Rab’s World

OKay..the news has just been spilled by the man himself, Steve Jobs. The Apple Store website has been updated.

Let’s see how well John Gruber & I (only because his analysis matched mine closely!) did with the ‘predictions’.

Well my POWNCE tells all but let’s do bullet points.

• New Sub-Notebook MacBook: We said ‘YES’ Steve said ‘YES’

- MacBook Air - “The World’s Thinnest Notebook” * Standard config - 2GB RAM - 80 GB HD .11n Wi-Fi; Bluetooth 2.1 1.67 GHZ Intel Core Special Core 2 Duo Processor! 1 USB 2.0 port, Micro-DVI, Audio Out. No optical drive! * * * * * * * * http://tiny.cc/MacBookAir

• Tablet touch Screen: We said ‘No’ Steve said ‘No’
- Anyway..isn’t MicroSoft & it’s PC Hardware cohorts clouding up the market with THEIR warped version of this?? “Anything you can do, I can do better!” quote from the Annie play is not applied here at this time.

• Wireless Time Machine Backups: We said ‘YES’ Steve said ‘YES’
- Time Capsule, a full Airport Extreme base station with 802.11n wireless HD back up capabilities!

• iTunes Movie Rentals: We said ‘YES’ Steve said ‘YES’
- This was well-known because the Movie companies started blabbing about their ‘Digital moves’.
- Touchstone, Mirimax, MGM, Lionsgate, Newline, Fox, WB, Disney, Paramount, Universal & Sony are all on board.

• Apple TV 2.0: We said ‘YES’ Steve said ‘YES’
- It has a new name! It’s almost a play on what Steve really wanted but it just didn’t come out right last year. The name is Apple TV Take 2. Note..this is a software update. No new hardware. So my personal prediction of a fully operational Apple DVR is still vapor.
Points +++ You can now rent movies directly on the Apple TV in your choice of DVD quality or HD + dolby 5.1 surround sound. Podcasts are available in audio and video format, as well as photos from Flikr and .Mac and sync with iTunes. Plus! Price drop for 40 GB drive - $229 USD. 160GB (the way 2 go! is $329 USD. I expect this product to evolve quite rapidly in the next 12 months!

DRM-Free iTunes Plus Music From the Other Major Music Labels: We said ‘No’ Steve said ‘No’
- I work in the Music industry. I know the Big Wigs are forming like Voltron to turn Apple on it’s head with this one. After all; it was Steve ‘da guru’ Jobs who fired the 1st corporate anti-DRM salvo to the world.

New iPhone Hardware: We said ‘No’ Steve said ‘No’
- America (USA) [both consumer and service provider] are not ready for 3G possibilities. greed blinds them infectiously! I never agreed with John about an announcement for a 16GB iPhone. FLash is soooo expensive @ those capacities

iPhone SDK News: We said ‘No’ Steve said ‘No’
Just like John stated and said..we know the SDK is coming. Gruber was on point about the demoing of some of the third party apps.

Cinema Displays With Better Resolution, Brighter Screens, and Built-In Cameras: John said ‘YES’ Steve said ‘YES’
- I said ‘No’. The cost to manufacture respectable displays price-wise must come down.

Re-vamped AirPort Express: I said ‘Yes’ Steve said ‘No’
- Not on Gruber’s list but been in my Tech Talk for a while. This is the main reason why I won’t go to 802.11n wireless network. I would have to ‘x’ out my Express to realize the bandwidth of an ‘n’ network