So if you don't know Macworld Expo opened today, and I've been a long time Mac user. So as I am due for more entries and it's Macworld season these next set of days of entries is going to be centered around the expo. Due to the nature of when friends are going and that I have little commitments I will be going probably all (minus today) of the days to the expo. So if you don't care about such, you can skip reading for this week probably.
In this entry I'm going to go over stuff covered in the Keynote with some reactions. Also I helped out with a recording of Apple Universe podcast and there was a great panel of speakers so some stuff and thoughts from that.

So today I woke up early and I mean 8:45am. This is like record breaking folks! So it was on to loading up the text feeds of Steve Job's Keynote. I used Mac Rumors Live as I have in the past few years. This year their feed was top notch and I didn't bother keeping open the Gizmodo or Engadget ones. As usual I had chat windows open with my friends and we were sharing comments back and forth as things went on. So let's bomb thru keynote really fast. Seatbelts? (Disclamer: order may not be correct, and items may be missing.)

- iPhone update, as expected. SDK nice to see they've FINALLY announced it. The iPhone is going to become a much better device once 3rd party developers get going with it.
- iTunes store: Movie rentals. I'm not thrilled about any of it, but should fare well. Spent WAY too much time of the keynote on this shit.
- Apple TV: After thinking about it all day, the price drop and now that it's actually an independent unit makes it a better buy. Again we'll have to see how the market responds to it.
- iPod touch $20 update: Bullshit. Nobody's going to pay for that. It'll be on torrents in a few days.
- Time Capsule: Underapreciated release of the keynote.
- MacBook Air: As expected. Amazing. Haven't seen one yet, but everyone who has says it's stunning.

So the next major item of my day was helping out with Apple Universe live podcast recording. Daniel Brusilovsky who runs the podcast (via my brother) asked me for some audio help with the podcast. As it was going to be a live podcast recording and also a panel of speakers this meant more gear. So I helped him out and brought along my Mackie 1402 mixer and some more cable as well as a few extra mics for backup. Really good group of folks, plus some big names too: Robert Scoble (scobleizer.com), Dave Sifry (Founder technorati.com, Shooby, iJustine (Tasty Blog Snack) and Cali Lewis.
So I was the "audio guy" for the podcast, (I'll edit/update this when the podcast goes up with a link to it.) I sat there with headphones and did mixed things live to try to keep volume levels as balanced as possible. However I know Daniel is going to have to do a good deal of post-production cleanup work to even out some of the bits.
What was really interesting was the discussion as a whole, really interesting and great stuff. I need to get back into the tech scene.

Briefly recap of some key things that were talked about:
- MacBook Air is really well designed. Great for traveling business. Particularly useful to those that use centralized document systems, (e.g.. Google Docs) where everything is stored in "the cloud."

- Time capsule was probably the most under-appreciated item released. It's a good value, backup storage, Wi-Fi extender, plug and it will "just work" as Apple stuff does.
Also I did some looking into Time Capsule, it's price point is actually very competitive. You can buy the same sized NAS drives from say LaCie for the SAME price. Now given that functionally they are the same, but the nature of apple gear to "just work" makes the Time Capsule a better buy.

So bit longer (entry) than I expected. Stay tuned all this week for updates from MacWorld Expo. The plan is to be there tomorrow (Wednesday) so I'll have more thoughts about the MB Air once I get my hands on it. I'll be updating from the Expo, so make sure to check early afternoon.