Well, here I am back from Macworld and I have to say this was one of the most fun shows I have been to in a long time. Not just because of the products, the Apple ones will be reviewed below, but also because of the people. My good friend Scottie was there for his first time and I kind of took him under my more experienced wings which led to me seeing the show once again from a newcomers perspective. He spent a good deal of his time chronicling every moment with pictures and very well produced videos and just being excited to be there. Also, as Bethany pointed out to me, people just seemed very upbeat in general. Upbeat about the state of Apple, the Mac, the iPod and the seemingly never-ending event show floor filled with anything and everything one would ever need to match (and beat) their PC counterparts. Not to mention every conceivable way to encase and/or accessorize one’s iPod.
With that said, here are my observations on the Apple announcements:
MacBook Pro – While the name will take some getting used to, the speed, power and features will easily alleviate any twisted tongue. This thing is just plain fast. Looks wise, it is not that much different than the current 15 inch Powerbook. It is a little bit thinner, a little bit lighter, a little bit more curvy on the edges – just enough to make it a little more lust-worthy. The built in iSight, Mag-lock power adapter (I can’t tell you how many times it would have saved my poor mangled power port), amazingly fast speed on universal binary applications, all add up to one very compelling package.
New iMac – Not much new here except the processor and the speed. Makes one wonder why they even bothered with an update a couple of months ago when the could have saved the design change and slight speed bump announcements to go along with this one.
iLife ’06 – All of the improvements to this venerable digital media suite will force me to pony up yet another $79.00 of yearly Apple tax. The new features in iPhoto alone, the full screen editing, more photo printing options, photo streaming (which you know will be the next big thing because Steve says it will), a painfully needed speed increase – heck those are worth the price alone! iWeb, the new addition to the suite, will certainly cause me to get the most out of my .Mac account once again. Thus adding value to the other yearly Apple tax I pay. It will also help millions who have thus far been too afraid of learning code publish to the web. My only question is why iWeb is a part of iLife and not iWork? It seems better suited to that package. Speaking of iWork…
iWork ’06 – Yawn… New Keynote themes and stuff… Zzzzzz… Hork, snort… zzzzzzz…
Huh? Oh, sorry, dozed off for a bit…
Apple’s Record Sales – Simply amazing. What more can be said? I mean, 14 million iPods in a quarter? Who could ever predict those numbers numbers? Wish I had bought stock back when it was $15 dollars or so a share.
Oh well, there it is for what it is worth. I will follow a little later with some of the other third party stuff that caught my eye including a killer upcoming new Project management tool and a great little camera case for little cameras.