A brief review of News during January, 2008 January 29, 2007

During January several major news stories erupted. There was CES 2008, although not too much happened there, and Macworld as well. Let's take a look at what was really released throughout all the confusion of the two events.

Apple Macworld(and some general news)

Shortly before Macworld(at CES) Apple announced a welcome update to the Mac Pro. This is the professional level tower that Apple provides, and they have updated it to the most recent Intel processors. A minor anouncement, but for Apple it was a dead giveaway that something big was to be announced at Macworld. At the beginning of the event, Steve Jobs gave his keynote speach, which gave information about the major releases Apple had planned for Macworld. The most important thing that came out of this event was the Macbook Air. This is Apple's ultra-portable solution, weighing in at just under 3 pounds, and under .76 inches thin. Two of the major complaints about this product are the non-user removable battery, and the severe lack of connectivity. The machine has a 1.6 or 1.8ghz Core 2 Duo depending on the model, 2GB RAM, an 80GB hard drive or an optional 64GB solid state drive. A 13.3 inch screen and backlight keyboard are standard, but it only has one USB port, one micro-DVI port, and one Audio jack. The lack of connectivity is a serious setback, but Apple claims that they will replace the battery for $129, which is roughly the cost of the new battery anyway. For those of you who need something very lightweight and portable, this machine hopes to be everything you would need. We hope to get a review of the machine in sometime after they ship to stores, which is rumored to be the beginning of February. A few other announcements at Macworld included the release of iPhone update 1.1.3, which provided the ability to move icons around on the screen, create web shortcuts, and updated the map feature. This update also provided all the software to ipod touch owners, with previous owners being able to purchase the software from the iTunes store for $20, and every iPod Touch sold after Macworld to be shipped with the software. The rumor mills are also turning with the possibility of a Macbook Pro update, but Apple has yet to say anything on the matter.

CES 2008 Announcements

CES this year was actually quite a disappointment, especially in comparison to Macworld. There was some minor news, such as the production of a 9mm thick plasma by Pioneer, but nothing worth serious mention. If you're interested in seeing what was there, take a look at Tom's Hardware's "11 best" of CES 2008. However, some interesting news arrived shortly before CES. Warner, a large backer of HD-DVD, decided to go exclusively Blu-Ray. With more and more content providers jumping on the Blu-Ray bandwagon, it is seeming more and more likely that HD-DVD will lose the format war. This point was sharpened even more by the fact that HD-DVD cancelled its CES press conference. Shortly thereafter they came back to the press saying that the "Format war is far from over." Although this is partially true, it is seeming more and more likely that Blu-Ray will win out in the end.

Other small News

Some other things happened during the month of January, such as the release of Burnout Paradise, which I will cover in my article on Gaming for 2008, but not anything incredibly serious. Intel announced its plans to have a Penryn based mobile architecture available within the next couple of months, which supposedly will increase battery performance by about 25% and increase processing performance about 35-40%. nVidia announced an update to their graphics line, with the release of the GeForce 9x00 line coming later this year. AMD/ATI has also been working on an updated graphics line, but has yet to provide a comparable product to the performance of nVidia's high end cards. Expect more product announcements over the next few months, especially as we start moving toward April and May, as the computer market tends to pick up during this time. So this is my coverage of the news of January, hope you found it interesting.

Copyright © Kyle Diedrick and Graphics Unplugged 2008, All Rights Reserved