Real Kato Blog: Apple Watch: iPhone, AppleTV

Yesterday's MacWorld announcements.

A brief recap and analysis of yesterday's announcements from Steve Jobs' MacWorld keynote.

AppleTV. Formerly known as the "iTV", Apple officially rolled out its living-room entertainment device. It can sync 40GB of videos, photos, and music from one computer, working much like an iPod does. It can stream video from up to five computers. It does 720p HD video (but only in H.264 format, apparently).

I still have questions about this box. Can it support anything besides H.264 and MPEG-4? If not, the amount of content available for it will be severely limited. AppleTV could be great if there were lots of freely available content on the Internet (think Google video, YouTube, or network rebroadcasts). Or a subscription service, at least.

The content side of the market will catch up eventually, I expect. And that's when people will understand the appeal of on-demand internet television. Until then, this device will be something of an oddball.

iPhone. Oh. My. God. This thing is killer. And by "killer", I mean it will kill every other "smart" phone on the market, when it comes to usability, efficiency, and coolness. It's a phone, a camera, an internet device, and a media player. It rocks. It's the new crackberry.

Not everyone will want something like this. But for those of us who don't lug a laptop around all day, but want real access to the Internet from everywhere, this thing is a dream. And the biggest feature? It runs OS X... so you can run real applications on it. Post to your blog from your iPhone? View and edit photos? Write reports? You can, and without having to use a clunky stylus. It's the Newton reborn, but oh-so-much better.

As a video player, it'll be somewhat limited, having only up to 8GB of storage. But that's enough for a full-length movie, and watching a movie on a 480x320 display is a huge step up from the 320x240 display on the iPod. I wouldn't be surprised to see a device that connects the iPhone directly to an iPod, allowing the iPhone to be used as an auxiliary display.

Other companies will try to imitate the iPhone. But Apple has a crucial patent on the most important aspect: the gesture-based touch-sensitive display. You can't duplicate that kind of ease-of-use with cheapo knobs and buttons stuck to the front of a device. Take that, LuxPro.

This doesn't come out until June. It's gonna be a long wait.

Permalink 7 Comment

Posted by Ken in: techwatch

Comments

Comment #1 from Crouching Hamster (Guest)
2007 Jan 10 - 2:58 pm : #

Way overpriced ... and Cingular ... bleah.

Comment #2 from Ken (realkato)
2007 Jan 10 - 4:12 pm : #

I believe the $499/$599 price is before any service discounts... and consider you're getting a phone, plus a 2MP camera, plus a high-end wireless-enabled PDA, plus an iPod nano, plus a video player. Prices are comparable to an unlocked BlackBerry, and just a little bit more than a high-end Treo.

I'll have a more detailed pro/con analysis later. It's not a perfect device... but the excitement is in how this will change the face of mobile computing.

Comment #3 from JohnC (Guest)
2007 Jan 10 - 9:49 pm : #

That price is with a 2 year contract. though I already use Cingular and it works well around here.
The appleTV would be cool if it could DVR. You can always use handbrake to rip your DVDs and import them to iTunes. This works on iPods, I wonder if it works on appleTV.

Comment #4 from Jenn (Guest)
2007 Jan 11 - 12:48 am : #

Maybe I am old skool, but I want my phone to make calls. Maybe take a picture now and then. I don't text. I don't do email on my phone. I don't listen to music on it. Don't want video. Just make calls. By technology standards, I am hovering somewhere just above the Amish.

Comment #5 from Ken (realkato)
2007 Jan 11 - 10:53 am : #

John, apparently you're right about the 2-year contract thing. My bad.

As for the AppleTV, I'm sure you'll be able to use HandBrake to rip your DVDs and use your computer as a video jukebox. Lots of folks will do this, even though it's technically illegal to do so. Damn DMCA. But I'm guessing Apple is deliberately leaving out DVR functionality, because the long term goal is to have everyone getting all their shows on-demand from the Internet, instead of via cable or satellite or broadcast. I think Apple is going to have to come up with a subscription model for TV and a rental model for video eventually, though, before that takes off.

Jenn, I hear ya... but I think a lot of people feel that way because they don't want a crappy phone, a crappy camera, a crappy music player, and a crappy internet device rolled in one. If there was something that did all these things well, and it saved you from lugging around three different gadgets all the time, then I think you might change your mind.

Comment #6 from Noelle (Guest)
2007 Jan 11 - 1:26 pm : #

Ken, aren't you supposed to be on your honeymoon someplace really exotic and fabulous?

Comment #7 from Crouching Hamster (Guest)
2007 Jan 12 - 12:23 pm : #

I do like that fact that it has - for me - EVERYTHING. I'm tethered to the phone and the iPod. But I'm loyal to Verizon (although that could change).

I'll wait for round two.

P.S. - I promise to post my next blog post w/ pictures b4 the weekend ends. (I can only write a few sentences b4 I fall asleep.)

Comments are closed for this post.

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