I hope you didn't buy a new Apple laptop recently. Steve Jobs announced the MacBook Air at Macworld today.



The MacBook Air is the "World's Thinnest Notebook" - even thinner than the Sony TZ, which is 0.8 to 1.2 inches thick. It's so thin it fits in a manila envelope. Seriously. See the image below! Apple's goal was to make a high performance 3 pound laptop, with a full size keyboard, and large display.






The MacBook Air is so thin, it only has 4 ports: USB 2.0, Micro-DVI, headphone jack and a MagSafe 45w power adapter plug.

So what did Apple leave out? An optical drive. If you really want one, Apple is selling an optional external USB powered SuperDrive for $99. So how do you install software or get files off of CD/DVD? Apple has a new piece of software called Remote Disc which can be installed on any Mac or PC on your wireless network and will let you borrow that machine's optical drive.



MacBook Air features:

• Magnetic latch
• 5 hour battery
• multi-touch gesture trackpad
• 13.3-inch widescreen
• LED-backlit display
• built-in iSight for videoconferencing
• full-size keyboard
• 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
  
• 2GB RAM standard
• 80GB drive (1.8-inch hard drive. Same as in iPods.)
• 64GB SSD option
• 802.11n standard WiFi (N is the most advanced wireless on the market).
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR

You can pre-order the MacBook Air today. Apple starts shipping them in 2 weeks.



In addition to the MacBook Air, Steve Jobs also made the following announcements at MacWorld today:

• Time Capsule - a wireless backup hard drive companion to Time Machine
• iPhone & iPod Touch 1.1.3 software update - adds cell tower and WiFi location triangulation data amoung other things
• iTunes Movie Rentals - ability to rent new movies in HD
• Apple TV Take 2 - new Apple TV software allows you to instantly start watching movies you rent from iTunes
  

methodshop

Labels: macworld

Steve Jobs announced an update to the Apple TV at Macworld San Francisco this week as well as iTunes Movie Rentals, which were already rumored to be part of his Macworld keynote speech.

Jobs admitted that Apple's online video plan had been a disappointment and that users didn't take to watching online video the way Apple had expected. When Jobs first announced the Apple TV last January, Apple's initial video plan was too complicated for many people. Getting a movie or TV show onto your Apple TV required customers to buy the video from the iTunes Store, download it to their computer, then sync/stream the file using an Apple TV.



Although Apple has already sold 7 million movies, Jobs said: "That’s more than everyone else put together, but it did not meet our expectations."

Apple plans on overhauling their strategy by making 2 major changes:

1. Adding a new online movie rental service
2. Updating the Apple TV's software so that viewers can stream movies direct from the internet sans (that's Middle English for without) computer.
   

Jobs thinks that viewers would prefer to rent movies, not buy them. As a result, the new Apple TV software will allow users to rent first run films from every major movie studio including Fox, WB, Paramount, Universal and Sony in HD. Jobs called it "A better way to provide movies to our customers." Blockbuster and Netflix can't be happy right now.



1000 films ready for rental will be available on iTunes starting in February. Going forward, movies will be available to rent 30 days after they are released on DVD. Broadband users won't have to wait for these giant movie files to download. Moments after you rent the film using your Apple TV, it will be watchable immediately via streaming. How much are movie rentals? $2.99 to rent older titles, $3.99 for new releases. Add one more $1 to those prices if you want to rent the movie in HD.

Thomas Lesinski, president of Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment, joined Jobs on stage at Macworld and called the rental service a "defining moment" for the distribution of digital video content. "This is really going to take things to the next level," he said.



The new Apple TV software features will be included in a free Apple TV update scheduled to be released in February. You can update your Apple TV by selecting "Update Software" from the Settings menu.


methodshop

Labels: apple tv, itunes, macworld

It turns out that Andru Edwards from GearLive.com was right about the iPhone 1.1.3 update.

New features include:

• location data via cell tower triangulation (via Google) or WiFi triangulation (via Skyhook Wireless)
• Webclips - ability to make sections of web pages into widgets
  
• custom icon layouts for home screens (up to 9 total)
  
• SMS multiple recipients
• Chapters for video and subtitle/audio language options
• Karaoke mode (Lyrics displayable)
  

All these new features are available today as a free software update for every iPhone.



But what about iPod Touch owners? You can add Mail, Maps, Stocks, Notes, Webclips and Weather... but it's a $20 upgrade! Come on Steve. That wasn't very nice.

You can watch the leaked iPhone 1.1.3 video here.


methodshop

Labels: iphone, ipod, macworld

This morning at Macworld 2008, Steve Jobs announced a new hardware companion product called Time Capsule for Apple's Time Machine backup software. Time Machine is part of the newest Apple operating system OS X Leopard 10.5.

If you are already familiar with Apple's current products, Time Capsule is basically an Airport Extreme with a hard drive.

Time Machine can now backup multiple Macs on the same network wirelessly to the same Time Capsule hard drive.

The Time Capsule hard drives come in 2 sizes: 500GB ($299) and 1TB ($499). Pretty aggressive pricing. Apple must be serious about helping people backup their computers.

Time Capsule starts shipping in February. You can read more about Time Capsule here on Apple.com


methodshop

Labels: apple, macworld