Its been over 24 hours since the Macworld keynote. I’m not going to go over every little detail, because you can find that anywhere you look on the internet. Instead, I’m going to talk about what I find the most important.
To start, iTunes Movie Rentals!!!! I think a lot of people were expecting this to happen. All the major studios are on board, prices are decent and they even have HD movies to rent. But, unfortunately, you can’t buy HD movies. At least you can rent them. But the thing about that is, only on the Apple TV. If you want to rent the movie in HD, you have to do so from your Apple TV, and you can’t transfer it to you computer to watch it there. Apple will be providing a free upgrade to the Apple Tv to support rentals. I think I might get one. But of course, no rentals in Canada yet. As usual, the service starts only in the US but Steve said it would go international by the end of the year. Hopefully Canada will be included in that, and before December.
Speaking of Canada, still no iPhone. Why the wait? Its probably because Rogers is being stubborn. I likely wouldn’t get one anyways, but I still want the option. The iPhone got some nice new updates in the 1.1.3 firmware. And the great thing is, the iPod Touch got those updates (minus the phone specific ones) and even got some of the original iPhone apps like Mail, Notes, Weather, Stocks and and Maps. But for a price. For $20 iPod Touch owners will be able to get the update. I don’t really want to pay $20, but I do want to update, and eventually I’ll be forced to update.
Along with these announcements Apple also released the Macbook Air. Well I don’t really understand the name, I do like the computer. Its thin with a decent design. But there is no ethernet port (but being a laptop I guess you don’t need one), no optical drive (but you can use an external one or wireless access the drive on another computer), and there is even the option of a solid state drive (for $1000 more). I likely won’t get one (I need more speed), but its still nice.
I think it was a decent keynote. Nothing revolutionary, but I really didn’t think there would be. Only like 5 months till WWDC. Maybe I’ll get to go this year.
PS: Oh ya. They also released Time Capsule. But thats nothing important.