At the MacWorld conference in San Francisco, After the usual words of praise about the iPod+iTunes and the smoothness of the transition to Intel, Apple announced several new products. Surprisingly, nothing was said about new Macs or Leopard. The keynote speech started at 17:00 GMT. Read on for the details.Apple TV
Firstly, Apple announced the Apple TV (formerly known as iTV), which will enable you to stream your media content to your TV from any Mac. It will also allow you to buy content in the iTunes Music Store. It has ethernet, USB2.0, Wi-Fi (b/g/n), HDMI, component/RCA, 720p HD video, 40GB harddisk, and an Intel processor. Because of the harddisk, you can also sync content to the device. The pricetag in the USA will be USD 299, and shipping will start in February (orders can be taken today).
The Newton Lives. Again.
Secondly, Apple introduced the much anticipated and much discussed and much rumoured ‘iPhone‘; Jobs described it as a combination of a widescreen iPod, a mobile phone, and an internet communicator. After lamenting current smartphones, Jobs continued to explain that the major problem with smartphones today is that their keypads and keys are fixed; hence, the keypad on the iPhone is actually a touchscreen, without a stylus.
The big news: the phone runs Mac OS X, yet nothing was said about the how and the what or about a SDK becoming available. It features all the Core technologies and has desktop-class applications. It can sync just like an iPod, and does music, video, photos, calendars, notes, bookmarks; the whole nine yards. It has a 3.5″ screen (160p per inch). It also features sensors; a proximity sensor (turns off screen when the phone is near the ear), an ambient light sensor, and it also senses whether it’s in portrait or landscape mode.
It has icons on its ‘desktop’, which launch upon touch while it also features a coverflow-like view for contacts. The device is quad-band, has GsM+EDGE (no 3G), Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. It also supports conference calls, and it has a Safari-based webbrowser and support for widgets and Google Maps. Apple also announced a partnership with Yahoo! to deliver push IMAP mail to the iPhone, while also supporting plain old pop mail. It will cost USD 499 (4GB) and USD 599 (8GB) (2 year contract). Available in June in the US (Cingular), Europe and Asia to follow later.
All in all, the iPhone is a PDA. The Newton is back.
Apple Computer Is No More
After talking about the iPhone for 80 minutes (I kid you not) Steve Jobs announced something seemingly subtle, but actually really big: a name change. Apple Computer, inc., will from now on forward be called Apple, inc., reflecting the fact that Apple is more and more turning into a general electronics company instead of a computer/software company.
That was it. No information on Leopard or new computers. As always, a big thank you to MacRumors for providing a very detailed live text feed from the Keynote.
And I am not talking about “innovating like crazy over 200 patents in it.” LOL
Is that it? Everything that is there has been done a million time. There is nothing revolutionary nor evolutionary at all.
XBox360 has the AppleTV beat by a longshot: No IPTV.
I guess they found a place for the Sherlock app.
Edited 2007-01-09 19:19
I haven’t seen the iPhone yet, but if it is anywhere near the quality of the 80G iPod I just got for Christmas, then I’m going to buy one as soon as possible.
I’m a big fan of OGG files over MP3 for several technical and ethical reasons. I have owned several MP3 players in the past (some of which supported OGG as well as some that didn’t), and none of them come close to the iPod. I’m spending time ripping things anew in MP3 format just to play them on the iPod. It is that good, I think.
So, Apple may not have come up with some new, never before done gadget, but they certainly raise the bar when they do come out with something that “everybody has done before”.
It can’t have been a strong ethical decision for you to use Oggs, since you folded and started using MP3s again just because you wanted that cool music player.
(You haven’t tried replacing the firmware with anything else?)
I can admit most Ogg-featuring players need work, Samsung has a very good range btw, but principals are principals.
Edited 2007-01-09 19:46
Nope, can’t say I really hold my personal OGG vs. MP3 debate up there with whether or not I should kill babies.
The rockbox firmware for iPods can play Vorbis files. Didn’t try very hard, did you?
You didn’t try very hard to research your suggestion before throwing out a sarcastic stab at me, did you. I hope it was an ego builder for you.
RockBox does not yet support the 5.5 Gen 80GB iPod. Otherwise, I would not have had to make some MP3s.
I use oggdec to decode my ogg files
then use faac software to create m4a files and sync with my ipod.
That works well. The only problem with that is that you get a little poorer quality file than if you just re-rip the song.
I didn’t know it works with the latest generation of ipods that are capable of video playback.
It doesn’t. Somebody was just looking to earn a few ego points by trying to look smarter than somebody else.
sony sold 3 times more PS2s than Microsoft sold xbox 360s in sweden this christmas
And what have microsoft against this: Zune.
Mwahahahahahahaha!
Apple just rocks, never saw a such good phone.
Imagine what creative developers could do when they get their hands on the iPhone? Mobile Delicious Library, using the camera to scan barcodes, and sync to the computer over bluetooth. Sony must be caking themselves now; for too long their phone division has been shipping crippled handsets with broken bluetooth, second class media playback, third rate Internet, but first class interoperability.
and no 3G in a $600-with-contract phone is better than third rate internet? please.
at least sony phones have decent cameras (at least some of them…) and work as USB mass storage devices (extremely convenient).
at least sony phones have decent cameras (at least some of them…) and work as USB mass storage devices (extremely convenient).
Yeah but the mechanical reliability is low (I have already broken the little joystick on 2 SE phones) and the bluetooth plain sucks (usb? wires are so last century 🙂
There is room for improvement here, maybe Apple has licked it.
Edit: BTW Sony can kiss the mp3-player phone market goodbye now. Walkman vs iPod ? No contest.
Edited 2007-01-09 20:22
i’d far rather transfer stuff over a USB link than over bluetooth. well, maybe a small picture is OK over bluetooth, but a 2 megapixel one is pushing it, and I’d rather poke glass into my eyes than transfer an album worth of songs over bluetooth. It’s a hell of a lot faster to find a USB cable and plug it in.
hell, depending on how close you live to a computer store, it may be faster to go _buy_ a USB cable and plug it in.
I seem to have miss something somewhere but does the iPhone have an integrated GPS ? How can the device “know” how to locate you on the planet ?
I also would have liked to receive any digital satellite music with the iPhone.
umm… cellular triangulation works great.
No more computer in the name, a mobile ‘phone launched in to a crowded market, a media device for a limited service – why this and not a frontal attack on the OS market?
I’ve been a Mac user for years but this smacks of too much diversification just when Apple should be going all out in computing.
I still remember the bad old days of Apple printers/scanners/cameras et al…………………………………
Did Steve Jobs really call a widescreen iPod and a mobile phone revolutionary?
Yes.
I do not know about you, but I am getting one as soon as it becomes available in Europe. No more perenially unfinished Sony Ericson and Nokia products for me.
Dido, this phone looks seriously slick, and looks like it would wipe the floor with my Windows Mobile 5 device, only time will tell. I hope they will offer it straight from the Apple Store, rather than through a contact
I read on engadget it’s going to be both sold in apple stores and sold by cingular. Also I read the phone is locked to cingular…
They ran OSX on white box hardware, someone will get the iPhone running on any carrier
This is rather different. It only supports Edge and GSM, so the chance of it working on CDMA is pretty slim. T-Mobile and other GSM providers probably will have them unlocked, but the biggest provider in the US, Verizon, will not be seeing this phone for a while. And I’m sure Verizon doesn’t want it either.
I couldn’t agree more. Sony Ericsson with their lack of wlan and Nokia with their buggy crashing software. A sleek, sexy iPhone is just what I want!
I have WLAN on my SE
Yes, he did call the device itself revolutionary. And after watching all of the demos on:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/
I would have to say it certainly seems revolutionary. I have had many different “smart” phones, but this one really seems to be “smart.”
Well, thought out. The features are not hidden underneath several layers of menus… and the web browser, it’s about time that the mobile market gets a REAL browser! I always liked Mobile Opera but the Safari implementation looks like it finally makes mobile browsing worthwhile.
I don’t have a Cingular plan, but when June rolls around, I certainly will then.
“I always liked Mobile Opera but the Safari implementation looks like it finally makes mobile browsing worthwhile.”
Good luck with that whizzy mobile browsing over “I can nearly beat out a modem on a good day” EDGE.
Hmm, EDGE may not always be that speedy but where I live hotspots are damn near everywhere. That seems to be the case most places I go. I would be using the WIFI much more often than EDGE. In that case, a really nice full featured browser, that actually fits in my pocket more than makes up for the EDGE network. At least in my opinion.
I agree. The WiFi connectivity on this makes it quite interesting.
The interface looks amazing. It’s just a bit too expensive for me, but I agree that this is a very interesting announcement.
It may not seem innovative from a hardware point of view, but integration, simplicity and slickness sells. As proven before by the iPods. Both Microsoft and Apple are good at observing their potential competitors, arriving late and stealing the show.
The iPhone is not about Microsoft and Zune though. I would guess Sony-Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, Siemens and friends might have a year or two to match this in terms of features and looks, before the iPhone is cheap enough to really become a threat to them.
On the other hand, when technology “gadgets” start costing as much as the iPhone, everyone gadget compete with every other one. I for one can surely not afford iPhone + PS3 + Wii + GP2X + a dual core PC with an nVidia8800 + new LCD TV and home movie theatre. Provided that I wanted it all of course. My time and money wallets are not deep enough. Lucky for me, I will be happy playing around with Debian on a Slug while the kidz play with their iPhones. Or so I keep telling myself 🙂
…psst: Apple, Microsoft, Sony and every other tech company have already lost by the way. Once the Burning Crusade is out, global industry and economy will collapse and be replaced by syndicates of local pizza makers. And so it happened that Blizzard saved us from global warming.
While i find this not the least bit of a revolution and the multi-touch controls have been seen before in research projects (not that this will keep apple-trolls from pretending apple had invented it) and while i’m very dissapointed that there was nothing new from OS X 10.5, i have to say that this phone looks increadibly tempting.
I’m just fed up with the barely working sony crap and crashing windows mobile phones and *arse slow* and crashing symbian smartphones.
Also this looks very interesting from an developers point of view.
I’m just a little concerned that german telcos will screw it up for germany. German telcos are ninja-übermasters at the high kung foo of screwing up.
German telcos are ninja-übermasters at the high kung foo of screwing up.
Whereas Spanish telcos are the Samurais…
There’s a new 802.11n Airport base station on the UK Store as well
God you guys…Cheer Up! The phones features are just plain cool.. the pricing remains to be seen. I have used some smartphones in the past, and frankly the ease of the iphone seems to trump them all easily.
as for the set top box.. if it lets you play movies youve ripped from bit*** i mean dvd that would be cool.
As far as apples assault on computing, I think that that is going to be more and more in the hands of software devs who build apps with office interoperability. Keep your eyes out for new features in ilife.
from mac rumours:
8GB model – $599
4GB model – $499
And no doubt £599, £499 and €599, €499 in Europe >:[
And add a little extra Swedish taxes to that… 🙂
from mac rumours:
8GB model – $599
4GB model – $499
With a 2 year cingular contract. If you already have a contract somewhere you are out of luck.
Wonder who they’ll partner with in Europe ?
Ouch that’s with a contract. Where I live you can practically get a very good phone for free with a 2 year contract!
And what kind of phone would that be? Remember, there are phones, and then there are phones. The iPhone appears to be the latter.
Edited 2007-01-10 05:12
Phone manufacturers don’t partner anymore in most of Europe like they do in the states. So you’ll be able to buy this phone directly from Apple and use whatever contract you want.
Did it fall through the cracks?!?
“Did it fall through the cracks?!?”
Wow, only 10 comments before someone even mentioned the fact that Leopard was not mentioned.
My money says it’s fallen off schedule…jobs usually doesn’t mention anything that doesn’t have a firm ship date.
jobs did a 2 hour key note! so to give the audience time to catch there breath…. he will bring up leopard at a later time! my guess…with in two weeks!
Nah, they canned it; they’re switching to Vista for new machines
and sold apple macs fell down to zero and apple died
I was wondering the same thing. My best guess is that the iPhone and iTV were such big deals, and more importantly big deals in the consumer electronics market, that they didn’t want to muddle that in with information about their new OS.
I am extremely happy about the iphone but man the lack of leopard info was really disappointing. I mean come on how cheated do I feel!
Was this Macworld or Appleworld?
Am I the only one to notice that Mac world did not mention a Mac *at all*?
AppleTV, ok, cool. iPhone, admittedly running OS X, but still not a Mac, cool.
But no Leopard. No Quad-Core Mac Pros. No iLife, no iWork. No new slim Macbook Pro. Nothing. Zip. Zero. Zilch.
Can that be everything?
Can that be everything?
I was thinking the same thing. He talked about a damn phone for 80 minutes straight, but nothing on new Macs or Leopard.
Sad.
Whatever happened to the agreement with Apple (Records) in relation to Apple Computers?
Doesn’t their new name change bring them closer to appearing to be the same thing.
So much for Mac World. He mentioned nothing that would not have been better announced at CES.
Where is Leopard? Where is the Mac?
It is looking like the further commidification of the Mac is all that the future portends.
Apple computer is dead, long live Apple consumer electronics.
Apple computer is dead, long live Apple consumer electronics.
He did announce a name change from Apple Computer Inc. to Apple Inc. :
“The Mac, iPod, Apple TV and iPhone. Only one of those is a computer. So we’re changing the name,” said Jobs. “We’re announcing today that we’re dropping the ‘Computer’ from our name, and from this day forward we’re going to be known as Apple Inc.”
( http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/01/09/liveupdate/index.php )
I don’t see this as a bad thing. I am already syncing at least 2 devices with my computer (ipod and cellphone). The convergence of these devices is a real trend and Apple is on the forefront of it, why not change the name to reflect it ?
Edited 2007-01-09 20:08
I don’t know very many people that called them Apple Computer to begin with. Most people just say Apple for short, or Mac. So the name change won’t make much of a difference to us.
It does make a difference to us. It points to a less than subtle shift in focus. Someone just reminded me of an interview that Jobs gave when he was out in the wilderness.
He was asked what he would do if he were still in charge of Apple, and his reply was something along the lines of:
“I would milk the Mac for all its worth, and then move onto the next big thing.”
Well, the next big thing is here, and Apple is all set up to be the next monopoly (that will no doubt be fanatically hated and despised by a vocal minority).
In terms of revenues, Apple’s device stuff is catching up with the computer stuff, by 2008, once this phone has been on sale for a while, it will surpass it.
But it’s not just Apple; look at Dell …
I guess Apple will be doing plasma screen TVs next.
1) “The iPhone runs full OS X”
2) “It supports widgets”
Doesn’t 1) mean 2)? This is suspicious. It remains to be seen how “full” this OS X version really is.
Yup. I’m not happy with it until I can run my homebrew BioPerl scripts in bash. Nothing beats some lazy amino acids sequence analysis while listening to some tunes in the tube.
…the Macworld presentations arent over yet are they? So there should be more time to talk about Leopard and the octacore machine etc etc. What about the upcoming Santa Rosa 64 bit mobile platform? I am sure Apple has already got some plans with that dont they? Too many questions unanswered as of yet.
But back to the phone I think it looks amazing and I personally cant wait to try it. I have Cingular as a service and I have an unlocked Sony Ericsson P990i…and I am really tempted to order the 8 gig version of the Iphone. Great work Apple. The Sony phone looks positively outdated in comparison!
That’s probably not all – both iLife and iWork weren’t updated. Perhaps they just ran out of time, since this was such a huge announcement. Expect them to stage several special events or just quitely introduce the upgrades in winter months…
No 3G, less space than Zune. Lame.
Here’s the specs:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/technology/specs.html
I really want to know how they make a handheld device with that resolution have those animations. Are they running a graphics chipset with OpenGL?
Also how could they get OSX on an embedded device, linux and windows and had years of optomization to achieve it. My guess is that they had to put a lot of ram and processing power, that’s why it’s so expensive. Also these prices might be supplemented by cingular (I don’t know how american cellphone providers work)?
I really want to know how they make a handheld device with that resolution have those animations. Are they running a graphics chipset with OpenGL?
It’s gotta be. I would guess an OMAP 3 or the latest XScale+Intel graphics.
Also how could they get OSX on an embedded device, linux and windows and had years of optomization to achieve it. My guess is that they had to put a lot of ram and processing power, that’s why it’s so expensive.
Steve said they’ve been working on it for two years.
My real question would be, what CPU is this thing running on? If it’s an XScale, that would mean they have been developing OS X for ARM (sorry, I’m old fashioned) for two years without anyone knowing about it. I know they did it for x86.
Then you could have some sort of Intel x86, but that’s no good for battery life.
And then you have… PowerPC! This would be the most logical option for me, but aren’t we all supposed to believe Apple dropped PPC?
I don’t think there is any currently available PowerPC that is suitable for cell phones (there was the 405LP, but that was years ago). It’s gotta be ARM IMO.
I think when the truth comes out, we’ll see that it’s OSX in name only; probably stripped down to a kernel (may not even be MACH), a few services and a widget engine.
So… I was hoping the moment they released the info that the phone is multi-touch, that they’d show some demo of a display they’re working on that also features multi-touch. With all these new-display rumors going around…
No Leopard news AT ALL, no smaller version of the Macbook Pro, no COMPUTER news actually, just phone and media center stuff. Is that the new Apple?
Microsoft is shipping Vista in January, wouldn’t have a big announcement made sense? I mean, the timing would have been perfect. After WWDC, I think everyone was expecting at least a Release Date. I’m disappointed. The iPhone is great, but I’m much more eagerly looking forward to 10.5.
> Microsoft is shipping Vista in January, wouldn’t have a big announcement made sense?
To this comment, and the one about the announcements being more appropriate for CES. Think of it this way:
At MacWorld, Apple has center stage. So they can make their announcements without fighting over the noise of other vendors. So it’s better to announce at MacWorld.
And even though Apple would receive disproportionate press (in relation to their marketshare) if they announced 10.5 stuff now, they would still be fighting over the noise generated by Vista. So it is better to discuss 10.5 a couple of months after Vista is on the shelves.
As for Apple Computer Inc. becoming Apple Inc., well, it’s a sad day. It isn’t sad because they dropped the word (because let’s face it, most people just talked about “Apple” anyway and they are more of a consumer electronics company these days anyway). It is sad because Apple feels that they have to drop a part of their history.
If the iPhone is good and they come out with a version for Sprint users.. I WILL buy it.
The iPhone looks quite cool.. I wonder if it’s durable enough though.
A question about the next version of the ipod: will it now be based on OSX, and even without the Cell phone/cingular features, have a browser to hook up over WiFi? Along with the nice big screen and neat multi-gestures, and widgets, and iphoto integration? I don’t really need the cell part, but a basic ipod/wifi browser would get the price down to what – $350 – $400?
If they did this without phone features, that would put tens of millions of copies of Safari out there – what a huge increase in market share.
The software design was very impressive. Look at the videos at apple to get a good sense of it.
Edited 2007-01-09 20:13
The lower-end Mac Mini was [silently] bumped up to a Core 2 Duo, btw. That’s news, right?
Where exactly do you see a Core2Duo Mac mini? Apple Store still lists it as Core Duo, not Core 2 Duo
While iPhone is very cool, but where are the Pro-softwares? Apple has shunned the pro-user with hip-teenage products. I don’t see Apple advancing the personal computer market anymore like in the firewire days, Final Cut Pro developement or even Motion.
Apeture was half crippled when it was released. The first generation Mac-Pros were defective. I still have friend dealing with hers and sending it back to Apple for the second time.
I don’t find any facination with MacWorld(apple) anymore. It’s just a bunch of personal gadgets that really don’t re-define personal computing.
More photos from the presentation here:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/the-apple-iphone/
Edited 2007-01-09 20:21
Maybe Apple and Radioshack should co-invest in a store. They have almost the same line up of products. Radioshack could run that iPhone verson of OS X on their cash registers.
San FranSisco????
Fixed.
I’ve previously had a Motorola phone/pda/mp3 player, and all I can say is that I’ll never buy a similar device again for the following reasons:
– too big for a mobile phone / music player. You have to carry this all day long, and it wont fit in your pocket.
– too small for a hand held computer. Using the tiny screen is unusable.
My experience anyway.
Will apple make a game console. I mean, the stuff on that phone is amzing. They could obliterate the high end of the market in no time at this rate.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=1d&s=AAPL&c=PALM&c=RIMM
Apple >5%+ , Palm&RIMM -5%
Seems the markets are positive about Apple’s chances anyway.
Edit: stock prices at time of writing.
Edited 2007-01-09 20:34
And now they are called Applec Inc 😮
sheesh, looking at this stuff makes me feel like such a luddite at times. to me, a phone should be…a phone. if I want to take pictures, I’ll use a camera, if I want to surf the net or check my email (stuff I certainly do _way_ enough of already), I’ll use a computer. if I want to play a game, well I have a PC, plus my rocking cool game consoles (an Atari 2600 and a Sega Genesis!) if I want to listen to music, there’s the radio, CDs, cassettes, etc. but on a frickin’ phone with all those tiny buttons (or in this case, no buttons)? no thanks.
what’s the point of all this? to insure that the current generation of humanity has absolutely NO life away from all their gadgetry and mind numbing entertainment addictions?
what’s the point of all this? to insure that the current generation of humanity has absolutely NO life away from all their gadgetry and mind numbing entertainment addictions?
I feel that too. I guess I’ve gotten grown up and boring and enjoy more going for a walk in the forest than running my finger up and down a touch screen… which gives me a million dollar idea of a “trainer program” that could suit this device, pretty much like “Typing of the Dead” in its time, only this is about learning to please your partner!
“what’s the point of all this? to insure that the current generation of humanity has absolutely NO life away from all their gadgetry and mind numbing entertainment addictions?”
welcome to the future sweetheart! all those not on board…. will be left behind!
next stop…. the colonization of the solar system!
“Welcome to the future sweetheart! All those not on board will be left behind!”
Next comes the ZPhone from McSoft. It runs a little warm in you hand..
Either way, this phone is absolutely sweet. I mean, we’re talking about Mac OS X (mobile). More apps will come out for this baby. I just shat my pants. Who cares about Leopard details? We just got a whole new Mac OS! Have you checked the demo’s yet on apple’s site? If the phone were available today, i’d throw my sidekick 3 at the wall, pay the money to have my T-mobile canceled, and then by the iPhone. Since i have till june, i’m gonna try to give my Sidekick away for free to a friend as long as they pick up the rest of the contract.
I’m pissed about appleTV tho. Could have been so good. They could have made it bigger with 3.5″ drives (200+gig), included a WAN port so it can double as the airport extreme, and announce 720p Movies now downloadable from iTunes. Day late dollar short.
Day late dollar short.
I don’t think you know what this means.
Apple is the first to bring this type of product to market (in a mass fashion, at least)… so it’s not “a day late.”
And it will certainly be the first one to integrate iTunes purchases. It’s the first I know of the allow HD transfer from your PC over 801.11… so it’s not a dollar short.
This product looks nice. It could be even better, but it still looks really exciting today.
These kind of extenders have been on the market for years. In fact, just yesterday Netgear announced a 1080p extender that plays many formats, not just Apple’s. So AppleTV is literally one day late. 🙂
Of course only AppleTV will play videos bought from iTunes, so it will probably take over the market despite inferior specs.
“despite inferior specs”
sorry… i am laughing my ass off!!!!!!!! look… maybe its not all about SPECS!!!!!! hell… there are other mp3 players the have better “SPECS” than compariable iPods…. BUT…. which is TRULY the best?
HUMMMMMMM
now…. where’s my appleTV….
@tryphcycle
Well it’s limited to 720p.
Video formats supported: H.264 and protected H.264 (from iTunes Store): 640 by 480, 30 fps, LC version of Baseline Profile; 320 by 240, 30 fps, Baseline profile up to Level 1.3; 1280 by 720, 24 fps, Progressive Main Profile. MPEG-4: 640 by 480, 30 fps, Simple Profile
taken from http://www.apple.com/appletv/specs.html
So he does have a point.
BUT…. which is TRULY the best?
I don’t know. Perhaps the one that suits your needs? The iPod is slickand seems quite usable, but it would be rather worthless to me, since my entire CD collection was ripped in OGG (and transcoding is out of question; quality matters to me). I’m not too keen in installing a third-party firmware, either.
Thus, it’s rather a matter of personal opinion, just like that iPhone. It seems great, yet far too hip-gadget for me; I have a life beyond the Net. Still, some people will find a use…
Brand loyalty is scary, sometimes.
well I sure as hell hope that appleTV is not codec specific for the streaming stuff. There are way too many people out there with divx movies and such. I know I can add a divx quicktime component so that itunes will play the movies – and if itunes will play them… I hope appleTV will too.
On another note… if the iphone is OSX – could I be hopeing too much to see ichatAV ported over so I could by pass the celluar route all together and just ichatAV my mac / iphone friends?!? or am I dreaming?
Just caught this in Google Reader – http://zaitcev.livejournal.com/115994.html
Quote from link:
#1: Please stuff your Rich Mail up your ass.
I happen to agree.
Isn’t Jobs complaining a lot about keyboards? Will we see a full-size touch-screen plate anytime soon that meant to replace keyboards? One setup for office apps, one for doom, one for media playing, one for learning the piano…
I hope not. I detest interfacing with machines without getting tactile feedback.
How about a very small and gentle electric shook 🙂
Ok, now since Cisco still owns the iPhone trademark, what kind of legal wrangling will the two Sillycon Valley residents be doing next?
For those who haven’t seen it yet, here are the demos directly from Apple’s homepage.
http://www.apple.com/iphone
I don’t know about you, but compared with a lot of PocketPC/Windows Mobile devices (like Qtek) the Apple iPhone IS NOT expensive. Bear in mind that you’ll be buying an iPod + phone + decent browser/email.
a browser with no keyboard that’s only EDGE plus wifi (i’m happy for the dude who’s surrounded by wifi hotspots, but he clearly lives a rather sheltered life if he never gets out of range of one…) is not a decent browser. i get the feeling the finger interface is going to be great for music and general cellphone use but even worse than stylus input for actual typing. and using a browser on something with a stylus but no keyboard already irritates the hell out of me.
Heard that the iphone would be tied to cingular, if thats true it’s about the same price as a qtec. If i could get it as a phone without lockin i would buy it.
and if some sane phone-network offer it here in sweden i wold get it to i guess.
IMHO, the key is developer access and consumer access to the developers.
For anyone complaining about this phone, it’s simply the beginning and a hotsync away from pretty much being anything you want if Apple opens it up.
If Apple posts the dev kit for this thing on to its web site and opens the phone up to any yahoo with a Mac Mini, and then lets consumers download such applications and media via the hotsync cradle, then it truly will be a revolutionary device.
Whether its open source widgets, or a new, paid, PDA app from Bingo Software, if developers have access to this device in a free market that the computers enjoy today, we’re going to see some amazing things on this thing.
Mobile devices, phones specifically, are a PITA for small coders to develop for. And getting content to the phones is almost impossible without network cooperation.
But it’s clear from what we’ve seen so far that this is obviously a powerful little bit of kit, and I can only hope that small time developers and innovators that make the internet sing today are going to be not only let in, but welcomed through the front door.
This is a rather odd choice for a mobile data standard. If you happen to be in an open WiFi hotspot you can use it, no problem there.
However if you’re not (and there’s a pretty good chance of that) you have to use EDGE, a relatively little used 2.5G standard. e.g. if you are in the UK and the operator is Orange you may be lucky, if not you’re stuck with an old style GSM modem… ouch!
I’m curious to see what the CPU is, I’d imagine it’s an Xscale of some form (Intel sold off all the ARM stuff be will probably still making them for a while yet). There are PowerPCs at this level now (460 series) but I doubt that somehow with the current Apple Intel love-in.
I don’t think it’ll be a full OS X somehow, probably a very stripped down embedded version.
The look and GUI of the device appear to be very impressive indeed as should be expected and I think this device will certainly give the mobile manufacturers something to think about.
I’m a bit sceptical of the touch screen though, those things are difficult enough to keep clean even with styluses, it’s going to get dirty very quickly if you touch it with your fingers all the time. Have they given it a special coating or something?
The Apple TV is another interesting product which isn’t as innovative as it might appear (XBox360 and a Philips system can do something similar, Sony have a box which doesn’t need the PC) Apple’s advantage is integration, nobody else has this – yet.
Going into 2 completely new markets against larger established competition is brave to say the least. I can’t see them having the same success they had with the iPod though. But if they can cut themselves a profitable niche I think they’ll be quite happy.
The battle for the desktop is over, Wintel won. The battle for the living room has begun.
Watch it now: http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/j47d52oo/event/
I’m pretty sure XBMC (Xbox media center http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_Media_Center ) is 10 times better than Apple TV. And it was released five years ago!
Yay for open-source.
That said I didn’t have much hope for the connectivity thing. Seeing iTunes 7 DAAP is still not cracked for platforms like Linux.
Even the Windows Media Center Extenders for Vista will offer more functionality than this with more codec support.
Edited 2007-01-10 01:10
I don’t own a Mac, but looking at this phone it makes me envious. I hate my walkman phone, why? cause I hate the connection, why doesnt it uses standard headphone jack? But im still hoping for a iphone mini or nano sometimes in the future. As for iPhone being a GSM and not 3G, thank God! 3G here is expensive.
Guess it makes sense to change the name when your bread and butter is coming from everything except that “Computer” part.
So, check this out….since Jobs has decided on a name change…how about the Computer part of Apple being spun out/sold off as a separate entity (a-la Lenovo)? Possibilities? Probabilities?
/*nothing was said about new Macs or Leopard.*/
I was not surprise. why should jobs metion the new macs? when more people keeps buying the pc running a five year old OS over the latest, greatest mac computer. It seems like it does not really matter what new featues apple adds to the mac os x and to the new macs. a virus,worms,trojan horse prone five year old OS from MS sale more then the lastest mac os x release
Edited 2007-01-10 04:30