Jan/09©Chris Farley
Pre-Macworld Thoughts
Since the iPhone was announced at the historic Jobs keynote in 2007, the Apple community has swelled to several times its previous size. We now expect a great deal from an Apple keynote: a new product release isn’t good enough – we expect to be amazed. And it just isn’t a quintessential keynote with Steve Jobs and his “one more thing.” I think it has been for those reasons that the past few keynotes have lacked the magic that they once had.
This keynote (for me, at least) promises to be better than any keynote for a while. The Apple community doesn’t have high expectations. We have a vague idea of what’s going to happen and we’re mostly saddened that this will be the last Apple Macworld keynote, but that’s very liberating. It’s no fun to have your expectations raised so high than anything short of a miracle is simply unacceptable.
So this year, I’m looking forward to Macworld. With no presumptions of amazing, shiny new products, I can just enjoy the show. Sure, I’ll miss Steve, but I’m excited about Macworld because it’ll be purely fun. And maybe Apple will surprise as all; you never know.
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3:08 am on January 6th, 2009
Hi Riley and Chris,
Have you looked at the Flip camera? It produces very nice HD video and is in a small form, thought perhaps not quite as small as the iSight.
Cheers,
Mrs B/Laurie
10:50 am on January 6th, 2009
Mrs. Bartels,
I did hear that the Flip Mino HD is a good buy. There is one thing though that I think would bother me: the not so great audio quality. Do you know if it has an audio in port?
Riley
12:18 pm on January 6th, 2009
Very true, Chris. Question: what would you think of an iSight camera in HD? Do you think Apple would do it or would it just cost too much for them to manufacture?
Can't wait for MacWorld!
12:34 pm on January 6th, 2009
Interesting question. As a purely theoretical idea, I have a few thoughts, but I don't think we'll be seeing this anytime soon and almost certainly not at tomorrow's Macworld.
An iSight camera in HD seems like an illogical move at this point in time. Even broadcasters are having trouble with HD and with the compression that would be needed, it wouldn't even be worth it. And I'm not sure the technology even exists to fit an HD sensor into such a small form factor. If it does, I think, as you mentioned, that the cost would be prohibitive.
In the future, it seems very likely. The quality of everything is going up, so I think HD webcams are next.
CF
2:40 am on January 7th, 2009
Hi Riley,
Madame Scher took the Flip to France over December vacation, filmed a lot of video (including sound) and then, after downloading it to her computer using the Flip software (very easy interface), imported the resulting QuickTime movie into iMovie, where she did further edits.
The sound quality was fine, and you will get to see the results at Thursday's morning meeting. Why don't you hang around afterwards for a few moments and ask her to show you the camera. I have not actually played with it yet.
Cheers,
Mrs B