Neil’s Official Keynote Predictions

“Welcome to Macworld. We got a lot of great stuff to show you today.”

Steve gives an update on retail stores and revenue. He then goes on to talk about iPhone sales.

“Last year, I stood up here and introduced the iPhone. In less than six months we’ve sold over 5 million iPhones, and we’re well on track to exceed our goal of selling 10 million units by the end of 2008.”

Next he discusses iTunes and compares it to other stores that sell music on “physical CDs”.

“We think the iTunes Store is the best way to purchase your music. Not only can you get music on iTunes, but you can also purchase TV shows and movies. Today, I’m really pleased to announce our new partnership with Twentieth Century Fox, to bring over 100 new movies to the iTunes Store.”

“Our partership with Twentieth Century Fox extends beyond selling movies through the iTunes Store. Because of our new partnership, we’re introducing a new service today called iTunes Movie Rentals. This is a great way to rent movies, and we think our customers are really going to enjoy it.”

Steve explains how the rental system will work. You have 30 days to watch the movie, and can watch the movie 5 complete times. After 30 days, you have an option to purchase the movie.

“Another result of our partnership is what we call iTunes DVDs. Starting this year, every DVD you buy from Twentieth Century Fox can be viewed by iTunes, and if you want to put that movie on your iPod, iTunes can rip the movie right from the DVD, just like you can rip songs from a CD.”

Steve demonstrates this system with “Star Wars: Episode III”. He starts the process by entering a code that is provided inside the DVD box. This code is sent to the iTunes Store, and the transfer is attached to your iTunes account. The transfer only takes 2 minutes, so apparently there is a DRM’ed file already on the DVD ready for iTunes. The movie is complete with album art and everything expected for a movie from the iTunes Store.

“This whole process works in reverse too. Let’s say you download a movie from the iTunes Store, and you want to put that on a DVD. We’re going to let you burn DVDs of your favorite movies, up to 5 times per movie.”

Steve starts talking about iPhones again.

“We have some great new applications for the iPhone that take advantage of its touch interface. The first is called “Directory” and it combines white pages and yellow pages into a simple resource. As always, you can just tap the phone number and your iPhone will automatically call that number.”

“The second applications is called “Showtimes”. This application gives you the showtimes for almost any movie at almost every movie theater, using Fandango. I know this is one application I will use quite often.”

“The third applications is a called “To Do List”, and that is exactly what is sounds like. It’s a very simple list of things you have left to do, and it syncs right up with the To Do system in Leopard. If you add a To Do item on the iPhone, it will get loaded onto your computer the next time you sync. We’re also going to start syncing the Notes application with Leopard.”

“All three of these applications will be available today, as part of a software update, version 1.2. However, there’s one aspect of the iPhone that I’m really excited about. I’m talking about third party applications. It’s no secret that we want native third party applications on the iPhone, and I’ve already expressed that we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.”

“The big question is: How is this going to work? One of the great aspects of web apps was that you could just update the application on the server. With native applications there needs to be a way for applications to be updated automatically. So, we looked at what we’ve done with updating third-party content in the past, and we noticed that this is exactly what we do with podcasts. People can simply submit a URL to iTunes for their podcasts, and podcasts are automatically updated every time an iTunes user syncs their iPod. This is exactly what we’re going to do with applications.”

“But what if you think of an application, and there isn’t a computer with iTunes nearby? Turns out, we’ve already solved this problem too. We have the iTunes Wi-Fi Store right on your iPhone, and come February we’re going to add a new button on the bottom for applications.”

Steve demonstrates what accessing third party applications will be like, although there obviously aren’t any applications available yet.

“With all the new applications that are going to be coming out once we roll out the SDK in February, you’re going to need more storage on your iPhone. So, we thought we’d do our part and increase the storage of the iPhone to 16GB for the same $399. We’ve also managed to make the iPhone even thinner; it’s just 8mm thin.”

“When we decided to put Intel processors into our computers, we found that the performance was significantly better than what we had with PowerPC. Developers have been able to take advantage of this performance by writing apps that run natively on Intel processors. Today, Microsoft is releasing a completely native version of Office. It’s my pleasure to invite Craig Eisler, the general manager of the Macintosh Business Unit, on stage to say a few words about Office 2008 for the Mac.”

Craig Eisler takes the stage and briefly explains some of the new features of Office 2008. He says you can find it on store shelves starting today, and there will be demos available after the keynote.

Steve comes back on stage to wrap up the keynote, but accordingly states:

“But there is one more thing…”

“You know, we have a great line of computers, and there seems to be at least one computer for whatever you’re looking for. In terms of desktop computers, we have a computer for professionals with the Mac Pro, a computer for consumers with the iMac, and a miniscule computer with the Mac mini.”

“Portable computers also seem to follow this same pattern. We have a computer for professionals with the MacBook Pro, a computer for consumers with the MacBook, but what seems to be missing is this last category. Where is the miniscule computer in the portables category? It’s time we introduce a new portable Mac that is ever more portable than either the MacBook Pro or the MacBook. We are calling it the MacBook mini.”

The MacBook mini lacks a disc drive of any sort, and it has a 32GB SSD with a 64GB SSD option. Steve says the battery will last up to 15 hours.

“You’ll notice there isn’t any keyboard or mouse on this computer. This computer uses a multitouch display that works very similarly to the iPhone. Your finger controls the pointer right on the screen. The keyboard is very smart. Just rest your palms on the display and begin to type like you would on any physical keyboard, and the MacBook mini will automatically figure out what you’re typing and adjust the keyboard on the display to compensate.”

Steve wraps up the keynote, but there is a quiet update that can be seen online for the Cinema Displays. The newer Cinema Displays have a much higher resolution and a built-in iSight camera. The form of the display is otherwise identical to the original.

December 28, 2007 at 10:06 pm

4 Comments

“Just rest your palms on the display and begin to type like you would on any physical keyboard, and the MacBook mini will automatically figure out what you’re typing and adjust the keyboard on the display to compensate.” .. really hoping he would say that

Amu on January 6, 2008 at 5:16 am