Yesterday was the day that Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, made his yearly MacWorld Keynote about his consumer products. Last year at this event, he announced the revolutionary iPhone, a device that amazed everyone. This year, the amazement was back with the announcement of a new MacBook. I set my alarm to get up in time to get live updates of the goings on in the keynote, but I managed to sleep through my alarm but woke myself up just in time to see the announcement of the MacBook Air.

The MacBook Air, a ultra-slim notebook computer that weights under 1.4kg and at its highest point is under a measly 2cm. It is amazing how slim it is, but what is even more amazing, it all the functionality and power they have put in the tiny package. But if you want one of these, you do pay a premium price of $2999 NZD for the base model. Sure, you can get more powerful computers for a lot less than that, but you won’t find a computer this thin, that still has all this functionality left in.

I do think the MacBook Air looks amazing and would love to own one of these, but in reality, a computer like this would not suit me, I would need something ore powerful. There will be many people in this same boat that don’t care that much about size and wouldn’t get a product with reduced performance than a bigger notebook computer. The computer is nice and would be great for people to carry around everywhere with them in their bag or something. This would suit someone with a more powerful computer and wouldn’t mind a small notebook without a bit of performance and wouldn’t mind something small and can afford the price for this.

Last year, Apple announced their entry onto your television. They admitted that they failed to deliver, but they are going to try again with Apple TV Take 2. Take 2 has a few new features such as viewing photos from .Mac and Flickr and a new interface, but the biggest change is the fact that it is now an independent product, it no longer needs a computer for you to take advantage of it. The store is now accessible from the Apple TV and you can buy music, movies, television shows as well as download podcasts right for the device. And all this, is available to current Apple TV owners in a software update available in a few weeks.

But that’s not all, there are now iTunes Rentals in the store. For a small price of $3.99 USD for new releases of a dollar less for library titles, it is an attractive option to rent movies. There is also HD movies for the Apple TV which cost $1 more and are around 4GB in size for a full, 720p resolution movie. This is a great way of getting movies right when you want to see them, at nice HD resolutions. When you rent the movie, you have 30 days to start watching it, and from when you push play, you have 24 hours to watch the movie, you can also watch the movie as many times as you want in that 24 hours.

I think it is good of Apple to give people the Take 2 software for free and not make a new product. I also hope that they have a huge success with the rentals, because I do think it is a great way to rent movies. I live in New Zealand so the iTunes rental stuff won’t be here for a long while, but when it does come here, it would be a great way for me and my family to get movies, much easier to get movies when we want them and not have to pick them up from a video shop. I do hope that they lower the delay from the DVD release and the iTunes rental release so they can compete with the video rental stores. If I want to see a movie when it comes out on DVD, if I can borrow it cheaper then the video shop, but if it is not there and I really want to see it, I will make that trip to the video shop to watch it now, not in 30 or so days. It is a brilliant start and I hope they roll it out internationally as soon as possible.

Those two big announcements were amazing, but the thing that interests me the most was the thing that was under-looked by everyone. The hype of the other announcements overshadowed this, but then again this isn’t anything evolutionary or really anything to be excited about. The product I am talking about is Time Capsule. Basically, all Time Capsule is, is an Airport Express with a hard drive in it. The product was mainly based around the wirelessness of the MacBook Air and the other MacBooks, but also the amazing backup feature in Leopard, Time Machine.

Time Capsule is nice because you get the benefits of the Airport Extreme, with gigabit ethernet and 802.11n, and on top of that, you get Network Attached Storage, with either 500GB or 1TB of storage. At this point, this is the only way to backup using Time Machine to a network drive and makes the backup process just that much more easier, convenient and completely automatic. You are no longer required to plug in a hard drive into a USB port.The price of the product is very competitive and not that expensive, you are not paying much more for having all these features put into one easy package.

There was another thing that was announced, which are new features of the iPhone and iPod touch. They were cool and make me want them, but they are irrelevant to me and I don’t really have much to say on them. I later watched the keynote video and I was interested right through to the end, well except for the performance at the end. Steve’s keynote speeches are always interesting and amazing, even though there weren’t many things that were so innovative that it blew me away. I’m waiting to see refreshes for the two older MacBooks which I am sure we will see sometime during the first half of 2008. I can’t wait for the next Apple Event and a bunch of new announcements.

You may have seen across multiple technology sites over the past month, some stuff on a Apple docking patent. What this does, it is takes a portable computer, like a MacBook, and it goes inside the dock that looks similar to an iMac. This will allow it to be used as a desktop like device with many extra ports and such.

Laptops are becoming more popular and are starting to take over a lot of the desktop market. People are turning to laptops for what they need, except in a portable package with similar and/or sufficient power for their needs. People are turning to laptops to use as desktop replacements and therefore a type of dock is a well welcomed device for the home. This allows for all peripherals such as hard drives, monitors, keyboard and mouse to be on your desk, and you can dock your laptop and use it without having to plug half a dozen plugs into your laptop.

With the Apple dock, the laptop inserts into the device, and there is where the limitations start. First off, you lose the ability to use one screen. It is being wasted inside the computer. For some people, this wouldn’t be an issue but you could use the laptop screen as a secondary monitor to display stuff, such as your iTunes library, or even other applications that you may not use. It would be useful for displaying information that you don’t need to see but it would be nice to have displayed without getting in the way of the apps you are using and without you having to select it. It would be good if it was just there at your side on the laptop screen.

You are also limited to the screen size of the dock, which is dictated by Apple. They could have multiple docks with different screen sizes, but that means you have to pay extra for it, and it probably won’t be cheap. You could even be better off getting an iMac and leaving the dock out of it. It will most likely be cheaper to buy a Dell monitor, or any other brand, for cheaper than the dock is. If the laptop isn’t very powerful, it might struggle with displaying two large resolutions if the dock happened to have a monitor port for a dual setup.

What I would rather have is a dock that can be used with all the Mac notebooks, not just the one that the dock is made for. Also I would like to be able to use a monitor of my choice and have many ports on the dock. It could work similar to how their iPod docks do, you just slide the laptop into it, and it just goes. All peripherals and such connect to the dock and get detected by the computer on insertion. I would also be able to use the screen on my monitor for other applications and not have it wasted.

On the assumption that the new notebook is ultra slim, it might not be as powerful as bigger laptops, in many ways. If so, is it really a good option to use it as a desktop replacement? If people wanted a Mac desktop replacement, they would probably go for a higher end line with higher processor, dedicated graphics and larger screen. A lower powered notebook might not suffice as a desktop machine. In that case, the dock is a waste of space, and probably a waste of money. A port replicator dock would be much better and could also be usable with multiple notebooks, models from now, and in the future.

This is really all based on speculation, and not a real product. Maybe in less than 12 hours, we find out what this really is and if it is plausible. I may end up eating my words, but some of my points may still be valid. It is a neat idea just sliding in your portable computer into a monitor/iMac like device and use it as my desktop. It can be two units in one, a slim portable computer for when i need the portability, and then a desktop like computer with a bigger monitor and more ports and such for when I need that functionality. I would have to get some real information about the notebook and the dock, before I can have real opinions about the actual product, and I would have to use it for a personal opinion of the actual product. We shall wait and see.