Alex Hopmann’s Blog

Leading up to MacWorld there were a ton of rumors about a new MacMini, an iPhone Nano, and updates to Snow Leopard. Then the announcements during the actual show were a bit underwhelming(for most people- Chris was really excited about the new MacBook Pro).

My theory is this is all related to the reason that Apple is pulling out of MacWorld in the first place. It is a show they don’t control, IDC presumably wouldn’t let them webcast the keynote so they would rather introduce important things at their own events where they can get more focused press (on a schedule they control, not the middle of the CES mess and where they can time them so the products are ready), with a webcast and broadcast into all the Apple stores.

So they had already signed up for MacWorld and needed to announce something, but they kept it to the fairly tame iLife, iWork updates and the new MacBook Pro which is certainly a product for the enthusiast segment. The theory is that on good PR grounds they are holding the bigger more general audience announcements for events where they can control them better and make a bigger splash.

I’m assuming in a few weeks we are going to hear about invitations heading out for some other Apple event where they will start rolling out the next stuff (I’m hoping for an update to the MacMini myself, and betting that we won’t hear about iPhone updates until around June which appears to be when they refresh that product line).

Cliff Mass is a meteorologist at University of Washington and frequent contributer to KUOW our local public radio station and has been publishing an excellent blog about weather, especially focused on the weather of the Pacific NW. I’ve been very interested in weather lately, mostly stemming from needing to understand it as a pilot, although its often useful to help guess whether a given day will be a good one for skiing. Most weather reporting tends to be far too dumbed down for me, but Cliff appears to be blogging about the real details (while presenting it in an approachable way), plus the focus on the phenomena of the NW is really helpful.