Today at Macworld 2008 Steve revealed not only updates to the iPhone, iPod Touch, and Apple TV, but officially announced the release of Time Capsule and the long-awaited MacBook Air. Here’s a rundown of today’s announcements.
- The iPhone is popular. 4 million units popular, in fact. Now the popular device is improved with the maps app finding your location via triangulating cell phone towers so you can quickly orient yourself and get directions from your location. Users can also create up to 9 different custom home screens which can be quickly switched between.
- iPod Touch got mail, maps, weather, notes, and stocks apps – welcome additions to current lineup of Safari, YouTube, and the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store. The catch is a $20 upgrade fee for current iPod Touch users which I think is lame.
- Ability to rent movies (even in HD with Dolby 5.1) via iTunes and watch on multiple Apple platforms.
- Apple TV has a bunch of additional features including the ability to rent and watch movies, listen to music, and browse photos from your .Mac gallery and Flickr. New price of $229.
- Time Capsule is a new product which is basically a wireless backup server. Also a 802.11n Wi-Fi base station, Time Capsule allows you to wireless backup from any of your computers. Comes in 500GB or 1TB flavors for $299 and $499, respectively.
- MacBook Air. Much rumored and finally a reality, this is Apple’s ultra-portable laptop with an amazing 5-hour battery life. It features a 13.3” widescreen LED backlit display with built-in iSight, full-sized illuminated keyboard, and the integration of many multi-touch gestures used on the iPhone. Weighing in at 3 pounds and being 0.76” at its thickest end and 0.16” at the thinnest, this is definitely ultra-portable. It’s able to be this thin because it doesn’t have an optical drive, but this can be remedied by the $99 MacBook Air Superdrive which can be plugged into the Air’s sole USB port, or by using the new Remote Disc software which allows it to connect to and share another computer’s optical drive wirelessly. It sports 802.11n wireless and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR (which stands Enhanced Data Rate and is capable of 3.0 Mbit/s). The standard configuration includes a 1.6Ghz Core 2 Duo processor (made possible by Intel working to shrink their chip by 60%), 2GB of memory, and an 80GB 4,200rpm 1.8” hard drive for $1,799. If you’re loaded with cash, you can upgrade to the 1.8Ghz Core 2 Duo processor for $300 more and replace the 80GB hard drive with a 64GB solid-state hard drive for a mere $999 extra, bringing your grand total to $3,098.
Check out the goods at the Apple Store.
In other news, Super Smash Bros Brawl was delayed – again. It really doesn’t matter much to me, since I’ll be out of the country.