Back to Macs

After my brief dalliance with financial commentary it's back to Macs - yesterday was the annual Macworld keynote speech by Steve Jobs.

Some can be letdowns and some can be exciting. This year's seemed to be somewhere in the middle.

Apple seems to be more and more about strategy rather than just releasing cool boxes and software to run on them. The original iPod turned into a major industry irritating the music labels to the point that they've dropped DRM (and they were the only ones to want it) just as a way to spite Apple (which may have very little effect anyway). The Apple TV is turning into something that may be the future of video viewing - or maybe not. Either way, Blue Ray or HD DVD may not necessarily be the future of HD viewing in our homes or on the road.

The big new items from Macworld were movie rentals through iTunes (from all the major studios), the iPhone update (heavily leaked earlier), the Time Capsule (an Airport base station with a hard drive you can back up to), and the MacBook Air.

The MacBook Air looks delicious although it's bigger that I would have thought - pretty much the same depth and width as my existing MacBook but much, much thinner. If you were to look at it entirely on specifications you'd probably buy a MacBook Pro or even a MacBook but if you travel a lot, have another Mac you'll be keeping, and if you just want a simple life - the MacBook Air looks ideal. It'll certain make most Mac users think about buying it.

As a person who troubleshoots Macs for a job, and a person who only has a laptop, there are a number of issues with troubleshooting. It has no optical drive (barring major software updates I've barely used mine in the last year but I did need it when I did) and no Firewire ports (invaluable in helping a sad Mac by booting from a Firewire hard drive).

Despite working in an office full of Macs, if I was to buy the Air I would need to buy the external optical drive. The Macs in my office don't have wifi (yes, they are that old) so I'd want to be able to fix my own Mac in an emergency.

I wonder if the Air can actually boot from that optical drive (if so, that would be new on Macs)?

The Air also suffers from only one USB port. If you charge an iPod, then you can't plug in a camera to take photos off it or anything else for that matter. A simple life is required - or an equally sexy USB hub.

The announcement of the Time Capsule seems to go hand in hand with the Air - a great wireless backup option (Time Machine isn't nearly as convenient for laptop users) although being able to boot from the Time Capsule would be a revelation as you may not be able to boot from anything else in an emergency.

The hard drive in the Air is smallish though (and slow) and as we transfer more of our lives into these machines, I'm seeing an increasing need for a "server" of a sort. Time Capsule may be that (can you partition it so one could be a simple drive and one could be dedicated to Time Machine itself?).

One day I can see that there may be a need to have an iTunes for Macs (no, not for music ON Macs - for the whole Macs). On an iPod that won't fit my music collection (it's not a big collection I've got to admit) I make playlists so I can sync a subset of my library to the iPod so it will fit. I can see the need (and am already archiving stuff off from my existing laptop) to do that on laptops.

Whether the Time Capsule can act as that server or maybe a souped up MacMini could play the role is another question. An ideal world would have a "headless" MacMini (with a huge hard drive) that you could netboot (via wifi) off - now that would be cool. I want that extra storage (and ability to install software) but don't want to buy a keyboard, mouse and screen just for a few occasions - that, and I don't have the space for it.

The iPhone update is a great improvement although, like the update to the iPod Touch, could be seen as delivering what should have been on the iPhone already (texting more than one person at a time is hardly revolutionary). It is good though and the iPhone is still proving a temptation even though I'm in the harder to sell to UK market. Maybe when there's 3G or a newer model?

The movie rentals in iTunes is fundamentally a good idea - and definitely a challenge to the new HD formats and the declining world of shop-front video stores. I can't help thinking it may have arrived too early though. The questions are: how big are the movies to download (especially the HD versions) and how long will the average user take to download them? If they are as enormous as I would expect (especially with the HD versions), it could take hours (if not the whole day) on many DSL connections to download a full movie.

When you normally rent a movie you tend to do it in an opportunist way (go to video store - choose one you think won't bore you to death - go home and watch) - you don't want to have to set the download going and watch it tomorrow. Most people aren't going to get instant satisfaction and they tend to like that.

Who knows how it will go and how will this go in international markets? It takes long enough to get licensing sorted out in the UK (which shares the same movie companies and is a big market that doesn't need language customisation) let alone smaller markets that tend to come at the end of a long slow Apple delivery line (like my native NZ or places with different languages).

It may take a few more years for that to be viable. Then again, Apple always has had an eye on the future.