October 14th, 2008
New notebooks: What Apple didn't announce
While Apple delivered a lot of new features in the new MacBooks today (glass trackpads, unibody contruction) and they also removed one – Firewire from the MacBook. There are some other key features that that were rumored to arrive in Apple’s new notebooks that just didn’t pan out.
- Blu-Ray. Jobs answered this in the Q&A segment by saying “It’s great to watch the movies, but the licensing of the tech is so complex, we’re waiting till things settle down and Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace.” Apple would rather have you rent movies and TV shows from iTunes than on an optical disc from someone else.
- Touchscreen display. With the move to Multi-touch trackpads on the MacBook and MacBook Pro, some people extrapolated that Apple might move to multi-touch screens as well. The problem is that touchscreens are expensive (especially 13, 15 and 17-inch ones), so it probably won’t happen for a while. When asked about touchscreens, Jobs responded “so far it hasn’t made a lot of sense to us.”
- HDMI. When asked why Apple chose the Mini Display Connector port over HDMI Jobs responded that HDMI is limited in resolution. Phil Schiller responded that for typical computer use, display port is the connector of the future.
- Mini-DVI. It was rumored that Apple would replace the full-size DVI port with a Mini-DVI port, but instead opted for Mini Display Connector port.
- $800. A super-low, US$799 price point was rumored for the low end MacBook, but that didn’t work out. The new entry level MacBook is US$999, US$100 lower than the previous model.
- Netbook. A question came up in Q&A about if Apple would create a “netBook” commonly defined as a small, light, low-cost, subnotebook optimized for Internet access and word processing. Jobs called the netbook “a nascent market that’s just getting started.” I find this question curious because Apple already has a thin and light MacBook in the Air and I don’t see them adding a fourth notebook model.
Jason D. O'Grady is the editor of PowerPage.org, which has been publishing daily mobile technology news since December 1995. For disclosures on Jason's industry affiliations, click here or to view Jason's full profile click here.
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