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My Accurate MacWorld Predictions for Steve Jobs Keynote

Right then, the dust has settled (and very small dust it is too) on MacWorld, and the reaction around the internet is interesting to say the least. Apple CEO Steve Jobs hit on five areas, so I’ll touch on them, then rip apart my predictions.

1. Time Capsule.
Easy backup and network storage in one. Backup is always good, I’ve seen too many PDA users cry at the loss of data in my time to not back-up as I go along. This is practical, welcome, but not especially stunning… for Apple. Any other company and they’d have loved this!.

2. iPhone and iTouch Firmware Upgrades.
Ha! The big change, you can have two phone numbers in the To: field on an SMS… and iPod Touch users are charged $20 for firmware upgrades, something that Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Sony and a million other CE manufacturers don’t do. But the Touch isn’t sexy enough to make Wired with rabid fans going on about Apple screwing first movers.

3. iTunes Movie Rentals.
It’s DRM’med to hell, it’s US only, and the Majors aren’t letting Steve do to them what he did with music. Which is to be expected. Just one point. 30 days after release? When US based Netflix has it same day (and BitTorrent has it weeks before?).

4. Apple TV.
It’s a set-top box. Which are damned useful – the Virgin Media PVR we have in the house is wonderful – but it’s not going to be able to hook to cable in the US, it’s reliant on iTunes for streaming and finding content, so I’ll skip it yet again.

5. MacBook Air.
More expensive, with less features, reduced function and missing key technologies. I can just about understand the loss of an optical drive for a traveling machine, but no user replaceable battery? And are you really going to carry this outside a case or protection?

Okay, so my predictions of coverage…

He’s gone and done it again, hasn’t he? “It’s a brand new area of technology, we’re leading the way, there’s nothing like this on the planet,” and the community goes absolutely wild. Come on folks, get a grip, this is not new!

Arguably the MacBook Air, although the SMS functionality manages this. 1/1

Okay, let’s start with the technology. “The foundation of a new age?” Not buying it. After all I bought it back in 1998 on my first Psion Organiser, and it’s been incorporated into pretty much every ultra-portable since then. It’s available right now on a range of devices, yet pop it in a silver box with an Apple, and you’re all happy to pay twice the price, for half the functionality? You should be able to use it between any devices, not just those from Cupertino.

No word yet on how propiatory the Time Capsule backup stuff is for a network drive and some software. 2/2

Ah, I lied. Sorry . You’re not happy at all. You’re breaking down the doors in ecstasy.

Coverage is strangely muted. So I lost this one – and I would have expected this to be the oddds-on favourite. Like Hillary. 2/3.

And oh look a content deal. Much like every other content deal announced in the US in recent years. A nice cosy relationship that keeps the price as high as the majors want, but somehow makes Apple smell of roses…. What is nice is to see that they’ve not handed Steve the keys to the family jewels like they did with their music catalogues.

Slam dunk. 3/4

Not surprisingly, there’s still no Beatles in iTunes I see, although with that divorce settlement due soon for Macca, who knows. Maybe in September… )

Let’s try for Double Jeopardy! 4/5

Ditto on the iPhone. You’ve sold a lot, that’s nice, but the point is that the majority of these are in the US. Look to any other territory where there’s even the modicum of competition in the functionality of handsets available and you’ve not got a hit…

A very quick statistic that in the first three months the iPhone grabbed 19% share in the US and number two in the market. I’d still like to see current numbers, compare this the regular phone market, and maybe I dunno a mention of the numbers in Europe – you know the ones you’ve told everyone not to talk about. 5/6

What the rest of the world needed to hear about was the next iPhone… And about that “open development platform,” it’s an evil idea,but pushing everything through the iTunes Store to ensure you get your 25% cut from third party developers for every bit of code they place on other iPhones… well now the role of the iPhone is clear. It’s not a game changer to rework the mobile marketplace as the iPod did to music, it’s simply a way to get recurring revenue in ever greater numbers from your users.

No new iPhone, but no mention of the SDK either. And the recurring revenue line was to attack the iPod Touch, not the iPhone. So twisting the facts after the event like David Copperfield could give me a score, but this missed. 5/7

The worst of all this is no matter what’s said, the grumblings of people outside the fan-boy circles, the companies erased from history, and the commentators that just don’t get your vision, the updated technology is not only going to sell by the bucket-load, but when the inevitable faults in the first few batches arise, it’ll be brushed over as the price you pay for being at the cutting edge. Every CEO at every other Consumer Electronics Company wishes he could deflect criticisms of poor build quality, buggy firmware, and missing features as easy as Steve does.

For all the grumbling, you watch that MacBook Air fly out the door, burn laps, and everyone accepts it. Almost every discussion on the Mac sties on the Air ends with an obligatory ‘I still want one…‘ justification.

Final score… 6/8, or a solid 75%. Which is an A* if I use the same banding as the Government uses for A-Levels. Go me!

January 17, 2008; Daily Links, Links to my Articles;

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Comments

4 Responses to “My Accurate MacWorld Predictions for Steve Jobs Keynote”

Dean Whitbread on January 17th, 2008 10:44

You are legend. Scathingly accurate, but also legend. What next – the MacBook Mud ? (You read it here first)
On Ewan’s Macworld judgement | www.gadgetguy.de - The GadgetGuy on January 17th, 2008 11:29

[...] pal Ewan Spence is looking back at his Macworld predictions, and he’s not too [...]
Rowley on January 17th, 2008 12:30

I think very few people predicted timecapsule. I like the idea and the price tag for a 1TB NAS is good compared to things like drobo and buffalo’s equivalent.

I was hoping that Jobs would say the itunes music would go drm free, I think that will appear next year, then.

DRMed movies is understandable, if they could marry this up with bbc iplayer that would be more than cool, mind you the iplayer streaming is going well (80% or people who use the service stream), maybe this is one of the ideas that will come soon for itunes/appletv/iphone/itouch.

Few people want to keep throw away content (TV episodes/movies they only watch once) for too long.
Michael Markman on January 17th, 2008 14:24

Small correction: There was a mention of the iPhone SDK. (It was sandwiched between the market share pie charts and the iPhone software update 1.1.3, about ten minutes in.) “What everybody’s really excited about is the software development kit that we’re gonna release in late February.”