News Apple limps away from MacWorld

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2009/01/07/apple-limps-away-from-macworld/1

Apple's last MacWorld keynote was frankly full of disappointments and no shows - the most interesting news came from outside the keynote arena.

 

It was pretty dull.

"Look - new features 8D!"

 

I guess people use their laptops differently. I've had my laptop 3-4 years now, and the battery has been fixed in there the whole time, except for just after I bought it (I was being nosy). If I could get 40% more life or whatever Apple claim, that would be a brilliant trade-off for me. On the other hand, if you need your laptop for watching DVDs working on transatlantic flights, I can imagine that having a non-replaceable battery might irritate. I reckon the biggest problem is that you can't change RAM/hard drive as easily as on other models. That's a shame for sure.

Presumably it's not that hard to crack the case open and replace the battery anyway? Perhaps for the average user, but I doubt that will affect too many people reading this.

 

I can see GPS-enabled cameras (finally) taking off this year.

 

I can't believe they charge 50$ extra for the matte finish. I mean you're already paying a lot for the computer... Isn't the base model 2800$?

 

I do love Apple pricing schemes.

"Bend over the table, sir/madam."

 

My phone camera does that already.

 

Well, I have 17" MBP and use it fairly hard. Tethered shooting, on location review with clients, rough editing for placement to name a few. And then I am occasionally out of touch with a power socket for a few days, and need my MBP to upload images. So I routinely swap batteries. The loss of FW800 as stock (15") and an encased battery are a shame, it's 2 of the reasons I like my MBP.

 

Lol.. 8Gbs DDR3 = 1,200$ upgrade. Wow.

Anyone got screen caps of the hacked feed? Sounds much more entertaining than the keynote.

You'd have thought Apple would go down with a bang instead of a whimper.



And although I agree that most people don't remove their laptop batteries, the Pro line is aimed at professionals, and that means they generally use their laptops a LOT and most carry 1 or 2 spare batteries so as to be able to continuously work even in the event they can't get to a wall socket for a day or two.

 

I've got a fair few cycling programs that use it to upload photos from my route to google.

 

Yep agreeing with the last 2 posters. The 17" is a big seller to Pros who will pay a premium for the best for their job. Having to pay for a matte screen, no FW and the lack of a removable battery kills off so many decent points. Fail!

edit; Doug!! I'm agreeing with JJ and Darklord

 

Actually if you look at Dell new Latitude series 8 GB of RAM option is about the same price (DDR2 (latitude E6500, E6400 and E6400ATG) or DDR3 (latitude E4300, and E4200).

What I don't' get is many people from comments on other site that does this Apple coverage are impressed by the 8 hours. For less expensive, my laptop (Dell latitude E6400) which has 4GB of RAM, Quadro NVS 160M, 5200RPM HDD, Intel wireless N 5100, Vista 64-bit with Aero and transparency, ... has 9 hours of battery life surfing the web (get SSD HDD and apparently you can pass the 9 hours). 8 hours and half at worst, 3 hours and half playing Crysis. The is, of course with the 9-cell battery. And a second battery (12-cell) could be added at the bottom (like a plateau of the size of the machine) for a claimed 19-21 hours of battery life. And its not like you have less features with that laptop. You have a metal alloy base and screen cover lid, ambient light sensor, backlit keyboard, normal Display port, VGA, eSATA, power a device using the specific USB while the machine is off, 4 USB, two mouse setup, anti-glare screen, MINIMUM 3 year warranty with a guy that comes to your place when you what, at the time you want. The one thing I can think off that is not there is the as small PSU and even higher resolution... but it's 17inch than the Dell is a 14inch one. Anyway, my point is that such laptop is just moved away on news, and leave more room to show the less impressive Apple machine. Again, I am talking about in general.

 

Given that this was Schiller's first go at doing a whole keynote - and the first for a very long time with no Steve - I can see the wisdom of giving Schiller a comparatively dull set of products to deliver. It was a soft intro, and all the focus is on the dull (but worthy) updates to the software, not that "ah, Steve would have been so much better."

Plus, had Apple shown off anything amazing, surely questions would have been asked about why it was quitting MacWorld.

 

That laugh was hard to stifle at work.

 

Apple is pretty dull, in other news, the sun will come up tomorrow.

 

I didn't manage to stifle mine, burst out laughing

 

Rather disapointing tbh. Been waiting to see apple update their mac mini for a while now. Now I have to decide do I carry on waiting or get a pc.

 

What, you don't think 1.8Ghz Core2, 1Gb RAM, and an 80Gbs HD is worth 600$?

 

Indeed.

"The MacBook Pro comes in at one price point - expensive."