Seinfeld

I’m borderline obsessed with Seinfeld, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Seinfeld starring Jerry Seinfeld aired on NBC from 1989 – 1998. Needless to say this is one of the first I found. Seinfeld’s actual apartment exterior is in LA, not New York. Notably if you pan around a little bit you’ll see palm trees you’d never find in New York. It’s actually somewhat bizarre:

Monks Cafe is also real, though in real life it’s Tom’s Restaurant. Google has it a little washed out, but you can tell what it is:

The famous “Soup Nazi” is no longer there, but there’s now a chain of stores operating around. This is the famous location in New York where it all started:

Roseanne

Rosanne ran on ABC from 1988 to 1997 featuring Roseanne Connor played by Rosanne Barr living in fictional blue-collar Lanford, Illinois. The real house is in Evansville, Indiana. It still looks almost identical:

Family Matters

Family Matters aired ABC from 1989 – 1997 as part of TGIF and CBS for 1997 – 1998. The famous Winslow house is actually located in Chicago. I’m not sure if the building to the left was there when the show aired. I don’t recall it being there:

Perfect Strangers

Perfect Strangers aired on ABC 1986-1993 mostly during TGIF. Here’s Larry & Balki’s apartment exterior from Perfect Strangers (TV) from the 2nd season until they moved into the house:

Here’s the Chicago Chronicle where they worked. I’m pretty sure these are the doors used for the revolving door bit at the end of the intro:

Brady Bunch

The Brady Bunch aired from 1969 – 1974 on ABC. Here’s the famous Brady Bunch house. Despite the changes the owners have made to deter tourists from gawking and even crossing onto the property, it’s obviously the Brady house (more about the history of the house can be found here):

Full House

Full House aired from 1987 – 1995 on ABC mainly during TGIF. The Tanners lived on 1882 Girard Street in San Francisco, CA. Many mistakenly think that the tanner residence is depicted in the intro, when in fact that’s actually them having a picnic in the park across from the famous Painted Ladies.

The actual house used is another San Francisco house:

Friends

Friends aired on NBC from 1994 – 2004 featuring a group of friends who somehow managed to afford a rather large apartment in NYC despite struggling financially:

Malcolm in the Middle

Malcom in the Middle aired on Fox from 2000 – 2006. Interestingly the house looks much nicer in real life than it did on the show:

Happy Days

Happy Days was an iconic show that aired from 1974 – 1984. The house is a little obscured by trees, but still recognizable. I can hear the The Fonz’s motorcycle from here:

All in the Family

All in the Family ran on CBS from 1971 – 1979 then was continued as Archie Bunker’s Place from 1979 – 1983. Here’s the house from the original All in the Family:

The Jeffersons

The Jeffersons was a spin-off of All In The Family that aired on CBS from 1975 – 1985. Here’s their Upper East Side apartment:

The Cosby Show

The Cosby Show aired on NBC from 1984 – 1992 starring Bill Cosby. The actual house is in lower Manhattan. Cosby is said to have insisted that the show be taped in New York and was taped at Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens:

Who’s the Boss

Who’s the Boss ran on ABC from 1984 to 1992. It actually debuted on the same day as The Cosby Show. I even managed to get the house at about the same angle you’d remember it in the intro:

Cheers

Cheers ran on NBC from 1982 – 1993. The Bull & Finch Pub became famous because of the show:

The Wonder Years

The Wonder Years aired from 1988 – 1993 on ABC. There’s no street view available yet, but the house is visible on Google Maps:

Married With Children

Married with children aired on Fox from 1987 – 1992 featuring Ed O’Neil as shoe salesman Al Bundy. My research strongly suggests the house with the black roof on the right is the house:

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air aired on NBC from 1990 – 1996 starring Will Smith. No street view for this one either but you can make out the house from the satellite view pretty well:

The Love Boat

The Love Boat aired on ABC from 1977 – 1986. The ship mostly used was the Pacific Princess, now MS Pacific. And yes, she’s still afloat:

Leave it to Beaver

Leave it to Beaver aired on CBS then ABC from 1957 – 1963. Leave it to Beaver is actually an interesting story. The Pine Street house is on the Universal set and still exists.

For the Leave it to Beaver movie, they built another Pine Street house. This and the Munster house are now part of Wisteria Lane on ABC’s Desperate Housewives. In fact several of those houses were in movies or TV shows.

Growing Pains

Growing Pains aired on ABC from 1985 – 1992. The house shown in the Growing Pains opening credits is actually on the WB backlot from what I understand, and was re purposed for Gilmore Girls.

The Partridge Family, Dennis The Menace, Bewitched, Friends Fountain

The Warner Brothers Ranch has a bunch of pretty cool homes and artifacts including the Friends Fountain. You can see them from overhead. Mouse over to see what’s what.

Ghostbusters

This is a movie not a sitcom, but I’m still listing it because it’s awesome. The Ghostbusters firehouse:

This blog post took way longer to compile than I even thought it would. Hope you enjoyed it.

All of this in the first two weeks, and we’ve got fifty more weeks to go.

In all the keynotes I’ve followed, this was the most aggressive agenda. 2008 is going to rock for Apple products.

Leopard Was Successful

No kidding. Vista’s lackluster launch just made it look that much better. Almost 20% upgraded to Leopard. That’s pretty impressive. Especially considering it’s only at 10.5.1. Most don’t like upgrading until x.x.3 allowing for some bug fixes to be released first. Other than that, pretty uneventful.

Time Capsule

Time Capsule is pretty cool. Essentially just an Airport Extreme with a hard drive. Personally I would have liked to see it as two separate devices. So you could easily use it with any network, and plug into an existing Airport. It’s described as containing a “7200-rpm Serial ATA server-grade hard disk drive”. It will be interesting to see what that really is when people dissect them. Most interesting is $499.00 for 1TB. Considering it’s an Airport Extreme + 1 TB storage, that’s a pretty decent deal. I still like my solution better. Customization allowed and more redundant. Time Machine is awesome, so I’d suspect this is a great easy way to backup. Now why can’t apple get Time Machine working over SMB/CIFS?

iPhone

Sales were awesome, SDK still in the plans for late February. Maps with geolocation! Awesome in a big-brother-ish sort of way. Exceptionally awesome considering your iPhone can now be strapped to your dashboard [insert Mac/Dashboard joke here] and used as a GPS device. That’s a lot of value right there. Don’t forget it’s Google Maps too.

SMSing multiple people… personally? Don’t really care. Email, Web, Video makes the iPhone special, not SMS. In my mind it’s like bragging about an OpenSSH upgrade in Leopard. Cool, but isn’t this just expected?

No 3G. Sigh.

iPod touch

For just $20 you can be more like an iPhone and have mail and other iPhone apps! Or you can just use the hacked firmware. Despite the gain, it still feels like the iPod touch is the redheaded stepchild.

Movie Rentals

Awesome. Everyone knew this was coming, and now that it’s here: sweet. What makes it great is all the major studios are participating. Finally something they all can agree on. Unfortunately only becomes available 30 days after DVD release (suck). “Library” title is $2.99, new release is $3.99. Up to 30 days to watch, once watching must finish within 24 hours. Not bad. I expect in 12 months that 24 hours will extend to at least 72hrs.

DVD quality or (optional) HD with Dolby 5.1. $3.99 for library titles, $4.99 for new releases. No word on what “HD” is, but one would assume 720p since that’s all the Apple TV supports.

A big thing stressed is that it goes across devices. You can watch on your TV (via Apple TV), computer, or iPod/iPhone as the image above demonstrates.

Apple TV Take 2

Sounds like new hardware, but like the iPod, the Apple TV announcement is just software. Pretty much, a computer is no longer required. Can rent directly from the interface (which has been revamped). Still no 1080p, a major gripe with many potential buyers. Software available for existing owners (cool). Small price reduction also announced. I still wonder why they didn’t introduce a 1080p at a higher tier and give people the choice. Look at photos, videos all on your TV without using a computer. Very cool.

MacBook Air

What words should be used to describe the MacBook Air? **** awesome? Yea, that about does it. At 3.0lbs, and only 0.74 inches thick, how can you not be impressed? 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo. That’s not a Celeron or some other watered down processor. It’s the real thing. 4200 RPM PATA drive, or SSD. PATA and your going to feel sluggish with high IO activities, or solid state (SSD) and you’ll be speeding but broke. Even Steve admits it’s expensive. What a dilemma.

The micro-DVI port is a great touch. A 2nd USB port would have been nice, but considering it’s an ultra portable, no problem with only 1. ExpressCard would have been a major win. I would expect 2nd generation will include one as I’m sure it will be a major gripe among users. Intel GMA X3100 graphics processor was a good choice as well. That brings a good balance of performance and power consumption. Beautiful display. It has an audio out port, but no input. Audio in would be a nice addition, but you could use bluetooth or USB for that, so again not a deal breaker. Lack of a removable battery will cause some to be upset. I’m mixed on that. Not sure if I’d sacrifice size to add in the extra hardware to allow a battery to be secure yet removable on the undercarriage. 2GB RAM on board is pretty nice.

If I were Apple, I’d make a couple of changes:

• More choices in drives. Smaller SSD options going all the way down to 20GB (10GB OS X, 10GB user). I’m sure many would sacrifice size for faster and still portable. Also Hybrid HD’s (both SSD and mechanical) would be a major win.
• ExpressCard port. A staple for business use, a major win for upgrades and accessories.
• Either make the battery user-replaceable (even if it involves a screwdriver) or announce up front what replacement costs. Update: $129 for replacement according to Engadget.

Apple is seriously pushing this as a workable machine. It’s got a full copy of OS X complete with Xcode. That’s right, you can code on this sucker. How awesome is that.

Conclusion/Thoughts

Awesome announcements despite the lack of new hardware that’s so desired. I think there’s a lot more still coming. I expect the iPhone to get an upgrade soon (3G + more storage) and that will be it’s own announcement. Perhaps even next month with the release of the SDK. I also think we’ll see more hardware at WWDC (Mac Mini, MacBook Pro are up for a revamp by my count).

Fun day. I love keynotes.

Hardware images provided courtesy of Apple.