Like every other Apple fanboy, of *course* I have to post my reactions to the MacWorld announcements…
iPhone updates: Firmware updates are welcome, but nothing earth-shattering.
AppleTV movie rentals: Potentially very cool… The price point is about even with going to a BlockBuster store without having to get off your ass. I will say though I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with Netflix’s flat monthly fee and huge selection.
Limited selection for TV is the reason I haven’t used my AppleTV much in months except for playing music in the living room… My shows are available on iTunes, but half of my lady’s aren’t, so we ended up getting cable.
If the selection’s decent and downloads actually *do* start “in seconds”, the new AppleTV software should be perfect for spur of the moment rentals, but if we’re already paying a flat fee for Netflix I don’t have much incentive to use it frequently… unless I have to see something *now* I can put it on my queue and wait.
I’m assuming of course that the software update will come for older AppleTV units…
MacBook AIR: A year or two ago this would have been the answer to my prayers — the fairly compact form factor of the MacBook, while thinner and lighter than my first love, the PowerBook G4 12″. I’m a bit leery of the lack of an optical drive and losing some of the wired ports, but it’d make a great travel / conference / meeting machine and everything but the FireWire can be replaced with USB extras for “what do you mean, there’s no WiFi?” emergencies.
I have the suspicion though that the iPhone’s going to eat up a lot of my computer-on-the-go requirements; it’s already got mail and web, and an official SDK should let us see extra apps come in (chat, organizers, games ;) that lessen the need to lug a laptop around town.
Seeing Apple lurch towards solid-state drives is verrrrrrrrry exciting, but the cost is still high and the capacities too small for a primary-use computer (my iPhoto or iTunes libraries *each* would fill the optional 64GB SSD, and they’re only going to get bigger).
Now if we can just get the pervasive connectivity that the iPhone delivers built in to the laptops…