iPhone, Apple TV, Airport Extreme, and what Apple DIDN’T announce today
January 9th, 2007 by Derek
By now you’ve probably heard about Apple’s wild new iPhone, which is almost everything the fanboys and girls might have fantasized about. It’s essentially a widescreen, touch-interface iPod, a mini-Macintosh running Mac OS X, a Bluetooth and Wi-Fi wireless device, and a phone too. Yes, it’s $500+ USD, but it packs a lot in for that price.
I wonder whether subsequent “regular” iPods will take on the mini-Mac OS X iTunes interface and touch screen, and do away with the scroll wheel too.
Also interesting are the release of Apple TV (formerly iTV) set-top TV media interface box and the new, higher-speed 802.11n-based AirPort Extreme base station, which will be able to stream video at tolerable speeds and share a USB hard drive over your network. Engadget, as usual, has hands-on photos of the phone and Apple TV from the Macworld Expo show floor.
What’s more interesting is what Apple didn’t announce. No further details about Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard.” No new version of iWork. And no new iLife suite either, even though it’s been upated annually around this time since 2004.
Perhaps when Paul and I are at the NAMM Show next week with numerous other podcasters from the Home Recording Network, Apple might pull a new version of GarageBand and the rest of the iLife suite out of its hat? Or maybe an iPhone-style video iPod too? Here’s hoping.
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8 Comments Add your own
1. Luis&hellip | January 9th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Yes, I agree.
Though the iPhone seems great, I’m still
waiting for a true Video iPod with a ‘big’ hard drive.
2. Derek&hellip | January 9th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
Interesting background article on the iPhone from Time magazine.
3. Shane Hendricks&hellip | January 9th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Yes, I definitely want one of these big time, but I would like a bigger hard drive…8 GB isn’t large enough when I’m used to my 30 GB iPod.
4. Derek&hellip | January 9th, 2007 at 8:45 pm
Jason Kottke made a cardboard mockup to show the relative size of the iPhone, while TNL.net has a comparison with other smartphones.
And it wouldn’t surprise me if future iPods follow this form factor, but maybe without the phone bit.
5. Shane Hendricks&hellip | January 10th, 2007 at 5:40 am
This will eventually kill the iPod…once the storage comes up a bit. Why pay basically the same for an iPod when you can have all that’s in the iPhone and still retain your iPod functionality? Apple was very smart to do this. Everyone is hooked on iPods, and folks will now see this as the next step towards being rid of separate PDAs, phones, mp3 players, etc.
I think you’re going to see other phone service providers (i.e., Alltel, Sprint, etc.) start tap dancing soon for a piece of this, or I think their business will be hurt if they don’t.
6. Vince&hellip | January 12th, 2007 at 6:15 am
I’d say, in response to your question about this being taken up by the other iPods, is no.
The reason is that the existing iPOds all use an embedded OS and the iPhone uses OSX and the processor in the iPhone will be much more powerful than the iPods.
However, this may the start of the next major transition to new iPod generation – maybe mixing in a) WiFi to share music – like the Zune but doing it properly b) better audio i/o such as 5.1, digital, 24 bit recorrding c) Bluetooth audio d) large flash drives and then moving over to the iPhone platform – except it will be cheaper without the GSM/EDGE wireless and cut down apps.
Just my two penn’orth
Vince
7. Derek&hellip | January 12th, 2007 at 8:27 am
That’s more what I meant. Obviously current iPods must depend on their existing scroll wheel interface, smaller screen, and lower-end processor. There’s no way they could take advantage of the new iPhone UI.
But I’m assuming (or presuming) that the next generation of “non-phone” iPods will take cues from, or be derivatives of, the iPod. Which would be extremely cool!
8. apple iphone&hellip | January 14th, 2007 at 1:40 am
I think it was a great move for apple to come out with the iPhone it has most features consumers have been wanting to have and i think the price will not deter people from buying the apple iPhone. I even think they will sell more then the 10 million apple iPhone they expect to sell within the year.
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