Ahh, MacWorld Keynote Day! It’s like a second X-Mas, except at this one Santa sends me an invoice for all the toys he left under the tree. Bittersweet, to be sure, but a wonderful and exciting time to see the latest in Mac Goodness.
Except this year, I didn’t.
Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone looks fantastic (I was literally quivering with delight as I read Engadget’s play-by-play coverage), and the Apple TV, while not my cup of tea, also looks like a very slick product.
But come on, the whole keynote was spent talking about a product that we already knew existed (and pretty much what it would do – HD and iTunes support was a given, all that was left was a bit of confusion over the connection with the Mac and its support for other formats, as well as the nitty gritty of how it looks/acts), and a product that won’t ship until June.
To add insult to injury, NEITHER of these products are Macintoshes. They’re in the same consumer electronics category as the iPod (which Steve, for the past couple years, has made a point of NOT covering in detail, since it’s MACworld expo, not APPLEworld expo). In fact, both products fully support PCs as well as Macs.
And sure, the MacBooks were recently updated to the Core 2 Duo processors, but the Mini and iMac haven’t seen an update since September, and the Mac Pro hasn’t ever been updated since it was released in August. Where’s my new hardware? I can get a Dell with faster processors than are on any of the Macs (even four more cores on a workstation class dualie). And say what you will about anodized aluminum, but I can’t help but feel a bit bored with Apple’s pro enclosures. Nope, I was waiting the whole time for a “one more thing” revealing an eight-core Mac Pro.
Furthemore, iSights are unavailable, but Apple’s displays don’t have a camera in them. iLife and iWork still say ‘06, which makes them start sounding a bit (dare I say) Microsofty. (Word 2004? That’s so Web-1.0-era!) And don’t even get me started on how badly .Mac needs an update to justify its ludicrous price!
Do I want an iPhone? Yes, desperately. But it’s not a Mac product. Neither is an iTV. Heck, if they’d thrown in a pity demo of Leopard, I’d feel better about it, but as it is, I can’t help but feel that just as Apple Computers became just Apple today, the Mac officially got its keynote hijacked to push Just Apple’s new products.