New laptops – still some of the best hardware and software in the business but still to darned expensive. Really wish they would wake up and realize that $999 for a laptop, even a Mac laptop, is beyond consideration for too many people. Also, it feels a little silly having just one MacBook and then a a bunch of MacBook Pros. Ah, the fun of marketing.
Snow Leopard – very much want. A much more complete line of improvements and upgrades than expected for an operating system that already does an amazing job of just working for the average user. And selling me a family upgrade package for only $49?!? How awesome is that? Let’s see Microsoft offer their “Ultimate” version of Windows 7 for that!
iPhone 3.0 software – so much was already known about this release that the wow factor was missing. Somewhat surprised to learn how much of the new power of the software will go missing for those already carrying existing hardware however. I was expecting features like video and voice commands to work less impressively than on the new hardware (more on that in a minute) but to have the video not even be an option, even if it was of limited quality, seems like an oversight to me. Let me be the judge if it doesn’t get the job done. But, otherwise, it’s a free upgrade so it’s hard to complain.
The new phone – color me a bit disappointed in the new phone really. Actually, it’s a nice collection of evolutionary improvements but the price?!? (More on this in another minute) Faster with more storage is a good thing of course but I’m waiting to hear some unbiased field test results on the actually speed increases. Which brings us to the two “wow” features of the phone: namely the voice commands and the video recording via the improved camera. Voice commands strike me as one of those gimmick features that looks cool during a demo and makes your friends a bit jealous, but day in and day out I just don’t think I would use it very often. Now, the camera however, looks like a much needed improvement over the existing camera but is it really that great? 3.0 mega-pixels? Really? Not exactly state of the art. Improved over the embarrassingly bad camera in the current models, but not exactly a huge improvement either. Close focus will be nice and the selective focus might come in handy sometimes but is that really how we use our cellphone cameras? Don’t we really just whip them out for improptu candids? Something tells me, improved or not, if I care about my images enough to worry about selective focus and auto white balance I’ll probably wish I had a small dedicated pocket camera instead.
The iPhone 3GS price – as of right now there is a terrible amount of confusion over the street pricing on this new phone. How this isn’t more clear is stunning really. Not at all the Apple way and just another failing of the carrier deals they’ve signed. It really strikes me as the final straw in the Apple AT&T relationship actually. As far as I’ve been able to piece together, if I want to upgrade my 2008 iPhone 3G to a 2009 iPhone 3GS I have to pay a $200 penalty beyond the pricing dangled in front of us by Apple this afternoon. So, in my case, to upgrade my base iPhone 3G to a base iPhone 3GS would cost me $399 plus some pathetic $18 upgrade fee. $417 plus tax feels like a terrible price point to ask of what is going to amount to some nice but far from necessary upgrades to my iPhone 3G. If I wasn’t a loyal customer or if I hadn’t upgraded my hardware in the last 18 months or so, this makes me a better person and the $200 upgrade penalty is waved. So, if I had kept my money out of Apple’s pockets for a longer time I would be eligible to keep even more money out of their pockets now? This is wrong, wrong, wrong!
Again, the distortion field is still in full effect so we need some time to really figure out exactly what’s going on. I’ll be stunned if this crazy pricing scheme is allowed to stand on the phones and whether Apple is really asking us to pay only $29 for a new OS or if their asking us to pay $29 for what should be a free service pack.
Say what you want about being a Mac user. It sure is more fun than owning a PC!
