With Macworld 2008 wrapping up, I thought I’d touch on some of the announcements made this year. I took the week off hoping to go to Macworld again this year but no such luck. Somethings came up, good stuff which I’ll touch base with in a future post, so I couldn’t make it this year. So like millions of other geeks, I loaded up my browser tabs with as much coverage as I could. Which didn’t go as well as planned. Iphonealley’s Ustream didn’t work out, Twitter buckled under the pressure and even Engadget had its share of hiccups. Macrumors was once again the winner with up to the minute coverage.

Macbook Air

Lets start with the biggest announcement, the Macbook Air. New ultra-portable laptop that falls in between a Macbook and a Macbook Pro. Well, first off, I’m sure it’s a gorgeous piece of hardware (I haven’t seen one up close yet) but I’m just not the target market for this product. If maybe I had a Mac Pro or even an iMac as my main computer, the MBA would be a nice on the go laptop but thats not the case. So I’m going to pass on this one.

Time Capsule

Now something that is right up my alley is the new Time Capsule. Since upgrading to Leopard I haven’t had a backup. Superduper isn’t compatible with Leopard yet and my only external drive is a 120GB WD Passport that’s too small for Time Machine to work. I’ve wanted an Apple Airport Extreme for sometime now but never made a move due to have a rev 1 Macbook which didn’t include 802.11n. I’ll probably opt for the 500GB one as I only have my Macbook to back up and 500GB should be plenty. As soon as they are available, I’ll be picking one up.

Apple TV and Movie Rentals

While iTunes movie rentals is no big surprise, the fact they have all major studios on board and HD movies was. I’m all for renting movies and I think Apple will do fairly well. Unfortunately I think only the people with AppleTV’s will really use this. Watching a movie on my iPhone or iPod just doesn’t appeal to me. When I had my AppleTV i loved it. The only reason I sold it was my HDTV died and I wasn’t planning on getting another one right away. I think once I get another HDTV, I’ll pick up a AppleTV again. The software update was nice and the ability to run without the need for a computer is epic.

All the rest

It seemed to be very quiet otherwise at Macworld this year. The iPhone update nice but expected. I would have liked to see something about the iPhone SDK that’s being released next month. Eye-Fi announced iPhoto support. Too bad my camera uses XD cards. Office 2008 was released which is finally a Universal Binary. I installed it this morning and its a nice upgrade to 2004. Other than that, I didn’t hear anything else that really caught my attention, well except a rumor than Panic is working on blogging software!

I rely heavily on RSS feeds to get my daily fix of news. As you can see above, I don’t read a ridiculous amount of feeds but enough to keep me busy most of the day. One of the problems I’m starting to notice is that I’m spending a lot of time online just to keep up. I’m not sure how other people use RSS but i read everything that comes in. Maybe not “read” it all but definitely skim over the article. In the last 30 days, I’ve read over 24,000 articles. Thats a lot of reading and a lot of time invested to not fall behind. This reared its ugly head during my trip to Macworld this year. The internet at the hotel was so bad it was just about unusable unless it was early in the morning. So while I tried to keep up on stuff, I fell behind to the tune of about 3,000 unread items by the time I got home. It took me hours to just get through everything and catch up.

I’m finding I want to be doing more stuff on and off the computer but feel tied to my RSS reader. Catch up on podcasts, blog, World of Warcraft, watch TV shows, Netflix, workout, play my Xbox 360 and Nintendo DS, photography etc. I work nights so my time is split up between before work and after so I can’t just do a lot of stuff.

I’ve been bouncing around news readers for awhile, Bloglines, Newsgator, NetNewsWire, endo, NewsFire, Google Reader to name a few in the past months. I’ve settled on Google Reader due to its web interface so I can access my feeds from both home and work. It’s missing some nice features of desktop clients but its ability to be “everywhere once” outweighs everything else. One feature I missed was Dinosaurs in NetNewsWire. Basically It showed outdated feeds that haven’t updated in awhile.

Enter Google Reader Trends.

It shows statistics based on your feeds. This includes what your reading, what your starring and what your sharing along with subscription based stats such as frequently read and inactive. Inactive is what I’ve been missing. It shows me the Top 10, 20 and 40 feeds that haven’t been updated.

So starting today I’m going to “trim the fat” as they say. I’m going to start deleting feeds that I don’t really need or want to keep up on. This should help me feel less tied down and hopefully free up some more time do so other things. I’m also going to start using the Sharing feature in Google Reader to share what I find interesting. You can see my Shared page at http://www.google.com/reader/shared/17007536064916393533. You can even subscribe to it to keep up to date.

My current OPML file is up on Share your OPLM if you’re interested in what feeds i read. This is the original file I will be trimming. I’ll post my new file when I’m finished.

Flickr Set

The taping was awesome. Kevin and Alex got a couch from god knows where somehow and snuck in beers so it felt like a real diggnation taping. They tossed out T-shirts, which I didn’t get any and lighters, which I didn’t get any.

The video of its up for members right now and should be on iTunes in a couple days. Got to see the video and you can catch me during the beginning pan of the audience.

the8thsign represent

Video I took of the Apple iPhone on display at macworld

I got the chance to see Kevin Smith at Macworld this year which was definitely one of the highlights of the week. Kevin did his standard Q and A for about an hour and a half and I was lucky enough to be pretty close to him. Maybe in the 6th or 7th row. I’m just pissed I didn’t get any pictures.

I even brought my Green Arrow #1 for him to sign but the asshole I am, I left it in the hotel when we left. Damn it.

The Q&A was great, with some awkward moments when fans were trying to be witty with him and it back fired. If anyone else was there, just remember the big snake, little snake thing.

I “think” he’s suppose to be at the NY ComicCon next month also. If so I’m going to try and catch him and get my Green Arrow #1 signed. Its now my mission in life.

What did I think?

Apple TV
I’ve been waiting for this. I like what they did and will probably pick one up but its definitely not the perfect device. I don’t want to move all my movies into iTunes. I keep everything on a separate drive and you cannot stream from a folder.

The interface is slick and it can sync with iTunes just like a iPod so you don’t have to keep your computer running. I’m probably going to pick one up anyways since I get all my TV Shows from iTunes and its convenient but I’ll probably find another device down the road to replace it.

iPhone
This thing is amazing. I’ve said it before that when Apple drops there phone I would be be first in line to buy one. After all is said and done, I’m probably not going to get one.

Reasons:
1) Cingular. I’m a T-mobile customer.
2) Price. $599 is kinda steep tho I do think its worth every cent.
3) I’ve fallen in love with my Blackberry’s push email from work and I’m not sure if the iPhone can do that.
4) Doubt its going to work with the Nike+iPod kit.

June is along time away, half a year. As more details get announced, I’ll weigh in on my choice.

In other news, if Apple released a 120G touch widescreen iPod, that I will buy.

Apple AirPort Extreme
Nice, real nice. I want one but kinda pricy and my Macbook doesn’t have N in it.

Disappointed
After dropping a bombshell like the iPhone I still felt a little disappointed with the keynote. Why?

No new iPod, no Leopard and no iLife ’07.

I was actually looking forward to new Leopard details, maybe even a release date and what’s new in iLife ’07. I’m really hoping they overhaul iPhoto.

My guess is all that stuff will be announced soon and wasn’t at Macworld do to the iPhone stealing everyones thunder.

This time tomorrow I’ll be on a plane headed to San Francisco for Macworld. This is my first trip anywhere and my first time flying, so I’m excited. Right now I’m packing and trying to get all my ducks in a row.

My planned itinerary is:

Sunday – settle in then grab a bite to eat.

Monday – free day that I want to do some site seeing

Tuesday – going to follow the keynote online then head to the exhibit hall for 11am. Kevin Smith at 2p, Macbreak at 6pm then Macbreak Get Together at 7pm

Wednesday – exhibit hall at 10am, diggnation at 4pm then Macworld Party at 9pm

Thursday – expo at 10am and Capcom Lost Planet release party at 8pm

Friday – expo at 10am and rest of the day free for whatever. plane leaves at 10:30pm

Saturday – back home

If anyone is going and would like to meet up or just lives out there and knows some good places to eat or hang out. Feel free to contact me.

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