Macworld Report
Tech fans can count on two things at the beginning of January: CES in Vegas, and Macworld in San Francisco. Often, the two events are staggered enough that keen tech reporters can hit both shows, but this year they directly overlapped. This year, you saw a whole group of journalists hunched over their computers in the press room at CES, waiting for the news from Steve Jobs’ keynote at Macworld. So for a short period, CES was forgotten…at CES no less.
Apple made two significant announcements at this year’s keynote. Not only did the company announce the proper launch of the previously previewed Apple TV, but the company also finally announced the long-rumoured iPhone.
Apple TV
Apple TV wasn’t a huge surprise to anyone who’s been following Apple news: previously dubbed iTV when it was previewed at last year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, the product is Apple’s very own multimedia streaming device. Sure, there are already a number of other media-streaming devices on the market, but Apple TV not only sports a more attractive industrial design, it’s also designed to sync with your computer’s iTunes application. The product incorporates 802.11b/g/n wireless networking, and you can also connect it to your network using 10/100 Ethernet.
The fact that Apple TV syncs with iTunes is a huge selling point, as it goes a long way to simplifying setup. Just as other computers running iTunes will appear as shared drives in your own computer’s iTunes, so will Apple TV - in other words, no special client installation followed by a manual search of the network for your new hardware. In other words: YAY!
Better, Apple TV will be able to retrieve audio, video and photos from up to five machines in the house, either Mac or Windows, so long as they’re running iTunes. Content will sync with Apple TV’s internal 40 GB hard drive, including copy-protected items purchased from the iTunes online store.
Connections to the television are also impressive. Apple TV is designed to deliver a high definition signal to the television, either via HDMI (both audio and video) or component connectors (supplemented by analogue or optical audio connectors). It’s compatible with both 720p and 1080i connections, but it will work with a 480p display as well, for those who haven’t made the move to high def just yet.
The Apple TV will cost $349 and is scheduled to launch this month.
iPhone
While it’s always hard to say for sure what Apple is going to announce before Steve Jobs stands up on the stage, a lot of people were positive that one of the announcements was going to be the long-anticipated Apple-powered smartphone…and that’s exactly what happened.
As expected, the new iPhone will combine phone functions with multimedia content. What wasn’t expected was that the phone will run Mac OS X, allowing it to run email, Safari and other applications in a multitasking manner…and of course, it will play audio and video content purchased from the iTunes store on its built-in widescreen display.
The phone uses a touch-screen interface for almost all interaction with the phone (there is one button that takes you to the main menu). Dialing, text entry and navigation are done with a series of taps and gestures, but the phone is smart enough to distinguish between deliberate and accidental touches.
The iPhone is a GSM/EDGE phone (with WiFi onboard), and is scheduled to launch in the United States in June on the Cingular network. Current pricing is set at US $499 for the model with 4 GB of internal memory, and US $599 for the 8 GB model.
While the announcement was greeted with stark raving techno-lust from a whole legion of Apple fans, there’s at least one company that’s not quite so thrilled: Cisco Systems, which owns the rights to the iPhone name, immediately filed suit against Apple for trademark infringement despite ongoing negotiations between the two companies aimed at allowing Apple to use the iPhone name. What that means is unclear at this point, but it could simply mean a new name for the product when it launches in June.
Goodbye, Computer
If it wasn’t already clear from Apple’s success with the iPod (or from this year’s decidedly non-computer-centric announcements) that the company wasn’t simply a computer company, Apple sealed the deal by announcing that it was changing its corporate name of 30 years from Apple Computer, Inc. to the more basic Apple Inc. Apple is clearly charting a new course now - thus the company’s Macworld 2007 slogan, “The first 30 years were just the beginning.” Still, we’ll miss you, computer!
Tech fans can count on two things at the beginning of January: CES in Vegas, and Macworld in San Francisco. Often, the two events are staggered enough that keen tech reporters can hit both shows, but this year they directly overlapped. This year, you saw a whole group of journalists hunched over their computers in the press room at CES, waiting for the news from Steve Jobs’ keynote at Macworld. So for a short period, CES was forgotten…at CES no less.
Apple made two significant announcements at this year’s keynote. Not only did the company announce the proper launch of the previously previewed Apple TV, but the company also finally announced the long-rumoured iPhone.
Apple TV
Apple TV wasn’t a huge surprise to anyone who’s been following Apple news: previously dubbed iTV when it was previewed at last year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, the product is Apple’s very own multimedia streaming device. Sure, there are already a number of other media-streaming devices on the market, but Apple TV not only sports a more attractive industrial design, it’s also designed to sync with your computer’s iTunes application. The product incorporates 802.11b/g/n wireless networking, and you can also connect it to your network using 10/100 Ethernet.
The fact that Apple TV syncs with iTunes is a huge selling point, as it goes a long way to simplifying setup. Just as other computers running iTunes will appear as shared drives in your own computer’s iTunes, so will Apple TV - in other words, no special client installation followed by a manual search of the network for your new hardware. In other words: YAY!
Better, Apple TV will be able to retrieve audio, video and photos from up to five machines in the house, either Mac or Windows, so long as they’re running iTunes. Content will sync with Apple TV’s internal 40 GB hard drive, including copy-protected items purchased from the iTunes online store.
Connections to the television are also impressive. Apple TV is designed to deliver a high definition signal to the television, either via HDMI (both audio and video) or component connectors (supplemented by analogue or optical audio connectors). It’s compatible with both 720p and 1080i connections, but it will work with a 480p display as well, for those who haven’t made the move to high def just yet.
The Apple TV will cost $349 and is scheduled to launch this month.
iPhone
While it’s always hard to say for sure what Apple is going to announce before Steve Jobs stands up on the stage, a lot of people were positive that one of the announcements was going to be the long-anticipated Apple-powered smartphone…and that’s exactly what happened.
As expected, the new iPhone will combine phone functions with multimedia content. What wasn’t expected was that the phone will run Mac OS X, allowing it to run email, Safari and other applications in a multitasking manner…and of course, it will play audio and video content purchased from the iTunes store on its built-in widescreen display.
The phone uses a touch-screen interface for almost all interaction with the phone (there is one button that takes you to the main menu). Dialing, text entry and navigation are done with a series of taps and gestures, but the phone is smart enough to distinguish between deliberate and accidental touches.
The iPhone is a GSM/EDGE phone (with WiFi onboard), and is scheduled to launch in the United States in June on the Cingular network. Current pricing is set at US $499 for the model with 4 GB of internal memory, and US $599 for the 8 GB model.
While the announcement was greeted with stark raving techno-lust from a whole legion of Apple fans, there’s at least one company that’s not quite so thrilled: Cisco Systems, which owns the rights to the iPhone name, immediately filed suit against Apple for trademark infringement despite ongoing negotiations between the two companies aimed at allowing Apple to use the iPhone name. What that means is unclear at this point, but it could simply mean a new name for the product when it launches in June.
Goodbye, Computer
If it wasn’t already clear from Apple’s success with the iPod (or from this year’s decidedly non-computer-centric announcements) that the company wasn’t simply a computer company, Apple sealed the deal by announcing that it was changing its corporate name of 30 years from Apple Computer, Inc. to the more basic Apple Inc. Apple is clearly charting a new course now - thus the company’s Macworld 2007 slogan, “The first 30 years were just the beginning.” Still, we’ll miss you, computer!
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