OK – it’s many hours after the keynote and you’ve probably read all the news from your various sources, but here’s my perspective…
MacWorld is really happening this year! I got to the show at about 5:50am in order to pick up my badge and get in line for the keynote and there were already people going well around the corner of the Moscone Center.
Once in line however, it really started to move and we shuffled pretty quickly inside…to wait. After a few hours and a few minutes to 9 we made our final move inside the main auditorium which was close to full. My colleague and I were able to find two seats together pretty close up on the right side which provided a really nice perspective for the Stevenote.
Steve delivered.
Apple announced stellar sales for Q4 with close to 20% of sales coming direct from foot traffic at retail.
There was a nice and brief update on ipod with some new content shown from Saturday Night Live and the recent Rose Bowl piece from ABC / ESPN.
iLife is getting a truly fantastic update today. Each of the 5 core apps gets a nice boost connected to .Mac and RSS.
You can easily record create an enhanced Podcast with GarageBand including recording an interview through iChat. iMovie includes some beautiful new motion transitions that are professional grade in how they allow anyone to present their clips. You can develop vidcasts as an export option and of course go right to your iPod as well. iPhoto is looking very strong with photocasts and full-screen editing with some UI tweaks that make iPhoto and Aperture look more like siblings. The new addition, iWeb is a way to easily publish to .Mac includes easily published and discoverable RSS feeds and has many seriously cool features for sharing your thoughts and self-published content. I’m looking forward to upgrading my home systems so I can play with all of this …
Finally, the real magic happened when Steve started to give the Intel update.
Paul Ottelini came out on stage in a bunnysuit bearing the gift of the Core wafer. He proclaimed that Intel was ready to which Steve replied that Apple was also ready… leading very nicely to the new iMac. Everything you know and love about the (previously) current systems stays the same, except they are now MUCH faster courtesy of Intel’s Core Duo Processor.
Steve then revealed that the keynote up to that point had been running on a new iMac powered by Intel… That was a very cool move considering the new machines were out on stage before Steve and no one had a clue!
One More Thing…
MacBook Pro, the new Powerbook is a killer. A couple of very nice enhancements beyond the addition of the Core Duo, are a built-in iSight and Front Row which an IR sensor near the front latch release. The new book is a bit thinner and seems a touch more curvy, but is essentially the same form factor as the Aluminum book of yesterday. It’s a welcome upgrade that’s long overdue.
The real punch which was a shocker to everyone is that unlike the usual Macworld show, the products are available now. You can order a new IMac and they are apparently available while the MacBook will be ready in February which is MUCH sooner than any previous portable I can recall.
Awesome 🙂 I want a MacBook, but $2300CDN is costly. Thanks for the post 🙂