The MacWorld 2008 keynote has come and gone and now it’s time to look back and see what was released, and more importantly sometimes, what wasn’t. I’ll be taking a look back at my predictions here as well to see how close I came to the mark.

I might as well start off by discussing the single largest announcement during the keynote: the MacBook Air. I personally have been very unimpressed with ultraportable computers in the past and didn’t see Apple trying to get a piece of this market, even though there had been a lot of speculation about a possible release. However, after seeing this beauty, I simply want one.

The MacBook Air is beautifully designed. That’s a good start in and of itself. What gets me excited about this beauty? It weighs just 3lbs vs the 5lbs for my first generation MacBook. The battery life is rated at 5 full hours. The screen is the same 13.3″ widescreen in my MacBook, but it is LED backlit and therefore brighter and quicker to turn on. The keyboard is backlit and the same as the wonderful one found on the MacBook and iMac. Need I say more?

One feature that warrants closer inspection is the larger, multitouch trackpad. I’m immensely curious as to see how well this works and how easy it will be for developers to support this feature in their applications. So far it looks very promising, but I won’t truly know until I play with a MacBook Air myself.

A few problems and concerns I have about this lovely laptop: there is no user replaceable battery. I’m not concerned about having to take the baby in to an Apple Store and getting a new battery in 2 years (I’m hard on batteries, I’m on the computer way too much). What does disappoint me is the fact that carrying around an extra charged battery is no longer an option. That’s my only complaint there. I’m also slightly sad about seeing the optical drive go. I understand that it was a necessary design option, but I would have liked to have seen the $99 Apple External SuperDrive bundled with the computer, not packaged as an optional accessory. And while we’re talking about the external drive, does it strike anyone that for $99 you can get a SuperDrive now? I’m hoping that it works on just a regular USB port and that the one on the MacBook Air isn’t a special powered port. I can see buying one of these as a cheap and wonderful upgrade for older Macs. Or for having a second optical drive on my laptop.

The January iPhone update is fairly disappointing in some respects. If Apple hadn’t have included multiple recipients for SMS messaging, I might have went crazy. However, there is still no MMS support (texting pics or vids), as well as a huge long list I posted in my MacWorld 2008 Wishlist. I’m just disappointed and can only hope that yet another update will make the phone more unusable. And of course the iPhone SDK is exciting in and of itself.

iTunes Movie Rentals is a nice addition, albeit not exactly the scheme I had been hoping for. However, 2.99 for Library title rentals and 3.99 for New Release rentals is very competitive. You have 30 days to begin watching the video and 24 hours after starting to finish it. I wish that the 24 hour window was about a day longer, but I imagine that this was a stretch as it is. Also of note is that the Apple TV is the only way to get HD rentals and they can’t be transferred to your Mac.

There were a few other smaller announcements, such as Time Capsule which is essentially an Airport base station with a built in hard drive for network backups, the updated Apple TV, updated iPod Touch and more. Overall, I don’t see why investors would be upset with the announcements as Apple simply can’t keep topping the previous keynote every time. Looking back at my predictions, there was no updated Mac Mini, Cinema Displays, new Mac PC commercial, or a Leopard Docks area added to the Mac Downloads page.

Anything I miss?