Apple CEO Steve Jobs: The LIVE Blog From His Macworld Speech
This is the text of my live blog from the Steve Jobs speech at Macworld. It was fun to do and I hope you enjoy reading it for the first time, or re-reading it again.
10:35 AM PST: Outta here. No one more thing! We're setting up for our exclusive Steve Jobs interview. Stay tuned! We'll get his comments on the air as quickly as possible!
10:34 AM PST: Met Randy at Pixar, doing scores. He's the perfect person to introduce Apple's new iTunes movie rental service.
10: 30 AM PST: Is there a "one more thing?" Now is the time. Jobs recapping today's keynote now. All of this great stuff in the first two weeks of the year. And we have 50 weeks to go. No need for a DVD player, says Jobs. Introducing musical guest now: Randy Newman!!!!
10: 28: AM PST: Intel's Paul Otellini thanks Jobs (again) for letting Intel innovate with Apple.
10: 27 AM PST: No optical drive because Jobs says it's a wireless device. Music, movies, all downloaded wirelessly. No DVD player necessary.
10: 25 AM PST: MacBook Air will price at $1799 and ships in two weeks. Thinness: .76 inches thin. We're talking thin!
10: 23 AM PST: Otellini thanks Jobs for giving Intel the chance to innovate with Apple.
10: 18 AM PST: The Intel Core 2 Duo chip is 60 percent smaller than past versions. Intel CEO Paul Otellini now on stage.
10: 17 AM PST: How did we fit a Mac in here, he asks: 1.8 inch hard drives. The device will ship with 80 gig hard drive, or a 64 gig Flash. That's a surprise. It'll cost a bundle more to go flash. The device has an Intel Core 2 Duo chip, 1.6GHz standard with an option for 1.8GHz. The entire circuit board is smaller than the length of a pencil. Neat.
10:15 AM PST: Multi-touch gesture support too. Very cool. He's demo'ing the product now. But the demo is on tape. He's not doing it himself. Which makes me wonder why not? Is this actually ready for prime time or what? We'll see.
10:14 AM PST: Apple shares are starting to tick up now. Display is 13.3 inches, a back-lit, LED display. Built in iSight camera for video-conferencing. Full sized keyboard. Ambient light sensor so it's also back-lit. Very pretty.
10:12 AM PST: Unveiling it now to wild applause, inside an inter-office envelope. Oohs and awes. Wow. Paper thin. This is a beautiful product. Full sized keyboard and display.
10:12 AM PST: Thiness: MacBook Air will be .76 inches thin. We're talkin' thin here!
10:10 AM PST: The world's thinnest notebook. Compared to Sony's TZ notebook. O.8 inches to 1.2 inches, and weigh around 3 pound. 11 or 12 inch display. But they compromise: miniature keyboards and performance sacrifices because of heat and battery life.
10:09 AM PST: Gianopolus is done. Jobs is back: his last major announcement: there's something in the air, he says. Apple makes the best notebooks on the planet. These are the standards in the industry. Introducing the MacBook Air!
10:07 AM PST: Jim G. continues: "I think this will be a transformative version of the rental model and I'm very excited about it. We've been talking to Steve about DVDs too. Looks like next generation will be Blu-ray." He unveils a new digital DVD, Family Guy Star Wars spoof. You can instantly move the content to your iPod and iPhone. (Hysterical and a favorite in my house, by the way.)
10:05 AM PST: "Make great movies and give it to people in as many ways as you possibly can, says Gianopulos. Choice, access, convenience, control. So basic, even a studio guy can understand it." (Laughter).
"The Simpson Movie becomes available for rental tomorrow. When Steve came to us with this idea, it was a no-brainer."
