[Macworld]

Post your comments for PC World: Some things weren't in the air at Expo here

[hgwells]

And no new DISPLAYS!!!!

[hgwells]

And no new DISPLAYS!!

[roscoe]

no new upgradable tower to slot in between the imac and the pro. when will it ever happen?

[dfs]

I couldn't agree more. Come on, Apple, the world has passed you by. It's not so much that your current displays are old and tired as that over the past couple of years the cost of manufacturing LCD panels has gone down dramatically, and you've failed to pass on the cost savings to the consumer. Nowadays somebody can buy equally good monitors from a number of other manufacturers (Dell comes to mind) for a lot less. To stay in the game you need monitors with more pizzazz (maybe glossy screens) or you need deep, deep price cuts. Actually, you need both.

[bcode]

Excellent article. Love the NAS/Jay-Z bit, hilarious!

[DisabledTrucker]

There was something in the air alright, the smell of the Apple rotting on the tree this go round. All that money they made last year and this is all they could come up with for the Expo? Maybe they are trying to keep their good stuff closer to the chest this year, and release it later in the year.
I was kinda hoping for some sort of an announcement of a plug-in system for iMovie and Front Row and some sort of serious contender for competition to the Windows Home Server. Granted Apple released the 1TB router but, that's not the same thing as it was designed to work with Time Machine backups and not to serve anything. They also released an update to Apple TV which can serve media as well but, it's a no go with all the limitations in it, such as the tiny 160 GB HDD and no way to add more to it.
With the ability to put a Solid State Drive inside a notebook as small as the Macbook Air and there still is only a 16GB limitation to the iPod Touch, there has to be something up there, other than the cost of those drives. Still they could have put an 80GB+ SATA drive in there since they are using one in the Air that size. At least then it would be something worthy of it's widescreen display.
Okay so Apple made a 'blockbuster' hit with it's release of the HD rentals, but to limit them only to the Apple TV and only movies and that just killed it's 'blockbuster' status.
My Mini craves an Apple monitor, yet at the prices of those monitors, it will never happen. Why would I pay twice as much for the same monitor at Samsung? Even Samsung has upgraded their models since the Apple ones have been released and with Apple making laptops now with LED's where's the ones for the desktops too?
I'm grateful my XBOX-360 webcam works with my Mini too but, I'd love to have a Firewire capable one specifically for it instead. Also, where's a full sized wireless keyboard with trackpad for it?
Going back to Front Row, why isn't it also connected to iTunes where we can rent or purchase movies or music on our Macs? Why doesn't it have TV tuner capability in it? Where one can just plug in our Elgato Hybrid tuner and use it through Front Row, if Apple's not interested in doing it, then why not at least a widget system or some other form of plug-in system where one can create such a thing? Adding Skype functionality to it as well would also be a plus.
Speaking of the Macbook Air, where's the 'Touch'? I would have suspected that more than another laptop, if you can even call it that, since it doesn't have an optical drive nor a decent set of inputs on it. I can see maybe some businesses and schools liking those Airs so that they can give them to their employees and students and not have to worry as much about them loading stuff on it, although with a USB plug and Wi-Fi, it's still possible for that to happen as well but, easier to control. Outside of that, I really don't see them being used much with all it's limitations.

[rnb2]

Some good points, but far too many where the author doesn't seem to have thought things through at all.
Air with 3G/WiMax - this would involve forcing a contract on the purchaser, and the most obvious source (AT&T) doesn't have the most extensive 3G network around. A USB 3G dongle from any provider can do the trick, and leaves it in the hands of the consumer who needs it.
160GB 1.8" drive - from what I've seen, the 2nd platter may make this too thick for the Air.
Higher capacity Touch/iPhone - while a 16GB iPhone wouldn't have been a huge surprise, speculation about 64GB in the Touch or iPhone is just ridiculous. In the previous paragraph, the author talks about the prohibitive cost of the 64GB SSD for the Air, then acts like it's even feasible to put it in products that retail at $299-399. Even 32GB would push the price up too much right now.
Feature comparison of MB/MBP to Air - completely specious, as notebooks are always compromises, subnotebooks even more so. Everybody knows that the Air would lose a normal feature comparison with the MB/MBP, as its most important feature is the 2+ pounds you're not carrying. If weight means more to you than a FireWire port (and I love FireWire, and would miss my FW CF reader), the Air wins the feature comparison. Also, while this machine isn't really meant for heavy media editing, most of the current hard drive/flash-based camcorders use USB, not FireWire.
I'm not saying that the Air will be a smash success, but I think far too many people are making silly arguments against it because it only hits 90% of what they would have wanted.

[phoenixbwp]

Thank you for a better opinion on the Air than everybody else.

People, you need to look at Apple's current offering up against what else is out there.

Firewire has lost ground in Camcorders, so has MiniDV tapes vs. hard drives/Flash drives.
The Original iMac; No floppy and built-in CRT, Now All-in-One up to 24" LCD.
MacBook Air; no optical drive, USB, BlueTooth & 802.11ABGN.
iPhone/iPod Touch; Smallest computers out there.

Now if you want something better than the MacBook Air, then get Axiotron's Modbook; the first and only tablet Mac computer. http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/modbook

Apple could have bought them out, but the did not. And Axiotron is now a Proprietary Solution Provider! :) Apple did not make a Tablet Computer, and didn't want to buy into that idea, yet, so here is another offering. Also, the ModBook can be configured with a second hard drive, which replaces the optical drive, but it has FireWire 400 & Gigabit Ethernet.

Now, did anyone remember the feature set of Leopard? And of the old AirPort Extreme Base Station?
You should be up in arms with that first. Time Machine & AirPort Disk. Now there is a NAS for us; Time Capsule.

I don't have an AEBS, so I can't stand in the line for complaints. I would stand in line for complaints, that Time Capsule should have come out with Leopard. The chatter about Time Machine not working with AirPort Disk was not loud enough. It was heard, and now you have to pay for it. Just like having the iPod Touch...

For me, I am in "The Dark Ages", iBook G4, iMac G5 & 5.5G iPod, both running Leopard, and very well, with no upgrade glitches. The only things that I need to buy, is a 6G iPod, as the Movie rentals won't work on 5/5.5G's; and Time Capsule, which would free up my 500GB MyBook for video editing.

Use the tools as you see fit after they hit the store shelves. Petition, not complain, for new features. And most importantly; Apple secretly is working on tech and making deals that benefit them first, and then you. You have better ideas? Build it yourself. An SDK is coming next, will you still be complaining???

[booga]

I wish journalists would stop using the phrase "HD downloads" for a service that is most definitely not HD. Yes, it uses the same codec as HD media and outputs to the same output standard (in this case 720p), but the compression is so high and the bitrate so low that it doesn't offer the same fidelity as an up-converted DVD, let alone an HD disc of any kind.
Basically, Apple is offering their "YouTube"-quality and their "DVD"-quality, but no HD quality-- they just didn't name things that way.
(It's worse than the folks that claim HD DVD is as good quality as Blu-Ray just because they use the same codec-- but Blu-Ray offers up to 30% higher bitrates, which means 30% less compression and that much clearer a picture, especially in the action and motion shots. The codec doesn't matter anymore-- it's all about bitrate.)

[Spark]

rnb2 poster above mirrored my thoughts when he(she?) stated, "Feature comparison of MB/MBP to Air - completely specious, as notebooks are always compromises, subnotebooks even more so. Everybody knows that the Air would lose a normal feature comparison with the MB/MBP, as its most important feature is the 2+ pounds you're not carrying."
I don't understand why writers so obstinately ignore the market niche for which the MB Air was created. They seem purposely dense. Smaller, thinner, lighter are attributes that are valued on anything carried by a person. With the MB Air their is tradeoff in power, storage, peripherals for the physical improvements. But in this niche of ultra-portable laptops there always is. Why flame MB Air for having "only" a 1.8 GHz max Core 2 Duo processor when other's in this category max out at 1.2 GHz. Writers, please take off you blinders. Set aside your disappointment that another earthshattering product wasn't unveiled at MacWorld this year, and write objectively about the products that that were introduced.

[maint1]

A mid tower: ain't gonna happen.

Apple seems to be moving all of it's non-pro business to a reconfigured laptop format and that's the antithesis of a tower.

Case in Point:

imac: the world's biggest tablet macbook (touch sensitive screen forthcoming, probably)
mscmini: pint-sized macbook

Laptops have a better price/product ratio. And it allows you to compute on the couch, take it in the kitchen, to work....

Even though I only use laptops, I'd like a mini Pro because it'd make a good media server.

[monte]

One correction though: until we get new laptops out of Cupertino,
the MacBook can be configured with a 250GB hard drive if it is
ordered directly from the Apple Store website.

[DisabledTrucker]

You want me to start on the Time Capsule? Okay, if I had instead purchased 2 newer iMacs with the 1TB drives in it, (or upgraded my 250GB drives to them,) what's going to hold the second drive as both fill up? Another Time Capsule? Doesn't that just defeat the purpose of having them as routers too? Or is Steve seriously thinking I need a wireless router with each of my iMacs I have in the house now? I know of people who have 3 of the new iMacs with 1TB drives in them, how's this going to help them at all, especially when they too already purchased the Airport Extreme "n" router with the disk sharing and already have a RAID5 array waiting to use Time Machine with it? Not to mention those that have aTV's in hopes that we can get a home server soon so we can serve all our media needs throughout our homes. Does he seriously think that 160GB is plenty of room to hold our growing media libraries? Where are we going to store all those movie downloads he thinks we're going to purchase from iTunes, let alone our huge music and photo libraries? Our iMacs with 1TB drives in them? Get real, Steve, I have that much alone in just photos after copying all my pre-digital pictures into it, let alone room for music, not to mention all the video's I've already either converted or created myself, which by themselves take up 2TB and am working on the third, and I'm still not done converting all my VHS tapes yet, let alone my DVD collection. I am desperately in need of a Media Server, I don't want to give Microsoft my money, I want one which "just works" with my house full of Apples! aTV would be fine if I had a way to serve all that media to it, outside of using my Macs to do it, of course you'll have to uncripple the aTV first so that when I purchase a title, I can save it to the Media Server instead of just the aTV and be able to access it from any device I connect to it, not just the aTV. If I purchase a title from the aTV and want to use it on an iPod according to your license, I cannot transfer it to it, so what good is it? Why can't I purchase/rent an HD title from the iMac where I can use it in my bedroom now that I have no room for a TV? Why do I need to clutter up my desk space that I don't have for another device to do what my iMac is fully capable otherwise of doing? Even my Mini is more powerful than the aTV and you really expect me to go out and purchase a less capable device to do what I've already set my Mini up to do? You would have been better served by just adding the capabilities of the aTV to Front Row and releasing a Media Server instead. You could have made it as thin as what, 2 inches and 14 inches wide to hold 4 full 3.5 inch hard drives in it, made it accessible so one could replace the drives and given them RAID5 capability then added in the server to that if you wanted to, then you'd have had something worth showing at the EXPO. Okay so it would have been twice as wide as the aTV is now, at least it would have been useful and made a great platform for the Mini or aTV to sit upon, if you insist on keeping it. Is it the extra inch in size of the aTV that allows you to do 802.11n in it? Then why not increase the size of the Mini to do it as well? Hey you may even be able to include an extra HDD in it too at the same time.

You think too that the mini DVI is the wave of the future, okay so remove the DVI plug from everything, include a mini DVI to DVI adapter with all the units and put two of the mini DVI plugs on the back of everything and a HDMI plug instead, had you done this with the Mini, you'd have had room enough to add the extra antennas in it for the 802.11n capability as well as enough room left over for the addition of firewire 800 as well as an extra 400. Are you going to use the same processor you have in the Air in the next Mini? That would surely save room on the motherboard that you can now use to put those features as well as a better graphics chip in it, not to mention hopefully make it cooler. Oh, that's right you'll have to actually develop a new motherboard instead of using a generic one already create for this but, didn't you do that anyways to create the Mini to start with? If you make them ejectable and when people decide that SSD drives are cheap enough for them, they'll be able to upgrade to those drives when they are ready. Surely it can't be too hard to develop an eject similar to that of the express card for a 2.5 inch hard drive or two? For that matter why not also include an express card slot into the Mini instead of a second drive and still make the drive ejectable? So when I feel that 160GB is too small I can upgrade to a 500GB HDD instead. So your looking to kill the optical drive, if you do it in something like this it will at least need some way I can do more with it instead and an express card slot would be a reasonable swap for the optical drive in one. At least then I could pop my wireless services card into it and pop it into my vehicle and use it there too.

I see you updating the Mac lineup this year to make them thinner too, with the use of LED based displays and all, why not also add a way to exchange HDD's as well with a proprietary release system to eject them? Surely you can do this too while saving space, at least 2 if not 4 HDD's removable would help to ease the pains of not having a Mini Pro. With all that space under the monitor, surely there should be enough room to do it there, having them eject from each side. Sure a lot of people wont ever use them but, a lot will too. With the size your saving on the shrinking of the motherboard, surely there's enough room in those 20 and 24 inch models to add this one feature to it. I can even conceive 4 of them ejecting out of the top of it using SATA and having RAID5 ability built in. This would surely ease the pains of not having a Mini Pro or Media Server at least somewhat, and you can keep the rest as it is, a great compromise, just think of the money you'll make by the people who'll purchase the units with 4 - 1TB drives in it? That combined with Intel's new Quad-Core 45 nm processor and nVidia's 8800 series graphics would be a killer system to own once you also add the new Blu-Ray drive to it as well. Gotta have some way to get updates to the new Air and other devices your going to pull the optical drive out of, may as well have a way to watch those DVD's and hopefully burn to optical media for backups as well, as it will still take companies a while to start embracing using USB keys to load their wares onto it for purchases, instead of the cheaper optical media.