Where does Windows Home Server fit in?

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I have decided that the time has come to buy myself a new toy. My first inclination was to buy a Windows Home Server from HP. I did some research into the options available and regardless of the noise the product is reported to make I was still keen on it. You see I was using WHS a few months ago through the Microsoft Connect Program and I loved it. Great backup, easy to access from any location and very stable.

However I've changed my mind. Why? Well it's quite simple and it's nothing to do with HP or WHS itself. It's all to do with Microsoft's lack of an integrated future. You see I've got Office Live Workspace, Live Spaces, Live Mail, Skydrive, Live Mesh, Vista, XP and Windows Mobile 5 and I have absolutely no idea how it all connects together. Obviously I know that I can save to Skydrive or setup Mesh on Vista and XP but where does WHS fit into all this. Surely there are some obvious over laps between Mesh and WHS and with no ability to map Skydrive onto Mesh, WHS, Vista or XP it's very hard to see the point. I now fully understand the problem people are having when it comes to waiting for Windows 7. I'm thinking the same about WHS. I think, well if I wait for version 2 maybe it'll have better integration with the new services and therefore be more appealing. It's not that it's not an amazing product at the moment, because it is, it's just that Microsoft don't seem to have a clue how to present an integrated environment to the users and this is starting to confiuse us. Apple present new services like Mobile Me, with it's support for Windows, Mac and iPhone it immediately show us what we can do. Microsoft just don't seem to be able to do the same. Why?

So what are we looking for? Well I'm looking for a WHS that stores my big files and backups along with the remote access and basically everything it's offering at the moment. All I really want added is an integration with Mesh, some Media Server capabilities, the ability to map Skydrive as an external drive and perhaps the ability to wake the server over Mesh when I need to. Offer these servcies and I'll buy it without hesitation. Oh and one other thing....integrate it with Mac. Apple are a company that can no longer be ignored. I love Windows but I'm writing this on a Mac. I'll buy into anything Microsoft offers if they can give it to me cross-platform.

What do you guys think? Do the Redmond guys need to start offering cross platform services and better integration or is the current setup working for you?

Reactions To A Few Things

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Since I last posted a few things have happened in the world of tech that I think need to be covered. The most obvious is the Microhoogle. This deal turned into an absolute mess. Microsoft managed to get out of it with a few bumps and scrapes but they do now seem to be much more focused on what services will succeed and which ones they should simply drop, like book search. Book search has been done and done well. Microsoft is not going to benefit from trying to clone Google's version so there's really no point in wasting money on it.

What Microsoft do need to do online is actually quite simple. They need to bring the current services into a more logically connected structure. Microsoft's online offering, and part of Google's for that matter, feel like they're a bunch of independent services with the word Windows or Google in the title. They don't really work together particularly well and they certainly don't bring other devices together well. Now I'm using Live Mesh and I love it but I'm not sure why it has online storge when Sky Drive is offering storage too and neither connect together. Surely adding SD to Mesh would make sense.

Also the Redmond boys need to start deveoping applications for devices other than Windows based ones. Internet Explorer for Mac would be nice, I'm using Firefox on my Macbook but I'd like to see IE 8. I'd also like to see some live services for Nokia devices that I can just download and not have to go through that annoying download application only to discover that my mobile carrier doesn't support Live for some weird reason even though I can get Google off the mobile Google site with no issues. A connected environment that offers O2's Bluebook with Live Mesh, Sky Drive, Live Mail and the other services across multiple platforms would be great. In fact that sounds very similar to a certain Apple offering doesn't it? I really am looking forward to Mesh on mobile and Mac.

If Microsoft are serious about offering Software + Services then they need to embrace the multitude of environments that are now being used. By all means favour Windows but offer services on all. Oh and one more thing. Please fix Spaces. I really can't see a use for it. It's worse than Orkut. Give us blogging software we can use on our domains and this blog will be running off it. Give us ad's we can put on our sites and we'll do it. The future of the Cloud is not going to be the awful applications that you can develop for Facebook and Bebo, it's going to be the services users can place on their own domains and homepages and the simple way you can fulfil the simple needs of the end user. A blog, a few ads to make a few quid, a decent search engine, somewhere to put pictures and a gallery to display them. Mobile Me looks set to offer this Microsoft can too if it just takes a sip of the coolade and worries more about end users than end-user-developers.

Windows 7 Multi-touch

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Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer appeared on stage at the D: All Things Digital conference and introduced the world to Windows 7, or at least a major piece of Windows 7 functionality. The ability to manipulate Windows applications using touch is an excellent feature but is getting horrible press from people asking, "do we really want to touch our computers?" Now remember when rumours were circling about Apple releasing a touch phone and it was hailed as the greatest invention of all time, even though Microsoft had been using touch technology on it's mobile platforms long before Apple did. I am not arguing that Apple have used touch technology much more succesfully than Microsoft but MS did come up with it first. On the run up to the Macworld Keynote 2008 there was speculation that Jobs was going to announce a version of the iMac with touch technology built in. Once again the web was full of statements of the genius of Jobs and what a fantastic idea this was. Microsoft have actually done it.

I love the idea of Windows 7 having touch capabilities built in. A widescreen touch capable TV with a Windows 7 PC hooked up to it means no mouse, no keyboard but total control. Build similar technology into the next XBox, not for actually controlling games obviously, and you could have control of all living room media without the need for multiple controls. All you need to add is a touch sensitive media remote that displays the menu's that appear on the screen so selection is as easy as possible and you have a fantastic touch driven media suite all from Microsoft. Add the next generation of Windows Home Server, which I imagine will have full media server capabilities built in, and Microsoft can easily beat Apple and Sony to the living room and have it sewn up before anyone realises what's happened.

Apple Keynote Bloopers

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With only 19 days to go until the Steve Jobs Keynote at WWDC I thought it would be fun to post video from YouTube covering some bloopers from past keynotes. Bill Gates, enjoy :)

Are Apple Relying Too Heavily On PC Sales?

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I read an article in the Wall Street Jounal outlining the importance of the iPhone to Apple. I found one paragraph in particular quite interesting:

Mace, a onetime Apple executive, parses the company’s most recent earnings report to point out that iPod unit growth has essentially ground to a halt–up only 1% from the same quarter the prior year. (Mac unit growth was 51%.) He adds that it’s risky for Apple to rely on the relatively mature PC market for such a big part of its growth.

There has been a lot of talk about the move to Cloud Computing and the threat this poses to Microsoft's desktop business. I haven't heard anyone mention the dangers it poses to Apple. If future sales of Microsoft software and Operating Systems are going to be affected by Google and other online services then you have to think that the Apple environment is going to be hit just as hard if not harder and with such a reliance on Mac sales for growth Apple need another major market. With iPod sales levelling and the prospect of Mac sales declining the iPhone is going to be vital to Apple's growth in the future. Looking at the new models in the mobile phone market such as Samsung Soul and Steel you have to think that Apple are going to have to give the iPhone a radical makeover soon in order for it to compete with non-Apple fan boys. Apple need to seriously start considering the future because beautiful but expensive and stuck in the past will not save them when the market shifts. Apple online services?

iTunes Phishing Scam

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Macworld are reporting that iTunes users are the targets of a new phishing scam.

Phishers have targeted users of Apple's iTunes music store with sophisticated identity theft attacks for the first time, a security company said Tuesday.

People began receiving spammed messages Monday telling them that they must correct a problem with their iTunes account, said Andrew Lochart, an executive with email security vendor Proofpoint.

A link in the spam leads to a site posing as an iTunes billing update page; that phony page asks for information including credit card number and security code, Social Security number and mother's maiden name.

The theft attempt is a new twist on the usual phishing attack, said Lochart. "We've gotten used to seeing the usual companies and brands attacked," he said, "like PayPal, eBay and Citibank. But we've never seen Apple as the target."

I received one of these emails myself on Monday. It arrived shortly after I placed an order on iTunes for a TV Show, House, and I initially thought it was legitimate. However a quick look at the url's in the email told me that this was a scam. For those interested I gave advice on spotting phishing scams in an article here.

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Sets Record

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Microsoft has claimed that Office 2008 for the Mac has been one of the best launches yet and sales continue to outstrip the any version in the last 19 years. I'm not doubting that the Office suite is a massive success in it's own right but I wonder how much of the improved sales are due to Windows users moving over to the Mac and looking for the familiar on that platform. A more important reason is probably due to companies running mostly Windows machines with Office installed. People who buy Mac's will look for the Microsoft Office suite to give them as easy a life as possible when it comes to working on documents at home. Perhaps Microsoft should look to moving some other software onto the Mac, it seems like a mostly untaped market. Either way though it's nice to see Microsoft products thriving on OSX.

iPhone Sold Out!

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I got a very interesting email from Carphone Warehouse today informing me that they had officially sold out of iPhones.

Thanks to the most phenomenal response to the promotion, The Carphone Warehouse is now out of stock on the Apple iPhone.

...

Carphone do not expect to receive any additional stock at this time.

It's not the sales that surprise me it's the expectation that no additional stock will be received. I wonder does this mean the 8Gb is disappearing and the 3G one is on the way. Time will tell I suppose.

iPhone To Get Keyboard

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The Times of London is reporting that Apple has placed an order with it's suppliers for 200,000 of the new 3G iPhones by the end of May. According to reports the new iPhone will be different to the current device. The possibilities given are a flip version giving the user a larger screen and sliding version which would have a fully functioning QWERTY keyboard rather than a touchscreen keyboard.

The most likely outcome is that we will see all three versions of the device released. This would give the touchscreen version for users who want music and videos, the flip version for those who want Internet browsing on a larger screen and I would also say easier use of enterprise software and the slide for the average user and the Blackberry users who want a device similar to the one they are using.

The release of these three products could catapult Apple into a dominant position in the handheld market and bump RIM into second place. The timing should also guarantee an excellent quarter 2 for Apple. The image above shows the next Blackberry which RIM hope will be the iPhone killer, I doubt it though,

Are We Being Neglected By US Software Companies?

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The more times I visit the .com version of major US company's websites the more I feel that we are being shortchanged here in the UK. For example today on the Microsoft.com site there were links to downloads and deals for Vista owners, free help to setup a new business and ways to work with slower Internet connections. The Microsoft.co.uk site on the other hand had a pixilated looking set of Vista graphics with the headline "Introducing Windows Vista" and then links to a security updates and a trial for Office 2007. You can't seriously be telling me that the same amount of effort goes into the two sites. Windows Vista has been out for over a year! We don't need introduced to it yet again. Come on Microsoft give us the same level of effort at least on your site, it's bad enough that we have yet to see any sign of the Zune over here and those of  us who do own it can't get any help with problems. There's a reason I now own an iPod Touch and Shuffle.

This isn't limited to Microsoft however. There are other companies that have a difference between the US and UK version of the sites and the UK versions are nearly always lacking the information and quality of the .com site.

Looking beyond site differences and to prices and we saw from Apple's iTunes the overcharging that was going on at this side of the pond. The basic Macbook comes in at $1099 (£550 approximately) from the Apple.com store. The same Macbook on the Apple.com\uk store comes in at a surprising $1395 (£699 approximately).

It's difficult not to get fed up with uneven pricing, differing standards in websites and lack of assistance and I wonder just how many other people over here feel the same way as I do.

Apple Life Manager

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A browse through some recently released Apple patents has turned up an interesting new Apple idea. According to the patent the idea is:

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
[0012] In accordance with one embodiment of the present invention, a lifestyle companion system can be provided for coordinating multiple corridors of a user's life. The lifestyle companion system can include devices and methods for providing a platform for conducting user interviews, suggesting activities and references based on interview responses, providing a platform for a user to schedule activities, collecting data about a user during performance of activities or throughout the user's day, and/or providing progress reports. The method also can include assigning user category levels (e.g., activity levels) based on interview responses. In some embodiments of the present invention, the lifestyle companion system can coordinate a user's fitness, nutrition, and medical experiences.
[0013] The lifestyle companion system can integrate user-selectable plug-in modules that are focused on specialized topics. For example, plug-in modules can be specialized for particular periods in a child's development, students, expectant parents, new parents, seniors, specific sports enthusiasts, food connoisseurs, geographical regions, health conditions, holidays, etc. Each module can have coordinating questionnaires, suggested activities, suggested references, instructions, logging tools, audiobooks, videos, podcasts and other types of activities or information tailored for the specialty of the module.

This is an extremely interesting idea and worth keeping an eye on.

iPhone SDK Beta 3

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Apple dropped me a line this morning to inform me that beta 3 of the iPhone SDK is now available for download. I'll be downloading it this morning and will post about it soon.

Apple Oppose Big Apple's GreeNYC Logo

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According to Gizmodo Apple have filed an opposition to NYC's GreeNYC logo. The reason Apple is giving is that the GreeNYC logo will "seriously injure the reputation with which [Apple] has established for its goods and services." Personally I don't think there's anyway people are going to confuse the two logos. Sure the Apple logo has no stalk for a start! As Gizmodo points out the GreeNYC logo looks like it's an Apple created from an Infinite Loop. I wonder are Apple just suing because they didn't think of it first?

Microsoft out innovate Apple

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News has leaked out about a new interface for Windows 7, the next OS from Microsoft and it's massive. As we know Microsoft have been taking a lot of flack over the years regarding a perceived lack of innovation so they've gone out to do something about it. With Apple claiming touch and gesture technology, Microsoft is introducing thought technology. A Microsoft insider stated, "We've been working on this for a number of years now and since the public's perception of Vista was weak and Apple had cornered the touch market it was decided that this is the perfect moment to announce this new innovation."

When asked how the technology is used the insider would not go into too many specifics but he did state, "This works in the same way as a mouse cursor. You put on a specially designed Hat-Thought Interface and look at a particular part of the screen. The HTT picks up the location and the cursor moves there automatically. You then think 'click' 'click' and the interface interprets this as a double click and accesses the application. We see this as the next major step forward in computer human interaction. We also hope to one day make it possible for users to download information directly from the Internet into their brains through this same HTT."

This technology is set to be released as part of the Windows 7 OS and Microsoft hope that it will then be able to regain some of the market share that it lost to Linux and Apple because of the disastrous Vista.

OS X cracked first

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Charlie Miller is walking away from the CanSecWest Security Conference $10,000 and a Macbook Air richer after managing to hack into OS X running on the same notebook. A Sony Vaio, Fujitsu U810 and Macbook Air were up for grabs to the first person who could access the file system of the OS running on the laptop. The Sony laptop was running Ubuntu while the Fujitsu was running Windows Vista.

All three laptops survived the first day of the conference which consisted of attempting to access the file system over the network directly. On the second day the competitors were allowed to direct the organisers to view web sites and open emails which contained exploit code. Since the OS's only contained software that's installed out of the box the exploit must be either in or be accessible from the Safari browser.

I can't see this result being highlighted by two many Apple fans but it is very interesting to note that the Vista and Linux both survived two days of the competition and what is supposed to be the most secure OS fell early and quickly. Perhaps it's time Mac users started taking security seriously.

Apple breaks Apple EULA

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Ed Bott pointed out on his blog today that Apple is actually breaking it's own EULA when it distributed Safari through it's Software Update tool to Windows users:

Apple tries to foist Safari browser onto Windows users using deceptive tactics. But someone forgot to read the license agreement first.

Windows caught between a Linux and a Mac place

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Paul Thurrott responds to Steven Vaughan-Nichols claims that Windows is being eaten alive by Linux and Mac.

I guess it's all in how you look at it. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols provides the following bit of time killer over on Desktop Linux, which I'm guessing is one of the lonelier Web destinations these days:

For the first time in ages, the sale of new PCs with Windows as a percentage of the PC market is declining sharply. The new winner is the Mac, but, while no one does a good job of tracking the still-new, pre-installed Linux desktop market, it's also clear that Linux is finally making impressive inroads into Windows' once unchallenged market share.

I see two strong trends here. On the high end, people are buying Macs instead of Windows PC. On the low end, Linux is eating Windows alive.

Windows finds itself being confined to the middle ground.

As proof, he cites the US-only, retail-only NPD numbers that made the rounds this week on all the Mac fanatic sites, and "empirical evidence makes it clear that Linux desktops are moving into customers' hands at a quick pace." I feel that neither of these is particularly relevant from a wider trend perspective, but I do like the concept of Windows being "caught between Mac and Linux." So much, in fact, that I graphed it with Excel, using actual, real-world market share figures from calendar year 2007. And when you do this, here's what you get, ladies and gentlemen. I present: Windows, caught between Mac and Linux:

Chicken Little, your time has come.

Another Apple Inaccuracy

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Another Vista sucks ad is coming and this time Gizmodo is pointing out that Apple are playing with the facts:

You'll probably be seeing Apple's newest "Vista Sucks, OS X Rules Your Face" ad, starring hilarious John Hodgman and perpetually besmirked Justin Long, on Giz any day now. Basically, the banner keeps pulling up bad Vista quotes as Hodgman hammers the emergency banner refresh, but neither of them are from actual reviews of Vista—even though that's what Hodgman calls them.

CNET's blurb about Vista being one of tech's "biggest blunders" is actually from an op-ed that Microsoft should dump the OS entirely, while the PC Mag snippet is the title of a column from January that proffers ways for Microsoft to start-over.

It's not a mind-blowing factual error to say the quotes are from reviews, or even that disingenuous—attack ads usually involve a roll in the mud—but it's worth pointing out there's a difference between a position and an actual review. Not to say that the spots aren't amusing—John Hodgman is a riot. Oh, and we're certain its debut the same week as Vista SP1's is a total coinky-dink.

If Microsoft were playing the same games as Apple there would be outcry against them but in the case of Apple everyone still loves them and you daren't say a bad thing about them. It's wrong to love anything this much let alone a corporation who only really care about making money.

Maths Using Leopard

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This is probably well known to the Mac community but i just found it and think it's pretty cool. Type 2+2 into Vista Search and you will get all the files that have similar to that in them. Type the same into Leopard Search and the first result is from calculator giving you the answer. A nice touch from Apple.

Does the world really need more than five computers?

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From Greg Matter's blog:

THE WORLD NEEDS ONLY FIVE COMPUTERS

And, no, I'm not paraphrasing something that I bet Thomas J. Watson never uttered in 1943 anyway. But he should have because, ultimately, he might turn out to have been right.

Let's see, the Google grid is one. Microsoft's live.com is two. Yahoo!, Amazon.com, eBay, Salesforce.com are three, four, five and six. (Well, that's O(5) ;)) Of course there are many, many more service providers but they will almost all go the way of YouTube; they'll get eaten by one of the majors. And, I'm not placing any wagers that any of these six will be one of the Five Computers (nor that, per the above examples, they are all U.S. West Coast based --- I'll bet at least one, maybe the largest, will be the Great Computer of China).

I'm just saying that there will be, more or less, five hyperscale, pan-global broadband computing services giants. There will be lots of regional players, of course; mostly, they will exist to meet national needs. That is, the network computing services business will look a lot like the energy business: a half-dozen global giants, a few dozen national and/or regional concerns, followed by wildcatters and specialists.

Let me back up and explain what I mean by a Computer, and then why I think this is inevitable. I mean "Computer" as in the "The Network is the ...". These Computers will comprise millions of processing, storage and networking elements, globally distributed into critical-mass clusters (likely somewhere around 5,000 nodes each). My point in labeling them a Computer is that there will be some organization, a corporation or government, that will ultimately control the software run on and, important to my argument below, the capitalization and economics of the global system.

These Computers will be large for a number of reasons. It seems that the successful services are most definitely growing faster than Moore's Law. That is, in addition to upgrading to faster systems they are adding more of them and the compound growth is getting pretty spectacular in several cases. A company like Salesforce.com sees hypergrowth not in the form of some intrinsic demand on CRM (within an average company, definitely not growing close to Moore's Law --- Enterprise CRM is overserved by systems performance improvements), but rather the sum of consolidation of CRM systems across thousands and thousands of companies. Live.com is likely to fall into this camp, too. The growth seen by a Google or Yahoo!, on the other hand, is more directly a function of their pipe-filling roles: the greater the end-user bandwidth, the greater the demand on their infrastructure.

Moreover, there is most definitely an economy of scale in computing. To the extent that there is a scalable architectural pattern (cluster, pod, etc.), the per-unit engineering expense gets amortized over increasing capital volume. So, more and more engineering can be invested in driving higher and higher efficiencies at scale.

Our bet (meaning Sun's) is that, like the energy, transportation, telecommunications and power utility businesses, most of these companies will realize that they can become even more efficient if they rely upon a few, highly competitive and deeply technical infrastructure suppliers (think GE, Siemens, ABB for power systems, Boeing and Airbus for commercial aircraft, Ericsson, Nortel, Lucent/Alcatel, Nokia for telecom, etc.).

All this being said, a large enough enterprise (say, a big financial services firm) still have some pretty compelling reasons to build their own Computers. My only advice here is to approach the problem as one of latent scale. That is, think that you are building one of the world's five, but you just haven't quite grown into it yet! Same advice goes to start-ups: because either you will grow to become one of the big Computers, or you'll be acquired and be Borg-ed into one of them!

Naturally, we aim to be the premier infrastructure supplier to the world's Computers. Blackbox is just the beginning (More on Blackbox in a previous entry). Whatever its form (or color!) the emerging infrastructure will be far more efficient than what we think of for conventional enterprise computing. And, just as a reminder, that doesn't mean its piles and piles of cheap boxes, any more than you'd design a power plant with piles and piles of cheap portable generators. In the latter case, the little problems of noise, pollution, reliability and conversion efficiency are scaled into some really nasty ones.

Similarly, the cheapest computing is not necessarily obtained by lashing together racks and racks of the cheapest computers you can find. Engineering for scale matters. Really matters.

It's a very interesting read and he makes some very interesting points but I have to wonder if this is the world the consumer really wants though? I'm not sure if I want my whole desktop online and more importantly I don't want to lose the choice. I want the option to choose email provider, office application, media players and other services and not have them thrust upon me by an overpowering force. It's not what the net is about and I can see the EU fighting such an idea tooth and nail. Here's a question to consider though, where does Apple fit into the grand plan above? I can't see Steve Jobs surrendering any time soon.

Amazon to buy Audible.com

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For $300 million Amazon are intending to buy Audible.com. Personally I use Audible through iTunes quite a lot and I'm delighted to hear this news. The possibility of DRM free MP3 audio books being sold through Amazon is something worth looking forward to. I wonder if this will be the end of Audible and Apple's relationship? Even if it is it could be the start of something beautiful.

Google vs. Apple

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Could the peace between Apple and Google be coming to an end. In this quote from an interview Steve Jobs gave, it looks as if he's making the first threat that the war is approaching.

"I actually think Google has achieved their goal without Android, and I now think Android hurts them more than it helps them. It's just going to divide them and people who want to be their partners."

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/the-passion-of-steve-jobs/index.html?ex=1358226000&en=dc35254b0fcd5490&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Would you regard Apple and Google as virtually partners at the moment because I would.

IBM Applications on Apple Devices

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Lotus Notes on the iPhone will allow the iPhone to compete directly with the Blackberry in the business market. Bringing these two major Microsoft competitors together could mean that we're looking at a full on assault on the business community. New XServer, Lotus Notes connectivity and Lotus Symphony does make a good foundation to build on.

IBM to add software for Apple devices

By BRIAN BERGSTEIN - AP Technology Writer

E-mail software from IBM Corp. will be available on Apple Inc. iPhones and iPod Touch devices under a new partnership that brings together two big rivals of Microsoft Corp.

IBM plans a formal announcement of the Lotus Notes e-mail package for Apple's portable devices at its Lotusphere conference in Orlando, Fla., next week. The software, which requires use of IBM's Domino e-mail server program, will be free for users who already have a Lotus Web-access license and start at $39 per year for new users.

IBM also plans to release Lotus Notes and the free Lotus Symphony "productivity" package - which includes documents, spreadsheets and other Microsoft Office-like software - for Apple's Macintosh computers.

http://www.thestate.com/technology-wire/story/285949.html

4th piece of news

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The worst kept secret in Apple is official, The MacBook Air. It's the world's thinnest notebook. Apple didn't want to compromise processor power, display size or keyboard size for weight. .76 inches at it's thickest and .16 inches at it's thinnest it fits into a manila envelope. It has a full sized display and full sized keyboard. Built in camera, 13.3 inch widescreen display which is LED backlit to save power and give a bright display, keyboard lights up with an Ambient light sensor and has a well shaped trackpad which will now respond to gestures. This sounds like a pretty amazing machine. The trackpad uses the same pinching gestures as the iPhone and iPod Touch do. It has an 80Gb HDD standard or an optional 64Gb SSD. Core 2 Duo Processors and 1.6GHz standard or 1.8GHz optional.

It comes with USB 2.0, micro DVI, 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR. The optical drive is a $99 accessory which is bus powered. The software can be installed without an optical drive, thank you Apple. 5 hour battery life with everything switched on and in full use. This really is a fantastic device even though I will feel like I could snap it in half just be sneezing. All for only $1799. I want one!

The HDD is the same one as used in the iPod:

Spec list:

Just like to say a quick thank you to SlashGear for covering the keynote so well.

3rd Piece of News: iTunes Movie Rentals

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Touchstone, Miramax, Lions Gate, Paramount, Universal, Song, Walt Disney, Fox, Warner Brothers and more have signed up to movie rentals on iTunes. Hope the UK is actually going get this major feature sooner rather than later. Launches today by free iTunes, iPhone and iPod update. $3.99 for new movies, launched 30 days after the DVD, and $2.99 for older titles. 30 days to watch a movie and 24 hours to finish it. That's not bad I suppose. I usually only watch films once and they cost £15 or so each.

This will lead to Apple TV2. In fact he's talking about it now. No computer needed anymore. Direct rental from your TV. Watch audio/video podcasts, view photos from Flickr or computer and You Tube. Basically all iTunes content is available for download. Full DVD and HD quality with surround sound. Completely new interface as well. You know this doesn't seem like the hobby he described it as last year. Maybe Microsoft 360 and PS3 in the living room has worried him.

2nd News. Huge iPhone!

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SDK due in February and an update for iPhone coming today. Multiple person SMS, Customize Home Screen, Lyrics support, videos with chapters and subtitles, Webclips, iPhone knows where your location is and can give you location specific directions thru maps. All available today.

Add web pages to your home screen. Basically like favourites except it adds an iCon to your home screen that takes you to the site. A nice touch, pardon the pun, I suppose.

iPod Touch is getting Mail, Maps, Stocks, Notes, Customizable Home Screen, Webclips and Weather. At bloody last. However that update is actually $20. Why do I have to pay that while iPhone users get the same for free?

Time Capsule Announced

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First news from the Keynote and it's the release of a new device called Time Capsule. Used for backing up computers. Server grade hard drive and 500Gb for only $299. A terabyte version released too. Seems like a baby version of Windows Home Server but I suppose it is wireless which is good.

Here's a picture from SlashGear:

Macworld predictions

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Here are my predictions for what is going to be announced in today's keynote.

1. Apple TV2

2. Movies on iTunes

3. iPhone SDK

4. Slimmer Notebooks/Tablets

5. Takeover of Adobe (hence the Air reference).

6. Best sales figures ever

7. Number of iTunes downloads/iPhone users/iPod users

8. Apple takeover by Google (probably not but live in hope)!