Time Warner is considering pay as you go service for broadband. More you use, the more you pay. So, how does this help/hurt Apple?

mg

Cablecard is dead. I spent a month researching HDTVs last Christmas and didn't see any mainstream product with a Cablecard slot. CableCARD-2.0 never got off the ground and CableCARD-1.0 can't handle video on demand or supply an electronic program guide.

In my opinion, Apple is currently losing a great market opportunity in Europe. With the Euro so strong vs the Dollar, they could slash the prices in Europe and establish a huge customer base. Instead they prefer to keep the prices high and gain on the currency exchange. Apple computers can't be a niche product forever... It's time to expand the customer base.

They should sell AppleTV at cost or at most $149.

Advertise the heck out of it.

Create their own network with Google so the cable companies can't blackmail them.

And another thing.

I wish I could play Monopoly on my AppleTV with my family.

I don't want an xbox or playstattion. I don't enjoy most of those games.

I like simple old board games I can play with my family.

I wish Apple would put some of these type of games on AplleTV.

Pretty mediocre offerings. The Air is basically a refinement of a pre-exisitng market segment. The AppleTV shift isn't particularly impressive.

As for complaining about the letdown. Get real. These keynotes are always singularities in the RDF. Anything less than Jobs ascending directly to heaven is considered a letdown. Followed by Apple fanbois announcing that "we have always been at war with eastasia!" and praising the new iProduct as the ultimate advance in technology evar. If this didn't happen you and everybody else wouldn't cover it.

Frankly I'd really love to see your opinion of the EEE and the XO which in my opinion is where the action is, at the moment.

Bob, Great column... couldn't agree more with your analysis. I was not overly impressed with Steve Job's announcements this year but I still see the wisdom of Apple's long-term strategy. Wall Street and the press are only interested in home runs but patiently loading the bases is the better strategy.

Personally, I want the tablet but I was sure they wouldn't launch it yet... much smarter to roll out this new platform over time. The Macbook Air is too expensive but I know there are plenty of Apple fanatics that would buy it today. I'll wait for what I think will be an elegant new ecosystem that combines .Mac, Time Capsule and a smaller, cheaper Air platform.

The strangest design decision (omission) on the MacBook Air was the lack of Firewire of any description. If it included USB 3.0 ports, even without the backing hardware yet, that might have made the tiniest amount of sense, but they weren't there either.

As for Apple TV, well I have Netflix, broadband, a Windows XP MCE dual processor machine with an ATI X1300 card that feeds both my monitor, and my 43 inch Sony quite nicely. Apple isn't wining me over at $229, plus the ala carte price of every single movie yet.

I agree with Monopole I'd like to see an opinion on the EEE and XO.

The EEE seems to have hit a sweet spot to fill a need for portability, it's extremely portable and also extremely useful and also very low price. Asus is selling as many as they can possibly make.

Regarding the comment "And Steve Jobs knows this, because with their interlocking boards, Apple and Google have to know precisely what the other is up to." How are they interlocking? I know that Eric Schmidt is on Apple's board, but who from Apple is on Google's board?

RE the lack of FireWire on the new Macbook Air. This "omission" has less to do with style and size and more to do with Apple's CPU supplier. Now that Apple is using Intel, FW is d-e-a-d dead. Intel likes USB because it helps them in their primary business, selling processor cycles. Apple will continue to support legacy products with FW for a couple of years but after that it will be history, just like SCSI and ADB.

Yeah, yeah, Apple has a plan for world domination. We already knew that. I hope next week's column focuses on Sun's aquisition of MySQL.

"People replace their computers a lot more often than they replace their televisions" - I believe this is no longer true, but I'm too lazy to find stats to back it up.

"Apple introduced some cool stuff, but nothing that would sell four million units this year, hence the letdown."

Apple's stock price almost *always* falls right after a Stevenote. Fans are almost always let down as well--because they think Apple can do anything.

But Apple has learned not to be a first mover into new markets and technologies. They let others go in, observe their mistakes and come out with a superior service and/or product.

Apple can't prevent other firms from leapfrogging its offerings, and it's likely never going to corner a market again. It's probably going to be more successful at integrating all of its offerings into a seamless ecosystem.

Macbook Air feels a bit like The Mac Cube: an engineering challenge about size met that cuts too many corners and doesn't really have a lot of consumer demand. We'll see.

I'd like to see AppleTV work, but I don't see how or why the cable companies need Apple. Can't they make something like this on their own and leave Apple out in the cold? And Apple doesn't always partner well with other companies.

Google will set up its localserverinabox and run the content from that with an agreement through Apple with all the major content suppliers.

Small ISPs will of course get screwed. What's new?

Apple has always created software to sell hardware. Since iPod, Apple has created access to content for the one purpose of selling hardware. That's why the AppleTV didn't drop to the sub 100 price. Apple will never sell at a loss.

Bob's conspiracy theory about the perfect ISP storm and Apple's access to Google's dark fiber is too good an idea to be true. It all makes perfect sense but real life stories aren't that perfect. I kind of want to believe it tho, it's so temptingly beautiful.

What I don't understand is how Job's got the film industry to sign on. Universal, Warner, and Sony seem to hate Apple for cornering them into non-variable pricing iTunes and in return they refuse to sell non-DRM music on iTunes while they sell it for high quality and lower prices on Amazon and elsewhere. But then the same three all sign a major deal so that history can repeat itself, this time in film version? Jobs impressed me with that the most.

The lack of a user serviceable or removable battery is going to cripple sales. Or so I would have said about the iPod or the iPhone. I have had to remove the battery from my MacBook Pro at least six times since I purchased it in November to restart the computer. I keep thinking shortcomings like this would affect sales of the Air and other Apple products, but apparently I am wrong.

The most disappointing thing about Macworld is the fact that the best product I saw was Microsoft's new Office 2008.

Another disappointment is the price of movie downloads. $4.99 for 24 hours? For a few dollars more I can own the DVD.

you are blind. Totally blind. All the discussion about Air is utterly ridiculous. The truth is that speaking with friends and family in Italy, Spain and some weird skiing brother-in-low in Aspen (working for Paramount) -- well, they all tell me the same story: WOW!!!! the macbook Air is the coolest thing ever. I want it! they want it! You guys must understand that not everybody in this world is poor, and people love Prada -- And do you know who else knows that?... (by the way you screw me big time with Burst -- so as I I'm a resident in the UK I can legally call you a wanker -- but I still love you (but less now) and I'm still alive.

The lack of a user serviceable or removable battery is going to cripple sales. Or so I would have said about the iPod or the iPhone. I have had to remove the battery from my MacBook Pro at least six times since I purchased it in November to restart the computer. I keep thinking shortcomings like this would affect sales of the Air and other Apple products, but apparently I am wrong.

The most disappointing thing about Macworld is the fact that the best product I saw was Microsoft's new Office 2008.

Another disappointment is the price of movie downloads. $4.99 for 24 hours? For a few dollars more I can own the DVD. The subscription pricing for movies offered by Netflix is the best way to go.

Fernando wrote "CableCARD-1.0 can't handle video on demand or supply an electronic program guide."

Check out the HDTVs for sale at your local emporium -- none of them present the EPG, either, despite EPG being part of the ATSC standard. What's up with that?

Thats it, Macworld expo and all you comment on is apple tv and air?

iPhone maps is worth a column by its self. What about the iPod movie on all of Fox's DVD's? The implications of world domination aside jobs is taking on the movie industry and winning.

I think Apple's video rental service and the bandwidth caps the ISPs are tinkering with is proof the tiered Internet is right around the corner.

ISPs will start charging for bandwidth consumption, no brainer. But then we'll see companies that sell bandwidth intensive services (like Apple) work out deals with ISPs so their services don't count toward a customer's bandwidth cap. I'm convinced this will happen.

And then we'll be right back to where we are now... only those with deep pockets get to deliver video services. We'll be right back to Fox News, MSNBC and the rest of the feeble offerings Big Media has today. Say goodbye to watching TV programming overseas, say goodbye to alternative commentary on social and political issues. Sure, the US will be tapped into a global network but Big Media and the ISP syndicate will see to it our country is stuck watching the same mindless dribble.

This type of business model virtually guarantees the US will wallow in miserable broadband speeds for years to come as the market to ration scarce bandwidth will just be too lucrative to change.

All we can do is pray Google nails the 700Mhz auction and holds fast to their "do no evil" mantra. The ISP/Telco industry is ripe for as ass whipping... god forbid they actually have to INNOVATE.

:)

Hooray progress!

Bob, you are the first to recognize the importance of Intel. By giving Intel an exclusive, Apple gets "leverage" in chip design and Intel wins its battle against AMD. As more people get Macs; fewer people get AMD chips. A long battle ahead, but ultimate victory assured.

The Expo was more fun for us investors than anybody else: Mac sales way up; iPhone sales exceeding target numbers; good shot at getting a lock on Movies like they did with music. Life is good. Ignore the temporary stock blip $300 by December of I'll eat my shirt.

As for the "Air". Apple needed something in this category. The "touch" pad is quite innovative. No, not everybody will prefer these to full weight laptops, but if I were a "road warrior", this would be the machine I'd want above all others by a wide margin, obviously.

Apple's movie rental service is virtually identical to video-on-demand services, even right down to the 24 hour rental period. They effectively just added the service, and with some minor UI changes in the software, could add VOD to AppleTV. VOD is already an IP service, it takes no effort for Apple to add it. A digital cable terminal with VOD capability goes for $55 CDN right now. The other $180 for the Apple TV? Deal or not, I'm not sure.

The one product you don't mention is Time Capsule, or wireless NAS. Don't you find it odd that the only application Apple sees for a W-NAS server is file backup? Absolutely incredible! They didn't even make the connection between the software update system for the Air and how the Time Capsule can do the exact same thing!

As for the Air, it's obsolete technology. The exact same processor in Ultra Low-Voltage form is rated at 17 Watts power consumption, the Apple "special" version, which runs no faster, uses 20 Watts. Apple could be cutting CPU power by 15% just by using a standard chip Intel had in the works the whole time!

This MacWorld was about Apple slipping up and missing the broader potential, the bigger niches. The Air is an engineering exercise, not a legitimate product. Thin is not small, and clearly the market wants small (EeePC). I'd bet the Air won't ever sell more than 60k units, or 600k units. It's simply far too expensive for the benefit, which isn't a smaller computer, merely a lighter, thinner one.

Such contrast between the Macworld keynote where the announcements are met with such enthusiasm, and the comments section of every mac/computer blog after a keynote, where you read a preponderance of doom and gloom. I think Randy Newman said it all when he mumbled something about "hating corporations", but not Apple. I think that says a lot. Whatever Steve and company produce, I give them credit for the"spirit" in which they produce it. Some people understand that spirit and support it, other people are just missing the boat.

Let's start reading tea leaves...

Apples got other stuff cooked up. The keynote was three products announcing the death of the media disk.

The Air is a showpiece for traveling executives. It's a Trojan horse into corporations.

My theories...

The big news would have been a MacTV for $99 and movie rentals for $1. This would have killed the pirated DVD market; why spend $2 to create a cd when you can rent the same movie for $1.

Since Apple makes profit from selling hardware, they have to sell the MacTV for $229 BUT IF APPLE COULD JUST TAKE A LOSS ON HARD WARE, Apple would rule the media distribution universe.

The M4P on Fox DVDs is the big news, no question.

Watch sales of 'Family Guy' go through the roof. I am buying one, and I am not a big fan. When the other studios see this, they may follow suit.

Windoze media is such an obvious monopoly tool.

I don't think there's any doubt that a new pointing device is on the way. Probably a stand-alone multi-touch pad a little larger than the one on the Air and with a few more features. It will have bluetooth and some kind of induction charging, so there will be no wires. We'll get away from having our desktop machine's pointing device to the right or left of the keyboard. It will sit nicely just below the spacebar and may even attach with a mag-safe type of connector. It will support 2-handed multi-touch which will completely blow everyone away. A matching induction charged bluetooth keyboard will also be released. Both will be charged by just placing them just beneath an Apple display or under the screen of an iMac. Or maybe they will charge from the light in the room.....

The Mac Air will sell, no doubt, but it's honestly not a good design. What are you going to do with that extra 0.5 inches of width you are saving? They lost track of form following function on this one. Laptops are thicker because having ethernet ports, replaceable batteries, optical drives, larger hard drives, etc. is useful.

A few months from now, once Air owners get over the wow factor, they're going to wish they had a more capable machine.

Apple won't take a loss on hardware.
Might, say, Fox?
Think this over.
When Netflix or Blockbuster or your local video store rents you a physical DVD, Fox and Universal and Paramount et cetera do not get a cut of that recurring revenue at all. But when you rent via the iTunes Music Store or XBox Live Marketplace, the studios do get a cut.
It is absolutely in the best financial interests of the movie studios themselves to see the renting of physical media cease entirely, and be replaced by something like AppleTV or XBox rentals. They have to be aware of that.
Right now I think they're just waiting to see if consumers shamble in that direction on their own. I do not believe they will. At some point the studios will be willing to expend more resources to make it happen, and so we might see a studio funding the acquisition of AppleTV units in some manner. But only if consumers don't move towards enabling this on their own.
The bad news for Apple is, many consumers are moving in that direction on their own.Today, the XBox 360 and PS3 are perfectly capable of serving this function, and lots of people are hooking one or the other up to their big screens in their living rooms, in addition to, you know, playing games and DVD (or better) optical media. I tried a video rental via XBox Live Marketplace the other day, and the experience was just not really terrible! I can do those video rentals today, with equipment I already have, so why should I buy an AppleTV?
If the studios won't fund 'em, and Apple won't fund 'em, they're gonna have to do something else to make 'em attractive to consumers. What might do it? I try to think, what might make something like an AppleTV attractive to, say, my dad or my mother-in-law? Really not a whole heck of a lot! DVR? Maybe... maybe. Ability to play optical media? No, definitely not. Ability to rip optical media? No, people who care about that tend to be able to use computers. Games? No, people who care about that will likely have an XB360, which can do the video rentals already, or a Wii or PS3, which wouldn't have to be changed very much to enable it.
I'm almost tempted to say that Apple's best bet would be to give up on the AppleTV, and have iTunes become the video rental option for PS3 and Wii. But I can't see Sony and Nintendo cooperating on that.
It's confusing as heck, right now.

Maybe we didn't see an Apple Blue Ray announcement for a variety of other reasons. For instance, despite the media Blue Ray has not yet become the industry standard, cost for the drives are high, and the drives main benefit is its enhanced DRM capabilities.

Moreover, the Macbook Air clearly is marketed as a secondary computer. If treated as such, it doesn't need a DVD player.

Facts regarding the "interlocking board" structure: Two people serve on the board of directors of both Apple and Google: Eric Schmidt and Arthur Levinson (of Genentech). Paul Otellini of Intel is also on Google's board. No Apple employees are on Google's board... Jobs is of course on the board of Disney, where he serves together with Orrin Smith, who was CEO of Starbucks through 2005. It's certainly possible to see patterns emerging if you look hard enough.

I keep wondering why it is that no one has really focused on Air. They put up those banners--There is something in the air--and I can't help but think there is more to Air than vapor. Time Capsule. Apple TV. The dropping of the optical drive. Seems to me there are going to be a lot more Air products, and the notebook was just the first to make it to market. Apple seems to be banking on some kind of wireless ubiquity, and likely not just in the WiFi arena. I have no idea, really, what they might be up to, but do you come up with that not exactly felicitous name for one notebook? I think not.

I don't think people want small. They want thin rather than small. It's just that before there were no options. Now they can have the big keyboard and the big screen and can won't need to sacrafice on weight. And as for comparing AIR to other laptops and CPU speeds, it's like comparing a Smart car to a Lincoln. Of courese the smart doesn't need all that size and power, it's made for quick trips and efficiently. Some people really want that.

Why the hell doesn't Apple put in the H.264 chips?

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070712_002475.html

That'd help take air out of these gouging outfits that want to meter bandwidth!

One thing that jumped right out at me from SJ's presentation is the size of the circuit board in the MBA. That's a far smaller board than the Mac Mini's main board.

A Mac that much smaller than a Mac Mini, able to use the external superdrive that the MBA does, is a perfect machine for all manner of embedded installations.

-jcr

Mike Cane,

Speaking as one who is working on H.264 hardware, I'd say the reason that Apple isn't including a codec chip is that not enough of their users need it to make it worth including on every unit. It's just like putting a radio in an iPod.

If Elgato were selling millions of their VideoToGo devices, it might be a different story, but they aren't, so it's not. Keep in mind that a product that does well for a company of Elgato's size is a very different thing from a product that makes sense for a $100+ billion company to offer.

-jcr

I think you're right.

Correction: Elgato's h.264 device is called the Turbo.264, not the VideoToGo.

-jcr

Please see my post from Gizmodo: for link see above

i just wanted to show off that i had the same thought...

"... What stuck out most to me during this presentation was when he showed the shot of the actual board in the new macbook air with the cpu and gpu, and everything else built in. It was tiny as hell, and then I got to thinking. Why the %$@# would intel go through the trouble of re-designing their processor just for this one laptop. Sure its cool, and it got peoples attention and they will surely sell the processor to sony and everyone else as they attempt to play the catch up game again. But I have to imagine apple has something up their sleeves (plural and i'm not from the UK). Either a tablet of some sort, or maybe a umpc or something. I don't know, he stressed screen size so much i have to imagine it's the former, and this is all just me throwing it out there. I don't even want a tablet myself, I'm happy on a laptop, but I have to imagine with what they've learned from the iPhone, and multitouch and all that business, a larger product is on the horizon that will either be super amazing, and everyone will have one, and it will change computing, or it will be like the first apple tv, and languish.
Also what's up with the dude from intel chef boyardee or whatever showing up, and talking about all the great innovation, and they can't throw wimax into the mix? That bummed me out.

I did really appreciate the disc drive feature for the Macbook Air, being able to use someone elses to install stuff is fresh, although I thought he was going to announce software downloads from iTunes... which I have to imagine is coming...."

er see the link below, my name is the link...

I'm surprised that PBS employes a writer that has claimed a Ph.D., and a professorship from Stanford when in fact he has neither. Check Wikipedia under the Robert X. Cringely name.

You have to ask yourself. Who's computer experience do you want to part of in the near future? Bill Gates Microsoft or Steve Jobs with Apple? The next question you have to ask yourself: What's more important in the next 10 years to computer manufacturers, the enterprise buyer or the consumer purchaser? Enterprise was without a doubt what drove computer sales toward Microsoft in the past 12 years. Consumers followed because it was what they new and were familiar with. Most thought Apple was a weird niche and too expensive. That all changed when Steve Jobs came back on board at Apple in 1998, (I think that’s the right year). Jobs failed with Next, but here learned some valuable lessons. Next failed because it was way over priced. It was a radical departure, and he couldn’t get the major software vendor’s, i.e.: Adobe, Quark, Microsoft to come on board. The machine came with new technologies that weren’t ready for the mainstream public.

Jobs started slow when he returned to Apple. He offered great design, and an all-in-one solution that was well priced and fit into people homes without taking up a whole desk. Rather, it complimented the office without dominating it. It also came with standard interface connectivity, then later models introduced new standards, i.e.: USB, Firewire, Firewire 2, USB 2, etc. This gave time for users and manufactures time to evaluate the new interfaces and decide if they wanted to support them. USB eventually became common on PC’s as well as Mac’s, while firewire is still an uncommon feature on Window.

Now back to my point. The largest segment of computer purchases in the next five years are going to be from consumers. First Jobs got them to use iPods to play music, then they were able to use their iPod to play music, watch video’s and play games. Then he came out with the iPhone that does everything the iPod does, everything a cell phone does, some of the things I could only do with my computer, and then wraps the whole thing with an incredible interface. Now everybody is going to the Apple Stores to buy accessories, and while there are being introduced to the computer that’s just as cool as their iPod/iPhone. Add to that music sales, video rental, video purchases, (standard and HD), album art, iLife, iWork, Final Cut, iTV, Airport Extreme, Time Capsule, the list goes on.

Now from a consumers point of view, there’s no contest. Who’s more cool?

'Now from a consumers point of view, there’s no contest. Who’s more cool?'

And, eventually Enterprise catches up. All it takes is a few CEO's who REALLY LIKE their iPhones and really DON'T like their Luddite, obstructrionist MCSE-certified IT departments.

Who is naive enough to read anything on Wikipedia? Much less believe it?

How many stooges does Microsoft and thousands of other entities pay to fill troughs at Wikipedia?

What this world really need is a commenting system that will recognize that two or three consecutive comments are identical and dump the duplicates.

Someone up there hit on a good point (maybe even a couple of times) - the MacBook Air is thinner and lighter, but it still has the footprint of a laptop computer. Compare that to the EEE PC for example, which has the footprint of a book and is solid. A thinner MacBook just makes me worry that it is flexible, which of course can't be good for a motherboard or an LCD screen.

" A thinner MacBook just makes me worry that it is flexible, "

It's not. You can pick it up by a corner, and it feels like it was punched out of a sheet of plate steel. Haven't had a chance to take one apart of course, but I would guess that the shape of the motherboard allows the case to have a stiffening rib right through the center.

When you touch an MBA, you get the impression that you could split logs with it.

-jcr

Yes, but it's IP Multicast over Google's 700MHz spectrum.

The comment comparing the MBA to Prada is right on the money (pardon the pun). My wife bought an iPod when she saw it, and I can count on two fingers how many times she has used it. That iPod led to my Mini, which led to the 24" iMac I am typing this on. When she saw the MBA, she said "Bring that back for me when you go to SF next"
None of this would be that notable if not for the fact that I worked for a OEM Hardware manufacturer for 10 years, and I am an MCSE (Just not a practicing one ;-)

You say "we'll get back to something non-apple next week." I say I love the stories about Apple and Google taking over the world while Microsoft and IBM can't seem to do anything right and are grasping at straws to become relevant again.

Keep the Apple stories coming, amigo!

Hmm global TV dominance. Certainly there is something up between Apple and Google- when Jobs says "we like these guys". There is more GOOG going into AAPL products than there is with Microsoft. Apple TV has so much potential but its not coming fast enough. There is a plan in there somewhere. There was no Mac mini announced at MacWorld as so many thought at the close of 2007. Could it be that Apple TV is the new MacMini? Seems credible.

Who is purchasing all the latest crops of ultra modern electronics would be the better question.

Who is going to purchase HD tv which has been priced so out of reach for most of the average person. Personally where it not for grand children I would not purchase another tv of any sort, having come to the conclusion much like Newton Minnow did back when he called it a vast wasteland.

CableCARD has been a bust because the cable co's do whatever they can to not deploy them. Hopefully tru2way will address their concerns and we'll see it take off in '08. The problem with ATV and tru2way TVs is that the UI would have to re-written in java.

I do agree that the ATV as a separate STB is a hard sell, even a DVD player built in would be better than a stand-alone.

But I'm afraid this is a studio requirement, why else would they continue to partner with devices like Vudu, Xbox360 etc. I'm convinced they want the HD content locked to a box. In my opinion this is the biggest draw back of the ATV rentals. The HD is probably "good enough" for most, but without the ability to watch the rest on your computer I'm not sure why anyone would choose it over their cable's VOD. The least they could do is when you buy the HD version to download a portable copy to your computers iTunes. As much as I love HD content, I admit it has no place on my iPhone, so having a another copy would be useful.

As for the cable co's and their desire to not be a bit provider. If they would focus as much on partnering (like ESPN360) with content providers or becoming providers themselves instead of how to charge their best customers more money for the same service they'd be more successful. What's sad is they are right in front of the customer with all their STBs and at the customers home page (when they setup the broadband) but yet they still can't give their customers to look no further for everything they need.

Great article. I've been reading so many negative Apple postings and articles that I've been wondering if I was right to order a MacBook Air as I did. Yes, I understand that this is a less-featured product, but it looks great and will give me what I need

The "little cpu" is a last generation Merom processor. I doubt very much it will find its way into other products. More likely it will be replaced by a Penryn.

Random thoughts.

Apple TV: I agree with Doug that the Apple TV has to offer something more than movie rentals for me to want it for any price over $99. Right now I play AVI downloads on my HD TV via data disk or USB flash drive. I play Blu-Ray through the PS3, and a Netflix or Blockbuster subscription makes that cheap and convenient. Cable companies have movies on demand. The Apple TV is nice, but it seems to me that it would be too easy for the Cable companies or gaming platforms to put it out of business. And do I really want to add another HDMI box to my TV system? Cable, DVD, PS3 ... and now Apple TV? Too many boxes. (And the Comcast digital signal won't pass through my new receiver.) Here's a thought for added value: Make the Apple TV an HDMI switchbox with three HDMI inputs, which is something more and more people will want. Make it the HDMI hub. (And wireless hub, too, for that matter.)

MacBook Air: thinner and lighter is better than merely smaller. (Ask my back surgeon.) The super-small screen on an iPhone is cool and has its place; the 13" screen on on the Air is cool and has its place; anything in between is just annoying.

Trojan Horses: Between the iPhone and the MacBook Air, Apple will work its way into enterprise from the grass roots up and top management down. IT will be caught in the crunch and forced to get out of the way or get fired. AT&T will be offering corporate accounts this year and Lotus Notes/Domino is coming to the iPhone. Apple lost the first great computer war to Microsoft because (among other things) Jobs didn't care much about corporate users, but he's never given up on world domination from the home outward. It's still a long slog, but Apple is primed to get into corporations.

Blu-Ray: Saved for NAB. The Final Cut people are demanding it. Professionals will boo Apple big time if it's not included in the next round of Mac Pros. Jobs won't care as long as it stays out of iMacs -- but it will be tough to resist.

Another insightful column Bob!

I love the idea of AppleTV, but I can't seem to fall for the current offerings. I'd much prefer to pimp an Mac Mini to do the same job - and a lot more besides. I think Apple should buy Joost to integrate with AppleTV - if nothing else the distributed network would help wean them off Akamai and other CDNS. And Joost is headed for the deadpool if you listen to blog-gossip!

What is seriously missing with the MACBOOK AIR is the lack of support for cellular based wireless broadband (no internal 3G card for ATT or Verizon or SPRINT) WIFI is fine but try to find one outside of main street...

I think Steve should have intro'd the SSD version of MBA, FIRST, reminding people that tiny formfactor, LED screen and SSD are PREMIUM products, requiring PREMIUM pricing. Then, when people have that image in their mind, then announce that you can get the same tiny formfactor, and LED screen, without the SSD for a fraction of the price, and then people would have been WOWed. A tiny formfactor with the LED screen, and better battery life, for less than the MBP. Woohoo!

You're a pretentious idiot. You don't know how day trading even works, so stop pretending.

There's a bit more going on with hi-def content than you've quite put together... Steve doesn't want to lock Mac hardware into the chip-based DRM that Vista jumped through hoops to support. By making hi-def rentals only available through the AppleTV, and by not putting a BluRay player in a Mac device, he's essentially found a way to satisfy the studios who want locked HDMI bits on their "better than DVD" signals, while not overtly shoving DRM down the throats of the Mac faithful.

Umm, isn't CableCARD (note correct casing) being phased out in the long run in favor of OCAP? oops I mean "tru2way" with DCAS implemented? Not that the US cable monopoly would allow Jobs/Apple to get anywhere near their coveted turf in the first place...

There's a bit of stuff using CableCARDs in the field right now - I've got four in my house, two each in two Series 3 TiVos (the TVs could take them if I chose), as does my mother several states away.

In any case, people are jumping on the wrong detail - don't focus on CableCARDs literally, but as as an existing niche of modular components designed to translate signals to home video equipment. It would be foolhardy to ignore Bob's thought just because it would be realized as tru2way hardware instead of CableCARD.

A long time ago (in Internet time), didn't you tell us about all those Google server boxes that could get dropped everywhere? How much of the United States, or even the world, would be covered if those boxes suddenly sprouted a WiMax antenna that could broadcast to a relatively cheap antenna on your house, office, or even RV? Would all of this video traffic be able to bypass the telecomms, cable companies and other ISP's and go directly to the comsumer? Hmmmmm. When did you say that big spectrum sale was going to be? And what are the companies that for some reason have accumulated a whole lot of cash in the last few years? This could be fun.

I wonder if the fabled H.264 Hardware Decoder will make its debut on the MBA?

I'm surprised that PBS employes a writer that has claimed a Ph.D., and a professorship from Stanford when in fact he has neither.

Well, the P in PBS does stand for Public...

MBA: We've been waiting for something lite like the MBA for two years now! The President of the company has gone through three Tough Books at $2500.00 each and $550.00 a pop when they are spilled on or dropped. Back then we were all PC's, now we are four times the size and all Mac, utilizing Citrix via WinBloze Servers. (If there was some way I could get rid of the Win2003 servers, Citrix and Exchange I would, but we'll probably have to wait a few more years for Apple to hit the Enterprise markets hard enough and with the focused passion they are hitting Consumers with now).

So the MBA is perfect for the Exec who want a lite machine for traveling and they will gobble them up. (Execs still like to spend a lot of money on their toys and can even in this economy). Then they will get a 24" iMac as their desktop, if they don't already have a Mac desktop. So that's enterprise.

AppleTV: The new AppleTV kills Netflix, Blockbuster, possibly UnBox and all the other online competitors in one blow because it takes advantage of impulse buying... You're at home, on a friday or saturday night and a movie idea pops into your head and starts to nag at you... and you're watching it in about a couple minutes. Everyone I know, including myself, with a Netflix subscription has had the same dam movie checked out for over a year and can never seem to get around to watching it. It's almost like a certain kind of mental paralysis when you think of popping it in. You just can't do it. And you can't send it back because you haven't watched it yet!!! You also don't have to trek down to the local store only to become disappointed when that movie you wanted has only one copy available and it's been check out either five minutes before you got there or since last summer and it's never been replaced.

The AppleTV phenomenon is already starting... I know someone who works at one of the bigger Apple Stores and they started moving AppleTV's the day of the keynote in anticipation of the new software. And there's a huge niche of non-Apple people ready to dive in at that price point, 230.00, and when they see how simple it is, a Mac, an iPhone and an iPod are not far behind.

Time Capsule: Ah, the second biggest annoyance about PCs other than getting a damn virus, trojan horse, spyware, keylogger or malicious cookies (and then spend forever cleaning it or paying some store to do it for you) is the fact that something happens to the HD or the operating system and you've lost everything. How many times have I heard this!!! Well, this is not only going to sell a tone of Time Capsules, it's going to create a ton more switches. Trust me. Because the other thing is, Time Capsule just naturally becomes the music, video and probably household security server that everyone has ever desired when you think about it. (It captures video from your video surveilance system, controls your X10 devices, talks to your alarm systems, etc). So when OS X 10.6 comes out and you start calling it HAL because of all the cool AI and voice recognition you can remember what I said and when I said it.

Last but not least, the real reason for Apple's stock drop is something very scary to even contemplate. Steve has never looked worse. He was death warmed over at best and had to literally pull his pants up four times that I could count because he was so skinny. He also made some key mistakes when reading numbers off the prompter so his eyesight may be affected and although he was very pumped and I do feel it was one of the greatest keynotes in recent memory, in my humble opinion, he didn't care enough or wasn't alert enough as in the past to correct himself on these gaffs.

I pray that this is not that case and that he has not had any kind of recurrence of cancer or anything new because when you think about it, this single individual is driving such an amalgam of disparate industries, many of which have nothing to do with computers or phones or iPods but are all affected because of the style and aesthetics that he decides... I mean... it's true that Bill Gates and Michael Dell only know what's going on in the world, not after CES, but after Steve's keynote at MacWorld.

All I can say is, Live Long and Prosper, Steve Jobs...

Frankly, my favorite part about these MacWorld stories is watching all the little drones continue to call Bill Gates Satan and Windows the worst thing since the Ebola Virus.

Note to the 'faithful': Are your little worlds so damn fragile that you can't write a single paragraph about Apple without pissing on yourselves to downplay the dominant OS in the world? I'm a big fan of the Mac, used it for years on projects and plan on buying one this year, but only if you can promise me I won't turn into one of these smug, 'you just don't get it, do you?' types for whom the damn box is a religion.

IT'S JUST A COMPUTER - GET OVER IT!!!

Apple has clearly aimed the Air at the class of executives who can override some long-standing IT objections: Not only to supporting Macs, but many IT departments have been extremely anti-wireless too.

This makes it a much underrated strategic product.

If I wanted to give our security officer a fit, all I'd have to do would be plug in a wireless router somewhere. . .

Robert Pitera,

First comes right, then comes wrong, and finally, far beyond wrong in the distance, is your statement "IT'S JUST A COMPUTER - GET OVER IT!!!" As someone who has used and owned many Apple products for many years I can assure you "it" is more than "just a computer". I can also assure you that, should you buy a Mac per your plan, you sir have no chance to "turn into one of these smug, 'you just don't get it, do you? types". No chance, no way. Go ahead and purchase that Apple box and I'll go change my pants.

Hi Bob, whats your take on Sun's acquisition of MySQL?

I knew something was missing....

The MacMini is basically a Laptop sans Keyboard and Display. I was kinda expecting that along with a lightweight Macbook, the Mini would get reved also.

I'm wondering of someone couldn't modify one of those keyboard-monitor combos used in server rooms that fold down and slide into the racks. Have a mac laptop for less than $1000.

People use keyboards and mice with the Apple TV, but it won't work out of the box, you need to hack it.

You can install a full Mac OS X on the thing, but you have to replace the kernel because Mac OS will refuse to run on this hardware with the stock kernel. The process requires removing the hard disk and having access to a regular Mac.

You can install Linux (possibly even Windows) on this thing, but it won't boot with a stock Linux kernel IIRC. So you can't just stick a hard drive in a Linux box, install Linux on it, then stick it in this thing.

I believe there are patches to the stock Apple TV core which will enable booting from an external USB disk. Whether they work depends on which side of the Apple-Hacker see-saw is up.

New AIRYMAC is definitely cool

The Apple site headline says, "The world's thinnest notebook. MacBook Air" and "Thinnovation". The device weighs 3 lbs, which compares favorably to the Lenovo ThinkPad X61 at 2.7 lbs. The MacBook Air has a 13.3" display, the X61 12.1". 1.2" of additional screen space seems worth 4.8 oz to me, but perhaps not to someone who has to run through an airport.
Now back to thin. Thin is different from light which is the more important figure of merit in a laptop. I understand why cell phones need to be thin. My iPhone fits conveniently in my shirt or jeans pocket because it is thin, but we do not put laptops in our pockets. Who will ever want or need to put their laptop in a manila envelope? Beyond somewhere between 1" and 3/4", thin offers no benefits but it has steep costs. The MacBook Air gives up an ethernet port, battery life, and replaceable batteries for the sake of "Thinnovation". We will find out what it gives up in maintainability and accessibility when pictures of it's guts are posted. Besides the useless ability of a computer to fit in a manilla envelope, a thin computer fits more easily in a brief case or the seat pocket on an airline. If you want a MacBook Air, but balk at the cost, I suggest that you book a seat in the back of business class and look for one that someone has left behind for you as you exit.
Steve Jobs is a genius at marketing. I do not claim to be. I don't know whether the MacBook Air will be a market success. What I know is that if it is a success, people who say that people who buy Apple stuff against their interests because of the "cool factor" will be proven right.
I agree completely about a Mac tablet. I want one even if Gates claims ownership of the idea.
I completely disagree about Apple TV. It is an out and out screw up. Apple should have announced a 1080p version, because that is what people like me with $299 or $229 to spend on it are waiting for. Apple is spread too thin. They can’t fix bugs in the iPhone and 10.5, update the mini and Apple TV when they fritter away their resources on Thinnovation.

Just a thought -- would people wishing to upgrade their SOE by buying Apple notebooks be putting on Airs?

Bob,

After rereading your column, a good guess is that Apple will update the mac mini this year in a smaller form factor with the hdmi video out that will connect to your nice living room tv. With wireless mouse and keyboard and optical dvd drive. The perfect way to order pizza while watching tv

Bob,

After rereading your column, a good guess is that Apple will update the mac mini this year in a smaller form factor with the hdmi video out that will connect to your nice living room tv. Something that could sell millions of units. With wireless mouse and keyboard and optical dvd drive. The perfect way to order pizza while watching tv

Bob,

After rereading your column, a good guess is that Apple will update the mac mini this year in a smaller form factor with the hdmi video out that will connect to your nice living room tv. Something that could sell millions of units. With wireless mouse and keyboard and optical dvd drive. The perfect way to order pizza while watching tv

What I expect (at some future date), and what I want, is a keyboard based on Apple's iPhone/iPod Touch "Touch" technology.

Approximately the size of an Apple Pro keyboard, it would have a smooth unbroken surface that is user programmable to display any keyboard layout (qwerty, dvorak, whatever) in any language a user needs. The numeric keypad could be programmed to appear on either side of the main keys (depending whether one is right or left handed), or appear as a screen proportional Touch Pad area. The Touch Pad area (or entire keyboard) could also be programmed to function as a "graphics tablet" (with an optional "pen") for graphics pros.

If one was available for $200 to $400, I'd buy one right now.

The MBA has a removable media option: a USB flash drive. Jobs doesn't need to rail on the issue any more because it's not an issue. Any computer with USB port now has at least one removable option.

The MBA has a removable media option: a USB flash drive. Jobs doesn't need to rail on the issue any more because it's not an issue. Any computer with a USB port now has at least that as a removable media option, and it happens to be the most popular option at the moment.

Re Jon & a smooth touch keyboard a la iPhone:

Look up the company Fingerworks which was mysteriously bought several years ago, most reports say by Apple. They produced exactly what you're asking for, at about the same price.

Even better, the keyboard recognized a *huge* variety of gestures, and the completely smooth surface on which the key outlines were laid also doubled as the mouse track pad. They had some brilliant processing in it that figured out immediately whether you were dragging your fingers for a mouse move or typing, so accidental input errors were almost non existent.

The gestures on the iPhone and MBA just scratch the surface of what it could do. They had 1-, 2-, 3-, and 4-finger gestures, rotationals, splaying fingers quickly or drawing them together, vertical & horizontal moves, etc. The mappings were very intuitive also, to all the usual features of scrolling, highlighting, copying, pasting, zooming, rotating, closing windows, etc. Very efficient.

I got to try one out and was very impressed. Also, the surface didn't have that friction-drag or the need to press on it like a regular mouse pad has. So it was much easier to do the gestures than on a higher friction trackpad. Your fingers just glided over it. You could even actually use it with your finger hovering off by a miniscule amount. Yet still no accidental inputs. You could rest your hands on it when not doing anything and it would correctly generate no input.

Very programmable, with all the key and gestures available to be remapped. Last I heard before they were bought, they were making a drop in replacement for the keyboards in Mac laptops. It's sorry to see it essentially get squashed, and Apple only allowing a fraction of its potential to make it out. If Apple doesn't want to release it mainstream, which is understandable, at least they could release it as an accessory or license it and let someone else take the risk. Fingerworks was starting to get a good reputation.

The MacBook Air is one of the most useful products that Apple has released in years for the laptop-lover crowd. The last times I have used my DVD drive on my PowerBook have been when grabbing a friend's CD and importing it to iTunes. As Bob mentions, that competes directly with the iTunes Store so Apple wants to discourage that. Not having a replaceable battery is truly a bummer but there's always an external battery pack which is more or less the same weight as the extra battery you were going to carry anyway. Not compromising on the screen size was also a good decision, since it's a real pain to work with multiple windows when you don't have enough space.

It's good that Apple went back to designing great computers. Unless the MBA suffers from quality issues, it will at least add more luster to the Apple name within corporations.

Hi, Bob.
Instead of smaller in the future, why not bigger? Under the extra width of a 17-18" screen you could fit a number pad and an optical drive.
Lou