Macworld08
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iTunes now supports movie rentals
iTunes 7.6 is out, and it finally has something we've been hearing about for a long time: movie rentals. As announced at the Macworld Keynote earlier today, Apple has made deals with all of the major studios to provide streaming, downloadable flicks for you to watch on your computer, iPod or iPhone. Library titles are $2.99, and new releases will be available 30 days after DVD release and will cost $3.99. Each movie will be available to download within 30 days, and once you start watching it, you'll have 24 hours to finish.There is good news for HD viewers-- HD rentals will be available, but they'll cost an extra buck (so $3.99 and $4.99 for library titles and new releases. There'll be 100 HD titles starting today, and more all the time. And of course, movie rentals will be sync-able with the iPhone and iPod, or have the ability to be downloaded straight on to the revamped Apple TV. Unfortunately, we haven't heard an official resolution on the HD (720p is one of the numbers being tossed around, and that's not great for serious HD viewers), but if we get to see one of these flicks, we'll let you know.Get out the popcorn-- it's time to rent some movies from iTunes!
MacBook Air
Apple stunned a nation, or at least those who haven't been paying attention to the rumors, today with the unveiling of a very thin new MacBook called the MacBook Air. 'The world's thinnest notebooks' starts at $1799 and comes with a 13.3 inch display (LED), a full keyboard, built-in 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth, built-in iSight, and a multitouch trackpad that lets you use gestures to control a number of actions on the MacBook Air. Some other stats include: 1.6 GHz or 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 4MB L2 cache 2GB of RAM 80GB 1.8-inch hard drive (with optional 64 gig solid state drive 1 USB 2.0 port What it doesn't come with are built-in ethernet ports, FireWire, and optical drive, or enough graphics power to power a 30 inch Display (but you can hook up a 20 or 23 inch display via a built in mini-DVI port).
Prediction Report Card
We came. We predicted. Steve keynoted. (Veni, vidi, keynoti.) So how did we do? Speaking as someone whose predictions were almost uniformly wrong, I'd just like to say thank goodness for Scott McNulty who did worse. He was our worst predictor with his expectations for iTunes 8.0, a revamped Airport Express, and new displays. I was right down there with my iPhone game sales, ubiquitous computing and Bill-Gates-alike retirement scenario. So who rocked the keynote? Who was right on the mark? Mike Schramm was "Teh Man"(TM). He called iTunes 7.6, subnotebook with delayed sales, movie rentals, and the Apple TV update. In second place, Nik called a lot of the same stuff that Mike did but unwisely added Cinema Display updates and Office 2008. Other than that, he practically tied with Mike. So how did you do? Did you guess the keynote? Let us know in the comments.
iPhone January update, coming soon to an iTunes near you
I don't know about you all, but considering I'm not in the market for a pricey, tiny notebook, and I don't need yet another thing hooked up to my TV, the best news I heard at the Keynote today was about this iPhone "January update" (does that mean there'll be one every month?) coming soon to your iTunes. Included in the free update to iPhone users: An updated Maps that will actually find your location automatically by triangulating cell towers (we saw this a while ago), and give you the option to add a pin to the map Web Clips, cutouts of web pages that you can attach to an icon sitting right there on the homescreen. A customizable homescreen and dock (just hold an icon to get them wiggling, and then move them around as you please), and up to nine homescreen pages total The update will also add chapter navigation for iPhone video, and subtitle/audio options as well. And though the readers in our IRC channel weren't very impressed with this one, the iPhone will now feature multiple SMS sending. Very awesome update for the iPhone, completely free and available on download in iTunes right now (!), and definitely an update that will set the stage for all the third party applications we're supposed to see next month. Bring on the SDK!
The MacBook Air SuperDrive
Apple may think it's over for optical media, but we have a feeling a lot of MacBook Air customers are going to end up spending the $99 on the external SuperDrive. The 1.06-pound USB-powered dual-layer burner is as slickly encased in aluminum as the Air itself, has a built-in cable and features 4X DL read / write speeds, 8x DVD±R, and 24x CD-R. No official word on availability just yet, but we'd guess it'll ship alongside the Air in two weeks. Interestingly, the specs say it requires a MacBook Air -- but we'll be recklessly plugging it into whatever we have handy soon enough, stay tuned.
Macworld 2008 Keynote line video
The first part of the video was the scene around midnight. Only a dozen or so lost souls braved the moderately chilly temperatures to guarantee a potential spot somewhere within earshot of Steve.The second part is around 6AM, when the line for the regular passholders went completely around the building. We loves us some keynote, don't we?UPDATE: Apparently the first part of the video went missing. Probably off to rent movies on iTunes. But you saw the pics.
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 every 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. ---- 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. For instant updates on all our Macworld Expo 2008 coverage, you can follow TUAW on Twitter (fastest way: text "FOLLOW TUAW" to 40404 on your mobile phone), or add our Macworld feed to a Pingie subscription. We'll be talkcasting, vlogging and liveblogging all week long. We've got a gallery of San Francisco scenes and preshow shots, courtesy Mr. Nik Fletcher & Mr. Chris Ullrich, up for your perusal. If your reload finger gets sprained on Tuesday, you can use the Firefox Reload Every extension to get the page refreshed periodically. Join us over at #tuaw on irc.freenode.net to chat in real time. At 4 pm PT/7 pm ET, we'll have a talkcast.
LineBlog: News from Moscone
I have a live feed to Mike Rose and Nik Fletcher this morning and they report that the weather is very cold out there this morning. They've been waiting on line with many other patient well-behaved Apple enthusiasts this morning. The Platinum Pass holders are already being let in, cheering as they're given the go-ahead. 10:12 - Nik reports that a few guys came by a while back with free coffee on a rolling cart--not Starbucks and on the sketchy side. Mike reports that he's spotted Ryan Fass from Computer World, Galen Wood from MacNN, and Sergio from Brazil. Nik has spotted Isaiah, one of the 3rd party RW plugin devs and an EVDO engineer (who is reassuring him that everyone will have enough bandwidth to liveblog. 10:20: So what are people looking forward to from the Keynote? Galen Wood (MacNN) says that the underdog vote has "everyone back home thinking new MacBook Pros at Macstation... MacBook Air would be cool to see." Other votes from people in line: "My personal wish is a Canadian iPhone", "Subnotebook, iPhone 1.1.3, apple tv merge with Mac mini", "Wimax maybe". 10:25: Positioning update. Nik is inside Moscone while Mike shivers with the general media queue outside. 10:30: Join us over at #tuaw on irc.freenode.net! The Lineblog continues after the break!
Macworld 2008 Line Report
If you're like me and you love all things Apple, you might be in San Francisco waiting in line for the Steve Jobs keynote. I know I am. At the moment the line to get in is long and getting longer by the minute.However, people are in good spirits and, according to Mark, my new friend and fellow Apple enthusiast from New Zealand in line with me: "really looking forward to a great show." Sadly, there is no free wifi to be had and in anticipation of needing my precious Macbook Pro battery for inside, I'm writing this on my iPhone using AT&T's EDGE network. Even though progress is a bit slow, being able to bring you these thoughts like this is one of the major reasons people will line up early in the morning with a big smile on their face ready to experience the next great innovation from Jobs and company. What will they think of next? Stay tuned for more from us live at the Macworld 2008 keynote.Update: I've now moved inside and am waiting in the "second line". At least the floor has carpet this year and isn't quite so uncomfortable. Sitting here I've been chatting moe with some of the folks in line. My friend from New Zealand is not only a devoted Apple fan but is one of the few users of the iPhone in his native country. How, you may ask? He hacked it, of course. From what I can see it works just fine -- just no visual voicemail. In fact, untilo I showed him he didn't even know what he was missing. %Gallery-13819%
The Keynote Line
After just over 2 hours in line, we're pleased to bring you the latest photos from the keynote queue line. Already around the block of the Moscone Centre's West Hall, there's a huge number of Apple fans waiting patiently both for Steve Jobs' keynote, and their Starbucks.Stay tuned as we progress further towards the keynote.%Gallery-13841%
Apple Store down
File this under 'news that won't shock anyone,' the Apple Store is currently down. No doubt Apple's web gnomes are quickly putting things in place for the big switch over after Steve's Keynote today. Don't forget that we'll be liveblogging all the fun here as soon as team TUAW settle into our seats at the Keynote.Thanks to everyone who sent this in.
Macworld Booth Finder
Macworld Expo is pretty frickin' huge this year, and if you're anything like me you never know where the heck you are. My plan for finding things at Macworld this year involved a divining rod and some crystals, that is until I happened upon Dori Smith's very cool iPhone friendly Macworld Booth Finder.If you don't know who Dori Smith is, then you probably haven't tried to learn JavaScript at any point in the recent past. She is a JavaScript expert, and an all around knowledgeable techie who puts her smarts to work for you. Booth Finder is the perfect example of this: it is simple, and yet it will save you lots of time. Just point your iPhone at it and enter the name of the vendor you seek. As you type a list of possible matches will show up, click on the name you want and you'll get info about the company, their booth location, and their website. You can even click a link and see where their booth is on a map of the Moscone Center.As if that weren't enough, Dori has also created a Keynote Bingo app for your iPhone. Click along and be the first to ruin the Keynote by yelling out, 'Bingo!'
What are you hoping for in tomorrow's Keynote?
As the final hours tick away to tomorrow's Keynote by Steve Jobs (which we'll be liveblogging) what do you find yourself hoping to see from Apple? We TUAW folks have already outlined what we think will be announced tomorrow, but what do you hope to see? No matter how crazy it might seem, tell us in the comments. It'll make you feel better.
Is this Apple's ultraportable?
Wired's Gadget Lab blog has posted a mockup of the rumored MacBook Air. They based their mockups on what inside sources had to tell them. The big points are that this thing is supposedly very, very thin and lacks both an optical drive and an Ethernet port. I can see omitting networking ports and an optical drive if there is a docking station involved, but I would be hard pressed to buy any computer that didn't have a dedicated networking port.What say you, does this look like something out of Cupertino or something out of the Macworld addled brain of a Photoshop guru with a little too much time on their hands?
TUAW Macworld Talkcast #2 at 8pm ET tonight
We'll be live again tonight at 8 pm ET/5 pm PT for another preshow talkcast, with Scott McNulty and the entire team musing on the next-day excitement. If you've got a burning question that you want answered, call on in and join the fun. It's worth noting that the TalkShoe Java client (long a subject of discussion among our listeners) has been superceded by a shiny new browser-only client, no downloading required and no account registration needed. Just click the "TalkShoe Web" button on our profile page at 8 pm tonight.We'll also be live on Tuesday evening at 7 pm ET/4 pm PT for a full wrapup of the keynote, first day reactions, and more. Don't miss it!
We're at Macworld and we want to talk to you
Team TUAW is on the ground here at Macworld 2008. We're already posted a bunch of pictures, scouted out the scene, and obtained our media creds. Now all we need to do is hear from you. If you're at Macworld and have a cool product, app, or service we want to hear about it. Email us using the following address: macworld AT tuaw DOT com.
MacBook Air wafts around the rumorscape
Of our predictions about Macworld this year, the subnotebook likely topped the list for most mentioned, and though the name MacBook Air sounded strange to me when I first heard it (come to think of it, it still sounds weird, unless this is actually a product made out of hardened atmosphere), it looks like the evidence is mounting. Over the weekend, the name appeared in an Adium X usage log, and now we've got news that search engine ads and domain name lookups all point to Apple as the owner of macbookair.com (even if the site itself doesn't).So is this the name of Apple's new subnotebook? Of course, we won't know for sure until Steve says it on stage, but while it's not, on the surface, Apple's best naming choice, it could work, in an "Airport" and "Air Tunes" kind of way. It could be worse-- the thing could be called the MacPod. Or the PodBook. Or the PodMac. Or the Lisa.Update: macbookair.com isn't owned by Apple, but by some merry prankster. Let the speculation continue!
"Leaked" Keynotes
By definition, all leaked keynotes are bogus. That doesn't mean, however, that they aren't an artform unto themselves. I used to adore the fake iPhone concepts that "leaked" before the real one toddle along and I don't think I'll soon lose my love of the fake keynotes. Various TUAW readers have been tipping us off to the latest round of faux keynotes including that Wikipedia one. (Of course, the bit about refreshing the Mac Pro "today" is kind of a give away since the Mac Pro was refreshed last week.) In any case, what are your favorite "leaknote" products that you've read about this year? Let us know in the comments. I hold out hope for the Nike Air Phone, bringing back the glory of the "Get Smart" shoe phone.
Overnighting in the Macworld registration line
Sure, the Macworld registration line was kind of long this morning, but overnighting outside Moscone? Uncalled for -- this ain't the iPhone launch. Despite the futility, Justine and friend decided to "spend the night" waiting for Macworld registration to open. I guess they didn't want to wait in line -- and interpretive dance is always in good taste.[FYI: They didn't really spend the night outside Moscone, in case anyone was confused.]
Macworld 2008: The Build-Up
As the Steve Jobs keynote draws ever-nearer, the TUAW team has been busy preparing for our hectic coverage. In between the partying hard work and sleep, we ventured around San Francisco to sample the atmosphere as the registration for the Conference and Expo started at 8am this morning.%Gallery-13651%
