the stevenote is over. and my wallet will stay [mostly] shut.
don’t get me wrong. from a certain perspective, it was a fantastic stevenote. apple has lots of new products that will fly off the shelves.
just [mostly] nothing i need.
the two big product announcements are the imac and the macbook, both with intel chips. 3 times faster for the same price. they will sell a jillion of these, i’m sure.
and they were very smart to upgrade machines at a higher price point. if you know that people are going to be plunking down money, you might as well get as much of it as you can.
what was i looking for? what would have made me think about opening my wallet? a guaranteed wallet-opener would have been some tivo-like mac mini computerish gadget to replace my cable box. i think that’s what a lot of people were looking for. maybe it’s still coming. but, given all the rumors, i’m betting that analysts are going to be somewhat disappointed, and that apple’s stock is going to fall on this news.
i’ve done my best today to discount the over-expectations and the wildly rampant rumors, and base my opinion of the day’s events solely on the news given. after all, apple has promised zero up until today, so you can’t blame them if everyone starts predicting 50″ plasma tvs with built in computers and other such outlandish things.
even doing that, though, i have to admit to disappointment myself. no front row software for my mac. no home theater solution. no huge content announcements. no tivo-killers, no netflix-killers.
i’ll upgrade my system software to the newly-announced version 10.4.4, after i’m sure it’s safe. but that’s free.
and i’ll probably buy the obligatory ilife ’06 update for $79, after it gets incrementally upgraded again to the 0.1 or 0.2 version.
but apple could have made me want to spend a lot more of my money.
maybe they still will. but not today.