The presentation lacked the revolutionary fervor of previous years, but the Apple CEO did introduce a slew of useful and sexy products.

It’d be a cheap shot for me to say that Steve Jobs’s Macworld keynote this year was a little bit of a let-down. It’d be true, but it’d be a cheap shot.

I think Jobs himself was aware this isn’t a revolutionary year for Apple — he omitted his characteristic “one more thing,” the statement used in past years to signal the introduction of game-changing technology.

Still, Jobs introduced a slew of meaty and attractive new products and services at his keynote Tuesday. The ultra-thin MacBook Air is guaranteed to be the notebook computer of choice for the fashionable geek this year. Updates to iPhone and iPod Touch software will make the devices more easy-to-use, useful, and fun. New wireless backup technology will make it a lot easier for users to protect their data.

And one of the announcements might prove revolutionary after all: The package of movie rentals over iTunes, along with upgrades to Apple TV. But it’s too early to tell whether movie rentals will transform home theater the way iTunes and the iPod transformed the music industry. iTunes movie rentals will launch with a very limited selection — although the business could prove formidable indeed if Apple can ramp up its catalog rapidly.

Everybody’s talking about the MacBook Air and iTunes, so I’ll run down the keynote in chronological order, which will let me highlight some of the less prominent — but still interesting — announcements, and describe what it was like to be there.

Introducing Time Capsule

The keynote kicked off with a viewing of a recent I’m a Mac/I’m a PC commercial, with a “Happy New Year” theme. The Mac guy was happy because he had a great year. The PC guy… not so much. But the PC guy was looking forward to a great 2008, copying what the Mac did in 2007.

Jobs took the stage dressed as always in black mock turtleneck sweater and jeans. “Thank you for an extraordinary 2007,” he told the audience, and then trotted out the statistics: Leopard shipped 5 million copies in 2007, making it the most successful Mac OS ever. Nineteen percent of the Mac OS X installed base has upgraded.

He introduced Time Capsule, a hardware companion to Leopard Time Machine backup software. When Leopard shipped in the autumn, Time Machine required backing up to an attached external or internal hard drive, which is especially inconvenient for notebook users, who need to be able to take their devices with them. Apple introduced the Time Capsule home backup server to allow wireless backup. The Time Capsule includes a built-in 802.11n Airport Extreme base station, with a server-grade hard drive. “You can back up every Mac in your house to one server,” Jobs said.

The Time Capsule will come in a 500 Gbyte configuration, priced at $299, or 1 Tbyte for $499.

Jobs broke for another I’m a Mac/I’m a PC commercial. This one showed the Mac guy duplicated many times, to illustrate Time Machine, which the PC guy found annoying. Oh, that PC guy, how put-upon he is!

What’s New For iPhone

iPhone Upgrade Jobs then transitioned to talking about the iPhone.

“Today happens to be exactly the 200th day since the iPhone went on sale,” he said, “and I’m extraordinarily pleased to report that we have sold 4 million iPhones today.” That’s a rate of 20,000 per day, he noted.

In its first quarter of availability, the iPhone became the second-most popular smartphone available, with 19.5% market share, topped only by the RIM BlackBerry, with 39% market share — statistics which Jobs attributed to Gartner. The iPhone has more market share than Palm, Motorola, and Nokia. As a matter of fact, those three vendors combined have only slightly more market share than the iPhone.

Jobs mentioned the upcoming software developer kit, which will allow third-party developers to write software for the iPhone, only in passing. Instead, he talked about a significant new upgrade to the iPhone software, made available after the keynote Tuesday.

The new version upgrades the Maps application so the iPhone can find and display its current location, by triangulating on nearby cell towers using technology from Google. The mapping also triangulates on Wi-Fi hotspots using technology for Skyhook Wireless, which has mapped 23 million hotspots worldwide, and can triangulate based on beacons from known hotspots even if the user isn’t logged in to the hotspot.

The Maps upgrade gives the application a less-confusing user interface. Users can drop a pin on a specific location and bookmark the pin.

Users will be able to use Web Clips to bookmark Web pages on the iPhone home screen. Users will be able to create up to nine home screens, which they can toggle between similar to the way they now browse photos. The iPhone will also support sending SMS messages to multiple recipients. Video upgrades include adding chapters, subtitles, and graphics.

Web clips not only work as bookmarks, they remember the specific zooming and panning in the browser, and return to that location and zoom level — handy if you want to mark your place on a specific section of a specific page, like the technology section of the New York Times home page.

Users can rearrange icons on the iPhone home screen by simply tapping and holding on any icon for about three seconds. At that point, all the icons start to wiggle, and can be slid around with a fingertip, or moved to another home screen.

And the iPod application was upgraded to allow displaying song lyrics, where those are available. (Good. Now maybe I’ll be able to figure out the lyrics to “1-2-3-4″ by Feist — which, by the way, was playing just prior to Jobs coming on stage.)

The upgrade is free to iPhone customers.

The iPod Touch — often described as an iPhone without the phone bits — gets an upgrade to incorporate the iPhone’s Mail, Stocks, Weather, and Web Clips applications. The upgraded software is being built into new Touches immediately, and it’s a $20 upgrade to existing users.

You Ought To Be In Pictures

Movie Rentals Jobs said the iTunes store reached a landmark last week, selling its 4 billionth song. On Christmas Day, the store sold 20 million songs. In the history of the service, it has sold 125 million TV shows and 7 million movies. “That’s more than everyone else put together, but it’s failed to meet expectations,” Jobs said.

Buying movies doesn’t really fit the way that most people consume movies, Jobs said. They’ll listen to a favorite song thousands of times, and so it makes sense to own it, but they usually only watch a movie once.

To boost sales and better fit how people use movies, Apple introduced movie rentals in iTunes. Jobs said that Apple has lined up the six major American movie studies: 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., Walt Disney, Paramount, Universal, and Sony. “We have every major studio supporting it,” Jobs said.

The service includes all popular first-run movies, and a library of old movies.

Jobs said that the service will have over 1,000 movies by the end of February, and movies will be available 30 days after their DVD release.

Movies will be viewable on Macs, PCs, current generation iPods, and iPhones. Users will be able to start watching movies instantly if they’re connected to broadband. Users will have 30 days to start watching, then 24 hours to finish. Movies can be transferred from one device to another — for example, they can start watching a movie on their Mac, and finish on the iPod.

Pricing is $2.99 for movies in the library, and $3.99 for new releases — $3.99 and $4.99 for high-def. The service launched Tuesday in the U.S, and internationally later this year.

The movie rentals are an intriguing offering, especially when paired with the new Apple TV (more on that later). Ramping up the selection will be essential to the service’s success. One thousand titles sounds like a lot, but actually it’s not much at all. Netflix has a selection of 90,000 DVDs for rent, plus 5,000 available for viewing on demand.

Jobs then turned to Apple TV. He reviewed the history of media-center PCs briefly, noting that Microsoft, Apple, TiVo, and others have tried interesting users in media-center PCs for their living rooms. “And you know what? We all missed,” he said. No one has been successful.

Apple introduced Apple TV last year, a device for viewing movies and TV downloaded from iTunes. It required a network connection to a PC or Mac running iTunes.

Apple TV Take 2 removes the requirement for a second computer, allowing users to rent directly from their televisions. The machine will support high-definition movies with Dolby 5.1, allow users to view photos on Flickr or the .Mac service, or YouTube video.

Apple TV will also allow users to buy TV shows. Jobs made no mention of renting TV shows, which seemed a gap in their service. If people are more interested in renting movies than owning them, surely that goes double for TV shows.

The user interface for Apple TV borrows elements from hotel-room pay-per-view services, Amazon.com, and TiVo. Users can browse by genre, see what other movies people who rented a given movie also rented, and search using text.

The service also supports over 125,000 podcasts.

The Apple TV demo was the occasion for the only glitch in the demo that I could spot — the Flickr photos didn’t come up. Jobs was very calm about the whole thing — he just waited a little bit to be sure the screen remained blank, commented, “Nope, I’m afraid Flickr isn’t serving,” and moved on.

The new capabilities are a free software upgrade for Apple TV.

Apple also announced a price cut for Apple TV. “Now, it sells for $299, ” Jobs said, “but not anymore.”

“Wow!” I thought to myself. “They’re cutting the pricing to $199.”

But the new price was $229. That’s a respectable discount, but it lacks that sub-$200 thrill.

The new Apple TV will be available in two weeks.

Fox will offer DVDs with technology on it that allows consumers to copy the content to an iPod or iPhone.

Something In The Air

The MacBook Air The tiny MacBook Air was the big gun at the keynote. Jobs said the device is the world’s thinnest notebook computer.

He compared it with most ultrathin notebooks, which, he said, weigh about 3 pounds, with 11-12″ displays, miniature keyboards, and 1.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processors.

The MacBook air also weighs about 3 pounds, but other than that, it’s different from and more advanced than other ultrathins, Jobs said. He compared it to the ultrathin Sony Vaio, which, he said, is a wedge-shaped notebook that’s 1.2″ at the thickest and 0.8″ at the thinnest. In contrast, the MacBook Air is 0.76″ at the thickest, and 0.16″ at the thinnest. In other words, the thickest part of the MacBook Air is thinner than the thinnest part of the Vaio. It fits inside a big manila envelope — the kind that closes by looping red thread around buttons. Jobs showed a TV commercial demonstrating just that, and removed the MacBook Air from a manila envelope onstage.

The notebook has a magnetic latch, a 13.3″ instant-on wireless display with LED backing, built-in iSight camera, and full-size keyboard with backlight that automatically switches on when ambient lighting dims. “This is possibly the best notebook keyboard we’ve ever shipped,” Jobs said.

The notebook has a large trackpad, which supports multitouch gestures similar to the iPhone. Jobs demonstrated a few gestures using iPhoto: Double-tap and drag to move a window, pan a large photo by dragging with two fingers, rotate the photo by rotating two fingers, flick through photos by swiping a finger, and pinch in and out to zoom on a photo.

The notebook comes with an 80 Gbyte hard disk drive standard and optional 60 Gbyte solid state disk option. The spinning drive is a 1.8″ hard drive, same as on an iPod. The processor is a 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, with option to go to 1.8 GHz, same as in other notebooks and Macs. The processor was built specially by Intel to make it 60% smaller than the standard Core 2 processor.

The notebook has a magsafe connector and 45 watt power adapter. A latching door on one side of the unit accesses a USB 2.0 port, MicroDIV connection, headphone jack. The unit supports 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1.

Missing from the notebook: A hard Ethernet connection.

Also missing: An internal optical drive. Eleven years ago, Apple attracted criticism when it shipped the candy-colored iMac without a floppy disk drive built in, now it’s shipping a notebook without an internal optical drive. Apple will sell a detachable USB optical drive for $99. “But you know what, we don’t think most users will miss the optical drive. We don’t think most users will need that optical drive,” Jobs said.

Users use optical drives for movies, to burn backup disks, burn CDs for their cars, and install software, Jobs said. But iTunes will provide movies, Time Machine and Time Capsule will provide backup, and users can listen to music in their cars using iPods.

And for software installation, Apple is introducing technology to allow the MacBook Air to borrow optical drives from nearby PCs or Macs over a network. Users install special software on the remote machine, and the Air can address the remote machine’s optical drive as though it was the Air’s own. The Windows version of the software will allow PCs to run Mac installation programs on the Air’s behalf.

The unit has a five-hour battery life. Many ultrathin notebooks only have enough juice for an hour and a half.

The price will start at $1,799.

Jobs said the MacBook Air is designed to minimize harm to the environment. The aluminum case is fully recyclable. “As a matter of fact, it is an extra desirable recyclable material,” he said. It uses the first display that’s free of mercury and uses arsenic-free glass. And retail packaging is 50% less volume than previous MacBooks. Apple has been taking heat from Greenpeace, which claims the company’s environment practices are unsound.

The keynote concluded with music from Oscar-winning singer/songwriter Randy Newman, who wrote and sang for the soundtracks of Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, and other Pixar movies.

He sang a satirical song about the end of the American empire. It was kind of a downer, actually, and added a political tone to the keynote that I thought was inappropriate.

But Newman saved the day by singing “You’ve Got a Friend In Me,” which, he explained, he wrote for Toy Story. “I actually wrote a great love theme, but they cut the Buzz-Woody love scene,” he said.

 

For those not paying attention, there’s a “leaked” Macworld 2008 keynote making the rounds today, and we’d just like to make sure you know it’s completely and utterly false. Not only is it one of many fabricated keynotes making the rounds this year, and part of an annual ritual of keynote fabrications, but it even manages to be self-damning with its listing of a Mac Pro refresh — which obviously happened last week. Let’s try a little harder, people!

[via Engadget]

We’re here! Yeah, a bit early, but this place fills some 6,000+ people. Crazy to think that this will probably be the last time Gates ever gets up on stage at CES — at least it’ll definitely be his last hurrah up there as Chairman of Microsoft.

6:25PM PT - Ok! “Ladies and gentlemen, the keynote will begin in five minutes, take your seats please.”

6:28PM PT - Two minutes. “PLEASE take your seats.” Let’s not keep North America’s 2nd richest man waiting, shall we?

6:30PM PT - Here we go! Lights are down, harp music.

6:30PM PT - Showing a CES promo video. All about the square footage, bajillions of attendees, keynote speakers — oh, the hype.

6:33PM PT - “Ladies and gentlemen, president and CEO of the CEA, Gary Shapiro!” Mild applause. “Happy new year, and welcome to 2008 CES!”

“In my opinion, these are the best four days of the year. The floor officially opens tomorrow morning for the ribbon cutting, with cutting edge product…” Woops, teleprompter mistake in there, sorry Gary. Talking about keynotes, the CE industry forecast, and so on.

6:36PM PT - “We’re hosting a new program this year…” — Technologies in emerging countries. “And now, I’m honored to kick off 2008 CES with Microsoft’s chairman, Bill Gates.” Applause! Bill! “He’s spoken at CES 11 times… clearly Bill’s changed the world, and he’s brought his vision to hundreds of millions. His story is legendary.”

6:36PM PT - Xbox, Media PC, Smartphone… all products Microsoft’s announced at CES. “Microsoft aims to provide the tools to let people connect no matter where they are. … He’s also the world’s most successful philanthropist. … I am proud to introduce to you… Bill Gates!” Big applause! Retro tech video playing before Bill’s on.

6:38PM PT - People love playing Xbox 360, using their Media PCs, Smartphones, and Zunes alright. “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Chairman of Microsoft, Bill Gates!” That’s the what, third, fourth time he’s been introduced?

 

6:39PM PT - “Good evening, it’s great to be here and see all the exciting things going on… my first keynote was in 1994. That was a time when Win95 was just coming together, the internet was just getting started, and we entered the start of what we called the first digital decade. The PC installed base grew to over 1b machines…” music, photos, cellphones. “The trend here is clear: all media and entertainment will be software-driven. The first digital decade has been fantastically successful.”

6:44PM PT - “We’ve made a lot of progress. The first digital decade has been a great success. Thousands of companies have worked together… this is just the beginning. There’s nothing holding us back from going much faster and further in the second digital decade. But before we talk about that, I want to talk about the fact that this IS my last keynote…. This will be the first time since I was 17 that I won’t have my full time Microsoft job.

Brian Williams: “Join us all day as we report on Bill’s last full day at Microsoft.” Bill drives off in a tiny car, briefcase on top. Ballmer is talking about Bill totally The Office style. Awesome. Bill spins in his chair, plays with action figures.

Matthew McConaughey: “After all these years he’s finally taking work-life balance seriously. He’s even got a personal trainer.”

Ummm, Bill’s singing “Big Pimpin’,” being produced by Jay-Z. “Let me get one thing straight with you Jay-Z, you can retire, and then UNRETIRE?” Jay-Z: “Yeah, keep ‘em guessing.”

6:46PM PT - Bono: “Yeah, Bill, I’m a little busy here!” Bill’s playing Guitar Hero II. “Bill, we’ve talked about this before. We’re full up in the band. All positions are filled. I know… I know… I can’t just replace Edge because you got a high score on Guitar Hero.” “Bill’s always had a passion for music… and as long as it’s not my music, I’m fine with that.”

Apparently now Bill’s auditioning with Spielberg. “Oh Bill, what money can’t buy.” Clooney: “Steven, I can’t play Bill Gates. Why don’t you get Russell Crow to do it? Tom Hanks? Passed on that one too?”

Bill: “I was thinking the last time I was on the show it was really successful…” Jon Stewart: “Yeah, you were great. But you did kind of run off at the end, like it had monkey-pox.” Clip of that classic moment, oh yes. Jon’s waffling, no Jon, let Bill co-anchor!

6:48PM PT - Bill asks Hillary and Obama to be their running-mates — Gore: “Oh hey Bill. No, it’s not an INCONVENIENT time. Yeah, that was a good one.”

Ozzy Osbourne: “We’re the first to give credit where it’s due. Microsoft Bob? All his.”

Bill drives away from Microsoft one last time… all his office stuff falls off his car — oh Bill. Another Brian Williams clip. And huuuuuge applause. Over 6k people!

6:53PM PT - “I don’t think it’s an accurate representation… but it was fun to put together.” Gee, thanks Bill, ya don’t say. “Of course, after the transition, I’ll have a few projects I’ll pick about the magic of software… how it will advance education and health. The second digital decade will be more focused on connecting people, more focused on being user centric. Microsoft will deliver platforms that will let people build apps — but they’ll run not only on the PC, in the cloud, on the phone, in the car, in the TV.”

“We’ll use the best of rich platforms and services…. these devices will span work and business. … The three key elements I’d highlight: high def experiences everywhere. On the wall, in your desk and in your table — it will just be there, easy to manipulate.”

6:53PM PT - The quality of the rendering will be very, very rich, and will apply high quality AV… getting your data, you’ll just take that for granted. No longer will users have to bridge between the devices. The master in the cloud — backing up, searching, connecting — will be very simple. The information can be shared in a simple way.”

“When you get a new phone or want to borrow a device, it’ll be a very simple thing to get up and running… organizing memories and having the system find what’s relevant to you, that digital memory application will be something broadly used and very important. Devices will know your context, know your location. Finally, the third and most underestimated: the power of the natural user interface.”

6:58PM PT - “We’ve seen new interfaces: touch on the Windows PC, touch on the iPhone.” Oh? “The reaction to those natural interface implementations has been very dramatic. People are interested in a simpler way of accessing their information. All of these things come together with the other elements to create very new experiences. We’re just at the beginning of this. This is something the software industry will build into the platform.”

“The innovation of the previous years will come together… a key building block has been the Windows platform. We will evolve that and use it as the central building block. The last year has been an amazing year PCs. … A year ago we launched Vista, we have 100 million people using Vista.”

“We have great partners building neat, new form-factor PCs… we have online services, we’re seeing incredible growth in those. Windows Mobile, over 10 million new users last year, and we’ll double that next year. The phones have gotten so rich.”

6:59PM PT - I want to give you a quick glimpse about the latest exciting developments.” Mika Kramer (sp) has taken the stage: “My lifeline is Windows… gone are the days of multiple sign-ins and multiple hassles. With my single Windows Live ID all my services are integrated, personalized, and connected. Tonight I want to share what’s fresh and new — what helps me stay connected.”

7:01PM PT - Windows Live calendar demo.

7:02PM PT - Now doing a demo of the Windows Live photo gallery…

An image of the new Palm!

7:05PM PT - Demo of Live Spaces, Live Video Search. All done!

Bill’s back: “Well, I got invited to that snowboard thing, so I now I have to buy one of these things.” Bill, you’re such a nerd. Surface demo! Bill’s talking about the recognition systems, playing with customizing the board.

Bill writes his signature on this snowboard as: “Bill!” in cursive. Nice.

Demoing Surface integration with a phone to send out to Windows Live. “We see surface showing up in many situations — even here in Vegas — as a new flexible interface. Another big announcement for us is the introduction of a web technology called Silverlight. It came out with some unique capabilities, shipped in its first version it got a great response.”

7:08PM PT - “I’m pleased to announce today we’ve found a perfect partner to showcase Silverlight: NBC has chosen Microsoft has as its exclusive video partner for online video footage. We’ll make it all available live and on demand.” Handing off to NBC via video.

Lots of clips from the Olympics — Bob Costas, yo Bob. NBCOlympics.com / MSN — video on the web “in high quality and with enhanced features.” Bob: “One last thing — you HAVE to stop calling me. There’s simply no place for you on our Olympic broadcast — there’s nothing I can do. Lose my number.”

7:11PM PT - “I’ll enjoy watching the Olympics… I can watch all the obscure sports.” Robbie Bach is up! “It’s good to be here again to talk about connected entertainment! I want to talk about the successes we’ve had in 2007 and talk about what’s coming in the future… first, we’ll talk about gaming.”

“Vista is a great OS for gaming, and Windows is far and away the largest gaming platform — Xbox has had tremendous success as well. 17.7m consoles shipped to date — in the US through November we did 3.5b in business, more than the Wii and PS3.. more than the spending on Wii and PS3 combined. We also continue to grow on Xbox Live.”

“We have passed the 10 million member mark — that’s six months faster than we expected to get to that number. Certainly a lot of the time people are on Live playing games, but they’re also enjoying TV and movies…. ABC and Disney will be bringing their shows to Xbox Live this month. High School Musical, Lost, Desperate Housewives… We’re also adding in the movie space.”

7:15PM PT - MGM! “Xbox Live will provide 2x on-demand content than any cable or sat provider. Our approach to TV isn’t just through Xbox — Media Center continues its success, and is on the vast majority of PCs in the market to date.” Talking about Media Center Extender tech: “New extenders from Samsung and HP — which we already heard about last week.”

Finally Mediaroom (MSFT’s awesome IPTV service): “First, we have tech called DVR anywhere — distribute recorded content around the house.” Talking about interactive services with CNN. “The final announcement, last year we talked about the 360 being an STB — this year we’re excited to announce that BT will be the first to provide that capability. But a 360 and use it as an STB for your TV.”

“This is not just a hobby, this is something we take quite seriously.” That a dig at Jobs and the Apple TV as “Apple’s hobby”? Now the Zune, comparing it to the iPod. Yep. “For the first time we’ll begin selling the Zune outside the US, in Canada.”

7:19PM PT - “Music is an inherently social experience, and that’s why we made Zune Social.” Robbie’s invited a pal, Molly, up on stage to help demo Zune Social, Zune Card, etc.

Ha! Robbie’s user name is EDprezz (President of Entertainment and Devices — high-larious).

Shins, Silversun Pickups, Decemberists, it’s a hipster hit parade up in this piece!

7:23PM PT - Robbie’s moved on to Sync, demoing that. Robbie asks the Sync machine to play Cars by Gary Numan. Huzzah, Numan!

7:28PM PT - “The other exciting thing that’s happening in the auto space is a new upgrade to Sync, which is called 911-assist. If an airbag deploys, the system automatically makes a 911 call –unless you stop it — so emergency services can come quickly to help you out.” Windows Mobile time. “Phones are going to be a BIG platform — PCs will grow, but phones are the fastest growing platform. We outsell BlackBerry, we outsell the iPhone.”

“Tellme is a leader in the telephony space, but in the future they’re going to launch something called Say and See.” Demoing again — this app uses GPS and voice recognition to search local listings. Too bad this doesn’t appear to be happening on a Windows Mobile phone.

Correction — definitely not happening on a Windows Mobile phone.

Now Robbie’s showing his end of the demo, receiving movie tickets from Molly’s Tellme service, then previews a Cloverfield trailer. Talking how well Microsoft is in position to take advantage of integrated (mobile) advertising. Robbie wrap-up time. “Microsoft is poised to deliver. Before our big finale, I wanted to invite Bill on stage to show us the future of where we’re going…”

Bill’s on, showing a demo of software camera recognition — knows Robbie owes Bill $20. Knows what it’s being pointed at, can show contextual information — like having a HUD that tells you whatever you want to know about whatever you’re looking at in real space.

According to the system Steve Ballmer is, apparently, playing nickel slots. Nice. Bill’s about to call up his history of CES keynotes… media, people, and information stacks of clips and data. The Rock 2001 CES keynote flashback for the launch of Xbox. Ah, nice, CES 2005 — we were there when Conan co-hosted. “The idea is that you don’t have to take a lot of manual steps — this should just happen for you.” Robbie: “Now, we have this $20 I supposedly owe you. I want to see how good you are at Guitar Hero 3.” Oh snap, they’re about to “jam.”

Robbie’s inviting Guitar Hero champion Kelley Leyone (sp). She’s playing Welcome to the Jungle, and certainly a hell of a lot better than we are.

7:39 PM PT - “Well, it turns out I’ve got my own ringer here.” He brings out the Slash. Who is actually playing Welcome to the Jungle, ha.

Robbie’s already got his wallet open.

Bach: “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much, I’ll see you again next year…” Slash is shredding, or whatever it is those guitarists do. “Cool.”

Looks like that’s it! So long, Bill. I’ve been liveblogging you since we first started Engadget, and I’m absolutely going to miss this.

 

[Via Engadget]