Apple keynote impressions

I'm very desapointed about the keynote.
I'm waiting the new IMAC Quad with 28" screen.
I boght an EeePC 1000H notebook , the 17'' MacBook Pro is too expensive.

Apple make a mistake with this soo expensive laptop.

 

I'll be better able to judge after Monday. I'm attending an inservice at the county office of ed by one of the apple people that used to work for the district. He's our go to guru on all things Apple and gives us the straight stuff on what's hot and what's not.

 

The things I'm waiting on Apple for are:

1. A home media server, which I hoped they'd announce at MacWorld.
2. A revamped Apple TV with app store, and maybe games.

A new Mac Mini is also mildly interesting to me, but nothing I'd swoon too much over.

A concur with everyone. This year's MacWorld was a big letdown.

On a side note, I think it's a horrible idea to abandon MacWorld. Sure, Apple has gotten bigger, but even Microsoft attended the CES trade show this year.

MacWorld was one of the biggest ways Apple generated anticipation and excitement over new product launches. I loved to tune into the live blog feeds on Engadget to see what they announced.

 

To me this sounds like Apple is anticipating that software-based
DRM is a doomed, unsustainable approach and is making a last-
ditch effort to squeeze a little more money out of it before
free "un-DRM your music" warez are circulating widely. And I'm
sure they will if they're not already.
.
That whole "itunes store" thing is a shuck. First thing I did
with iTunes was turn all that "check for this and that and the
other automatically and phone home to Apple" crap.
.
_H*

 

I find it amazing that people even use the iTunes store at all when Amazon has a MP3 store that offers roughly the same selection (with exceptions on both sides), higher sound quality, non-protected MP3 files, and with a downloader that works on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

With all of that, what's the point from buying from iTunes at all?

 

Amazon's downloader is clumsy. You buy a file from the website, then a file dialog pops up and you have to click "Open" (heaven forbid you click "Save"), before it downloads to a directory. If using iTunes, you'd then have to manually add that song to your library somehow or another, and I don't think you'd have things like album art automatically.

The iTunes store is more sophisticated and easy to use, for example, iTunes lets you purchase songs and listen to thirty second clips directly from the list of results returned by your search (Amazon makes you visit the product page of an individual album or song).

iTunes has historically been about convenience over quality (though that's changing with iTunes plus). It's great to be able to download a song from iTunes, have it automatically show up in your library/sync with your iPod, etc.

With iPhone's and iPod Touches, you can even download songs directly onto the device and have them sync to your library the next time you hook it up to your computer. Then there are applications like Shazam and Pandora that let you identify and later download those songs from iTunes, etc.

The Amazon store doesn't really interest me at all for music. Apple understands the process, capabilities and ease-of-use of the music store so much better.

 

not having a new mac mini, with a better video card and/or 802.11n was a big let down. i believe it costs like $250 or something right now to get a draft 802.11n card inside the mini from a third party. and the gma950 video isn't fully supported as a 3d card in vmware fusion, so enabling it is causing my windows 7 install to crash, windows is running fine with acceleration enabled in fusion, but doing anything, like playing full screen video causes it to crash

ilife sounds good. it will have digital video stabilization for imovie, to stabilize your home videos. garage band will come with guitar lessons more or less. amazon is taking pre-orders for ilife 09, but they say it wont ship till the end of feb

 

It doesn't seem like you've used Amazon's webstore at all.

• You can, in fact, preview items without having to go to the item's product page.
• The downloader does integrate downloads into your iTunes, Amarok, WMP, whathaveyou media player.
• While Apple may have a slicker interface, Amazon understands how to keep customers happy. That's why they've been DRM-free from day one (kudos to Apple for getting there, jeers to Apple for charging extra to 'unlock' your property). Amazon has also been high quality from day one, and Apple has yet to make that jump.
  
  
  

 

Nah, I've used it a few times, but not much (I abandoned it because I found it to feel clunky).

I did play around a bit more to see where I was wrong, and as you pointed out, in some circumstances you can listen to previews as part of a list of results, just not if you do an "All Amazon" search from the home page (or when clicking through some categories, as it turns out), which was all I tried to do before.

The automatic integration with iTunes is a plus I didn't know about, too.

That said, in my poking around, I tried previewing a song and Flash hung trying to load the clip. I tried to download a song and IE 7's file download warning popped up, requiring me click a few times before downloading, then a final dialog popped up asking if I wanted to "Open" "Save" or "Cancel" (you have to read instructions to figure out you're supposed to click "Open").

I don't find the Amazon store very usable in the least.

With the iTunes Store, it's all about Grandma-friendly ease of use and convenience.

I think I mentioned this before, but there's also a lot of application support built up around iTunes. I have Pandora internet radio and Shazam song recognition software on my iPhone, and both programs let me buy a song I heard from the iTunes Store with a single touch.

Actually, iTunes Plus (the DRM free music) is also higher quality. I checked the Amazon vs. iTunes Plus downloads and the bitrate was 239 vs. 256 kbps respectively.

Something I will give the Amazon store, however, is that I think the competition they provided was the catalyst for the recent iTunes Store changes.

Competition is good.

 

eagle, I think you're mostly right, but I'd claim Apple wasn't especially motivated to shake DRM until Amazon came around. I mean, I know Jobs wrote letters on the topic in the past, but at the same time it's nice if you own the world's largest music store while manufacturing the only MP3 players that can play the downloads.

 

Weird, but then, I don't use IE7 so things just happen automagically.

Altho, back when I had my Mac (they good old days of the G4), I always found the iTunes store to be clunky in the extreme. Lots of clicking and going into subcategories, not to mention huge downloads everytime I was required to update the client.

Of course, I'm sure having a 60MB download (plus whatever crap our overlor---Apple) requires these days is infinitely preferable to just a simple browser + small helper application.

 

I use the iTunes Store to download free podcasts of my favorite radio programs. It all happens without my doing anything after I subscribe to the show. Once in a while (as needed) I connect my iPod, delete the shows I've listened to, and load the new ones. There's lots of free content on the iTunes Store, and I appreciate Apple for providing this. The same content is available elsewhere (e.g. on the web sites of the individual programs) but Apple provides it in one place, all automatically.

I buy content from The Teaching Company and audio books from Audible. I have bought a couple of albums from iTunes, but I hardly ever buy music downloads.