Bonus: You'll also be able to read it in Spanish this year!
8:18am - Bomb-sniffing dogs; that's a new one for Macworld!
8:20am - They just pointed to the hall doors.
8:33am - Looks like they're about to open the doors to the conference hall.
8:35am - Media signs are going up. Any minute now.
8:39am - Music is pounding from the other side of the doors, things are running late.
8:48am - Camera crews entering, rest of press still waiting.
8:55AM - We're in! They're playing some new New Order, it sounds like. Mixing up the usual Coldplay / Gorillaz soundtrack.
9:03AM - Green Day, Kanye West, lots of buzzing about, you might say there's something in the air.
9:08AM - Does Gnarls Barkley do a cover of The Smiths's Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before? Because that's what it sounds like. We've been told by the RCRD LBL-master that it's Mark Ronson. Playing Feist from the iPod nano commercial now.
9:13am - Lights dimming, cheers coming up, music fading. Here we go!
9:15am - Steve! Huge cheers.
9:15am - Welcome to Macworld 2008! There is clearly something in the air today. Before we dive into all that, I just wanted to take a moment to look back to 2007. 2007 was an extraordinary year for Apple. The amazing new iMac, awesome new iPods, and the revolutionary new iPhone.
Steve's quoting Mossberg, Pogue, Baig... all their positive reviews of Leopard.
"Today we're introducing a companion product to Time Machine -- it's called Time Capsule."
"It's really clever, it's a backup appliance. What it has in it is an Airport Extreme base station and a hard drive -- 802.11n wireless and a server grade hard drive in it."
"One with a 500GB drive, one with a 1TB drive inside it -- $299, and $499. Very aggressive prices because we want people backing up! Ships in Feb." Mild applause.
"We've got an ad for Time Machine -- I'd love to run it now." This is the ad released last week.
9:22am - "So that's TC, a perfect companion to Leopard, and that's the first thing." Applause. Number two! "It's about the iPhone." A hush...
"What's this mean in terms of the overall market?" Chart time! It's first Q shipping it garnered 19% market share, Palm 9.8%, RIM 39%, other 20%, Nokia 7%...
Palm, Moto, Nokia together -- "We equaled all them in the first 90 days..."
"We've got some great new features today. First: maps with location!"
"You know have the ability to find your current location in maps. Webclips, right on the home screen. Up to 9 total home screen. SMS multiple people at once." Big applause on that one.
"Chapters, subs, langs in videos, lyrics in iPod." Demo time!
9:26am - Maps demo now -- page curls up, search and directions buttons now -- if you've seen the 1.1.3 demo vids, this is exactly it. "Schoom. And there we are." as it locates Steve in the Moscone. "I can flip right into directions, and it uses my current location to start..." calcing the route back to Apple HQ.
9:28am - "We love working with Google. So... I want to SMS more than one person at once!" Let's bring up a new message here. I want to send it to Phil and Scott, maybe Tim..." they're all coming up, just like an email to multiple people. Friggin finally. Still no sign of MMS, though.
9:29am - The list shows an icon to the group -- "It's pretty nice. So that's sending SMSs to multiple people. Webclips! I'm gonna go to Google because they have really cool apps that work with the iPhone -- now I have a plus button and I can just push this and I can just hit add to home screen."
9:33am - "They pick up beacons, triangulate the beacons, and tell you where you are -- and Google is doing the same thing triangulating cell towers -- we're using both of them, and it works pretty doggone well. We have this new add to home screen button... add our apps right to the home screen."
Demoing lyrics, chapters, languages, all the new multimedia features on the iPhone. "All of this is vailable today as a free software update for every iPhone." Big applause. v1.1.3!
9:34am - "The iPhone isn't standing still, we keep making it better and better. That's the iPhone. But what about hte iPod touch. What can we do for the touch? We decided to add five apps to the touch. Mail, maps, stocks, notes, and weather!" [About freaking time! - Peter]
9:35am - "All the same stuff we just heard about on the iPhone -- on the iPod touch. Starting today we're going to build it into every new iPod touch, for existing iPod touch users it's going to be just a $20 upgrade." EXCUSE me?! You have to PAY for this? This is SO weak.
"iPod touch, and the iPhone -- major software updates. And that's the second thing I want to talk about." Big applause.
9:36am - "Ok, number three. This is a good one, too. Number three is about iTunes."
9:37am - "And we've sold 7m movies, again, more than everyone else put together. But it didn't meet our expectations, I have to tell you. We think there's a better way to deliver movie content through iTunes. So today, we're introducing iTunes Movie Rentals."
9:40am - "Now, so what's the deal? We're gonna launch with 1k films by the end of February -- 30 days after DVD release. Watch anywhere, PCs, Macs, iPods, iPhone..."
9:41am - "Watch instantly! In less than 30s..." it streams. "The rules -- you have 30 days to start watching it, and once you start you have 24 hours to watch and finish it. As many times as you want. You can transfer films to another device in the middle -- transfer to your iPod and watch the rest on the iPod on your flight."
9:44am - "I'd like to say all of us have tried. We have, MSFT, Amazon, TiVo, VuDu, Netflix, Blockbuster -- we've all tried to figure out how to get movies over the net onto the TV. We've ALL missed. No one's succeeded yet. We tried with Apple TV -- it was designed to be an accessory for iTunes and your computer. But that's not what people wanted."
9:45am - Here's what you can do with Apple TV: rent movies directly on widescreen TV with Apple TV. Rent them in DVD quality, rent them in HD with 5.1" HUGE applause! Screaming.
"Dolby 5.1 surround. The quality is unbelievable. You can also view audio and video podcasts right on ATV, choose from 125k podcasts and see them right on your widescreen. Get photos from your computer... get them also right over the internet from Flickr and .mac." Flickr support, good gawd yall.
"And, of course, YouTube -- we've expanded the selection. There's now over 50m videos from YT, This has worked out so great, our customers love this. Buy TV shows and music right from your TV. And if you're using a computer it'll sync BACK to your computer."
9:46am - "And, of course, play iTunes content. So all of this stuff on the new Apple TV. Let me focus on the HD movies for a minute... the library titles are $2.99 and $3.99 -- for just a dollar more rent them in HD, $3.99 and $4.99 -- there are over 100 titles available today.
9:47am - "All these features and an entirely new UI." Demo time! "This is the new UI -- one menu, it couldn't be simpler. Let's go into movies..." Man, this is a sexy interface, no doubt.
9:48am - Star Trek! I love the old Star Trek movies..." Chuckles. Blades of Glory: "Fun movie -- I can read about the movie, see the actors, directors..." shows recommendations based on what others have viewed.
9:49am - "So you get the idea..." He's renting the movie, downloading, "it'll tell me when it's ready to play. So I hit the play button and it'll play!" Looks pretty friggin good, even on this absolutely massive screen.
9:54am - "Music: again, we've got 6m songs in iTunes, you can buy any of them on your widescreen TV, lets go ahead and search for something here... there they are right there, and there's the music video. Let's go to podcasts here, this is really cool. HD podcasts! We have a lot in HD now, which is really amazing." Veronica Belmont was on screen!
9:56am - "Incredible!! Let me go to photos now, don't know if I can top that one -- again, this is all live. Set these things up as screen savers, or just look at the photos. So let's go to the vacation here... streaming off .Mac, live."
10:00am - "I'm afraid Flickr's not serving up the photos on that one..." Sorry Steve! Flickr still loves you, and we still love Flickr. "Movies -- preview it, rent it, genres, boom -- TV shows, buy music... automatically sync it to your computers. Podcasts -- over 125k podcasts in the directory. And photos from .Mac and -- when they're serving up photos -- Flickr." Har
10:02am - "We are shipping the free software upgrade to existing owners and the new $229 ATV in just two weeks." Mild applause.
"Let's come back to iTunes rentals, you can watch them on your computer, watch them on all current gen iPods, your iPhone, and you can watch them on your widescreen TV. Order them for your computer, iPods, iPhone -- right off of iTunes. Order them for your widescreen TV right ON your widescreen TV. We've got support from EVERY major studio. We've got it all together."
"The first studio to sign up with us... 20th Century Fox. We appreciate that, we've developed a great working relationship. Let me introduce to you Jim Gianopulos, chairman and CEO of Fox." Big applause.
"Basic enough that even a studio guy can understand it. So we go to our in-house tech dept and I think we have a slide with the result -- woohoo!" Homer's on screen in a faux-iPod ad.
10:06am - "The real back story, when Steve came to us, it was a no-brainer. It was the most exciting, coolest thing we've ever heard. VoD isn't a new thing. But there was music, and then the iPod. There was a phone, then the iPhone. Apple does things in an intuitive, insightful way... this will be a transformative version of the rental model. We're incredibly excited about it."
"There's another idea we've been talking to Steve about. There are other formats -- DVD. And there are next gen formats, like Blu-ray." Laughter and applause. "People still want to buy hard media, but we don't want to deny them the benefit of watching the same movie. So we developed a digital copy that will be on discs going forward."
10:07am - "I have a copy of the first one today. We planned this date a long time ago, The Family Guy Blue Harvest video, but this contains a digital copy that you can instantly move to iTunes."
10:08am - "We're really excited about this as well, today is an exciting beginning for movie rentals on iTunes. We couldn't be happier and prouder of our partnership. Thank you." Jim's off, Steve's back.
"Thank you Jim. Well, iTunes movie rentals. That's the third thing we wanted to talk about today."
"What is it? Well, as you know, Apple makes the best notebooks on the planet. The MacBook and the MacBook Pro."
"What is the MacBook Air? In a sentence, it's the world's thinnest notebook."
10:10am - an 11 or 12-inch display, they also compromise on the keyboard, they make mini keyboards. They don't run the mas fast as they could. We looked at this and said what do we like? Where can we compromise? The weight's a good target, 3 pounds. But too much compromise to get there.
Less than a full size display, keyboard, and we want to put even more performance in this product. This is that Sony product -- one of the best in the field. This is the macbook Air. 0.76 - 0.16-inches
10:11am - Unprecedented 0.16-inches -- the thickest part of the Air is still thinner than the thinnest part of the TZ series. It's so thin it fits in a manilla envelope. Let me show it to you now.
He pulls out a manilla envelope. Huge applause.
10:12am - "This is the new Macbook Air, you can get a feel for how thin it is. There it is." Unreal, that's almost invisible from the side.
"Amazing product here, full size keyboard, full size keyboard, full-size display. Isn't that amazing?"
10:14am - "The display is gorgeous -- LED-backlit display, it says power, and instant on the minute you open it. It's got iSight for videoconferencing right out of the box. Flip it down, there's a full-size keyboard. This is the best notebook keyboard we've ever shipped, and it's full-sized. And it's backlit."
10:15am - We've got a very generous trackpad, which is great. We've also built in multi-touch gesture support. We've taken that even further, you'll actually be able to turn on all sorts of new gestures."
"You can double-tap and move the whole window, not just the cursor. When you're in a large photo you can pan around with two fingers. When you want to rotate a photo, just rotate your fingers. We learned in the iPhone and we're putting it in our notebook computers."
"If you want to go between photos, pan right, pan left -- if you want to zoom, pinch in and out. Isn't that great?" Rumbling applause.
10:18am - "We've got a great relationship with Intel -- they're engineering driven, we challenge each other. We said we want the Core 2 Duo, but we need to go to smaller packaging. It sounds easy -- it's not. They invested a lot of engineering to create this for us. The same chip in a package that's 60% smaller -- one of the reasons we can build the MacBook Air. I'd like to say thank you, Intel."
10:19am - "I'd like to invite Otellini on stage..." Paul O gets up there, another appearance. Paul: "About a year ago you challenged us to get the world's best CPU into this machine. When we started this project we didn't think it was possible. What we built for you is the width of a dime, thick as a nickel... it's been a challenge, we sweated over it, and we did what we do best together. Innovate."
Paul gives Steve the chip as a "souvenir." Aw, shucks.
10:20am - "This is AWESOME technology. Thank you Paul, thank you Intel. So that's the electronics -- how we fit a Mac inside the world's thinnest notebook. On one side we have MagSafe -- a smaller 45w power adapter, on the other side we have a door that exposes a USB 2.0 port, Micro-DVI, and a headphone jack."
"And, maybe most importantly, we've built into the most advance wireless... 802.11n, along with Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. The latest and greatest in wireless, built to be a wireless machine."
10:21am - "What you're NOT going to find is an optical drive. You can buy this accessory, it's USB powered, it costs just $99, it's very compact. But you know what? We don't think most users will miss the optical drive, or will need the optical drive."
10:22am - What do we normally do with these drives? Play movies, install software, burn CDs... guess what, we have a much better way. We can wirelessly rent movies, we have a much better way than burning CDs -- most of us have iPods in our car. For making backups we have Time Machine and Time Capsule to wirelessly back up our laptops. What about installing software?"
"We're going to do that wirelessly too. We have a new feature built into the MBA called remote disc."
"You'll see in the finder called Remote Disc -- it will show you all the Macs and PCs that have some special software on them, and you can pick one of those machines and ask to borrow its optical drive.
10:23am - "Once they've accepted your request you can see what's on their optical drive -- a PC can read a Mac disc and send it wirelessly over to your MBA and it's just as if you had a local optical drive. It's amazing" Big applause. Well, we'll be damned.
"We don't think users are going to miss THAT." DVD disappears. "We didn't want compromise on battery life -- 5 hours battery life in that TINY little notebook."
10:31am - "I wanted someone who could help us bridge the gap between iTunes movie rentals and our relationships with movies and music -- one of our heritages now. The best person in the world to do that was gracious enough to come and do a few songs for us. Randy Newman."10:19am - "I'd like to invite Otellini on stage..." Paul O gets up there, another appearance. Paul: "About a year ago you challenged us to get the world's best CPU into this machine. When we started this project we didn't think it was possible. What we built for you is the width of a dime, thick as a nickel... it's been a challenge, we sweated over it, and we did what we do best together. Innovate."
Paul gives Steve the chip as a "souvenir." Aw, shucks.
"And, maybe most importantly, we've built into the most advance wireless... 802.11n, along with Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. The latest and greatest in wireless, built to be a wireless machine."
10:21am - "What you're NOT going to find is an optical drive. You can buy this accessory, it's USB powered, it costs just $99, it's very compact. But you know what? We don't think most users will miss the optical drive, or will need the optical drive."
10:22am - What do we normally do with these drives? Play movies, install software, burn CDs... guess what, we have a much better way. We can wirelessly rent movies, we have a much better way than burning CDs -- most of us have iPods in our car. For making backups we have Time Machine and Time Capsule to wirelessly back up our laptops. What about installing software?"
"You'll see in the finder called Remote Disc -- it will show you all the Macs and PCs that have some special software on them, and you can pick one of those machines and ask to borrow its optical drive.
"We don't think users are going to miss THAT." DVD disappears. "We didn't want compromise on battery life -- 5 hours battery life in that TINY little notebook."
10:25am - "A lot of others only get 1.5 hours -- this is phenomenal battery life. 3 pounds, 13.3-inch full size display, full keyboard, multi-touch gestures, 0.16-inch thickness, iSight... 1.6GHz C2D, 2GB RAM standard, 80GB drive, 64GB SSD option, 802.11n standard Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR...
"All these and more in the thinnest notebook in the world -- we are pricing this at $1799."
"Lots of woos, huge applause. We commence shipping MBAs in just TWO weeks. Pre-order today, we're shipping in two weeks."
"The thinnest notebook in the world -- we made an ad. Run the ad!"
"Lots of woos, huge applause. We commence shipping MBAs in just TWO weeks. Pre-order today, we're shipping in two weeks."
"The thinnest notebook in the world -- we made an ad. Run the ad!"
10:29am - "It's 2008 already! In the first 2 weeks, let's just review the new products and innovations. Last week we announced the most powerful Mac we've ever made. 8 CPUs, it's a SCREAMER. Today: Time Capsule."
10:26am - Manilla envelope... pulling out, that thing is so absurdly thin. Disgusting.
"There's a few things we've done on the environmental side. It's enclosed in a fully aluminum case -- it's easily recycled, highly desirable by recyclers. It's our first mercury and arsenic-free display. All of the circuit boards are bromide and PVC free. We're very happy about that as well... the retail packaging is 50% less volume, this helps a great deal in energy expended in transporting and disposing the materials."
We're very conscious of this. Thank you. The thinnest notebook in the world. And it joins the other two great notebook families -- the MB and the MBP, the best notebook in the industry. And that's the fourth thing I wanted to talk to you about today."
"There's a few things we've done on the environmental side. It's enclosed in a fully aluminum case -- it's easily recycled, highly desirable by recyclers. It's our first mercury and arsenic-free display. All of the circuit boards are bromide and PVC free. We're very happy about that as well... the retail packaging is 50% less volume, this helps a great deal in energy expended in transporting and disposing the materials."
We're very conscious of this. Thank you. The thinnest notebook in the world. And it joins the other two great notebook families -- the MB and the MBP, the best notebook in the industry. And that's the fourth thing I wanted to talk to you about today."
10:30am - "Software upgrades for the iPhone and the iPod touch -- bundling 5 new apps on the touch as well. iTunes movie rentals, a whole new way to enjoy rentals on your computer... and a completely reinvented Apple TV where you can order movies right on your widescreen. Unbelievable."
"AND, the MacBook Air -- all this in the FIRST two weeks. And we've got 50 more weeks to go!" Big applause. Oh Steve, you kill us.
"This, ladies and gentlemen is what we have to share today, thank you SO much for coming. We have a special treat today."
"AND, the MacBook Air -- all this in the FIRST two weeks. And we've got 50 more weeks to go!" Big applause. Oh Steve, you kill us.
"This, ladies and gentlemen is what we have to share today, thank you SO much for coming. We have a special treat today."
"He's won and Academy Award -- nominated 17 times. 5 Grammies, 13 noms -- I first met Randy when he was doing scores for our Pixar films -- he's done scores for ALL these films for Pixar. He's simply extraordinary, it's my pleasure to introduce you to Randy Newman." Huge applause!
10:33am - Randy: "I was in Europe a year ago, and I noticed they didn't like us very much... I wanted to do something to sum up America in 2:27." Laughter. "I'd like to say a few words in defense of our country... the people aren't bad!"
10:37am - Randy's finished his first song. "Goodbye... goodbye... In many ways, that was about the toughest act to follow of ANY act. This was hard, it's not Rockefeller or Carnegie, I mean, you can tell when someone's a human being."
"I'll always root against corporations -- because that's the way I am. But not this one, this one's different."
10:37am - Randy's finished his first song. "Goodbye... goodbye... In many ways, that was about the toughest act to follow of ANY act. This was hard, it's not Rockefeller or Carnegie, I mean, you can tell when someone's a human being."
"I'll always root against corporations -- because that's the way I am. But not this one, this one's different."
10:39am - "But Jim G's the best studio head... really. But that's a little thing just to make me some money. This is from Toy Story, it got cut, Buzz and Woody's big love scene."
10:41am - Randy's singing "You've Got a Friend in Me."
Photography by Engadget bestest buddy, JD Lewin. Much love!