MacExpo 2008 Highlights
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
MacBook Air: Just like Apple did with the phone market, they revolutionized the laptop. This device comes in at 3 lbs and contains an 80 gig hard drive, 2 gigs of ram and 1.8ghz dual core intel chip. It does not contain a cd/dvd drive but you can purchase one for $99. This laptop is so thin and powerful that you really wouldn't need much else.
Pros: extremely thin and light. new touch interface which allows you to do more with the mouse. 5 hr battery life.
Cons: price $1799, no media drive and only 1 USB2 port. cannot remove the battery and no ethernet connection, wireless only.
Apple updated the Apple TV with new software that will allow you to rent movies from the iTunes music store for $3.99 for standard movie (30 day rental, 24 hrs once movie has been started) and $4.99 for high def quality movies. You can also buy music thru the Apple TV and can be used even if you do not have a computer. Price went down a bit and you can pick up a 40 gig for $229 and a 160 gig for $329.
Pros: very easy to use, browse the iTunes store and purchase music, movies, tv shows, rentals etc.
Cons: limited to the Apple file format so you would have to convert existing media files into the correct format to play. Not quite big enough hard drive for me. now if you incorporated the 500/ 1 terabyte into the Apple TV, i would be very interested.
Time Capsule: Basically this is a NAS (network attached storage) drive with a router built in. This supports the latest wireless speed 802.11N and is backwards compatible to devices with a wireless G card. The new router will plug into your cable modem and also contains either a 500 gig or 1 terabyte hard drive. Prices are $299 for the 500gb version and $499 for the 1 terabyte. Because it has a built in hard drive you can save data, music, files, photos, movies etc to it and multiple computers can access the share.
Pros: all in one device, you can backup all your data and have one central location for all your files.
Cons: too expensive and I already have a router.
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iTunes has sold over 4 billion songs and 4 million iPhones with an average of 20,000 phones per day.
Overall a great MacExpo and some really cool new products. I won't be getting anything right now but Apple is heading in the right direction. Maybe in another year they will have the perfect device for our digital living room.
Posted by mardenhill 1/15/2008 04:57:00 PM
Labels: Technology
