Jobs opens Macworld 2008, announces 'Time Capsule'

Opening Macworld 2008 with his annual keynote address, Apple CEO Steve Jobs told the audience "there is clearly something in the air today."

Jobs began his keynote by looking back at 2007. Apple sold five million copies of Leopard in just three months, making it the most successful Mac OS X release ever. 20 percent of the Mac OS X install base has upgraded to Leopard, said Jobs, noting that "We're really thrilled by this."

He also touted the support from developers, adding that Microsoft's Office 2008 ships today. However, Jobs acknowledged that Leopard's new Time Machine feature doesn't work quite so well on notebooks due to plugging and unplugging of the external drive.

In turn, Apple has designed a new product called Time Capsule. This device is an Airport Extreme base station that includes an internal hard drive. A 500GB version will run $299 USD while the 1TB model will cost $499 USD.

Time Machine will automatically back up all Macs in a house to Time Capsule over the 802.11n wireless network, eliminating the need for an external hard drive to be plugged directly into the laptop.