Apple MacWorld Expo 2008
Posted by YILKA in Hardware, Software, TechJan 16th, 2008 | 4 Comments
Wait no more, MacWorld Conference & Expo 2008 is on the air today, January 15th 2008. After people experienced the ‘art of technology’ with Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2008 at Las Vegas, they gonna ‘wow’ and ‘wee’ for the upcoming super cool stuffs from Apple 
Last year, Steve Jobs rocked us with the revolutionary iPhone and Apple TV. This year, people expected to see: a super thin lightweight and gorgeous ‘AirBook’, an 3G iPhone 16Gb, iTunes Movies Rental service, software update, price reduction …
Let’s look at 4 main points are introduced today:
1. Mac OS X Leopard – Backup solution:
After 3 months, Leopard sold 5 million copies, its features getting better and better. One of its unique feature is Time Machine for back up, and we just need one hardware companion to be perfect.
Apple today roll outs a new product called Time Capsule – a wireless hard drive is used mainly for Time Machine. Having 801.22n and Server grade, Time Capsule will cost you $299 for 500Gb and $499 for 1TB model.
Time Capsule has an impressive configuration, which definitely a leap forward for backup. All the setup can be done easily on both Mac and Win environment. It serves not only as a hard drive but also as an Extreme Base Station with 802.11n technology producing a high-speed wireless network for your home 
2. iPhone and iPod Touch firmware update:
iPhone has been sold 4 million after 3 months; and today it receives a free firmware update 1.1.3 with some new features: Maps with location, Webclips, Customize home screen, SMS multiple people – pretty obvious to all of us since leaked news last week. iPhone SDK is scheduled to be released within February 2008.
iPod Touch also has an upgrade with 5 new apps: Mails, Mail, Stocks, Notes, and Weather; but you won’t have it for free 
A ridiculous fee of $20 may set you off 
Unless you buy new iPod Touch from now on, otherwise you may have to pay for software upgrade.
3. iTunes Movies Rental
As we’ve expected, Apple has officially announced Movies Rental Service with all major studios onboard: Touchstone, Miramax, MGM, Lionsgate, Newline, Fox, Warner Bros, Disney, Paramount, Universal, Sony
US people now are able to rent movie at $2.99 for Library titles or $3.99 for New Releases. The rules is 30 days to start watching, 24 hours to finish. HD content is also available for $4.99. Movies can be rent directly from Apple TV as well, no computer is required
Apple admitted that the first Apple TV didn’t quite work out – so it’s back with a new model Apple TV 2 with free software update and price drop from $299 to $229.
4. And there’s One more thing
Sweet news! Apple today gives you their 3rd MacBook model – The World’s Thinnest Laptop: MacBook Air
Comparing to slim Sony TZ seri, the thickest part of the MacBook Air is thinner than the thinnest part of the Sony. It has:
- A full aluminum case
- 13.3-inch LED glossy backlit widescreen display
- Built-in iSight camera
- Full-sized backlit keyboard with ambient light sensor for automatic adjustment of keyboard illumination and screen brightness
- Trackpad having multi-touch gesture support (two-finger scrolling, pinch, rotate, swipe, tap, double-tap, and drag capabilities)
- A flip-down door that has one USB 2.0 port, microDVI port, and a headphone jack
- Processor Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6 GHz Standard (1.8 GHz option), 4MB on-chip shared L2 cache, 800MHz frontside bus
- 1.8” hard disk of 80Gb (or 64 GB Solid Stage Disk SSD option)
- Wireless 201.11n + Bluetooth 2.1/EDR
- 2Gb of RAM 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
- Intel GMA X3100 graphics processor with 144MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared, DVI Output
MacBook Air promises 5 hours of battery and selling today at $1799 (~S$2900), it’s having an ability to fit in an envelope
No optical drive anymore! You can either purchase a separate made-for-MBA SuperDrive at $99, or use new software called ‘Remote Disc’ to ‘borrow’ Mac/PCs optical drive for installing software if necessary. Everything can be done wirelessly, even backup and migration People from MacWorld Expo reported that ‘Remote Disc’ works flawlessly, they can install Microsoft Office 2008 easily via DVD Drive from a remote PC.
The ability to fit in an envelope – sweet 
During the keynote, Steve Jobs did pull it out from an envolop 
Here’s are its size and weight:
- - Height: 0.16-0.76 inch (0.4-1.94 cm)
- Width: 12.8 inches (32.5 cm)
- Depth: 8.94 inches (22.7 cm)
- Weight: 3.0 pounds (1.36 kg)
MacBook Air is ultrathin, ultraportable, and ultra unlike anything else A stunning beauty, slim, and yet powerful 13.3” laptop.
Now I know what my next notebook looks like My only wish is to have a white keyboard, instead of the black one … Anyways, MacBook Air is now available for pre-order and will be shipping within 2 weeks
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4 Responses and Counting.
About Me
Apple’s stock is going down
You just can’t announce a new iPhone every year.
MacBook Air turned many down due to the lack of USB port, Firewire port, Ethernet jack, non-replaceable battery, and pricey.
For me, I wish it could look a slightly better, dunno how but that’s not the best design I feel … Too much space around screen … errr not ‘manly’ looking …
I thought there weren’t many options to upgrade the MacBook Air yet, like memory and hard drive capacity. Would you please confirm whether that’s true or not? I guess size does matter either way.
It’s undeniably a very pretty laptop though. Sooo thin! The backlit keyboard and the trackpad are quite impressive too
Take care,
Lila.
Yup, as a matter of fact, there’s limited choices of upgrading, namely:
- Bump up Processor speed from 1.6Ghz to 1.8 Ghz: add $300
- Switch from 80Gb Parallel ATA (PATA) 4200-rpm hard drive into 64GB Solid State Drive (SSD): add $999
You might end up paying $3100 to max-out the system – quite a figure indeed
The reason: it’s not easy (by any mean) to design a thin laptop, and SSD drive will deliver a monster speed with less power consumption. Again, you pay for what you get.
The design of MacBook Air is not really impressive with the lacks of a Ethernet jack and a DVD. The black keyboard should be white. Well, but with 3lbs 13″ ultraportable laptop, who could ask for more?