Dem Thomas sein Blog

…of course I had to write my first entry about the announcement made yesterday at WWDC.

I just watched the 2 hours long video stream and I bring you the following conclusions, which are final, wont ever change and are ultimate. (Get it?)

So what happened at the Keynote:

1. Laptops (Personally, for me, one of the best announcements of the keynote)

First of all the 13” Macbook (Pro). You just have to love the new price point and this one is for sure becoming Apple’s best selling laptop. For 200 bucks (Euros and Dollars) more than the white Macbook you get:

1. LED Screen (much nicer than the TFT one)
2. FireWire 800 (Fire Wire 400 became useless with the introduction of the unibody laptops anyway)
3. SD-Slot
4. the amazing looking metal enclosure
5. a slightly faster processor
6. the possibility to put 8 GB of ram into the machine
7. a longer lasting battery (yeah I know not removable, but at least I don’t care for that)

Another big one for my is the price slashing of the Macbook Air.

Starting with 1400 Euros, it got into a range where many more people (including me) will consider buying on of those light beauties. (Unfortunately it still, doesn’t have the black bezel, which I like allot in the Pro models). And freaking 1700 Euros for a quite fast processor and a SSD is just amazing.

The 15” Macbook Pros also got a little speed bump while also going down in prices. Or did it? Actually the now cheapest 15”er doesn’t have the second GPU. So that decrease in price is more cosmetic than anything else. Still all of the 15”er (as the 17”er as well) got a descent bump is speed and hard drive space, while keeping their original prices.

1. Snow Leopard

First of all 29 Dollars? Are they insane? (in a very good way). Probably not. They are just very smart. If you want your customers to upgrade to such a “customer feature low” OS, you need to keep the price low. I actually thought they would give it away for like 50 or 80 Dollars. But I guess the fact that the average costumer doesn’t have the pockets full of money anymore, made them come up with this very respectful price. (Maybe the low price point of Windows 7 did as well).

Feature-wise there isn’t much news. We all knew more or less, what was coming. The only two things that I am kinda disappointed about is the fact that there is no “marble” UI (at least they didn’t mention it, which I think they would have) and that ZFS is probably not customer ready yet. Hopefully this will find its way into the client version of 10.6 in some later release (I doubt it though).

All in all I’m of course getting me some Snow Leopard and hope that the tuning, they did will also make my almost 3 year old laptop a little faster again.

1. iPhone OS 3.0

Nothing new to see here…go along.

Little note to Apple though. I think we get the point of how amazing the new SDK is, when only 4 or 5 developers get on stage. NOT FREAKING 8!!!! Especially not when we have seen most of this already in march. But anyway.

Still can’t wait for this very release, which is also coming sooner than rather later. Which is always great.

Finally

1. iPhone 3 GS

Mhhhh. Not really what I expected. I mean the rumors were pretty correct, when it comes to the inside features like camera, processor, battery-life and so on. (Thanks Gruber for spoiling the keynote ) But everybody who hoped for a change in design must be quite disappointed. I know I am.

I wouldn’t have thought that Apple will release a new handheld device and not change the look of it at all. I guess they did it once with the iPod 4G, when it got the color screen. And if you really think about it, as well with the iPod classic (but for that doesn’t count).

Also I have to say I hate the name as well, but I guess they just want to be able to call the next one 4G out of several reasons. First of all the network. They probably want to name it 4G if they actually will use the next generation network in their phone. Secondly I a next generation iPhone will also take advantage the PA Semi chipsets, that Apple is working on. So then it would be a real next generation device.

All in all I have to be very pleased with the announcements that were made. My to favorite things I come out with are that Apple is adjusting their prices to a more consumer friendly level and that they were able to ship their new announced products immediately or at least within two weeks.  (You gotta hate these “available in two months” announcements)

I will still wait for the 4-core laptops to come along and then probably upgrade to these machines. Also because somehow my current laptop  (1st gen Macbook black) is still working very fine and in most cases I don’t see the actual need for a faster machine, especially with 10.6 around the corner. But we will see.

Ok that’s it for today.

See you later folks.

Yes, yes, yes.

I have not updated my blog in forever. So many things have happened. Barack Obama won the elections. A new year has begun (2009 for the ones who missed it). I finally finished school. Which all in all took me a little longer than I intended to, but at least I am now officially a Diplom-Politologe. Which does have somehow of a nice ring to it.

Oh yeah and very important…i updated my blog and lost all my data, while doing it. And you guys are asking, couldn’t you just have put your old post back on the “new” blog and keep on/start blogging again.

Yes I COULD have, but I decided not to. For the one or two people who are asking “Why not?” After reading my last entries and the looking at the time that passed by since then, I wanted to start an “All-New” Blog.

That’s what you are witnessing here right now. So hopefully you enjoy my attempts of bringing interesting thoughts on screen.

but what shall be my first topic……?