MacWorld Updates
The Stevenote is going on right now. While you can track it live via several websites, I’ll give you the highlights as we go along as best I can.
iTV is the Apple TV and it looks cool. It has a 40 gig hard drive on it and is designed for widescreen TVs. It has composite, S-Video, and HDMI outputs. It’ll handle up to 720p, and uses 802.11b 11g or 11n natively. Nice. But there’s also room for an ethernet cable.
The interface will allow you to watch movie trailers from Apple’s website right on your TV. You can stream movies through your computer. Paramount just jumped on board iTunes with their back catalog, so you can watch the STAR TREK movies from your home Mac, if you wish.
$299 in February. You can place your orders today, though.
And now, prepare for the internet to break in half — here comes the cell phone and widescreen video iPod (with touchscreen controls). More to come.
- I’ll put bullet points in front of each update.
- The interface for the phone is something I haven’t quite wrapped my brain around. Touchscreen Keyboard? Something like that. . .
- OK, so it’s a phone with a big touch screen. I need to see a YouTube video of this thing in action. Must Watch Mac Break Live tonight.
- Jobs is playing Beatles music on the phone. It sounds like I’ll be proven right soon enough.
- You knew this was a special presentation when Jobs showed up wearing a turtleneck that wasn’t black. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Paul McCartney show up on stage now WITH Ringo. . .
- Remember those videos floating around a few months back of the multi-point touch screen devices? You could put two fingers on the screen and spread them apart to zoom in on a map, for instance. Looks like the iPhone includes that. Interesting.
- The phone does everything. Widescreen web pages look amazing, from all reports. Does it have built-in GPS, too? Tough to tell from the writeups I’m reading, but it seems to point that way. Seems too expensive to include, though.
- Unsurprisingly, Google’s CEO is coming on stage now. Wonder what exciting stuff he’ll talk about? He’s on Apple’s board now, so anything is possible. . .
- And then the Yahoo “CEO,” Jerry Yang, came out. They’re just there to smile and talk about how great the iPhone is. False alarm.
- You look at all the things this phone can do and you realize (A) why the keynote is scheduled for two hours and (b) that Microsoft should just kill their Origami project immediately. The UMPC is dead in the water now. This phone has Yahoo and Google support built into it. Time to go back to the drawing board, Microsoft.
- It’s $499 for the 4 gig phone, $599 for 8 gig. That’s a reasonable price for what you’re getting, but it’s a little out of range for someone just looking for a phone, like I’ll be in a couple of months. Shipping in June - crowd didn’t like that. heh heh
- We still need announcements on Leopard, iWork, iLife, and a whole lot more, I think. Plus, you know, the Beatles. I’m sure they’re coming.
- No, really, MS’ UMPC is done. Dead. Over.
- Quoting Steve Jobs from Engadget: “You know, when I was in high school, Steve Woz and I made this little device called the TV jammer — this little oscillator that put out frequencies that would screw up the TV… We’d go into a dorm at Berkeley we’d screw up the TV while people are watching Star Trek.” How long until Woz corrects this and points out that Steve didn’t even know how to solder anything?
- Apple has dropped “Computers” from its name. It’s now just “Apple Inc.” Old school fans are not going to like that. And the Beatles would be REALLY pissed if they weren’t back stage.
- Hunh. That’s it? We’re getting John Mayer? No Beatles? No iWork or iLife? No Leopard updates? No phoneless video widescreen iPod? Is “One More Thing” after the performance? Odd.
- They took down the Apple Store this morning to prepare for the announcement that there’s NOTHING you can buy new there today. You can pre-order the Apple TV, but that’s it. Curious. Is there a second keynote this week?
January 9th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
I don’t want an iPhone. I want a widescreen, touchscreen, mp3 and video iPod.
Umm, Steve… The Beatles??????
I can’t believe there’s no “One More Thing…”
January 9th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Everything looks cool so far, but the only item I *need* is an Airport Extreme:
http://www.apple.com/airportextreme/
I need to wirelessly access my external hard drive, and I need to do it yesterday.
January 9th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Poor Ringo is hanging out backstage wondering what’s going on. “Do I at least get a refill on my Starbucks, Steve? Give ‘em a call, won’t ye?”
January 9th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Did they just sneak the Airport Extreme in while we weren’t looking? Weirder and weirder still.
January 9th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
I think you need the new one to stream video…. + 179.
January 9th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Well, call me an Apple Geek Without a Mac, because I was refreshing Engadget like crazy this morning. I’m quite impressed with the iPhone — definitely is a leap forward in how one uses a phone, that’s for sure. And I wasn’t expecting the widescreen iPod to be the iPhone.
Now, this is where I should be banging my head on my desk that my 2-week old iPod is now outdated I knew I shouldn’t have asked for one until after MacWorld etc. But I’m not, and not simply because it’s not out until June. Here’s why:
1) Ignoring the fact that it’s also a phone and a hard drive would probably jack up the price (and physical size) even more, 8 GB is not enough storage for me for a Widescreen iPod.
2) I have Verizon, not Cingular, and I still have about 1.5 years on my Verizon contract, so no moving anytime soon.
3) $600 for a phone? Sorry. That’s way out of my price range.
We’ll see what happens in 1.5 years when my contract’s up. Prices should lower, maybe they’ll have a version for Verizon (unlikely), but also maybe they’ll have just the widescreen iPod, which probably wouldn’t be unveiled until next year’s MacWorld at the earliest. They want to sell as many of these iPhones as possible, right? Why dilute the marketplace with the iPhone and the Widescreen iPod without phone?
Still, I tip my hat to Steve and the Apple folks. Running OS X? Nice. Multi-touch, gestures, pinching — gotta see it, but sounds cool. E-mail, web — yeah, this is what I want in a mobile device.
It looks fantastic, and if it does what the descriptions say it does, it will be something to keep an eye on, for sure.