I’m writing from my second home today, San Francisco. I visited MacWorld Expo 2008′s opening day for exhibits… I also was outside of Moscone West during the keynote with my MacBook, watching MacRumors Live IRC chat robot spit out the feed of what was happening during the keynote. It was really fun out there, a large group of people had formed around me and my laptop, wanting to know keynote updates and see photos.

Regarding Apple’s announcements, let’s start with the big one. The MacBook Air. My first impressions of it after picking it up and typing on it at the show are that it’s incredibly cool and thin. The moment you put your hands on it, you feel the RDF kick in. It is a very slick device, in very typical apple fashion. With all the coolness of the device, there were a few things that struck me as omissions or things it (perceivably) lacked.

The first item on the list is the lack of an Ethernet port. I don’t know about how most people work, I usually leave this laptop (a MacBook) on my desk most of the time connected to my gigabit ethernet at home, which is insane amounts faster for transferring media back and forth between devices. Not having this item would mean you would be restricted by the speed of your wireless network (in most people’s houses, it’s 802.11g, which travels at a paltry 22mbit/sec at it’s best in my testing at home). It does support 802.11n, but N still doesn’t even touch the speed of gigabit Ethernet for simple file copying, and is wildly inconsistent on transfer speed since no one seems to want to agree on a final specification.

Secondly, the battery on the device is not removable. It’s the iPod all over again. I’ve heard installation is a free service apple will provide if you buy a new battery, but that means you have to buy the battery from them (at apple inflated prices) or do it yourself. Really stupid. I realize design choices are sometimes chosen over functionality in regards to Apple stuff, but every previous Apple laptop I can remember has a removable battery.

The third item on the list is the omission of any type of firewire port and only 1 USB 2.0 port. I don’t think this going to be as much of an issue as some people might think, but I routinely use 2 USB ports on the road (for instance, with a Verizon EVDO USB modem and a USB thumbdrive or card reader). Guess everyone will have to lug around an un-powered USB hub with them to compensate.

And finally, my last item of negativity on the product, what’s with the price point? $1799 to start? It’s thin and all, but it’s slower than my 1.5 year old MacBook, it has less features, and it has no CD/DVD drive. Add the 64GB SSD drive and you’re gonna pay $3000 for this thing. Hope you have a few spare credit cards.

All this being said, I may consider this device in a few weeks when it’s available. We’ll see. If I do, I’ll review it for the readers.

The only other item in the keynote I felt was noteworthy was the new software update for the crippled AppleTV appliance. The update includes the ability to rent movies directly from Apple, on the device, without the use of a computer. Pretty interesting. I had an AppleTV at one point and sold it, mostly because I didn’t find it immensely useful, and the limitations of the device and it’s ability to play content other than Apple’s hand-picked video and audio codecs got to me. This may renew my interest in it again to possibly buy another one, but only because they added the functionality to rent 720p HD versions of popular releases.

Currently there’s not another provider of a service like this, so we’ll have to see what kind of movies get there. An alarming item I read from the keynote transcript said movies come out “30 days after DVD release”… ouch. Honestly, if they really want to curb people from pirating media, why do they do stupid things like that?

Apple also dropped the price of the baseline AppleTV from $299 to $229, which was a smart move.

I had a great time visiting San Francisco for the event again and hanging out with some of my friends here. I’ll probably be back next year. The show itself was boring as usual, but Apple’s announcements and the parties and gatherings are the reason it’s fun. See you next year, MacWorld.

I have posted my photos from MacWorld 2008 on Flickr.

I thought I’d write a bit of an plug for a program I participate in, using a lot of the computers I use to write my articles with.

I use my idle computer time to contribute to a project called Folding@Home. Folding@Home uses the spare processing power on your computer to run simulations of protein folding. Before proteins carry out their function, they have to assemble – or fold – themselves. Unfortunately, the folding process can and often does go wrong, leading to serious diseases, including Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow, Parkinson’s, and others. By simulating the folding process, scientists can use the results to find out more about these diseases, and eventually find a cure.

There’s a good chance that you or someone you love will encounter a disease related to protein folding at some point in life. Instead of feeling helpless in the fight against that disease, you can join devoted scientists that are helping to cure it!

Check out the folding@home website to get your hands on the Folding@Home client. Once you’ve downloaded it, begin the installation. It will guide you through a number of steps to get started. Remember to enter team 35054 when it asks you for a team number! That’s ours.

Folding@Home FAQ: http://folding.stanford.edu/faq.html
Our Folding@Home Team Page: http://leovillefolding.com

Team 35054′s Folding Statistics

Thanks for your help, if you can contribute!