Macworld Keynote Impressions and Disappointments
Steve has finished his keynote, and I can’t wait to get a chance to see it myself once it becomes available to the public. More importantly though are the actualy announcements that came from our favourite fruit company, as Forrest Gump so inappropriately labelled it.
When I was reading the live updates from the keynote I almost exploded!
However, after sitting back and letting everything sink in, a slightly dissatisfied feeling has started to get the best of me. How can I make such outrageous claims you may ask? The answer lies in my whereabouts. This was supposed to be Macworld, but in reality everything that was talked about was targeted specifically towards the US market.
The first real announcement was that Paramount will join the iTunes Movie Store. Great, except that the movie store is only open to US customers, so it really doesn’t mean anything to the rest of us. Hopefully soon Apple with get everything sorted out for opening up the possibility of buying movies (and hopefully TV-series as well) in the near future.
Next was the Apple TV. I was really excited about the prospect of this device, but now that it has gone public on Apple Store, not so much. The first thing that struck me was that not only will I have to put in the money for the aTV, but also a brand new router. Previously I had for some reason imagined that the aTV would accept the WiFi signals directly from my computer, so that was a bit of a let-down.
The second thing that bothers me is that I in reality won’t be able to play any of the movies and TV series I have on my computer due to the limited formats the aTV supports, and again, it becomes a problem that the iTunes Movie Store is only limited to US customers. So using the aTV for the purposes I was excited about becomes more of a hassle than anything.
And the third thing that cools down my excitement for the aTV is that I just realized my CoreDuo MacBook’s Airport Extreme card doesn’t support the wireless n standard, that is seemingly required to stream videos. I guess I will be sticking to good old fashion cables for a good while yet. I still love the idea of the Apple TV though, and hopefully some future revisions will make it more compelling to not only myself, but the rest of the world outside US as well. The ability to record TV programs would go a long way in doing that!
Now, on to the iPhone. It’s awesome. It rocks my socks off. It’s nothing short of amazing! But I doubt it will be of any use to me, or again, the rest of the world outside US. Apple seemed to focus a lot on the deal with Cingular, and some features like the improved visual voicemail and the lack of 3G support highlighted this. Hopefully Steve and his working-aunts are working on this, and perhaps they will announce something at their event in Paris later this year, so the rest of us can allow ourselves to be excited too.
As if this wasn’t enough, I was really looking forward to hearing about what everyone expected to hear about. Leopard and the ‘07 versions of the iLife and iWork suites, but alas, no word on any of those. Hopefully it won’t be long until they give us an updated look at Leopard (with a brand new GUI, I hope) and a final release date.
Right now however, I am a little disappointed with what came from the Keynote. It could be just me and the fact that I feel a little ignored, being a European and all. I would definately like to hear what the rest of you thought though, so feel free to post your own comments and have a go at me for my opinions, should you feel like it.