Thoughts on Macworld San Francisco 2005
This doesn’t look like anything so much as a new G4 Cube, only half the size and 75% cheaper. It’s pretty neat, mainly due to its size. Interesting that they’ve finally decided to enter the low-end (price-wise) PC market after staying out of it for so long. Hopefully it’ll pay off and we’ll see the size of the Mac installed base increase.
They made a strange choice of section headings on the Mac mini graphics page. Are those lines from something else originally or is Apple really quoting Front 242 on their web site?
Apple was obviously looking into releasing their own office suite when they released Keynote a while back. Now, with the announcement of Pages, they’re making a little more progress in this direction. I wonder if they think they’re sneaking up on Microsoft by releasing it piecemeal instead of one bundled application suite? Microsoft Office for OS X is still in active development, so it’s unlikely that MS will drop it the way they did IE when Safari was released. but I’m sure they’ll make threatening noises about it if it looks like Apple is working on an entire suite.
I’m surprised at the lack of Powerbook updates. Think Secret predicted that we’d see some. Nothing as dramatic as a G5 Powerbook yet, but a speed increase at the very least. So much for “confirmed”. Not a big deal though, I spent all my extra cash on that car last month so I’ve had to postpone my Powerbook purchase for a little while anyway.
Ok, I guess, if you’re in the market for a small MP3 player. What’s more interesting to me personally is that this would make a pretty good USB storage device. It’s got a built-in USB 2.0 plug in the bottom and can be used just like a flash drive, with the added bonus of being able to play music as well. On the down side, unlike a flash drive, it needs to be charged. It’s priced about the same as a comparable USB flash drive. My 1GB drive was $130 after a $30 rebate. The 1GB iPod shuffle is $150. Hmm. Anyone want to buy an almost-new Iomega flash drive?
Comments
saraicat
January 11, 2005
powerbooks could still be coming. sometimes they just don’t have things ready in time for macworld, and hardware is sometimes announced as soon as a few weeks later. I think that happened last year or the year before with an upgrade.
saraicat
January 11, 2005
also, I think “lock the target” is a term for getting something in your sights for the purpose of shooting it.
kchrist
January 11, 2005
Probably, but they’ve also got “spread the net” and “catch the man” in the sidebar. I googled a bit to see if it was originally taken from somewhere else, but all I found was Front 242 references.
saraicat
January 12, 2005
I didn’t see those. how odd.