Summary: Jobs announced new MacBook Pros, a new 24-inch display, and new MacBooks. He also announced an update for the MacBook Air. The new MacBooks and MacBook Pros feature a new style of construction where the the aluminum body is carved from a single block. They include new Nvidia graphics chips for better video performance, and a new mini display port. There is also a new glass trackpad that supports multi-touch for gestures and the entire trackpad is a the button.
Here was the play-by-play:
10:05 Steve Jobs comes on stage and introduces Tim Cook, the Apple COO.
10:08 Cook talking about the success of Mac taking more market share over the last few years.
10:10 Cook says Mac actually has 31% market share when you measure in revenue.
10:12 Jobs introduces Jonathan Ive, Apple VP and lead designer to talk about MacBook design.
10:15 Ive talking about building notebooks by taking a single piece of aluminum and carving parts out of it.
10:17 Start with a 2.5 pound piece of aluminum and end up with a single .25 pound piece.
10:20 Jobs now talking about the Nvidia 9400M chipset, which will provide video and a GPU, 5 times faster than the current MacBook integrated video.
10:22 New MacBooks will feature a multi-touch glass trackpad, where the entire trackpad is the button.
10:23 New trackpad will include multi-touch gestures and multiple button support through software.
10:24 New MacBook Pro: Glass LED-backlit screen, connectors on one side only, mini display connector, new trackpad, new graphics chips, new rigid aluminum body built with new technique.
10:25 Also: Backlit keyboard, iSight and mic, magnetic latch, motion sensor.
10:26 New mini port connector will be on all new Macs?
10:29 NVIDIA GeForce 9400M or the NVIDIA GeForce 9600M.
10:31 Will include Firewire 800, two USB, mini display port, audio in and out, ExpressCard 34, and a battery indicator. No Firewire 400 (But you can use an adapter). Have slot-loading superdrive.
10:33 Option for Solid State Drive. Can access the drive and battery through lid at bottom.
10:34 .95 inches thick.
10:35 Bluetooth 2.1, 802.11n.
10:36 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 3MB L2 Cache, 2GB Memory, 250GB hard drive and SuperDrive for $1999.
10:36 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 6MB L2 Cache, 4GB Memory, larger hard drive and SuperDrive for $2499. Also better video chips.
10:38 Shipping today!
10:39 Upgrading MacBook Air: Nvidia 9400M, 120GB drive, mini display port (November)
10:40 New 24-inch display with 1920×1200, iSight, mic, stereo speakers, 3-port USB, $899 (November)
10:41 New MacBooks: Nvidia 9400M, mini display port, glass screen, multi-touch trackpad, new construction technique like the MacBook Pro, better battery life.
10:44 2.0 GHz processor model with 160GB drive for $1299 and 2.4 GHz for with 250GB drive for $1599.
10:45 Old white plastic MacBook still on sale for $999. MacBooks on sale today, in stores tomorrow.
10:46 Video shown about new MacBook and manufacturing process.
10:52 Jobs jokes about health, shows current blood pressure on screen (110/70).
10:53 Q&A session.
10:54 Display Port used instead of HDMI because HDMI can’t drive 30-inch monitor.
10:56 Blu-ray left out because it is too hard to license it.
10:58 17-inch MacBook Pro will also be refreshed, but later.
11:00 Only glass screens, no more matte ones in the future.
11:02 Jobs says touch screens don’t make sense yet.
11:03 No Mac “netBook” yet as market is too new.
The Apps in the Apps Store are a huge success. There has been just the outpouring of creativity and innovation that everyone expected. But the App Store itself is very inadequate.
First of all, try navigating around in it. Slow and sometimes just unresponsive. But that is par for the course when you consider the music store has always been that way. The iTunes store works as an online store, but it could work a lot better, especially considering it is a specialized piece of software communicating with a specialized server.
Second, it clearly does not meet the needs of the developers or the users. Consider how many developers right now are communicating with their audience through updating the description of the app. Notes are sometimes changed daily with little messages about updates and such. Clearly the description area is not where this should be. Perhaps a notes, messages or developer mini-blog are needed. Perhaps the store just needs to make it clearer to users that they should visit the developer’s Web site for information like this.
Two-way communication also seems to be a problem. Users are using reviews as a way to talk to the developer. Maybe this is because developers are being unresponsive? Or maybe it is because there is no clear line of communication between the developer and the users. Or maybe it is because the barrier to entry for a developer is so low that a single person can soon find themselves with tens or hundreds of thousands of paying customers, but no system in place to respond to requests.
What is clear is that reviews should be reviews. That needs to be fixed. Apple already fixed it somewhat by requiring that you purchase the product in order to leave a review.
Perhaps the App store should be taken out of iTunes altogether and put on the Web where it can be faster, presumably. We’ve done it at MacMost, sort of, by creating our own iPhone Apps directory. I enjoy using it myself just because I can quickly and clearly see what apps are new each day.
You can get free iPhone ringtones from MacMost.com. Just subscribe to the free iPhone ringtones podcast. You can then download the 100+ free iPhone ringtones to your iTunes library, and then set up your iPhone to make them all available to be used as ringtones.
The official Scrabble game for iPhone is a pretty full-featured version similar to the Mac and PC Scrabble games. There is also one for the iPod, but this version plays much better with the touch screen.
You can play against a friend on a single iPhone, or play against a computer opponent. One problem is the computer AI is too each on the medium setting, and too hard on the hard setting. There should be more settings in between, like the Mac game.
This game is a must-have if you are Scrabble fan. It is quick and easy to play a game and your Scrabble vocabulary will grow by playing it.
Read more about Scrabble and view it at the iTunes App Store.
Gary Rosenzweig looks at two ways to convert video files to mp3 audio files so you can listen to them on audio-only devices. The first method uses QuickTime Pro and iTunes. The second method uses FFMpegX.
Since the launch of the iTunes App store for iPhone and iPod Touch apps, there has been a ton of attention given to iPhone Apps. Having so many third-party developers pour their creativity into applications that run on the little iPhone is creating a renaissance in the world of software development.
As a user, it is also a great thing. Every day new and interesting apps appear in the iTunes store that could be useful. The iPhone gets more and more powerful with every app release.
But I’ve been disappointed in the experience of finding iPhone apps. The iTunes store is not a great way to find things — whether it is apps or music.
I dreamed of an iPhone app directory that would show me what’s new and allow me to sort and filter.
So I built one. Announcing the MacMost iPhone Apps Directory. I’d consider it to be in beta stage now, but it is still pretty powerful. For once thing, it makes it a lot faster and easier to check to see what’s new, or to just see what apps have just been updated.
Anyway, check it out and send some feedback. I’ll be adding some more features soon.
Go to the iPhone Apps Directory.
(old post)
MacMost is a short video podcast for people who use and love their Macs, iPhones or iPods. There are usually 3 to 4 episodes per week, focusing on topics like how-to tutorials, software reviews, tips, tricks and techniques and important bits of news in the Apple world.
You can subscribe to this video podcast using iTunes. Click on the link below to open up your iTunes application and go right to the subscription page.
You can watch the videos on your computer in iTunes, or transfer them to your iPod or iPhone to watch there. They also work on Apple TV.
.
When Steve Jobs announced that the big new feature in iTunes 08 was Genius, a music recommendation service, I, and many others, said: “Huh.”
First of all, this sort of technology has been around for a long long time. It was years (6, 8?) ago that I first used Amazon’s feature to find similar artists based on what people bought. I used that to discover new artists, in fact. More recently, Pandora has introduced some very sophisticated music matching techniques that suggest new music based on the music itself. I’ve also used sites like AllMusic.com to find out which artists I may like.
But Genius fails in a way that Apple is usually very good at — it really feels like it is selling you something. I feel that it is pushing me to buy music, not suggesting music I may like.
It reminds me of my high school job, which was working at a record store. Now I worked at a cool record store. We didn’t go out onto the floor and bother people by trying to sell them more records. (By the way, by “records” I do mean vinyl). But at other stores you’d get some kid trying to suggest something: “Have you heard the latest Smithereens album?”
Genius feels like that. I feel like telling it: “Don’t bother me, kid, I know what I want.”
And what is with the name? A “genius” is how you would describe someone who takes one song and then suggests others? That’s not a “genius” — that’s just Jack Black in High Fidelity.
I’d at least expect it to be smarter than Amazon or Pandora, but most of the suggestions I got were just for other songs by the same artist. And it doesn’t even seem to know that Anna Waronker was in That Dog — there are no suggestions between them.
And what happens if I select a Beatles song? I can’t find anything! That’s weird on so many levels.
And it has nothing to do with my Beatles songs coming from CD instead of the iTunes store — most of my music is that way. It may have to do with The Beatles not being sold on iTunes, but as a music lover I don’t really care about Apple’s legal issues.
Anyway, I’m sure that Genius will help Apple sell more music. It can’t hurt, right? I’m sure that was part of their reasoning.
But now that I’m not reviewing it, I’m turning it off.
