Ok, well I’m back from vacation. I have to start out by saying that I absolutely LOVE Carnival. They truly are one of the best cruise lines out there! This cruise was by far the best, highlighted by our cruise director, Mr. John Heald. I’ll have a full review coming up soon, along with a ton of pictures, so keep your eyes peeled for that. In the mean time, It’s good to be back, even though its freakin’ cold!
Hey what’s up all? Looks like I was pretty spot on with those MacWorld predictions. Well, except for that whole WiMax thing. Anyway, I’ll be away for the next week on a cruise. So don’t expect any updates. I’m not paying the 75 cents a minute at dial up speeds to talk to all of you. So, see you then!
Hello everyone! It’s Macworld time! Alas, I am not at Macworld and won’t be liveblogging the keynote here. (maybe next year)
So I figured I’d give you a list of links where you can check out the keynote live, when it goes down at 12 noon eastern time!
Once the liveblog is over, a couple hours later you can view the video stream at the apple site here:
I’ll be back later today to blog about what gets announced, and to spin my predictions into truth, no matter how hard i have to try 
So, it’s that time of year again. Macworld is on its way, and once again Steve will deliver a bevy of new and wonderful products that will attempt to spark a “childlike sense of wonder(tm)” in all of us. So what will those products be? That is the question that ignites the blogosphere. I figure I’ll throw my hat into the proverbial arena and give my Macworld predictions.
Ok first of all
NEW MACBOOKS
Now I’ve heard the rumor, just the same as all of you. The “MacBook air” they’re calling it. Now since they aren’t just calling it the MacBook, that reads to me like they are keeping the MacBooks and just adding this as a third tier in the laptop lineup. The only really open area in the lineup would be for an ultraportable, ultralight laptop. So, I’m guessing that’s what this is.
Now as for the name air? Well what would that mean? We’ll first of all, it’s fairly obvious that this laptop (due to it’s small size) won’t have an ethernet jack, or at the most a USB dongle will be created for the task. So air could mean the fact that this laptop is entirely connected wirelessly, through possibly a combination of wimax, wifi, and bluetooth.
Wait?! Wimax!? Now where would I get a crazy idea like that? Well from an Apple standpoint, it wouldn’t make much sense to build a computer system that can be wireless anywhere, if you couldn’t get internet everywhere. Wimax is similar to wifi in that it provides a fast broadband signal. However, Wimax works over VERY LARGE distances, up to 50 kilometers.
Now, why would Apple put itself through putting up all that infrastructure? They didn’t or at least they had help. Remember back a while ago with that deal with Starbucks? Where you can access itunes for free at every wifi hotspot? Well what if Starbucks installed some Apple Wimax hardware at every store? You’d have just about ubiquitous internet… everywhere. Both Starbucks AND Apple would make a killing selling internet not just to Mac users, but anyone with WiMax technology! Of course this is only a stop gap measure until they can coerce Google into purchasing that 700mhz spectrum, which will prodvide for free ad-supported internet everywhere. That would be one hell of a “one more thing” wouldn’t it?
NEXT Upgraded iPhones
Yep, expect a memory bump and the possible announcement of 3g in america. Also, announcement of the SDK and app pricing, though details will be left for WWDC.
NEXT iTunes movie rentals / AppleTV 2.0
Expect to see movie rentals available through iTunes from a lot of major studios. To be one step ahead of Netflix in this area, I’d also expect them to be in HD. Also expect to see it on a brand new AppleTV set top box. The front row interface on AppleTV is OK, but it’s certainly not up to the Steve standard, and we all know it. So expect an almost iPhone like redesign of that. I’d bet on a new set top box, possibly with blu-ray support, definelty with a slot loading DVD drive, cablecard support, and a MUCH bigger hard drive.
I’d think that Steve would want this to be the dominant box on your TV. So short of selling a 46″ inch ACTUAL APPLE TELEVISION, I’m thinking that with the cablecard support, you could take the card from your current digital cable box, plug it into the new AppleTV, and use it as your channel guide, your DVR, the place to rent movies in HD from iTunes, and the place to play your DVDs (and possibly blu-rays). I can picture Steve doing a comparison between a slick Apple designed guide system, and the one on a standard TV box saying (“wow this even makes Vista look okay”)
Admit it, it makes sense. We all dispise our cable boxes. The guide systems are ALL ugly, and slow. Apple could crush the market in months. Possible alliances with certain cable providers are possible too. In fact i’d expect them in certain markets, so that the cable providers could open up some extra pipe for those HD rentals, so they could be on-demand, through iTunes only on AppleTV.
There are others, but those are my biggies. I also see Apple purchasing Adobe at some point in the near future. But, I don’t think that will be a Macworld announcement. Something of that magnitude would probably require a Stevenote all it’s own.
Either way, I’m looking forward to tomorrow.
Hey what’s up everyone? I just noticed a few days ago that the Zune Marketplace (after being down for god knows how long) has returned and with a new firmware update for my Zune.
Apparently people over at the Zune team have been listening to the complaints made by myself and others in the community, that there was a serious battery issue with the Zune 30 firmware.
Thankfully, after upgrading my Zune, things seem to be running swimmingly, I can leave it on standby for hours on end, and there isn’t even a slight drop in battery power. Fantastic!
Kudos to you Zune team! The old Microsoft would have just ignored the problem and said, “Screw you!” But you guys listened and fixed it. Mucho Appreciado!
Keep up the good work!