Item number 1: Time Capsule

If this works as well as it says, then this is pretty much the best backup device for a home net­work I’ve ever seen. Granted it only really comes to life if you have the new Mac OS, but that’s how Mac has always worked. If you like their new toys, you have to play by their rules… and buy all their crap. It’s a dick busi­ness plan, but it works for them.

As I was saying, Time Cap­sule really comes to life when you com­bine it with Time Machine, which is a pretty slick backup pro­gram that comes with Leop­ard. I wont bore you with all the details (you can view them here) but the short of it is basi­cally a backup as you go pro­gram that han­dles it all for you on the fly. It only backs up files that have been changed, which are used to stack off of the base image it takes. It’s pretty hot. On top of that it acts as a WiFi centre that fea­tures the new 802.11n mode and even allows you to share a printer as a net­work item.

If I had been raised on Macs I would be pre-​ordering this so fast my mouse would be burn­ing from my fero­cious click­ing, simply to make my house go up a notch on the sex-​o-​meter.

Item number 2: Apple TV

They’ve fixed it, from what I’ve been told. I’m going to just declare my igno­rance here and state that I don’t know what they did wrong with the first ver­sion, and so I really cannot dis­cuss that here. I will dis­cuss how Apple is offer­ing a free upgrade to every­one who bought the orig­i­nal. That’s just solid cus­tomer ser­vice people.

What I can dis­cuss is their new game plan. Basi­cally the new Apple TV is sup­posed to put movie rental places utterly out of busi­ness. I know that’s not the writ­ten intent, but when you set up your busi­ness plan the way Apple has… well it’s just hard to ignore. The gen­eral idea is that you can now rent movies from iTunes. You keep it for 30 days, but once you start watch­ing it you have 24 hours to com­plete it. This is just what I’ve gotten from the Mac­world meet­ing, so I assume there are pos­si­bly dif­fer­ent plans.

The prices are pretty rea­son­able; with 2.99 for library titles, 3.99 for new releases, and 4.99 for total HD movies they don’t really seem to be heavy on the money pouch. On top of this, they’ve already got most of the major labels signed up so there isn’t going to be a short­age of movies to choose from. They’re also going to fea­ture TV shows and a slew of other media types (Flickr inte­gra­tion anyone?) that will turn your TV into a haven of ocular goodness.

They’ve also added a bit of Social Web 2.0 to the mix with trend-​viewing. The idea behind trend-​viewing is pretty straight for­ward. You can see who else has rented this movie (anony­mous or not, I have no idea) and what other movies they have rented. People are going to end up feel­ing mixed about this, but I’m sure you can opt out if you’re afraid of Big Brother.

I’m going to be honest. When I have my own place and a nice TV setup, I’m pretty sure I’ll own this. It really takes the pain out of movie rentals, watch­ing TV, and it even broad­casts to wire­less speak­ers. That’s just awe­some.

Item Number 3: Macbook Air

This was the finale piece to the Mac­world expo, and with good reason. It’s fuck­ing amazing.

Seriously.

I could go on and on about this laptop, and it’s shear sex factor breaks the what­ever the hell you use to mea­sure sex as a unit in the first place. It’s thin, its light, it’s still got pro­cess­ing power. It’s every Star­bucks blog­gers wet-​dream.

First off, lets start with the obvi­ous: it’s thin. Please note my use of both bold and ital­ics there, because they are the best tools I have to artic­u­late my amaze­ment. Go watch the ad, and the guided tour. The specs can be found here, and I have to admit that it’s actu­ally a pretty solid laptop.

The one thing I noticed is that it does not come with a built in CD/DVD drive. this is pretty much the only weak­ness for the laptop itself, and once again proves that Mac are amaz­ing at get­ting you to spend more money on their stuff. In order to get CD/DVD sup­port, you need to nab one of their Air­Drives (or borrow another com­put­ers drive, if what I remem­ber is right). The other flaw is that it’s mag­net­i­cally clasped, and some­thing about that bugs me. Call me old fash­ioned, but I like my plas­tic, slid­ing clasps.

As I stated, this is the pro-​bloggers wet-​dream come to life, as it’s per­fect for bring­ing about with you. Small, light, and still man­ag­ing to pro­vide a solid com­puter expe­ri­ence what with a full key­board and rea­son­able screen-​size. If I had to own a Mac­book, this would prob­a­bly be the one i’d go for, simply for the ease of trans­port it offers. That, and it would make my nerd-​penis fuck­ing massive.

Of course I cannot afford 1900 dollar start­ing price, but I’m sure they’ll come down in a little while. I’ll prob­a­bly end up just wait­ing for when com­put­ers are chips inserted into your brain.

So that’s the run-​down of my feel­ings on Mac­world. To sum­ma­rize: Apple knows what they’re doing. They’re going for mar­kets that are oth­er­wise fal­ter­ing, and then throw­ing every cre­ative bone right at them. They’re not directly com­pet­ing with anyone, and yet their win­ning every fight. I still don’t think I’d ever buy a Mac, but god­damn they can run my enter­tain­ment system anytime.

Also, Randy Newman? Seri­ously Apple, you could have picked some­one younger then 9 mil­lion? Is he a robot yet? Was that some secret plug for Mac­world 2009? Randy-​bots? I’m pretty sure he’s gone totally nuts. If noth­ing else it’s clear he hates what Amer­ica is becom­ing, so props to him for that. I cannot find a record­ing of his Mac per­for­mance, but this was the song he played.

And that’s the end of my gushing.