Miscellaneous Thoughts on MacWorld Expo

Posted on January 15, 2008 by Bruce Keener

Well, I wasn’t there, so I cannot add anything first-hand, but I watched the “live coverage” at the TechCrunch and the MacWorld sites.

One thing that really impressed me about the event is the impact it had on the internet. It brought Twitter to its knees. And, Engadget’s live coverage went down on two of its servers … Engadget actually has several servers, but two of them were brought down by the volume of traffic to their site. That is absolutely amazing. It certainly did not happen with the CES event, despite the enormous amount of coverage it got. I suspect most of you were like me about CES: it brought a yawn, but little else.

Frankly, I thought today’s Expo turned out pretty well. I know a lot of us were hoping for a Mac Tablet or PDA, but Apple released some good additions to its product line today. I think the Macbook Air will be a huge success. I have no need of one, but I can see it would be great for travel.

I think the Apple TV news was great. Nothing I can use just yet because I still do not have an HDTV. My view on that is that the TV I have works fine, and I think it would be a waste of money to upgrade without a decent reason. I’m the same way about my car: it’s 12 years old, but it serves me fine, so getting a new one would just be a waste of money.

But, the dropping prices of HDTVs and the Apple TV attractiveness could make me rethink my TV situation. If I could cut cable back to its most basic package, and make up for it with goodness from Apple TV, perhaps it would be worth the cost. I’ll have to think it through. Right now TV sucks so bad that I have already cut my cable package back from the $110/month package to the $50/month package, all with no real loss of anything worth watching.

Anyway, I thought Apple made another good showing today. Those of you who have iPhones or a Touch certainly have some nice new capabilities.

Let’s hear your thoughts.

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  • Capo

    I was kind of miffed that the iPhone updates are free but the iTouch package is $20. I don’t understand the reasoning behind that disparity. The Air is a slick little package, though the lack of an optical drive would be an annoyance for me. Before I got my current laptop I had a very small, light Dell – obviously not as slick as the Air, but same idea – with an external CD/DVD drive. It was a nuisance. The rest of it – movie rentals and such are probably bigger news for others – I’m not much of a movie buff. The best thing to me is just seeing Apple constantly pushing the technology further. They’re a lot of fun to watch. Jobs is a salesman par excellence, a rock star. I can’t imagine Apple flying on long without him.

  • http://www.keenerliving.com/ Bruce

    Good points, Capo. Yeah I think a lot of folk, me included, are scratching their heads regarding the iPhone and iTouch costing disparity. Makes no sense to me.

    Like you, I love seeing Apple just continuing to push the envelope, and agree totally that jobs is the best talent on the planet to do the pushing. If the guy writes a book, I’ll be the first to buy it.

  • Thomas R. Hall

    I’m still holding out for the iNewton or whatever the Apple PDA will be called. Glad to see the Touch get some parity with the iPhone. Those missing features were really arbitrary, so it’s good they are there now.

  • http://www.keenerliving.com/ Bruce

    Agreed, Thomas. I am holding down on my technology purchases, but if there is an iNewton, I will have one.