Macworld 2008 Keynote: What of the other rumors?

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What an exciting Keynote. The MacBook Air is drool-worthy, (though I think the price is high,) and we finally have real HD content for the AppleTV, in the form of the legendary movie rentals. And Time Capsule’s a cool product that will save Mac users, as well as Mac support, many headaches. The iPhone update’s a good start, and makes me almost want an iPhone, but I’m not quite there yet.

But what’s notable after a Stevenote is often not what was introduced, but rather what wasn’t. Let’s round up a few of the rumors we’ve been hearing and see if we can figure out where we went wrong.

Subnotebook: Sure, the Air is tiny, super-tiny, but many of the rumors were more along the lines of a less powerful, smaller, inexpensive notebook, on par with the Eee PC or the OLPC XO. We heard rumors of a $699 price tage, WiMAX and other fun features. We didn’t get any of that.

AppleTV: We’d been hearing of the rentals for awhile, and now they’re here. In HD even, giving the AppleTV a chance to do what it can. As an AppleTV owner, i’m thrilled. Apple’s calling it Take 2, which is clever, but movie purchases are still on the first reel, stuck in standard definition. So I can rent a movie in HD, but I can’t buy it in HD? What gives, Steve?

iPhone: Alright, the new updates are great, but nothing those of us who’ve Jailbroken our hardware haven’t seen. The two things we really wanted aren’t therel, though: 3G and more storage. We understand, the things been on the market for only 200 days, a product update wouldn’t make much sense. But consider this: it was a year ago we first saw the iPhone and groaned at the 2.5G EDGE network it would run on. It could have happened.

iPod: Some sites expected a 32GB Touch, but not this one. And while we like the software upgrades, the Jailbreakers had this one set awhile back. Nothing new here at all, really.

Desktops: My favorite rumor was about the monitor-plus-dock-plus-MacBook-equals-iMac concept we’d seen a couple weeks ago. It’s the next logical step for the dock concept, and I fully expected to see it here today, but alas, nothing.

Cordless charging: Don’t be silly. This technology works, but it’s still too new, and hardly portable enough, or pretty enough, to warrant an Apple logo.

iTunes: We know that Apple has a patent that would allow you to stream your iTunes library to your iPhone or iPod Touch or, if you wanted, likely your Moto ROKR, but we saw none of that technology here today. And I’m OK with that.

Tablet Mac: Not here today, and I don’t think you’ll ever see it, at least not from Apple. Can we put a fork in this rumor now? Please?

Apple announces purchase of Adobe: You all need to smoke less pot. I’m going to grab some food and hit the floor, and then in a little bit Apple’s promised me a little gropey time with the new MacBook Air. Provided I don’t faint from lust, I’ll have more for you later.