Macworld 2008 - live coverage of the Steve Jobs keynote

You can read my first impressions of the MacBook Air over on my Future Stuff blog. 

VIDEO: Hands on with the Apple MacBook Air

Sorry about the delay in coverage. The EDGE connection here isn't great, but we're up and running now!

5.15 – Steve is on stage talking about Leopard – most successful release of OS X ever.

5.18 – New accompaniment to Time Machine – Time Capsule, which has an airport extreme base station and hard driive – essentially a wireless network drive. It means you can wirelessly backup your Macs to Time Capsule. It's available as 500GB ($299) and 1TB ($499) versions. Ships february. It looks exactly like an Airport Extreme base station, with all the same ports.

5.21 – iPhone has been shipping for 200 days and 4m have been sold to date. US smartphone market share is 19.5% in first quarter shipping - second only to Blackberry

5.23 – iPhone's SDK is out in February – but new features out today include maps with location; web clips from your favourite websites; you can customise home screen; multiple SMS, lyrics display.

5.27 - Steve is showing off the iPhone's new features, including finding your location based on triangulation through mobile phone signals. You can add web bookmarks to your home screen, and it automatically creates an icon. It even remembers where you zoomed and panned to.

5.30 - Customising the home screen looks very cool - hold your finger on an iccon and they begin to wobble, at which point you can move the icons to where you want, and arrange them over 9 pages.

5.32 - The iPhone's location system doesn't just use Google's cellphone triangulation - it also uses Wi-Fi hotspot signals to make sure the location is exact. It'll work really well in cities, but perhaps less so in rural areas.

5.33 - The iPod Touch will have five new apps -= mail, maps, stocks, notes and weather, making it much more like the iPhone. This is great news - it means the Touch isn't hobbled to make you buy an iPhone. BUT it's going to cost Touch owners $20 to upgrade to get these new apps, which seems a bit tights as the iPhone update is free. Both are available today.

5.34 - iTunes - 4bn songs sold but only 7m movies - so we get movie rentals from Fox, WB, Universal, Paramount, Sony and Disney. Wow, that's every major studio... but will it come to the UK? Fingers crossed!

5.42 iTunes Movie Rentals launches today in the US, international 'later this year'. 1000 films by end of february with movies available 30 days after DVD release. You can watch them instantly on your Mac or PC or download them to iPod. You have 30 days to watch the movie, but once you've started you only have 24 hours. Rentals will cost $3.99 for new films or $2.99 for older ones.

5.43 Apple TV wasn't what people wanted - Apple TV Take Two doesn't require a computer - you can rent movies directly on a TV, in DVD quality and HD with surround sound.

5.45 View audio and video podcast direct from the new Apple TV, you can go to Flickr and .mac to view photos and you can access YouTube. You can download music direct to the Take Two, too. HD movies cost a dollar more ($3.99 and $4.99). It'll still sync with you computer if you want, but it doesn't have to.

5.48 Steve is demoing the new Apple TV front end, which makes choosing movies really easy - you get free previews, recommendations and short reviews. You can play moviews whie they're downloading, and in the demo it seems pretty instantaneous. It certainly seems like Apple TV has a reason to exist now - as long as iTunes Movie Rentals comes to the UK soon. Of course, it's nothing that the Xbox 360 can't do.

5.58 'Movies. Boom!' But Steve can't get the demo of Flickr access from the Apple TV to work. Shame, but it's still an impressive upgrade. 'I think it's a revolution'. And it's all a FREE software upgrade to current boxes - something of a surprise. The price of Apple TV is coming down, too - $229 starting price for the 40GB, available in 2 weeks.

6.02 Jim Gianopulos, the chairman and CEO of 20th Century Fox is now onstage. 'The next generation move format is Blu-Ray, right? But people still want DVD and today's premier of the Family Guy DVD will feature a version for iTunes and iPod' 'There was music, and then there was iPod. This is a transformative moment'

6.08 There's something in the air; New notebook. In addition to the Macbook and Macbook Pro, here comes the skinny Macbook Air. Its the world's thinnest notebook.

6.10 The rivals are skinny, weigh 3lbs but have compromises - 11in or 12in display, small keyboard, slow processor. The Macbook is 0.76in thick at one end to 0.16in at the keyboard end - the thickest part of the macbook air is thinner than the thinnest part of the Sony TZ series.

6.13 LED backlit 13in display. Videocam and full size keyboard built in. And it's backlit.

6.15  It has multitouch built into the trackpad – you can rotate photos, pan through photos using three fingers, and it has the pinch zoom effect. woah.It has 1.8in drive with 80GB HD or 64GB solid state drive. It has intel core duo 1.6Ghz standard up to 1.8Ghz top end.

6.19 Intel has produces chips that are 60% smaller for the Macbook Air. It hhas  a USB 2 port, micro DVI and headphone jack - but not optical drive. It has Bluetooth 2.1 and 802.11n Wi-Fi.

6.20 you can buy an external optical superdrive for $99 but Steve doesn't think you'll need it. You don't need it for movies or music now, nor backups – but what about installing software? New feature called remote disc – go to Finder and you can access the CD drive of any Mac or PC nearby and borrow the optical drive. Genius. You can even get a PC to read a Mac formatted disc.

6.27 Battery life is 5 hours with wireless turned on., I could do with that now – my battery is close to death. It weights 3lbs, with 13.3in display, 2GB memory standard. $1799 – about a grand in the UK I imagine. Ships in two weeks.

6.30 That's it - we now have Randy Newman to play us out. I'm off to get hands on with the new kit and shoot a few vids - check back soon for my first impressions.

All in all it's been a great keynote - I personally would like a smaller screen size but otherwise you can't fault the Air - even the pricing is brilliant.

You can read my first impressions of the MacBook Air over on my Future Stuff blog.

VIDEO: Hands on with the Apple MacBook Air