Disclaimer: I wasn't there. I haven't seen the keynote yet. But I'm on the Net, I've seen Apple's spin on their site and may drive over to Moscone this afternoon for a peak. Here are some things I'm thinking:
If there's a MacBook, does that mean there will be a PCBook? When Palm announced the Treo700w, it implied a Treo700p. What does this imply. Mum's the word apparently about the possibilities of running Windows on this machine. I guess Steve decided that he wasn't going to waste a minute of his Keynote on Microsoft.
The MacBook Pro is the new desktop Mac. You don't think the PCBook is likely? OK. How about this? It replaces the PowerMac? Sounds like it is fast enough. I haven't seen a comparison to the Quad and I'm sure the MacBook wouldn't win that battle, but it might beat the run-of-the-mill G5 PowerMac that most creatives are using right now. Especially, if you put a build-to-order 100 gig 7200 mbps drive in it.
And for extra fun, how about driving a 30" Cinema HD Display with your Powerbook. I have a PowerMac and PowerBook. Maybe I can cut out the PowerMac next time around and put the money I save on the PowerMac into a 30" display. Wouldn't that be fun?
When you think of this just-as-big-as-before PowerBook called MacBook as a desktop replacement, the name makes sense and you aren't particularly disappointed that it hasn't gotten smaller. Most desktop replacement notebooks are 8-10 lbs.
There have been rumors of a 3 lb Powerbook. I say this MacBook all but confirms it. The new PowerBooks will be smaller. But, that doesn't mean I won't want both. I would love to have a go-anywhere Powerbook that rides lightly in a small pack. By the way, so far I haven't seen where all this low-power-Intel stuff has affected the new MacBook. Maybe that's in the Powerbook Mini or whatever it's going to be called. MacBook Mini?
This first one is the MacBook Pro. Pro suggests that Creatives can use this to run their Pro applications. Hmmm. Does that mean the iBook will become the MacBook without the Pro? Or, is the smaller MacBook (PowerBook) going to be cheaper, less feature-rich and slower.
Now I'm nitpicking, but what the frick happened to the FireWire 800 port? Boo! I like FireWire. I thought Apple was the leader of the computer industry. If so, lead! The only good implication is that they are saving bucks where they can so that they can more aggressively compete on price with PC-based products. It's also another indication of Apple melding their standards to be PC-compliant. Maybe putting a Firewire 800 port onto an intel motherboard was an extra engineering challenge they didn't have time for (still hoping).
Notice, by the way, that nothing got cheaper with the new Intel-based Macs. That's cuz the darned Intel chips are much more expensive than the slower PowerPC chips. The price of progress, I guess.
Congratulate me on my restraint. I haven't ordered a MacBook yet. I guess I should be asking for congratulations if I resist for the rest of this week but this is a start. My strong hesitation is that I don't know what will run really fast on this MacBook and what won't. All the talk that I've heard so far is about graphics rendering and floating point processing. What about the integer processing? Occasionally, that's needed too.
More to follow.
Technorati Tags: Apple, Intel, MacBook, Macintosh, PowerBook