The Macworld 2008 Keynote Liveblog

Steve thanks everybody, and we're out! Thanks for joining us. We'll be live at 7pm ET / 4 pm PT with today's talkcast covering all the announcements.

Playing "You've Got A Friend In Me."

"I'll always root against corporations, but not this one." "I actually wrote a big love theme [for Toy Story] but they cut Buzz and Woody's big love scene."

MacBook Air product page is up, as Randy is talking about CNBC and Steve's inherent humanity.

"That was about the toughest act to follow," says Randy. "I once did the David Frost show after the Flying Wallendas, and that was hard."

Wow, Randy is really going edgy with the ethnic comments about the Supreme Court. Scott says "Interesting choice."

Wow, let's have a more downbeat song for this gig, OK Randy? This is not dragging the crowd into a funk or anything, so try to darken it a bit if you could. Sing more about dictators and malaria, thanks big guy.

We're singing about America. Talking, mostly, kinda singing.

Randy is honored to be here. Might have brushed his hair, it's a pretty big room.

Randy Newman! Bingo. "You've got a friend in Apple..."

Hollywood and music... hmm.

We're reviewing now. Time Capsule, iPhone/touch updates, Movie rentals, AppleTV 2, and the skinny laptop. All in 2 weeks, and there are 50 more weeks to go. No one more thing -- but a special treat!

Laptop line includes three machines -- MacBook Pro, MacBook, MacBook Air. Very impressive indeed.

Greenpeace lady is squealing, as Steve is now giving an environmental update. Alumnum case, bromide free motherboard.

TV ad takes laptop out of an envelope. That's some interoffice mail for you right there.

$1799. 2 weeks out. Poor Nik! He was ready to buy one.

Three pounds is magnificent. 2 GB RAM standard, 80 GB HD standard.

Battery life 5 hours! Whoof.

Want to install software? New feature: all Macs or PCs in the network that have a CD mounted. Very sneaky, "Scott's MacBook" in screen shot, Scott is excited.

USB powered optical drive. But Steve thinks most people won't need it.

10:20 Smaller 75 watt power adaptor. Has a USB 2 port a micro-DV port, a headphone jack, and it comes with WiFi (n) and Bluetooth.

10:19 Paul Otellini takes the stage, thanks Steve and gives him one of the new tiny chips as a memento.

10 17 Entire motherboard is as long as a pencil, and uses the Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6 Ghz standard with 1.8 as an option, if you want. Apple has a great relationship with Intel and they turned to Intel for some help with getting the chip in the MacBook Air. They wanted the Core 2 Duo in the MacBook Air, but they needed the chip to be smaller, and Intel made it 60% smaller, which is crazy.

10:16: How did we fit a Mac in here? Steve is puzzled. They put a 1.8 inch harddrive. 80 gig is standard with an option of 64 gig solid state disk (pricey but fast).

Multitouch trackpad!! Rotate and scale pics, panning. Pinch for zoom.

10:13 Magnetic inch, 13.3" wide screen. Built-in iSight. Black keyboard, full size. Backlit!

The reveal -- it's incredibly thin.

Chris Ullrich said yesterday it fit inside an interoffice envelope -- and that's what's on the screen.

.76" to 0.16 inches thin? Ouch -- that could cut your hands!!!

Apple aiming for 3 pound machine, with better performance, full size keyboard, larger display, higher performance than Sony.

Thinner than Sony TZ, which is 0.8 to 1.2 inches.

A third notebook -- MacBook Air. World's Thinnest notebook.

10:08: Something in the air -- it's a notebook.

10:05 I'll say this for Jim; he's more compelling than Stan Sigman.

10:03 "People want easy access to movies." Homer Simpson slide. iDonut. "This is the coolest idea we've ever heard [movie rentals]."

10:02 First studio for movie rentals was 20th Century Fox. Introducing Jim Gianopulos, Chairman of Fox.


9:59 Clearly this is what AppleTV was meant to be all along. Awesome. And a free upgrade!!! Plus the new price of AppleTV is $229. Shipping in 2 weeks. By the way, credit to Nik for the pictures. Well done!

9:58 The HD skiing podcast was off the hook. Boom! Teton Gravity Research, a guy parachuting off a mountain. Yeesh.

9:58 Oops, no Flickr photo for the user slideshow! Heh.

HD podcasts, HD .Mac videos, all no computer involved.

Renting music videos now.

9:50 We're watching Blades of Glory. That's nice. Now Live Free or Die Hard in HD. So much for that helicopter.

9:46 New interface for AppleTV. "Top Movies." Star Trek has its own header.

9:43 That sound you heard was the HD-DVD coalition lead falling over and hitting his head. Christina says "Where's the DTS sound?" 5.1 Dolby will have to be enough for the rest of us. Buy TV shows, Flickr + .Mac photos all on your AppleTV.

9:42 What if I want to watch on TV? "All of us have tried." AppleTV Take 2! Now with movies. No computer is required, you can rent movies directly. Rent in DVD quality or HD!!!! Big cheers.

9:41 $2.99 to rent library titles, $3.99 for new. Demo time! Can sync movies one at a time to the iPod. Handy. Launches today! International later this year.

9:40 "So what's the deal?" 1000 films at launch in February, 30 day countdown after DVD release. Movies will be watchable immediately on streaming. 30 days to start watching, 24 hours to finish. Transfer to iPod while watching.

9:39 There's crying in the keynote -- not from us, from a nearby baby. Poor kid doesn't like movie rentals, apparently.

9:37 Studios!!! Adding Fox, WB, Paramount, Universal and Sony. Dang. "We have ever

y major studio." All first run films.

9:36 iTunes Movie Rentals! "A better way to provide movies to our customers."

9:36 20 million songs sold on 12/25 on iTunes, 4 B songs total, 125 M TV shows, 7 M movies -- but movies, despite being ahead of everyone else, did not meet expectations.

9:35 Daring Fireball was right about iPod Touch upgrades and the accounting practices.

9:34 What about the iPod touch? Adding Mail, Maps, Stocks, Notes and Weather. Maps will include WiFi location. Webclips too. $20 upgrade! Whoof.

9:32 Chapter navigation for iPhone videos, and subtitle/audio language options. Available today as a free update for all iPhones. [cheering]

9:31 Skyhook Wireless is providing the location data, via WiFi triangulation, and Google handling the cell tower triangulation. Veddy nice.

9:31 Up to nine home screens. Very cool. Jiggly icons are a little disconcerting though.

9:30 Now Steve has a NYT button on the home screen. Sweet! Now it's time to do the wiggle. All the icons are wobbling! Creepy.

9:28 Webclips demo. Go to Safari on iPhone, going to Google to demo new iGoogle UI. Little "+" button on the browser, lets you add to home screen. Now demoing NYT.

9:27 Demo of multi-recipient SMS. Steve says "Hi."

9:26 Directions to Apple Store on iPhone. No indication of where there are ATMs along the route. Pins for maps available.

9:25 Steve is demoing location in Google Maps. "Zhuuup. There we are." Getting directions back to Apple. No, don't leave yet Steve!!

9:25 Scott admits GearLive was right about 1.1.3, offers to buy Andru Edwards a smoothie.

9:23 SDK coming in 'late February.' New features rolling out! Maps with location for iPhone. Webclips. Customize home screens. SMS multiple recipients. Chapters for video. Karaoke mode! (Lyrics displayable)

9:22: in iPhone's first quarter, RIM had 39% share, iPhone had 19.5% share. Sheesh. If you add the share of the next 3 vendors, just about 20%. That's astonishing. "When Dec. quarter numbers come out, we think we'll have done even better."

9:21 2nd product time... iPhone. Wooo. 200 days since iPhone shipped. 4 million iPhones sold. 20,000 a day. That's a lot of bling. Maybe too much. No, not too much.

9:20 Time Machine ad running. That's a lot of Justin Long, maybe too much.

9:19 Steve mistakenly says 500 MB drive, much giggling. $299/$499 for 500GB/1TB Time Capsules, shipping in Feb.

9:18 If you had "Apple ships a NAS" on bingo, you win. Backup wirelessly to one Time Capsule for all the Macs in your house.

9:18 Companion product to Time Machine! Time Capsule -- a backup appliance, an Airport Extreme with an HD.

9:17 Giggles at PC magazine rave for Leopard. Applause for MS Office 2008. "Last big app to go native on Intel."

9:16 We're quoting Walt Mossberg and David Pogue on Leopard. Woo!

9:15 Four things to talk about today. Leopard: 5M copies shipped. Most successful Mac OS X release ever. Almost 20% of installed base has upgraded -- unprecedented.

9:15 "Thank You."

9:14 Steve is here! Something in the air. We're looking back at 2007. "An awesome year for Apple."

9:14 PC & Mac video! 2007 in review. Terrible year for PC. "PC will copy everything Mac did in 2007."

9:13 lights dimming! Or Scott is having some sort of stroke.

9:10 -- VIP and press seating continues. Music is "1234." Boom!

9:08 -- Music is cover of The Smiths "Stop Me If You Think That You've Heard This One Before." A theme is emerging.

9:04 -- Nik reports that the general admission crowd is still working its way into the room. Music: Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Hopefully not an omen.

8:56 -- Seen in line: Dan Lyons, Steven Levy. Follow us on Twitter or join the IRC chat to send questions back to the show!

8:54 PT -- We're inside. Media scrum heading for seats. Coldplay on the PA, crowd shots on the monitors. Here with Scott McNulty, John Gruber, John Moltz and a whole lot of press.

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The action starts here shortly before 9 am PT on Tuesday (12 noon ET) -- don't miss it! You'll want the chance to see how on- or off-base our keynote predictions were.

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