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The New Mac Goodies

January 25th, 2008

I was as excited as everyone else to see what Steve Jobs had for us at the 2008 MacWorld Keynote. And I oohed and aahed at the MacBook Air. But on further consideration I'll be waiting for the new Macbook Pros to drool. IT is clearly designed as a second computer for people with a desktop at home, with a slower cpu, less RAM and smaller hard-drive than most laptops today. But the big consideration for buyers is the lack of an optical drive. Which means no built in cd/dvd player or writer. Calling it a “Road Warrior” machine, Apple clearly believes that most people have gone to using external drives for data backup and transfer. There is a built in technology for connecting to the optical drive of a nearby computer and using it as the Air's own for installing software and burning cds as well as external drives that can be added to your order for $99. There are a number of reviews up now.

I used the first iMacs at work which were the first computers to come without disk drives. The technology was becoming dated but it wasn't dead yet so every iMac in the library had to have one of the external drives hooked up which made an awful racket when in use and slowed the computer to a crawl. That's what this feels like. That Apple has once again discarded a technology too early in the search for the cool form factor. I'd rather deal with my full MacBook Pro with everything inside than have to balance one more toy on a cable on the go.

The new movie rental options simply don't do much for me, the 24 hour time limit simply can't compete with the unlimited limit from Netflix and Blockbuster. Here's one guy's experience though and Ars Technica has their own review.

I'm one of those who love my iPhone. I've noticed that those who don't are the ones who want to do a lot of text input on it: emailing and text messaging. The new Maps redo is full of useful functionality and I think a few design tweaks that make it easier to use.

The big thing for me is Time Capsule. Built on their Airport wireless network router, it will work with Time Machine (the backup software built in to the latest OS) to regularly backup all of your macs wirelessly. Backing up files is one of the most important and least thought about parts of computing. It's so easy to forget about when you're doing other stuff and when you're on the computer you don't want to tie it up with the backup. Using a laptop for my only computer, I've never been able to just leave it plugged in to an external drive to run an automated script. With Time Capsule however, I'd be able to just leave my laptop open anywhere in the house and have it backup automatically at a preset time while I'm sleeping. Like everything else it's not coming out until February but there is speculation that the backup over wireless capacity will be released for the latest Airport routers in a firmware update as well since they were supposed to have it to begin with.

MacSparky, the Mac lawyer, has a round up of products that didn't get as much press.

I'm excited for the future. I can't wait to see what developers do once they can run applications on the iPhone without “breaking” it. I will love seeing how the Macbook Air's design affects the Macbook and Macbook Pro's and I'm hopeful for Time Capsule. It looks like a good year coming for Mac heads.

Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 11:50 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. Stumble it!

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