Mood:
energeticNow Playing: random keyboard noise and some german greetings
WOW! My first keynote at the annual MacWorld Expo. I missed the keynote last year, so i made sure to get here nice and early this morning. It was a zoo -- lots of pushing and even a few angry verbal exchanges, and that was just in the media pit. We all squeezed in to bask in what's known as the Steve Jobs "Reality Distortion Field"... And my oh my.
New iPods! Mini ones, small little players about as big as a business card. They hold 4GB, they're half an inch thick, they have a really smooth look, and they are priced at $250. Not bad, but I would have liked to have seen them get the price below $200. People were applauding like crazy until Steve mentioned to price... that's what rumors do, i guess. Deflate.
The other big announcement (for me personally) was the release of GarageBand. It's part of the new iLife suite, and it basically turns your mac into a home studio. There are all the standard things like loops, playback controls, and a USB keyboard interface. But they also put in guitar amp models to get a few different sounds, plus the samples are really slick. They did a great job with just about all of the digital instruments, especially the guitars and the drums. Oh man the drums! See, I'm excited. I'm probably smack in the middle of the target audience, too. Oh, and when you're done with your multi-tracked song, just hit "Export to iTunes" and GarageBand dumps the song into a playlist. Suh-weet.
Off to get lunch now and hob nob, then I'm going to stroll the expo floor. Maybe I'll even see some exciting new Web technology (hey now)... More later!
Posted by michael calore
at 11:24 AM PST
