Hey, I'm not even there. However, I have been tracking Apple lately for personal reasons. I thought I'd list the things from the keynote (at least, that made it on to Engadget -- the only site that is staying up) that I thought were interesting.

iPods

Not much new, but apparently they sell over 100 a minute now. That's pretty impressive.

They have an attachment now that will serve as a remote and an FM tuner. Meh. That's not very interesting. With the way the track pad works, it can work through a case making a remote less needed. And the wire on the remote looks really long, so you have even more wires to deal with. Gimme Bluetooth stereo headset with controls and I'll bite.

Services

Photocasting. Oh, seriously. It's all just podcasting. Casting for broadcasting and pod for going to an mp3 player (with 83 percent market share, that's usually an iPod). No videocasting. No photocasting. Just podcasting. Or, more accurately, broadcasting over the 'net. Sony actually got it close with "RSS channel" -- if the whole universe of podcasts is like what's available via cable then each feed is just a channel -- the content could be audio, video, pictures, text, whatever.

Anyway...

Apparently this is just an RSS export from .Mac. It reminds me of Ceiva service, but without the need for a device. So, uhm, what? It must have an iPod component -- and I'm sure it just reads image enclosures in a feed. At least, I hope. There must be a new iTunes to support it -- and new iPod firmware? We'll see.

iLife and iMovie don't really interest me. They haven't given me a Mac for free yet. ;)

GarageBand is apparently getting better podcast support. Yeah, so where's GarageBand for Windows? And what about the enhanced AAC maker for Windows to be able to add slides, chaptering, etc.??

iWeb. Meh. A .mac thing, apparently.

Only just now hitting a million subscribers to .Mac? Odd. With iTunes music pulling in 850 million downloads. But then, I guess not many people actually own a Mac. ;) (You have to wonder -- how many of those downloads were promo, Pepsi or otherwise?)

The New Machines

Meh. iMac. Yep, Intel Core Duo. And he actually says they're faster than a G5. Wouldn't that kill the PowerMac line? There must be more good to come.

Yep. MacBook Pro Core Duo. That's a mouthful, but it's a fine machine. They've just joined every other laptop maker in announcing Intel Core Duo laptops. Go Intel.

At $2k, though, it's still not free so I'll stick with my XPS Gen 2.

So what's with the PowerMac's? The Pro software hasn't been upgraded to Intel yet and neither have the Dual PowerMac's. So are we going to see a PowerMac Dual Core Duo when they are? I'm sure they won't be selling many more of the current G5 ones... people know new ones will be coming and apparently with much better performance.

Posted by Shane on January 10, 2006 9:39 AM | Permalink