stuart test blog

Steve Jobs no doubt delivered a fine keynote this morning at Macworld – I haven’t seen it yet, but read Engadget’s live blog this morning with huge anticipation. Here’s my summary of the announcement and how it relates to us in NZ.

Updated Apple TV

This is more-or-less useless to people outside the USA as the biggest new feature is the ability to rent movies from iTunes and watch them as they are streaming down to your Apple TV. You can’t even buy movies from NZ let alone rent them, and the same goes for TV shows. The new interface looks a lot better though, and is available as a free upgrade so it’s worth upgrading anyway. The price has also dropped to $229 (USD) which is equivalent to roughly $299 (NZD) but the Apple Store still has it listed for $498 (NZD) so you’re paying a $200 (NZD) premium over the US price.

Updated iPhone Software

Also irrelevant to NZ as the iPhone is still not available here, and if you hack it to get it working here then you don’t need the updated software anyway.

Updated iPod Touch Software

This was the first announcement that I was genuinely excited about! At last we get the rest of the apps which are available on the iPhone on our iPod Touches! I’ve been hanging out for the Mail and Maps applications but am not too fussed on the others. BUT… The “upgrade” will cost $19.99 (USD)! What..? These are the same apps that are already on the iPhone, it’s just a case of including them in the next firmware update so why do we need to pay for them? I guess this is just another of Apple’s “Early Adopter Tax” that has to be paid if you want to be considered an Apple fan. All new iPod Touches include the updated software and also cost $30 (NZD) less than the original iPod Touch. From the coverage I’ve read so far about this, people are pissed – me too.

Time Capsule for Macs

This is a strange one – it’s an AirPort Extreme wireless router with a built in hard drive, that works with Leopard’s Time Machine feature to backup your Macs over the network. The reason why this is strange is that the current AirPort Extremes have a USB port that allows you to connect a hard drive to, giving you the same setup as the Time Capsule. But you can’t use Time Machine with a hard drive connected to an AirPort Extreme, but you can use it to back up to the hard drive inside the Time Capsule. My only assumption is that Apple wants to sell as many Time Capsules as possible before enabling wireless backups to Airport Extremes.

MacBook Air

This was the big announcement that had all the rumour sites buzzing leading up to the event. Apple have now added a new MacBook to their lineup called the MacBook Air. This device is probably as light as air and is the thinnest notebook available today and still gets 5 hours battery life. On the surface, it definitely looks like an impressive device but I still feel it’s a bit lacking… I especially think that it’s lacking one huge feature which would have made it a killer device – built-in wireless broadband. But it does have Bluetooth 2.1 which means if you have a 3G phone with and HSDPA modem, you should be fine. Also, they decided to ship the standard model with a 4200rpm PATA hard drive, which is surely going to limit the performance of this machine. You can upgrade it to include a 64GB solid state drive (SSD), but in NZ prices this pushes the price up from an already steep $2,999 (NZD) to a prohibitive $5,139 (NZD). Only a fortunate few would be able to afford that, so this will definitely be a status symbol for the rich and famous. Other notable features is that it only has a single USB port, has no optical drive, and has a mini-DV port with a DVI adapter which can drive a 23inch Apple screen.

Summary

So for us plebs in NZ, it’s a pretty disappointing keynote. No movie rentals/downloads, still no iPhone, MacBook Air is too expensive, and we need to pay a tax to get the iPod Touch updates. Not impressed.

Updates

I’ll post links here from NZ-based bloggers as I see them…

• Rod Drury has more questions than answers
• Ben Kepes says Wow…
• Fossie on Geekzone has a few posts: link, link, link, as well as a rant about the iPod Touch Tax, and on the reality of the MacBook Air (I agree – this is more of a status symbol than a useful notebook.) 
• Manhili on Geekzone paid  the iPod Touch Tax and upgrade to 1.1.3