that fits in nicely with the iTunes music, movies & TV eco-system. Add a larger HD (300 gig minimum) and iPod syncing to the AppleTV and it could be the all-in-one home media center.

The movie rentals are an excellent addition to iTunes for Apple, primarily because they give Apple a foot in the door and build on Apple’s relationships with other companies. Personally I prefer owning my movies, but from what I’ve seen the rental system is intuitive, relatively extensive and a fantastic start on another digital media monopoly for Apple.

The iPhone firmware increases the functionality of the iPhone by adding several attractive and useful features. With iPhone sales already being phenomenal (although Apple really needs to get Rev 2 hardware out the door soon) these new features can’t but help push more iPhones at retail.

And finally Time Capsule. Perhaps the least glitzy of the keynote announcements, it is none the less the one that I am most interested in owning personally. As someone who wants good wireless access at home and who has rigged his old Powerbook up to be the gateway to a 500 Gb family content & backup server, the thought of consolidating three pieces of equipment (Airport Express station, Powerbook and external hard drive) into one is appealing. My one wish related to TC would be that Apple make it easy for owners of the previous Airport Extreme stations to do fundamentally the same thing, albeit with an external drive. That feature was initially promised by Leopard, I’d like to see it delivered.

Overall I think all of the keynote announcements were fundamentally good for Apple and I’ll be curious to see how each of the products does in the market. It’s going to be interesting year.

It’s that time again, time for the Apple faithful to kneel at the altar of our favorite tech company to hear the first official words of Mr. Reality Distortion himself. For me personally it’s time to accidentally “forget” my wallet at home, lest I be tempted by the latest release. Speaking of the latest releases, there is a long tradition of predicting the upcoming announcements. Tomorrow we’ll know which rumors came to pass, which were duds and (perhaps) which are still to be seen down the road. This year I figured I’d join the fun and make my own predictions, so without further ado here are my predictions for Macworld ‘08:

• A new ultra-slim (but non-sub) notebook “Macbook Air”:
  • 13 inch, LED screen.
  • Penryn based, 2.2 or 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo CPU.
  • Solid state drive: 64 or 32Gb.
  • 14 hour battery life.
  • No optical drive, no Apple-branded external drive.
  • Wireless only internet (802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth, possibly AT&T wireless).
  • 3 USB ports, 1 Firewire 400, no Firewire 800 (possibly no Firewire at all)
  • Multitouch trackpad opens some new options, but nothing too radical.
  • $1700
  • “Most beautiful, lightest Mac ever”
  • “Unbelievably thin”
  • Shipping mid-late February, units on display at Macworld.
• New Macbook Pro, simple speed bump with Penryn chips. Possibly Macbook updates as well, but I doubt it.
• New displays add built-in iSight, drop prices, increased panel quality.
• Microsoft Office ‘08 demo. Many thanks to MS for making a new, universal binary version of Office.
• Statement about how X% of all (important) applications are now universal binaries, “transition to Intel now truly complete.”
• Statement about the adoption rate of Leopard, “our best OS ever, with the fastest adoption rate ever.” Making fun of Vista.
• Statement about market penetration of iTunes, iPod and iPhone. “And we’re just getting started.”
• No iPhone 3G, but new firmware (possibly demoed). Possible iPhone memory bump to match iPod Touch.
• iPhone SDK mentioned, give timeline, talk about how cool it is, but no deep in-depth demo (will wait until WWDC for that)
• Major iTunes video related announcements. Video rentals (48 hours, $3.50) with all major studios on-board. New television content, variable pricing, NBC possibly back on-board (doubt it). Video quality of all iTunes videos will be increased, previously purchased videos can be upgraded for $2.
• All iTunes tracks go DRM free with increased audio quality.
• Announcement of new music deals with Indy music studios.
• Announcement of timeline for Beatles music on iTunes.
• AppleTV update, new version is both an update of the original AppleTV and adds Airport Extreme features to make it a true digital hub. Sadly no DVR features.
• Biggest Macworld ever, “thank you”
• Sadly no Newton 2.0/Tablet announcement, yet.
• “Boom!”
• “One more thing”

So there you have it, my predictions for the keynote.

As a final note, for those of you who enjoy the annual Macworld keynote bingo game, this years edition is out.

Last weekend was a wonderful affair. Laris’ parents gifted us two nights in Duluth’s Canal Park Hampton Inn suite. It’s becoming something of an annual tradition to spend a weekend in Duluth and we both always look forward to it exceedingly. This years trip was particularly wonderful. The room was fantastic, with a gorgeous view over the lake, a jacuzzi and a king sized bed. As a result of this most excellent room, a fair bit of time was spent in the room relaxing in the jacuzzi, drinking rum & cokes and watching the tail of of Boston Legal Season 3, it was phenomenal.

We also enjoyed good cinema in the form of two IMAX films (Australia Land Beyond Time & Deep Sea) and Stardust, which was delightfully campy and amusing (it reminded me a lot of the Princess Bride, and that can’t be bad can it?). We also ate lavishly at Famous Daves, Red Lobster and Pizza Luce, enjoyed games at the Canal Park Arcade (both both such equally at both Dance Dance Revolution and mini-golf evidently) and spent far too much on gorgeous bags at the Duluth Pack store. It was a glorious weekend. A weekend sadly mired by its ending.

Late Saturday I felt the beginnings of a cold and by Sunday it struck in force. As a result our Sunday plans were cut short as I slept more or less the entire day. Monday I was running a fever of over 100, missed work and generally felt like crap. Although I’ve been back to work since Tuesday the cold is sticking with me,  seemingly indifferent to the prodigious quantities of tea, honey and water I’ve been consuming. What’s worse Laris is now getting sick too

At the library it seems like people are coming out of the woodwork to give me things to do. Up until now things have come at a nice steady stream. People would give me projects, I’d finish them up just in time for the next set of tasks to come in. Not so anymore. That stream has turned into a deluge. People wanting pages updated, forms created (particularly intricate & complex forms I might add), new information posted, new graphics created etc. I feel like I’ve gone from being on top of my workload to being backlogged overnight.

Mix into the fray the sudden news of my co-workers brother dying in a freak four-wheeler accident, the discover of Thanushka’s (my best friend at SCSU who finished this last semester) packed his bags overnight and moving to Missouri University of Science and Technology without my having a chance to see him off, my parents absense (they’re in Chile at the moment), and the dread of a new semester starting in under a week and you have a very strange cocktail to contend with. All this has left me at times feeling excited, marose, energetic, exhausted, each in rapid succession. It’s been a hell of a ride.

It would be best to maintain a low profile for now.

We’ll never know which of our cats ate the cookie, but we do know that they took the advice to heart

Now for the movie side of things. Since hearing about the screen adaptation of Sweeney Todd I’ve wanted to go see it. Since the film hasn’t opened in St. Cloud even though it’s been out for a while I was starting to get curious about what’s going on. A quick look at the Marcus Theaters website shows me that they’ve decided not to show the movie because they couldn’t come to a pricing arrangement with Paramount for the movie. Great. And since Marcus owns almost all the theaters within 50 miles of us, we basically are screwed for that movie. Now I realize this isn’t specifically an MPAA issue and that Marcus is at least partially as much at fault as Paramount, but it makes me angry all the same.

As I said, the system is borked.

I wish everyone a very happy holiday season and I’ll be back sometime next week:)

The reason I’d been looking forward to today was that I heard from an old high school friend that she’d be swinging through St. Cloud today. Since we hadn’t spoken more or less at all in a few years I was looking forward to this. Sadly, either through miscommunication or some other misfortune things didn’t pan out. Not only didn’t she come through (to my knowledge at least), but I wasn’t even able to contact her and verify that we shouldn’t expect to see her. Grr.

Having finally established that I wasn’t getting together with a long-lost friend I decided to use my computer. Oh wait, can’t turn the god damn thing on. Why? Well after process of elimination it’s the power supply. I only was able to discover this by putting Laris’ computer directly up next to mine and hooking her power supply into my motherboard and seeing if this resulted in a system with power. It did, OK, need new power supply. Laris and I head out for a Best Buy & Crafts Direct run (she needs more yarn).

Run is only a marginal success. We can’t find Crafts Direct even though we both think we know where it is. Having already been on the razors edge mood wise, this puts me over. My bad mood makes Laris have a bad mood. We go to Best Buy. Power supplies are more expensive than anticipated (god BB has terrible prices on hardware), but I’m able to select one after several minutes. Laris waits patiently, but I’m always a holy terror when there’s any kind of hardware failure and I can tell I’m wearing on her. Go home with $100 power supply.

Install new power supply, my computer boots again, happiness and joy. Try to make sure Laris’ boots, weeping and gnashing of teeth. Now her computer won’t bloody post. It has power, in fact the moment any power comes into the system it tries to boot, but it never actually posts. God damn it. Spend next two hours trying everything I can think of to fix it: reseat everything, plug in my new power supply, leave components unplugged. Nothing works. At this point I can only assume that the problem has something to do with the motherboard since that and the CPU are the only components that I didn’t swap out. Of course since we’re heading into Christmas we won’t be able to get replacement equipment for a while, so effectively Laris is without her machine for probably at least a week. Now I’m both pissed of and guilty. I hate days like this.