WWDC: New MacBooks, Snow Leopard, iPhone 3GS, oh my!
Apple's WWDC keynote saw a host of new products and info; here's a quick review of the high points, culled from some trusty live-keynoting services from MacRumors, MacWorld, and Endgadget.
The keynote with a swipe at MS, with John Hodgman's PC character begging for fresh ideas. It began with a fun graph of OS X's exponential growth -- and that includes the iPhone, of course, because it runs OS X. The meat of the keynote started with Macs, though -- and if these things run in order of increasing excitement, then that's quite a sign of where computers fall into the hierarchy these days.
New improved laptops
Even so, they're enthusiastic about notebooks -- that's what most new Mac users choose -- and introduced a new 15" Macbook Pro. Improved battery life was emphasized: 7 hours claimed, with over five years (1,000 charges) of use possible before performance degradation started in. There's also a new, improved display and a built-in SD slot, because people like fiddling with little memory cards better than they life fiddling with USB cables, I guess. Oh, and, hey, 3 GHz chip, 8 GB of RAM, 500 GB hard drive -- personally, I would have showcased that before the SD slot, but I am not Apple marketing. And it starts cheaper, at $1,699 (though we'll have to fiddle with the now-down Apple Store before we learn just what the specs are at that intro price). 17" model has been boosted too, and both are available today.
But wait! 13" Unibody MacBooks got similar boosts, backlit keyboard, improved battery ... and a promotion in name to MacBook Pro as well, and a starting price of $1,199 (less than what I paid for my white plastic Macbook less than a year ago, cue tiny Mac nerd violin for the passage of time.) This leaves, I think, the plastic MacBook as the sole member of the MacBook line, which I guess makes the segmentation clearer. As was noted, this computer got a unheralded spec boost this month.
The Air also got an upgrade -- and, perhaps more intriguingly, a downgrade in price. The entry-level Air now checks in at $1,499 -- not netbook cheap to be sure, but perhaps more enticing for someone balancing specs and form factor (the Air currently tops out at a 2.13 GHz chip).
OS X
From notebooks our team segued to OS X, and Schiller gave the stage to Bertrand Serlet. His presentation began with some smack-talk about Vista and Windows 7, before announcing that Exchange support will be built into Snow Leopard.
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GPS
As someone who gets lost pretty much every time I get behind the wheel of a car, I'm looking forward to the turn-by-turn GPS. I just hope it works well without that newfangled digital compass thingy. Overall the 3.0 software looks good and the 3GS looks like a solid update, but I don't plan on upgrading my hardware anytime soon.There were a few things I
There were a few things I was hoping for but I mean can they really make everyone happy?? There was one thing that really did piss me off and it sounds like everybody else is too. I was watching live updates of the WWDC as it was happening and it kept building me up and throwing me back down with the whole AT&T thing. They came out and said MMS support. I was like "yay!!! finally!!!" then they said AT&T wont support it until later this summer. I think i literally said "awww" *with some other words following then the tethering thing was the same way. I think they said... lets make all these cool new features but not push the provider that supports the phone to support the new features. And I screwed up here by looking up rumors about the new phone and got myself all excited about the camera in the front and that didn't happen. GPS is cool. and I really hope that the push thing really works. I'll never forget when they promised that to us when they announced the first iphone i think. said it would take like 6 months i think or something like that. I'm glad they made the phone faster too. would like to see the technical specs of what they put in it too because i dont know how many times i get a message tellling me that my phone is low on memory. anyways I think just for the speed features I'll probably get it. and for $200 thats not bad.I still love you, my poor MacBook White.
*hugs and gropes*