So after yesterday’s asstabulous keynote from Apple, iWork ‘09 hit the web faster than you can say “Hack the Planet!” If you’d like to score a copy of the office productivity suite for yourself, simply fire up your favorite Bit Torrent client and grab the torrent off, oh let’s see, pretty much any torrent site on the ‘net and you’re good to go. Unless you plan on buying a new 17-inch Macbook Pro, this is as good as Macworld gets.
Macworld begins today with a keynote from Apple. Steve Jobs won’t be coming and the Apple Store is down, so I’m curious to see what will come out of today. Look for our coverage after 1PM EST.
Just about every major news outlet is reporting that Steve Jobs will not be speaking at the Macworld Keynote in January. Apple has also gone on record to state that 2009 will be the last year it will present at Macworld. Huge news; so huge that Apple’s stock is taking a huge beating while rumors of Jobs’ health swirl about. I hope Apple knows what it’s doing. Perhaps a new event is on the horizon?
With the outrageous hype over the iPhone when it was first announced at Macworld, there was bound to be some negative feedback ricocheted after testing went under way. A source over at Cingular who was assigned to test out the iPhone before the product was cleared for the floor is rumored to have opened his mouth to a few choice people about the dark side of the iPhone. The results of these tests were not too good. In fact, they sucked.
“He says the amateur mistake that they made is not having a removable battery,� Dvorak said. “You run 20 minutes and you’re using up half the battery power. You get 40 minutes total talk time. And the interface fouls up constantly.�
Should Apple pull the plug on the iPhone until they get the damn thing right? We think that might be a good idea. iPhone or not, if the phone is shit, it won’t help having an Apple-ish name. — Andrew Dobrow
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Saturday Night Live rip-off sketch comedy troupe, MadTV, produced a parody last night of Steve Jobs’ Keynote Speech at Macworld. The thought of mixing politics with our precious gadgets enrages us, but the subject note was just too damn funny to resist. But if Jobs doesn’t stop feeding the iRack, it’s going to blow! And like other leaders, he refuses to let go and stop throwing money at the lost cause which is the iRack. Note: This is not a personal reflection of our own political views. Though, we would have loved to have seen some Jobsism’s thrown in. — Andrew Dobrow
So there’re 2 iPhones spinning around in the glassboxes like snow-white, there’s probably one being held by Steve Jobs. Is that it? We rarely see hands-on pictures with the iPhone, we know that there was a preview a few weeks ago but no pictures were taken (for obvious reasons), and even when reporters requested to have the babies brought out of the shrine this week, they’re often rejected. The reason being there’re simply not enough iPhones around to show everybody individually. However we believe that there may be more than 4 working iPhones on the showfloor, because accidentally one of the iPhones in the glassboxes were receiving emails from Greg Joswiak’s yahoo account. We cannot tell you the exact addy here, but by looking at the suffix number 4 with this email opened-just-for-demo, the guys at ITmedia are postulating that there might be at least 4 running iPhones on the showfloor. If you want hands-on, all you need to do is to neg the right person. For those who are attending the show, give that a try. — Sam Chan
iPhone at MacWorld [ITmedia]
9:06- There is constant alternative pop music playing. Gnarls Barkley, Beck, Gorillaz, Sheryl Crow. The usual.
9:07- Booming voice, this baby is starting… or just telling us that we should turn off our cellphones.
9:10- No luck with wireless network signal.
9:13- I Feel Good by James Brown. It’s possible someone will have a seizure from all of these flashes. Lights dimming. One minute.
9:15- And it begins. Talking about switching to Intel microprocessors. Planned in 12 months, completed in 7.
9:17- Over half of sold Macs are going to new Mac users. Some small jabs at Microsoft. New Vista ad. Pretty funny, speaking of death because of switching to Vista. “If I don’t come back, you can have my peripherals.”
9:18- Shuffle = World’s most wearable mp3 player
9:19- Sold over 2.0 Billion songs on iTunes. Refutes reports of iTunes sales slowing. Over 5 Million songs per day = 58 songs per second. 5th largest reseller of music, passed Amazon in music sales.
9:21- 50 Million TV shows sold. 1.3 Million movies sold. Paramount is now iTunes partner for movie sales.
9:23- Trash talking the Zune. Effect of Zune going up in smoke. New iPod ad. Reverse of previous ads. Colored figures, on black background. Very simple, just as captivating as before. To be running shortly.
9:26- New iTV. Now called Apple TV. New way to enjoy media on big screen TV. iTunes to Mac to iPod to TV via Apple TV. Power connector, USB 2, ethernet, wi-fi, hdmi or component for analog. Up to 720p video, with 40GB hard drive, 802.11 b+g+n standards, with Intel processor. Auto sync videos from your Mac to your Apple TV (sort of like smart playlists). Streamable from up to 5 computers (not stored on hard drive). Very nice screensaver effects. Looking at menu. All media (ie podcasts, music, videos, shows). Showing The Good Sheperd trailer (don’t go see the movie, not good at all). Zoolander, pre-walkoff confrontation. Showing Heroes (gamblers get killed by Jessica while playing with Hiro Nakamura). Calling the Apple TV an iTV by accident, no problem, he apologized before hand. Playing music (John Mayer, Daughters). Shows album covers during playback. Photos: very nice auto-slideshows with panning and zooming already done for you. Very simple connecting to nearby Macs, you can watch what is on the other computers remotely. Streaming content. $299. Shipping in February.
9:40- Getting inspirational here. Going over Mac history. Something big is coming NOW. Widescreen iPod with touch controls. New mobile phone. New internet communicator. One device. Only one device. iPhone!!! It’s now! It will be a smart phone. He doesn’t really like smartphones right now. Brand new UI, it will be an interplay of software and hardware. Problem with current phones is the keypad (bottom 40% of phones nowadays). The buttons and controls cannot change. No stylus, only fingers. Multi-touch, new technology. Multi-fingered commands. iPhone runs OS X, why? Because it already has everything that we need. It will sync with iTunes, PC, and Mac with a nice little dock. Music AudioBooks, Podcasts, Movies, TV Shows, Music Videos, Contacts, Calendars, Photos, Notes, Bookmarks, Email accounts. 3.5 inch screen 160ppi, only one button = the home button. Super thin. 11.6mm. Thinner than all other smartphones. 2.0 megapixel camera built in. Headphone jack, SIM card, and Sleep/Wake buttons on top. Speaker, Microphone, an 30 pin iPod connector on bottom. Proximity sensor senses when you bring it closer to your face (it turns off inputs when it’s against your face). Ambient light sensor to match backlight. Accelerometer to know when switched from portrait to landscape. “You can touch your music”. Widescreen video & Cover flow. During demo, it looks like it’s on Cingular. Amazing UI. Completely new. You can literally throw your finger up to scroll and it’s just super intuitive. Looks like he has TONS of media on it. Videos look beautiful. “You had me at scrolling.”
10:01- Moving away from iPod capabilities. Going to the cellphone features. The killer app is making calls. Visual voicemail = you can choose what messages you want to listen to. Quad band DSM + EDGE, WiFi and Bluetooth 2.0. Very simple interface, just like iPod. Switching between multiple calls at once is super easy, and he just made a conference call with a push of a button. SMS texting, you can have multiple sessions at once. He’s actually typing, talk about risky, but that’s what he’s all about. Photo aspect: simple scrolling and easy slideshows. Nice little bounce effect, automatically senses your orientation and resizes photos to match. Amazing touch controls with zooming. Everything is just outstanding.
10:15- Internet capabilities. Rich HTML email (any IMAP or POP3 email service). Safari web browser (WHY???). First fully usable HTML browser on a phone. Fully integrated Google Maps. Widgets. WiFi and EDGE access. Highlighting Yahoo! mail (IMAP), they have over a quarter billion users. Free “push” IMAP email to all iPhone customers. You can call directly from a web page, integration to the max, people! Real email just as we are used to. Now we get Safari. Shows the entire website, then you can just view it in landscape or portrait as you want, simple zooming through pinching touch effects. Multiple webpages in one session. Al Gore’s An Inconvinient Truth is #1 Amazon seller. Very nice webpage switcher (though multiple sessions). Stock information straight through widgets (looking as nice as on a Mac). Weather widgets, it’s 49 degrees right now. Warmer in Paris tonight than it is here right now. Raining in Hawaii. Now we see Google Maps. Perfect images. Shows where the nearest Starbucks is (or any store for that matter). You can call them from Google Maps. He ordered 4000 lattes for us, oh wait, he said wrong number… Dang. Great zooming with satellite images just like Google Maps on your computer. Wonderful zooming depth. Google and Yahoo! Searches integration as well.
10:30- Dr. Eric Schmidt (Google CEO) comes on stage. He wants to make Applgoo. Get it? If not, its not my problem. Just talking about basics of integration and information technology stuff. Not news.
10:35- Jerry Yang (Co Founder and Chief Yahoo!) comes to stage after Schmidt. Same stuff as Schmidt, reaffirming what Steve Jobs has presented.
10:40- Put it all together in one big presentation, he played Red Hot Chilli Peppers, answered a call, then send a picture to the guy he was talking to, then looked at Fandango.com and checked out movies while talking to the man on the other end, they agreed on a movie, he ended the call, and RHCP faded back in. Simple, amazing.
10:42- New stereo headphones with a mic and switch built into them (like a headpiece for phones). Bluetooth accessory, looks like one little ear piece of iPod headphones. Very small, like the Jawbone. Battery life = 5hours of talking and videos. 16 hours of audio playback. Beginning to wrap up. 200+ patents for inventions on this iPhone. “The ultimate digital device.” Pricing? Come on Steve, tell us! Comparing other prices of other smartphones. 4GB = $499, 8GB = $599. Shipping in June. Europe in Q4 2007. Asia in 2008. Cingular is official partner. Only partner, it’s exclusive. Will be sold in Cingular and Apple stores.
10:50- Stan Sigman (Cingular CEO) comes to stage. Talking about the new AT&T family with Cingular. Now he’s just promoting Cingular, we’ve heard it all before. He is bringing down this speech. Get him off the stage. Ok, he’s done.
10:55- The clicker isn’t working. Wow, he is a true speaker. He just went into a speech about the TV scrambler he made with Steve Wozniac. He wants 1% market share of 10M units in 2008. Mac, iPod, Apple TV, iPhone. All at the same keynote. New name. They are now called Apple Inc. No longer Apple Computers Inc. “I didn’t sleep a wink last night”. Neither did we, Steve.
11:00- John Mayer takes the stage!!!
– Nik Gomez
Stay tuned today for our special coverage of Macworld Conference & Expo, check out Gearfuse for live updates all day long.
Today was a big day in the technology world, for CES opened and product releases are rolling out. However, there is also another expo going on right now; Macworld opened today up in San Francisco. While Jobs’ keynote is scheduled for tomorrow at 9 AM Pacific time (be sure to tune in here for all the info), some companies decided to jump the gun a little and release their products today. Belkin was one of these such companies, and they unveiled the next accessory for an iPod. The Bluetooth Dock Adapter is actually a pretty neat, for you can attach your iPod to a wireless adapter, which will allow you to play your songs through a stereo dock. Now there are a lot of stereo docks for iPods, but not many have the capability to control your actual iPod (as opposed to a remote) away from the speakers. Now you don’t have to worry about having to figure out a new remote; you can feel all cozy inside when you get to use that special scroll-wheel you love so much. At $129.99 is a decent price for one of these ever-so-popular iPod docks, and the wireless capability makes it one of the cooler ones out there. — Nick Rice
We’ll be on the ground in San Francisco for this year’s Macworld Conference & Expo, so expect a full coverage of the show, keynote, and booth tours. Check out Gearfuse on Tuesday for a deluge of Apple related news including pictures and announcements of all the new gadgets and gizmos we can get our hands on. Live and up to the minute updates.
