Andy Laub

Do you remember where you were on January 6, 2004? I do. I was tucked away in my office, trying to watch a streaming video of Steve Jobs’ MacWorld keynote. And trying not to die of boredom. You see, that keynote was the one that ushered in two things: the iPod mini, and 2-hour talks about iLife. So I learned how Garageband worked. And John Mayer played. And then they came out with a nice-looking iPod that was totally useless to me. That night, somewhat disappointed, I consoled myself by finally, finally ordering the 12″ Powerbook I had been waiting to buy, just in case something came at the keynote. It didn’t.

2005 was better. We got the iPod shuffle and the Mac mini (after the obligatory hour-long iApp speech). 2006 was even more interesting, marking Apple’s first entries into the Intel arena with the Macbook Pro and the iMac. And the hour-long iApp speech.

But this year. Wow. Again, I’m in the market for a new machine, but nothing happened. It started off great. A few minutes on sales figures (doing great!), 15 or 20 minutes on Apple TV (interesting name, but whatever. Did they really need to write “TV” on the unit?). 11:30 or so, iPhone. Awesome, getting out of the way for the good stuff. Not to say the iPhone is bad, since it’s exactly what I said it should be. 12:00 rolled around, I went to lunch. 12:45, I return from lunch, refresh the browser and they’re still talking about the damn phone. Wait, is this keynote 2 hours or 3 hours? It’s only two, and John Mayer – again – is there, playing the soundtrack to my disappointment.

No Leopard preview. No new Mac hardware. Not even a look at iLife 7 (if it even exists?). But they did drop “Computer” from their name, so uh, that’s comforting. Even better, the products they showed aren’t even available yet! Awesome! I feel bad for the people watching the keynote coverage, car keys in hand, ready for a run to the nearest Apple store. Sorry losers! You get nothing!

I perked up when I read later that Apple (finally) updated the Airport Extreme; maybe there’s more news in the pipeline? But unfortunately, even that is flawed with its obvious omission of Gigabit Ethernet, a standard that Apple itself has been touting for years.

So let’s see; two products that I have no use for (even so, the iPhone should be sold unlocked, not tied to Cingular) and one that is missing a key feature… yep, this was a bust.