Minnesota's techies react to Macworld Expo

I took a somewhat Minnesota-centric approach to yesterday's Apple announcements, getting reaction from Apple watchers and other tech-y types in my home state.

My article got trimmed for space, and a bunch of quotes from those supergeeks at Technology Evangelist ended up on the cutting room floor.

So, for them and for you, here's the full version of the story (with TE stuff restored, but other changes from my paper's crack editing stuff left intact).

Really, really thin is in
Apple’s Air laptop generated the most buzz among its latest products
BY JULIO OJEDA-ZAPATA
Pioneer Press

SAN FRANCISCO — Mike Evangelist travels a great deal on business, and likes to fly light. Yet he always ends up packing his bulky laptop because he doesn’t regard his cell phone as an adequate substitute for the Web and e-mail.
Apple Inc. on Tuesday targeted people like Evangelist with its new MacBook Air, a superthin and superlight Macintosh laptop that’s among several new or updated products being announced with great fanfare at Macworld Expo in San Francisco.
Other unveilings during Apple Chief Executive Steve Job’s keynote speech included the debut of iTunes Store movie rentals from all the leading movie studios, a new wireless network-backup device called the Time Capsule, as well as major updates to the iPhone, the iPod Touch and the Apple TV set-top box.
But it was arguably the MacBook Air that drew the most attention. It is thin enough to slip inside a manila envelope partly because it does away with an optical-disc drive.
For Evangelist, a Birchwood, Minn., resident who works in the Macintosh industry, this is huge. He’s tried other ultralight laptops from the likes of Fujitsu, but found them wanting because of very cramped keyboards and difficult-to-use integrated pointing devices. The MacBook Air is just what he needs, he said, because of its full-size keyboard and large trackpad. He said one of these laptops is definitely in his short-term future.
Apple said the MacBook Air also is aimed at college students who routinely lug their portable computers across campus and are willing to do away with extras such as a DVD burner and reader to achieve maximum portability.
Benjamin Higginbotham of the Twin Cities-based Technology Evangelist technology blog said he rarely uses such an optical drive anymore since so his software mostly is downloaded from the Web.
“The way they engineered the MacBook Air is ingenious,” he said. “It’s superthin while being superfunctional.”
Ed Kohler, another Technology Evangelist blogger, isn’t as impressed. “I don’t look at the current MacBook Pro and think, ‘If only this was thinner,’ ” he said. “Less hot? Yes. Thinner? Not really.” And he’s surprised Apple hasn’t integrated cellular-data connectivity into any of its Mac laptops.
Steve Borsch, an Eden Prairie management consultant and Apple watcher said the laptop “sure seems expensive” at $1,799 (with a solid-state storage system in place of a mechanical hard drive for another $1,000 or so). But the MacBook Air is “an incredible feat of engineering,” he acknowledged.
Movie rentals on the iTunes Store also drew considerable attention Tuesday, partly because Apple had been struggling to replicate with digital movies its enormous success in music sales. And its relationships with the top movies studios had appeared to be tense.
That’s apparently history with all the major studios — Fox, Disney, Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal and Sony — now on board to rent and sell digital movies via the iTunes Store. It will be possible to view the films on computers, iPods, the iPhone and the Apple TV.
The latter device no longer depends on a connection to a computer, but can access the iTunes Store directly, a fact that thrills video producer and editor Mark Fawcett of St. Paul. He’s treasured his Apple TV for viewing home photos and movies from his Mac, but thinks users will get more out of the device now that they are able to rent movies easily, affordably and directly.
He’s also relieved Apple isn’t making him buy a new device. An update for existing Apple TVs is coming soon.
Higginbotham now sees Apple TV users installing the devices behind their HDTVs for easy access to new high-definition, audio-enhanced iTunes titles designed for such big-screen sets. “It’s freakin’ awesome,” said the blogger, who thinks a Blu-ray high-definition-disc player might be nearly irrelevant.
But Kohler said the Apple TV is hardly “competitive with Netflix for digital (consumption via that service’s Internet-streaming features). You can watch an unlimited number of movies for the cost of watching four or six on Apple per month.”
And “for people who prefer on-demand, I don’t see the big advantage of an Apple TV box over cable TV on-demand services,” he added.
The iPhone and iPod Touch — two similarly styled devices with wide-format screens — have been upgraded as of this week with software downloads that add a host of new features. Yet while the iPhone upgrade is free, iPod Touch users have to pay $20 via the iTunes store.
The new Time Capsule device blends a wireless base station with an internal hard drive for backing up contents of a Mac via the Time Machine feature in Apple’s Mac OS X. This is achieved wirelessly for the first time.
Still, any regarded Tuesday’s announcements as not on par with the iPhone’s debut at Macworld Expo one year ago.
“Expectations are so doggone high,” Borsch said. “If Apple released a ‘Star Trek’ holodeck, transporter and replicator, they might be more enthused.”
Bloomington startup-company consultant Graeme Thickins noted the “lack of reaction in the Apple stock.” Apple shares declined $9.74, to $169.04. “The announcements didn’t seem to get the market really excited. The stock last year went up.”

Staff writer Julio Ojeda-Zapata reports from Macworld all this week. Follow his coverage at twincities.com/technology, yourtechweblog.com and twitter.com/jojeda.