BeamEcho

Excitement ensued after Steve Jobs delivered his Macworld Keynote presentation, which has become an annual tradition in the City of San Francisco. It is a presentation which is much anticipated and speculated upon every year by the technology industry as a whole, not to mention all of us Mac geeks here at Beam Echo. To no one's surprise, the Apple CEO delivered - with his charisma, persuasion and enthusiasm, together referred to as his 'Reality Distortion Field'. At the event, Jobs introduced a couple of significant new product updates:

AppleTV: The Apple product that never really caught on in 2007 got a seriously needed revamping at yesterday's keynote, with a free software update. The update supports movie rentals, as well as purchasing iTunes content directly from the Internet, rather than through a PC or Mac on the same network. (Please note, movies aren't available on the Canadian iTunes store....yet...)

iPod Touch: Jobs also introduced an update to the iPod Touch firmware version 1.1.2, which adds to the iTouch much of the iPhone functionality which seemed to be missing from iPod Touch's operating system. The update, introduced with a price of $19.99 USD is also $19.99 Canadian. Jobs went on to say that future iPod Touch units would be shipped with the new firmware update.

Also introduced were two new products:

Time Capsule: The first product introduction is a companion to one of the exciting features of Apple's most recent operating system (Mac OS X 10.5,) called Time Machine. Until today, the only way to use Time Machine was to connect an external hard drive to your Mac, either using a USB 2.0 or Firewire cable, to automate the backing up of important files. Time Capsule uses the same automated backup concept, except it allows the backup to be done wirelessly. The unit is a wireless router, supporting the new high speed wireless N technology, and also includes either a 500 GB or 1TB built in hard drive.

The climax of the presentation, hands down, had to be the MacBook Air. And of course it's the size and weight of the machine that make it so incredible. At 3/4 of an inch thick (and that's at the thick end,) Jobs touted the machine as being the world's thinnest laptop. The laptop achieves its small size through the elimination of its internal CD/DVD drive (while an external SuperDrive is available for $99,) as well as its use of the same 1.8" hard disk drive that is found in the iPod Classic. The machine has eliminated all ports on the laptop except for one USB 2.0 port, one Micro-DVI port for analog and digital video out, an stereo minijack port, and of course, a Magsafe power adapter jack. the laptop does not include an Ethernet port; instead, it uses its built in high-speed wireless n capability, while a USB to ethernet adapter is also available for $39. The product is expected to be released in two weeks in the United States, and within three weeks in Canada, so remember to keep checking our site here at http://www.beamecho.com to see when we will be getting our hands on this new notebook.