Report from MacWorld 2007: January 9th, 2007

 
Jan 10, 2007

by Dee Sadler

What a day. Lisa Heselton and I got up before the crack of dawn to get in line for the keynote. It's a good thing she did, or she might have been sent to a overflow room. I, on the other hand, being press, shouldn't have shown up till 7:30. I did go have some breakfast, but went over to the media line. An interesting bunch. All was nice enough until it was time to get in. When the doors opened, it was like a scene out of a National Geographic documentary. I may have some bite marks to prove it. Actually, they pushed me into something, which fell over and I tripped on it while some guy stomped on my ankle. OUCH!

The Announcements

As you all probably know by now, there were only three announcements. Steve Jobs unveiled the Apple TV product, the new iPhone (finally -- after years in development) and the name change at Apple (Jobs changed the company's name from Apple Computers to "Apple, Inc.").

Jobs did put up some numbers for the iTunes music, tv and movie sales. Basically, more than 2.0 billion songs were sold, and 50 million TV shows. In only 4 short months 1.3 million movies were sold on iTunes. Paramount is their newest partner so instead of 100, there are 250 movies now on itunes.

Music Players

How did the Zune (Microsoft's MP3 player) do? A two percent market share with iPod at 62% in November. Jobs didn't have December's numbers.

Apple TV, Not iTV

It's a 40Gb media machine, thinner than the Mini, but oh so cool. The Apple TV is designed for a widescreen TV and streams content from up to five machines. Invite your friends over for movie night! It starts at $299 and ships next month.

And Now for the Newest Revolutionary Machine...

It slices and dices; it's a widescreen iPod with touch control; it's a mobile phone and a new way to communicate with the Internet. What is it, Steve? It's three, three, three things in one. The iPhone. Cheering, whooping applause....

OK, so even I was impressed. No buttons to push? Scroll with a flick of a finger, and it runs OSX. Amazing!

It syncs like iPod through iTunes and stores tons of data as well via the 4 gigabyte or 8 gigabyte version. The stunning 3.5 inch screen at 160 ppi is a super thin 11.6 mm. There is a 2 megapixel camera built in and a proximity sensor and touch sensor that turns off when when you answer the phone, as well as a ambient light sensor to keep you from burning extra light when you don't need it. One amazing feature is the accelerometer, which switches from portrait to landscape depending on which way you turn it.

There were many quotes that came out of the keynote, like touch your music and The Internet in your pocket. My favorite moment was when Jobs was making his first public conference call over the iPhone. He was talking to Jony Ive, designer of the iPod. Jony said It ain't too shabby when Steve asked him what he thought. The British are so funny.

Here are some more features:

  • Visual voicemail
  • Random access voicemail
  • Amazing sounding audio
  • Quadband GSM or EDGE
  • Super easy-to-conference call
  • iChat basically built in as SMS messaging
  • Photo management application built in. The pinch makes the pictures bigger or smaller.
  • Rich HTML email
  • any IMAP or POP email
  • Safari browser
  • Google maps – amazing
  • WIFI and EDGE
  • Widgets – cool
  • Yahoo is going to provide free push IMAP email to all iPhone users
  • Rich text
  • Split view as well for email
  • Safari can zoom in, have multiple pages open, etc.
  • Google or Yahoo search
  • Cover flow video(expands screen to full viewing area)

There are already accessories in the works, like a new Bluetooth device. It's pencil thin, has sixteen hours of audio and five hours of talk or video time. You also might have heard that the iPhone is exclusively Cingular. This doesn't surprise me, but, hey, I just went back on T-Mobile. Aw, shucks. Yes, Apple has over 200 patents on it. Finally. It will be $499 for the 4Gb version and $599 for the 8, and will start shipping in June.

Jobs' final announcement before John Mayer played was that since the official name for Apple has always been Apple computer, and since they are now much, much more than that, the new name will be just Apple, Inc. A smart move, if you ask me.

John Mayer played two songs since he has been at several recent MacWorlds. I had never heard him play live before, and all I can say is WOW. Amazing voice. I really like his music anyway, but... Wow.

Being an oldie when it comes to MacWorlds (this was my sixth), I did look under my chair when I sat down. I didn't actually think there would be anything there, but I looked anyway. (Old MacWorld veterans remember the days when there were products to touch (and sometimes to keep) stashed under the chairs at MacWorld keynotes. Alas, those days are gone...)

The Rest of the Day

After the keynote and a quick lunch, we headed over to the conference. I wanted to go to the Apple User Group lounge to hear a discussion on newsletters and how we can make them better. I can't say I learned much, except for some resources that I wasn't aware of. A topic came up about users getting the newsletter easier and what we could do to get into the 21st century. HA. One younger guy said we could make sure and blog and provide an RSS feed. I kid you not that the other managers, all older, had not a clue what that was. Maybe it's the fact I am an Adobe User Group manager, and a web manager at that, although I shouldn't be surprised. Mac groups seem to be very far behind in general with technology other than Apple hardware.

One woman wanted to know what software was available to put together the newsletter quickly and easily without having to spend time and money to get it done. I almost fell out of my chair and quickly said, ah.. Pages. I don't think she even knew it was an Apple product, as others told her it was indeed from Apple, and via ASW she could get it for the group for just shipping. Again, amazing, and not the "wow, this is awesome" amazing.

We headed over to the exhibit floor after that and walked around. I should have warned Lisa that I was an impulse buyer and to stop me from buying something before I had seen everything. On the very first row we walked down, I bought a clear red case for my black MacBook. It looks like a Black cherry soda now. I did see a different vendor I know and love who had the same sort of case, with better ventilation, for several dollars less. See, I need to be stopped.

I missed the first Bert Monroy session at Peachpit, but saw him at the Lynda.com booth. He's.... Bert. No other words describe him. OK, so I'm tired and off to the MacBlast party. Maybe I'll take pics there, but then again, maybe not. We'll see.

The pics are all up on my Flickr account at http://www.flickr.com/photos/31866566@N00/

Talk to you tomorrow!

Dee Sadler is an Adobe Certified Instructor in Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Flash and Dreamweaver, and hopes to add Acrobat to the lineup as soon at the newest test comes out. She is also the Adobe User Group Manager of two groups in Kansas City (http://www.kcwebcore.org and http://www.kcdesigncore.org), as well as the Vice President of the ColdFusion and Flex group, KCDevCore at http://www.kcdevcore.org. Fusion Authority readers will recognize her hand as the Creative Director of Fusion Authority Quarterly Update, where she is responsible for the look and feel of the ColdFusion publication that won a CFeMmy for Best ColdFusion Publication of the year.


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