Apple announced Tuesday that Macworld 2009 will be the last Macworld show the corporation will attend. Steve Jobs won't be appearing, either, which once again raises questions about the CEO's health.

"Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers," Apple said in a press release.

Apple said Jobs would not appear Jan. 6 for his traditional keynote to announce new products at the show: Philip Schiller, Apple senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, will take the CEO's place. This should come as a surprise to Apple fanatics and investors alike, who will, without a doubt, bring up discussion about Jobs' health: The CEO is a pancreatic-cancer survivor. He made his last public appearance Oct. 14 to unveil new MacBooks.

"Whoa, the end of an era," tweeted Bruce Evans, better known as "Snaggy," co-author of the popular web comic Joy of Tech.

Reacting immediately to Apple's announcement, another fan published a humorous press release saying Apple had canceled Christmas.

In the weeks before Macworld Expo, Apple's annual trade show, the tech media is filled with predictions about what product Jobs will unveil in his keynote address. Consumer-tech web sites live-blog the speech as it happens, generating their biggest traffic of the year. And the next day, practically every media outlet covers the announcements. Harvard business professor David Yoffie has said the introduction of the iPhone resulted in headlines worth $400 million in free advertising.

In fact, part of the joy of being an Apple customer is anticipating the surprises that Santa Steve brings to Macworld Expo every January.

Apple is pulling out of Macworld as its retail stores grow rapidly: The corporation has expanded from just two stores in 2001 to 240 retail locations worldwide to date. Before the proliferation of Apple stores, Macworld Expo was Apple's major outlet to make contact with the public and give exposure to its products. Since the Apple brand has become so popular, the company has been scaling back on trade shows, which is why Apple plans its final appearance at Macworld for 2009.

Though Apple is backing out, host IDG World Expo said Macworld already still plans to return for another show in January 2010.

"We're on track for a terrific show this year with strong attendance numbers and nearly 500 exhibitors showcasing their products at this January's event," said Paul Kent, general manager of IDG World Expo. "We look forward to many successful years of Macworld to come."

Macworld Expo was first held in January 1985 in San Francisco, and was subsequently hosted twice a year on the East and West coasts. Apple pulled out of the East Coast show in 2003, effectively killing it, though it struggled on for a few more years. Apple cited the same reasons for bowing out then: Growing traffic at its retail stores. Macworld sister shows are also held in Paris and London, but the Tokyo show ended in 2002.

Since 1997, Macworld has drawn huge attention, thanks to Jobs, who took to the stage to introduce new products. And as Apple has grown, so has Macworld Expo: After the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, the show saw a nearly 20 percent increase in attendance, according to IDG, and a further 10 percent increase in 2008.

Apple's move could appear troubling for IDG, the company that owns the Macworld conference as well as the publication that goes by the same name. In addition to Macworld, IDG World Expo also produces the E3 Media gaming show, LinuxWorld and the DEMO tech conference.

"On the one hand, it's quite a surprise," said Dan Moren, an associate editor at Macworld magazine. "I think we've all started to think that Macworld and Steve would be there forever, even despite the questions about his health. On the other hand, the way they lay it out in their press release makes sense from a business perspective.... I'm certainly disappointed by the decision, though I can understand why they're doing it."

Apple did not immediately return phone calls for comment.

Wired.com editor Leander Kahney contributed to this story.

Press Release [Apple]

See Also:

• Steve Jobs is Not -- Repeat, Not -- Dead
• Steve Jobs Is Still Not Dead, Take II
• Steve Jobs Urges Apple Shareholders to 'Hang in There'
• Teen Posted Fake iReport of Steve Jobs Heart Attack: Report ...
• Apple's Earnings Are Healthy -- But What About Jobs?

Photo: TomStardust/Flickr

The Guardian is outraged by a pie chart (Photo taken by Engadget) used by Steve Jobs at MacWorld to illustrate the iPhone's marketshare, calling him the "king of snake oil salesman" due to its deceptive representation of relative percentages.

We corrected the perspective, then lined it up with an accurate chart made using the same data: check our bumper graphic after the jump. Just how bad is it?

Continue reading "MacWorld's iPhone Pie Chart: Perspective Trick Makes 19.5% Look Bigger Than 21.2%" »

The Wired Gadget Lab Podcast is sponsored by Kensington.

In this week's Wired Gadget Lab podcast, Dylan Tweney, Daniel Dumas, and Jose Fermoso discuss the Jobsfest known as Macworld 2008, and exchange their first impressions of the super-thin MacBook Air notebook.

In addition, they'll quickly go over Apple's other new offerings and upgrades, such as the Vudu-killing Apple TV set-top box, and review some of the latest tested gadgets, including the Jura Capresso Impressa Espresso machine, Nokia's expensive E90 phone/internet device, and the Dyson DC-24 vacuum cleaner. (Verdict on the vacuum: It doesn't suck!)

We thank you for listening. Please remember that you can subscribe to the podcast feed by clicking here. And you can also find the twelve previous podcasts at the end of this post.

The Podcast (above) requires Quicktime (you can download it here), or you can find the flash version at the top right corner of the Wired Gadget Lab page.

The last few Gadget Lab podcasts are below:

Continue reading "The Wired Gadget Lab Podcast #13: Macworld 2008 Review and MacBook Air First Impressions" »

There are a lot of reasons not to like the MacBook Air, but most of them are missing the point, because it's a luxury item aimed at executives, journalists, and perhaps people in the fashion and hospitality industries. It's also Apple's first volley in the ultraportable market, and others are sure to follow.

Let's start with a few solid reasons to diss the Air: Its relatively high price, its curious lack of an internal DVD drive, the maddening fact that it has just one measly USB port (and no FireWire, or Ethernet ports). You can add in a few softer reasons for disliking it, such as the likelihood that the first few months' worth of shipments may have some as-yet-undiscovered mechanical flaw, bug, or other failure of quality control, which seems all too common in new Apple products.

Not to mention, a super-thin, three-pound notebook may not exactly be the most durable thing in the world, which should give you pause, particularly if you're considering dropping three grand on the 1.8GHz, solid state disk version.

But all these critiques miss the point, because the Air is not aimed at price-conscious buyers, and it's not intended to be anyone's sole computer. (Though some Mac enthusiasts will surely try to use it that way.) Instead, it's meant to be an elegant, portable traveling computer for people who put a premium on looking good, getting a bit of work done away from the desk, and on not letting a laptop bag put deep creases in the shoulders of their Brioni sports coats.

For that market, the Air seems like a good bet to become a hit, provided it doesn't turn out to be crippled by poor performance or bugginess. These people want an ultraportable, but they aren't buying them yet because most ultraportables are butt-ugly, squarish looking things that have tiny keyboards and tiny screens, so even if they cost just $400, you'd still be embarrassed to set them down on the shiny, polished surface of a boardroom table on the 21st floor. A superlight, thin computer with a full-sized screen and keyboard is just the ticket for this market.

What's more, the circuit board inside the MacBook Air is far smaller than the computer's axe-head-shaped chassis. In his keynote, Jobs said this custom-designed board was about the length of a pencil, though that's a pretty non-specific measurement. (Here's an annotated photo of the MacBook Air circuit board with a pencil, showing that the RAM chips are indeed soldered on.) Whatever its exact size, it's clear from the photos that Apple could easily shove the board inside a wide variety of devices for other markets, from some kind of tablet-like device, to more classic shrunken-keyboard style ultraportable (now known as a MID, if Intel has its way), to who knows? Maybe a reborn Newton running OS X Leopard. Well, maybe not that.

Bottom line: Apple has now entered the computer miniaturization game. It would be truly shocking if the MacBook Air were its only entry in that category.

Photo of MacBook Air circuit board, shown during Steve Jobs' keynote at Macworld 2008, by Jon Snyder for Wired

Only a few hours after his long-awaited keynote on Tuesday, Steve Jobs roamed the Macworld floor like a conquering (yet somewhat shy) hero. But after being approached for a picture by a local scribe from the S.F. Chronicle's website SF Gate, Violet Blue, Mr. Jobs reacted in a less-than-joyful way: He snapped and told her she was being rude, then abruptly turned his back to her. Then, adding another insult, one of Jobs' companions 'snort-laughed at [her], and rolled her eyes.' Fortunately, she got some pictures of Jobs that confirm her encounter, and later, got to relive the moment with Robert Scoble, who ran into her on the floor and later posted a video of her account:

It seems that Ms. Blue was a big Apple fangirl prior to this meeting, and there is no telling whether a personal brush-off from Jobs will make her change to Vista.

The picture above is from Violet Blue's page @ Flickr.

Griffin's new PowerDock can take four iPods at once and charge them. That's it. No speakers, no audio out jack, no DVD player. But at $70 for the four porter (and $50 for the double-entry model), it's cheaper than buying separate chargers from Apple, and, given the rate at which Apple is pumping put sexy hardware, actually pretty useful.

The four slot will ship in April, and the two slot in June. Plenty of time to buy some new iPods.

Griffin PowerDock keeps it all in the iPod family [Crave]

Steve Jobs is getting almost as famous for his fightin' talk as for Apple's shiny products. When CNBC reporter Jim Goldman interviewed Jobs after Tuesday's Macworld keynote, he passed on a comment from Robbie Bach, entertainment chief at Microsoft, that the Zune 2 is a "worthy alternative to Apple's iPod".

Jobs reply? "Was he inebriated? Do you even know anyone who owns a Zune?"

File this under Steve Jabs, next to the "It's like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell" comment he made about iTunes on Windows.

My Macworld Takeaways [CNBC via the Giz]

They already pay more for Apple TV in the first place, and now it transpires that the British won't be getting the price cut announced Tuesday for their American cousins.

Pocket Lint points out that while the U.S. Apple TV tumbles in price from $300 to $230, the British edition will remain at $390 (£199). Moreover, Brits aren't getting the HD movie rentals.

Apple told Pocket Lint that they'll hopefully arrive by the end of the year.

Breaking News: No UK price cut for Apple TV [Pcket Lint]

Continue reading "Report: Apple T.V. To Remain £199 in Britain" »

We love thin things, and so does Apple. It markets its MacBook Air as the thinnest notebook, which turns out to be true only if you count recently-released models. And even those oldies which aren't as thick as the Air (the Mitsubishi Pedion is 0.74", the Sharp Actius 0.54", and an older Toshiba Portége 0.65" thick) tend to have uniform thickness, while Apple's model tapers to a sharp point. How close, then, do current models get?

Toshiba's current Portége R500, at .77" thick, is only one-hundredth of an inch fatter than the MacBook Air. However, close inspection of PDF spec sheets reveals that this is at its thinnest point, while the Air is .76" at its thickest point. When it was released, Toshiba also called it the thinnest notebook in its class.

At $2,000 to start, the R500 more expensive, and it has iffy specifications: a 1.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7600 CPU and 1GB of RAM. On the other hand, it has excellent battery life and well-heeled design: if you're not so keen on Apple's teardrop shape and black keyboard, you may find the P500 better-looking thanks to its tiny screen bezels.

Apple boasts that the MacBook Air is the world's thinnest notebook. The trouble with boasting is that people like to prove you wrong. We reported on the Mitsubishi Pedion, which, ten years ago, came in at 0.04 inches thinner than the Apple notebook.

CNET has since dug up an even thinner machine, the Sharp Actius MM10, which is an unbelievable 0.54 inches thick, soundly beating the MacBook Air's roly-poly 0.76 inches, and managing to squeeze in an ethernet port, a PCMCIA slot and two (2!) USB ports.

Continue reading "Sharp Actius MM10 Thinner Than MacBook Air" »

Apple boasts that the MacBook Air is the world's thinnest notebook. The trouble with boasting is that people like to prove you wrong. We reported on the Mitsubishi Pedion, which, ten years ago, came in at 0.04 inches thinner than the Apple notebook.

CNET has since dug up an even thinner machine, the Sharp Actius MM10, which is an unbelievable 0.54 inches thick, soundly beating the MacBook Air's roly-poly 0.76 inches, and managing to squeeze in an ethernet port, a PCMCIA slot and two (2!) USB ports.

Continue reading "Sharp Actius MM10 Thinner Than MacBook Air" »

The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg might claim that professionally, he's "not allowed to be wowed", but as you can see from this WSJ video, he's pretty impressed with the MacBook Air. He worries about the lack of an ethernet port (although he could always buy one), but admits that the World's Thinnest Notebook is "Physically Attractive".

It had to happen. When Steve Jobs revealed the MacBook Air by pulling it from a manilla envelope, the race was on to come up with a faux-velope case. A race which Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans (a musician and a journalist, respectively) have won.

The smartly named AirMail is made of vinyl, and is lined with "fuzzy, soft fleece" and will ship in two weeks, the same as the MacBook Air. It will cost $30.

Product page [ManilaMac]

Apple's New Time Capsule is a great idea. A combined wireless router and hard drive built to work with OS X Leopard's Time Machine for continuous, over-the-air backups. And it's pretty cheap, too.

But given that you can plug any USB hard drive into an existing Airport base station, shouldn't Time Machine work with third party hardware, too? Well, it did. Apple advertised this as a feature of Time Machine right up until Leopard was released. It was presents in the developer seeds of OS X 10.5, but pulled from the shipping version.

Speculation says that maybe Apple dropped the feature in order to sell more of its own boxes, deliberately blocking home made setups. If so, that's just sneaky. Then again, the next software update could bring a fix. Maybe Apple just wanted to be the first.

Keynote Roundup [Daring Fireball]

If you head out on the show floor at MacWorld at San Francisco’s Moscone center, you’ll literally find an electron cloud of salivating geeks swarming around a nucleus of tables that display the first versions of Apple’s MacBook Air. Obviously there’s a reason for that: The Air is the biggest product release of the year and pretty much blows away anything we saw at CES. (150-inch TVs can suck it!)

Continue reading "Hands on Review: 15 Minutes Of Fame With The MacBook Air" »

Many people filing through the gates of the Moscone Center for Macworld this week are doing so the week after attending CES 2008. Most reasonable people who have experienced both, back-to-back, would call that insane or just bad for your health.  So while we walked around the floor this week, we noticed something that spoke to us for its gadget-friendliness, odd placement (next to a picture-enhancing software group), and promise of good vibes: The Rhythm Touch electronic 'stimulator.'

Here's what it does:

Continue reading "Macworld 2008: Low-Frequency Rhythm Touch, For the Tired Conventioneer" »

Juan Alvarez of Harrisonburg, Virginia tells two Macworld attendees about MacHeist's inexpensive -- and wildly popular -- software bundle. Photo: Jim Merithew.

We first profiled MacHeist in a Wired story last year, when the group sold over 16,800 of its low-priced bundles of popular Mac shareware apps. It was the most successful commercial distribution of Mac shareware ever, and at $50 a bundle, the promoters netted around $800,000. Some of that money -- $200,000 -- went to charity, with the rest going to the promoters and the developers.

As of high noon Wednesday, one week after going on sale, MacHeist had already moved over 15,600 of the packs, once again priced at $50 each. The team is on track to break last year's sales record and raise well over the $200,000 for charity it collected last year. Sales end on January 23.

Continue reading "Macworld: MacHeist's Shareware Sales Soar Once Again" »

The 24-hr. limit for the new movie rental service on iTunes is creating a lot of talk in the blogosphere, about how much time is really needed for downloadable films to be viewed, and whether Apple's DRM movie strategy will succeed.

When you rent a movie on Apple's service, you have the relative ownership of the movie for 30 days, but once you click on 'play,' there are only 24 hours to watch it, or it will disappear into space. This is the same amount of time that many on-demand Cable-TV services give their movies, and people have griped about that before as well.

The problem begins with the fact that 24-hour timeslots are hard to fit in the schedule of multi-tasking, over-worked adults, even during the weekends. You say, well, if you don’t have the full time to watch the movie, don't click on 'play' and shut up about it. Well, rental services were supposed to help the schedule-heavy adult, and they do, when you own the disc, or when the regular 2-4 day rental went into effect in Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, and the Mom-and-Pop's many years ago. The point is that the convenience of downloading and watching a movie immediately isn't that great that you should lose the former rental flexibility, and so harshly. 

Continue reading "Is the 24-Hour Limit a Non-starter For iTunes Movie Rentals?" »

These guys are nuts. VMWare, makers of the Fusion desktop virtualization technology for Mac OS X, was eager to show off how powerful its virtual environment software really is. Here, VMWare's Regis Duchesne offers a demo of five operating systems running virtually on one MacPro machine.

The details are grueling: Two instances of the 64-bit Mac OS X Server, Windows XP, Ubuntu 7.10 and Windows 2000 Server, all running in Spaces on the Leopard desktop. And the machine isn't that robust for something running two copies of 64-bit Leopard server (and then some) at once -- it's a quad-core MacPro with two 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo processors and 5GB of RAM. Pretty killer if you ask us.

Photo: Jim Merithew

Sure, external hard drives are, by definition, utilitarian devices. But companies like LaCie are doing their best to inject a little pretension class into these data retaining paper weights by teaming with famous commercial designers. That focus on design was more than apparent the LaCie's Macworld booth on Wednesday. Be it the stackable Lego special by Ora-Ïto or his gold-plated monstrosity, these drives might not inspire compliments, but they will get people's attention.

Continue reading "LaCie's Fancy Pants External Hard Drives on Display at Macworld" »

They were packed in tight at Google's booth on the Macworld Expo floor Wednesday. On the giant display (about eight feet across) was a live demo of Google Sky -- Google's "atlas of the heavens" which is available as a component of Google Earth. The whole package is a free download for amateur astronomers, the map-curious software fans or those drawn to the serious eye candy. Here, a crowd of Mac-heads watches a brief tour of the solar system. Photo: Jim Merithew

Continue reading "Macworld: Google's Crowds Drool Over Eye-Popping Tools" »

Lord knows there's no dearth of iPod jukeboxes out there. So how does a company stand out from the competition? Well, if you're DLO, you unveil the iBoom JukeBox with (wait for it...) a full color display screen RF remote control. Unforunately, nothing else about the new iBoom is all that noteworthy. The dual 1-inch tweeters and dual three-inch woofers provide decent sound. The jukebox also features a handy dandy magnetic housing unit in the back that keeps your remote safe and sound. But if you're intrigued by the idea of seeing what song is playing on a remote (in addition to hearing it), the iBoom jukebox set to debut in April and will retail for $200.

Continue reading "DLO Drops the iBoom Jukebox with Visual Remote " »

As Megan McCarthy over in Epicenter blogged, Macworld attendees saw 80s new-wave band Devo perform at San Francisco's famed Warfield theater last night. The occasion? Helping Microsoft celebrate the release of Office 2008 for the Mac. We'll have a full gallery a bit later today, but for now, here's a teaser shot of the ultimate geek band in action.

At Macworld 2008, Wired's Jose Fermoso checks out the new, ultralight MacBook Air. This three-pound, three-quarter-inch thick notebook will take your breath away with its slick new design, yet with a 1.6 to 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo processor and 2GB of RAM, it doesn't sacrifice power for portability.

Google has let slip that the company is developing a version of its Picasa photo management software for Mac OS X. Although its primary function is to get your photos from your camera onto Google's Picasa web service, it also has a number of image editing features that make it a welcome addition to Mac desktop. It would fit perfectly into that "I need to clean this picture up, but I don't quite need Photoshop" niche we've seen emerge as powerful and inexpensive digital cameras for consumers become more prevalent.

It's a rumor right now, but according to TechCrunch, we should consider it as good as confirmed that Picasa will arrive on our Macs later this year.

Mac users already have iPhoto, so why would they need a Picasa client? As Scott Gilbertson notes on Compiler, it's a quite fast and ultimately very useful piece of software based on his testing experiences.

Furthermore, Google devotees would gain the benefit of being able to use the same software for managing their photos regardless of which platform they're using. Apple would be happy about that since it gives Windows users another compelling reason to consider switching to the Mac.

You can read more about Picasa on the Mac at Compiler.

O.K., so the Palm Foleo is smaller, uglier, and had the specifications of a piece of toast. But if such wildly divergent philosphical approaches can result in such similar-looking devices, it's says something big: the subnotebook's time is nigh.

But guys, come on. 1994 called and wants its bezels back.

Amazon's Kindle e-book reader will fail, Steve Jobs says, because Americans simply don't read. From The New York Times:

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

Google's Android platform gets a similar drubbing. Also, there were 100 prototype MacBook Air designs prior to the final model. 100! Jonathan Ive deserves a long vacation.

"Some of the competitors’ machines are so flimsy, [Jobs] said, they require a fifth or even sixth [rubber] pad to keep from sagging."

Obsession over rubber footpad counts: this is an attention to detail you just don't get at Dell.

The Passion of Steve Jobs [NYT]

One of the many complaints about the new MacBook Air concerns the optional Solid State Drive. Not its price (at $1000, it's only $50 more than Dell's) but its longevity. Instead of just bitching and moaning, Charles Arthuer over at the Guardian did some research.

It turns out that the fears about SSD life are based in the 1990s. Back then, drives could only stand as little as 10,000 write cycles. And because drives were smaller, a given block would be written to often. Today, though, that number is up to two million cycles. After some calculations (linked below), we get to a theoretical life of 51 years for a 64GB SSD. Even in a worst-case scenario, a 160GB drive will last for 13 years, putting spinning-platter hard drives to shame.

You'll be a lucky Mac Owner indeed if your notebook is still working in 2059. And by that time, 64GB will look as ridiculous as a 110KB floppy does today.

So how long might the Flash drive in a (pricey) MacBook Air last? [Guardian]

SSD Myths and Legends - "write endurance" [Storage Search]

Debunking Misconceptions in SSD Longevity [Bitmicro]

US residents got a few extra somethings from Apple yesterday. The first was iTunes Movie Rentals, something the rest of the world won't see for a while yet. The other gift was the knockdown, bargain price of the MacBook Air: $1800. A quick look at the international sites on the Apple Store tells the story.

US $1800

Spain €1650 $2450

France €1700 $2520

UK £1200 $2355


If you buy a MacBook Air in France, then, you'll pay $720 more than in the US. We understand international shipping and taxes play a part, but these things aren't being made in the US anyway. What's going on?

Product page [Apple Store]

Say "Hello" to the MacBook Air's godfather, the Mitsubishi Pedion. By barely a hair's breadth, this 0.72"-thick notebook makes a fib out of Apple's claim that the 0.76" MacBook Air is the thinnest.

Crafted with help from HP, using custom-made components, the Pedion price tag demanded a shocking $6,000. Of course, the Pedion is ten years old and was a useless bag of spanners, but there you go. Is it still the thinnest honest-to-god notebook going?

News.com's Michael Kanellos also remembers the Pedion. In all its gory detail.

It's the thinnest laptop going, but that's it as far as the MacBook Air's form-factor magic goes (Though that is a spectacular "it"...) It's not even the littlest Mac, on at least one axis--the 12" PowerBook retains that honor.

Continue reading "Why Is MacBook Air Longer Than The 12" Powerbook?" »

Wired's video crew takes a quick look at the highlights of Macworld 2008's first day: The ultra-slim MacBook Air, upgrades for the iPhone and AppleTV, and iTunes movie rentals. Plus: Veronica Belmont gets denied! What's up with that?

Producer: Annaliza Savage, Camera: John Ross, Editor: Michael Lennon, Talking Head: Dylan Tweney

We all know that Apple products rely on more than just the quality of their specs. They also rely on an ecosystem of coolness that Jobs and Co. have deployed since the first iPod commercial, and they've been hugely successful, especially the ones with the unattainable but exceptionally joyful images of dancing shadow-people.

More recently, however, Apple has started to tone down their marketing message with commercials inspired by fans and included more approachable, quiet music. This new one for the MacBook Air is probably the best of the new batch, as it homes in on the most marketable piece of all: The insane thinness, fitting inside an office envelope.

Steve Jobs had Macworld attendees salivating over the uber-thin Macbook Air on Tuesday, but once the reality distortion field went down and people actually started looking at the specs, that drool began to congeal. 

Some critics are already less than impressed by the laptop's sealed case and the absence of features offered by other traditional notebooks -- like an optical drive, replaceable battery and a firewire port. That $1800 price tag isn't winning over many people, either.

Yet such things don't seem to worry those who cover Apple for a living. Every analyst we spoke to on Tuesday said they expect Apple's new emaciated notebook to do big things in the coming year.

"It definitely breaks new ground and is clearly the thinnest laptop ever released," said Creative Strategies Tim Bajarin. 

"What's more, Apple's clearly responding to what is an actual trend right now: the popularity of the ultra-light laptop," he continued. Bajarin predicts that ultra-light laptops will grow to 20 percent (of the laptop market) in the next three years and that the Macbook Air will play a major role in that growth.

Continue reading "Macworld: Analysts Weight the 'Air'" »

The lack of a user-replaceable battery in the MacBook Air is already being seen as a substantial flaw in the new notebook's design, but it turns out that Apple will offer a reasonable price for an in-house replacement: $129, or the same amount of a new MacBook Pro battery. Just take your new MacBook Air to the nearest Apple store, or send it in through a mail service, and you're supposed to get it back fairly quickly. The only thing that would make this a major hassle would be if the battery was found to be more susceptible to overheating (it's possible) or if its benchmarks went lower than the expected 5 hrs.

So at this point, the battery issue should be a moot point. While we think that battery accessibility and battery life are two of the most underrated aspects of the consumer electronics business (years of bad cell-phone charging has had some influence over that), the power and portability of this little notebook make the battery expectations quite sensible.

The people who are virulently opposed to giving up their MacBook Air for the battery replacement are probably those who have had a bad time returning or exchanging a dead iPod over the years, but Apple has steadily improved that process. Yet unlike iPods, a notebook is a much more important device in the daily life of workers, so it would be against their best interests to mess up that exchange.

One of the biggest complaints about Steve Jobs' keynote this morning was its lack of his trademark"one more thing" announcement. As any Stevenote veteran knows, the Apple CEO seems to relish dropping one big surprise at the end of his talks, and over the years Macworld attendees have come to expect the buildup and drama that foreshadows such announcements.

I spoke to a few industry types about the errant "one more thing" and the best explanation I've heard so far comes from Creative Strategies analyst Tim Barajin.

When you look at it, Jobs set the keynote up in an interesting way this year. He said, we're two weeks into the year and I've just given you four major announcements.  What many people are missing, I think, is the fact that this was the equivalent of his "one more thing. What he really saying was: expect many more major announcements throughout the year.

Continue reading "Stevenote 2008: What the Hell Happened to the 'One More Thing'?" »

Apple's MacBook Air is the sharpest-looking laptop in ages: lash it to a pole and you could use it as an axe. But how's it cutting it with the critics? The consensus seems to be that we love the look, but are not too impressed by the sealed case and loss of features offered by traditional notebooks.

I'm looking forward to having a just-works ultraportable—if I can justify the price—but others having a hard time accepting it as one, knocking it for the compromises inherent to notebooks of this class. Are these valid criticisms, or did the pre-announcement buzz create unreasonable expectations? Will you be buying one?

Continue reading "MacBook Air Cuts Critics Two Ways" »

Tuesday morning's Stevenote highlighted some impressive numbers from Apple. Here's Steve Jobs' keynote condensed down to the cold, hard figures.

Macworld Keynote facts:

• Number of new hardware products announced: Two. The Time Capsule network backup device and the ultra-thin MacBook Air.


• Number of product upgrades announced: Four. Apple TV, iPod Touch, iPhone, iTunes.


• Number of failed product demos: One. Apple TV couldn't load photos from Flickr's servers.


• Number of price drops: One. The AppleTV dropped from $300 to $230.

Continue reading "Macworld: The Stevenote By the Numbers" »

Are you done reading our liveblogged coverage of Steve Jobs' MacWorld 2008 keynote? His freshly-announced MacBook Air is already on parade at Apple's website, for those who want a closer look.

It looks like our sources were right, Apple has just announced the MacBook Air, "The World's Thinnest Notebook".

The MacBook Air sports a full sized, 13.3 inch LED backlit screen with a built in iSight camera and a full sized, backlit keyboard. The whole thing is just 0.16 inches thick. So thin, in fact, that you can slide it into an envelope.

The new notebook also has a multi touch trackpad, and it's big. The multi touch functions can be customized, but the essentials are there too: the pinch'n'zoom of the iPhone, for instance. Apple have gone with a tiny, iPod sized 1.8 inch hard drive to save space, which will be 80GB in size, but – get this – there's an option for a 64GB SSD!

Continue reading "Macworld: MacBook Air is Real and Has Multi Touch" »

Revealed: All New Super Thin MacBook Air — Movie Rentals on iTunes —  No Computer Required For Apple TV 2 — Time Capsule Back Up Appliance — New iPhone Features

(Photos by Jon Snyder. Live blogging by Mark McClusky and Dylan Tweney.)

8:44am: Wired editors Dylan Tweney and Mark McClusky plus photographer Jon Snyder are in a sort of press holding area waiting to enter the Jobsnote. Don't worry — they're free range!

8:53am: Press is being seated. Won't be long now.

8:58: We're in and seated! Black apple logo, backlit with a burst of white light.
when we entered, the inevitable Coldplay is on: Yellow. Jobso loves himself some Coldplay.

9:04: There are at least 200 people here setting up to liveblog.

9:05: Today's color scheme for ushers — egg shell blue. A nice soothing shade.
Forrest of broadcast folks here — 50 TV cameras lined up stage right.
Twitter.com is unresponsive. It appears the servers have crashed from all the Macworld traffic. Wah wah wah.

9:08: What's the sound of thousands of microbloggers screaming?

Still no action. More music to entertain us. Feist, "1234"

9:11: ATTENTION! Fake Steve Jobs is right behind us. He's liveblogging his own keynote. Which is pretty brilliant if you think about it.

Lights are dimming. Here we go.

Continue reading "Liveblogging the 2008 Macworld Steve Jobs Keynote" »

The iTunes Store now offers movie rentals. Priced at $3 for old titles and $4 for new releases, you can keep then for up to 30 days before watching them, and once you hit play, you get 24 hours. The big news is that every major studio is on board, and movies will be added 30 days after the DVD release. Streaming starts almost straight away, and you can watch in either DVD quality, or HD (hot damn!) with Dolby 5.1 sound. HD movies cost a buck more.

Continue reading "Macworld: iTunes Movie Rentals And Apple TV is Now a Standalone Box" »

At the Macworld Keynote, Steve Jobs has announced that the iPhone has already fold a whopping four million units in just 200 days, which is around 20,000 a day if you're counting (and we certainly are). That makes the 10 million target for the end of 2008 look much more plausible.

The iPhone also gets some new features with the v1.1.3 software update, most of which have already been guessed or leaked: Google Maps gets locations, which can be added by pushing in a virtual pin. Maps also get a GPS-a-like addition from Skyhook, which uses WiFi positioning combined with Google's cellphone tower triangulation to tell you where you are.

Also new is the ability to send an SMS to multiple recipients (welcome to 1999), customize the home screen just like in the video we saw, you press and hold an icon and then all the icons start to jiggle. You can then move them around. The iPhone will support up to nine screens and you swap them with a finger flip, just like the jailbroken iPhone.

The iPod part will get lyric support (something hacked iPhone owners already have with MobileScrobbler), and the Webclips feature of Leopard is included: You can grab a section of a web page and have it show up as an icon on the main screen. Finally, videos get support for multiple languages, subtitles and chapters.

If you have an iPod Touch, you get the additions of Google Maps, Stocks, Notes and Weather, all of which can be added to a hacked Touch. The bad news? Apple will charge existing Touch owners $20!

Time Machine is great. The new feature in Mac OS X Leopard lets you run backups without even thinking about it. Unless you have a notebook, that is. Plugging and unplugging cables is so 2007. Time Capsule is a new companion device for the Time Machine software. Essentially an Airport base station with a hard drive in it, the box has four ethernet ports and 802.11n WiFi.

The Time Capsule will be detected by any Mac running Leopard and Time Machine takes care of the rest. It'll come in two flavors: 500GB for $300 and 1TB for $500, both with server grade hard drives. That's certainly "Something in the air" right there.

Product page [Apple]

Over at the Moscone Center, Steve Jobs has started his keynote speech for Macworld 2008. Of the four things he wants to talk about today, the first is the newest version of the Mac OS, Leopard. Since its release at the end of October, the OS has sold five million copies, which means that 20% of Mac users are using it. How does that compare to Windows Vista? Pretty good: Jobs quotes Walt Mossberg: "In my view, Leopard is better and faster than Vista..."

Ouch! Follow the Gadget Lab Liveblog for the latest news from the Keynote.

And we're off. The little yellow post-it note is the traditional beginning to the Macworld excitement. Stay tuned for regular updates from the Gadget Lab crew.

We have our men on the ground in the Moscone Center: Danny Dumas, Leander Kahney and Dylan Tweney will be live-blogging the keynote speech, and we'll be providing an overview of the big announcements. You can also keep an eye on the Macworld category, where all our coverage can be found. Sit back, grab a donut and enjoy the action.

Golly. No sooner does Gadget Lab get the exclusive scoop from an Apple insider on the MacBook Air, than an eagle-eyed reader finds a case for it.

Commenter Geewillickers pointed us to the site of Orbino, where you can find the Aria, a case for the as-yet nonexistent Mac notebook. This is either a cheap publicity grab – in which case, well done chaps, you got a post on Gadget Lab – or the real thing, which means a big slap on the wrist will be coming soon from Apple.

Product page [Orbino]

Hot-shot analyst Mike Abramsky again steps up with some obvious and unfounded speculation. According to Bloomberg, Abramsky says that Apple may announce a Canadian iPhone today.

For the record, Abramsky did predict the iPhone price cut just days after the iHorn's launch. He also said that we would get MMS, instant messaging and GPS, so it seems he uses the scattergun method of "analysis".

Still, a Canadian iPhone has to come sooner or later, so why not in today's Jobsnote? Plus, we get to be the first to run an innuendo laden headline.

Apple May Announce Canada IPhone Tomorrow, RBC Says [Bloomberg]

John Gruber of Daring Fireball weighs in on the Macworld Prediction Game this morning. By the time our US viewers read this, the truth will already be out there, but in the meantime, here's the rundown, and a few disagreements from us.

Subnotebook: Gruber says "Yes". We agree. The 'nets are on fire with this, and as Gruber points out, you still see a lot of 12" PowerBooks in use. Demand is high. He also speculates that the MacBook Air will have a regular hard drive, not Flash: "Look no further than the iPod Classic to see how hard drives don’t keep a device from being super-thin". The trouble is, the iPod has a tiny, and slow 1.8" drive which probably won't be up to the rigors of booting an operating System.

Continue reading "Macworld: Daring Fireball Predicts New Products" »

An Apple insider told Wired today that the company's new ultraportable, expected to be seen in public for the first time tomorrow, has an extremely thin profile and is shaped like a teardrop when closed — thicker at the top behind the screen, tapering at the bottom behind the keyboard.

"It's unbelievably thin," said the source.

The device is made of aluminum and glass, and uses the same design language as recent Apple consumer products: black on silver.

Sadly, we don’t have details on pricing, specs or availability. Expect reality to disagree with our photoshops.

Is this cable-free design the face of things to come? Our own Charlie Sorrel pointed out earlier today that the rumor mill hints of a new MacBook utterly devoid of cables. However, he wouldn't speculate on its physical dimensions. But now we've got the, uh, skinny on what this new ultra slim, ultra portable actually looks like thanks to one source who says they saw this device in the wild.

Steve Jobs is widely expected to reveal a new MacBook at Macworld on Tuesday morning, and with the rumored name being "MacBook Air."

Most people are expecting a conventional sub-notebook — a super-thin, lightweight laptop that ships without an optical CD/DVD drive. The MacBook Air may also dispense with a wired Ethernet port, according to rumor. It will be a purely wireless device, relying solely on Wi-Fi or other wireless technology for its connectivity — hence the "Air" moniker.

But the Air seems more like a ultra portable with a physical keyboard and multi-touch screen, according to our source (who we promised not to name but confirmed works at an Apple third-party vendor).

We'll see tomorrow.

Apple didn't respond to a request for comment.

Apple did not immediately respond to our request for comment, but such roundups are routine in the days leading up to the Macworld keynote. Incidentally, most turn out to be completely false.

Over the weekend, Macrumors said it received two similar transcripts, each purporting to be rundowns for the Macworld 2008 Keynote. The site published these transcriptions but admitted they were probably fake. For the most part, Monday's Wikipedia run-down also seems to suspiciously mirror the popular rumors that have gained credence over the past month -- which could mean the ministry of disinformation at Apple has been hard at work.

Read the full details, as originally outlined by Void Inside, below and decide for yourself.

Continue reading "Macworld 2008 Stevenote Leaked on Wikipedia" »

OK, we'll bite. The latest rumor on the slim MacBook comes from 9to5 Mac, which has a pretty good record on Apple hardware predictions. Apparently, tomorrow's Jobsnote will see a cable-free Mac, called the MacBook Air (hence the "There's something in the air" banners at Macworld). The name supposedly showed up in the logs of the Adium IM client's usage log report.

The form factor isn't speculated upon (it could be shaped like a big iPhone or a small MacBook) but 9to5 predicts that the MacBook Air will have no cables whatsoever. From WiMax for networking through power induction for charging, to wireless USB for peripherals. It a long shot, but we like a good, creative rumor, and we especially like a fake product shot, this time courtesy of Mac Predictions. Find out for real tomorrow morning by following the Gadget Lab Live Blog from Macworld.

We'll have to wait until Tuesday to find out. In the mean time, if you have any ideas of your own, let us know below.

Continue reading "Macworld: There's Something Appley in the Air" »

Now that CES is safely in our rear view mirrors, we at the Lab can focus on what's really important: Macworld!

Next Tuesday, look no further than the Gadget Lab for up to the millisecond coverage as our troops descend on Moscone Center in San Francisco to liveblog every single syllable that pours from the bearded mouth of one El Jobso. We'll also have plenty of commentary, analysis, and even some video from the show floor. We'll see you then! 

An unidentified newbie on the MacRumors forum has recently posted what may or may not be a significant announcement at the upcoming Apple-fest.

Although the unsightly clicker and perfectly identical docs of both machines might be a dead giveaway, it's good looking enough to be pretty close to the real deal. With all of the rumors we've been hearing from several credible sources, the new MacBook will most likely feature a multitouch trackpad, SSD storage, and an incredibly slim form factor sans optical drive.

Is it just me or does the shadow on that corner of paper look a little iffy?

Apple Sub Notebook [Macrumors Forums via Eng]

— Posted by Ilya Kochanov

Shaw Wu, an analyst at American Technology Research, is predicting that Apple will start shipping Macs with Blu-ray drives as part of a high-def video strategy to be rolled out at Macworld. Wu notes that Apple has a seat on the Blu-ray consortium and Steve Jobs has significant ties to Disney, which has aligned itself with the Blu-ray camp.

Wu says that while Blu-ray only Macs are most likely, there is "a smaller chance Apple may use a combo Blu-ray/HD-DVD drive to ensure full compatibility and not get involved in the format wars."

Apple set to ship Macs with Blu-ray support - report [AppleInsider]

This is a pretty unambiguous patent application from Apple, filed back in 2003 but relevant to the ultraportable Mac rumors flying around right now. The dock is essentially a screen with a slot in the side, the portable slides into the slot and runs like a regular desktop.

The twist is that part of the communication between dock and Mac is wireless, via both WiFi and Bluetooth. The question is, does this have anything to do with the MacBook Touch? While you decide, I'll leave you with this astonishing piece of patent-babble from the filing:

 

[T]he docking area is configured such that a plane parallel to at least one largest face of an imaginary rectangular polyhedron of the least possible volume that can contain the portable computer docked in the housing is more parallel than normal to the direction of gravity.

Patent filing [USPTO via The Giz]

As MacWorld approaches, drool continues to collect on the chins of acolytes awaiting the presentation of a widely rumored sub-notebook. Latest report is that the presumed mini-MacBook will come sans CD or DVD drive -- no room for one. Instead, owners will have the option to buy an external drive.

Apple Sub Notebook Hints: External Optical Drive, MultiTouch Trackpad? [MacRumors]

Axiotron's ModBook is now shipping. The tablet-style, GPS equipped MacBook mod has been in the pipe since January last year, and we reported last week that it would be appearing some time this January. The price? $2280 and $2580, depending on model. Our advice? Wait until Macworld on January 15th. Apple might just be making its own touchscreen Mac.

Product page [Axiotron]

The Boy Genius Report reports the rumors of new Apple notebooks are "confirmed!" How so? Someone at an Apple party says that the performers were promised them upon release at MacWorld, which runs Jan. 14-18 next month.

Apple’s new laptops: confirmed! [BGR]

MacWorld 2008 isn't being held the same week as CES 2008, so Mr. Jobs won't get to deliver another silver-trimmed kick in the nuts to the entire consumer electronics industry this time around. Speculation over what will come at the January bash, however, is getting heated.

Following below are 5 forward-looking statements about Apple, pulled out of my hat. I'm not really an Apple man — you can do better. We'll send a generic iPod clone (OMG $99 value!) to anyone who comes up with a genuinely accurate, detailed prediction for MacWorld 2008 in the comments.

Continue reading "What Are Your Predictions For MacWorld?" »

Axiotron, the California company who promised us a Mac-based tablet way back in January, is finally about to ship its ModBook this January. The information comes, as often happens, from a reseller. Other World Computing contacted blogger JK with an order update, telling him that the ModBook will begin shipping on January 8th.

The GPS equipped, touch screen MacBook is pretty much just a regular model with a Wacom tablet embedded into the screen (and no keyboard). And while the product page still doesn't list a shipping date, the prices are there: $2280 and $2580, depending on processor speed.

With only a couple of weeks to go, we'll soon see if this is yet another Duke Nukem style stall or the real thing. Either way, it might be too late. Apple could be showing off a multi touch, ultra-portable Mac at this years MacWorld. There is some irony in the fact that Axiotron are based in El Segundo, California.

Product page [Axiotron via TUAW]

Product page [OWC]

We asked if you thought Apple's iPhone exclusive with Cingular was a dealbreaker. The results so far: With 4,501 votes, 55 percent say they'd pass on the deal, versus 45 percent who said they'd sign right up. (If you haven't voted yet, go here).

In presidential politics that's called a landslide, but in consumer electronics let's call it a dead heat. A few things to note: Many commenters suggested that the exclusive would surely expire quickly, putting the phone in the hands of T-Mobile subscribers and Europeans at least (sorry Verizon, this is a GSM phone--no CDMA allowed.) Actually, the announcement proclaimed that the Cingular exclusive was "multi-year"--so that would make it 2009 at the earliest.

As for Gadget Lab, our corporate phone accounts use Cingular, so we're just trying to figure out where to find the requisition forms....