Well first of all lets lay it all out for you who don’t know (I don’t know how who wouldn’t)
- Apple TV
- iPhone
- Bluetooth headset for iPhone
- Airport Extreme Base Station
The Apple TV
The device is built to be used with widescreen HDTV’s and EDTV’s capable of 480p, 576p, and 720p. It has HDMI output, Component video output, Optical audio output, USB, and 10/100 Eathernet. If you want to see the interface of the device you can check it out here. I’m excited about this and plan to buy it as soon as I can pick one up in an Apple Store. It also has a 40GB hard drive and 802.11n wireless connectivity. Along with the Apple TV release they also released Paramount movies in the iTunes store. The Apple TV can sync with a computer in your home or you can stream from up to 5 computers. I find it to be funny because according to the Apple spec’s page, it requires iTunes 7.1.
The interface is absolutely beautiful and I’m wondering if this is signs to come of the Front Row interface for OS X Leopard.
The iPhone is really 3 devices in one. It is a widescreen iPod, a cell phone, and an internet device.
The iPod part. Well its a great device just as an iPod. It of course has a widescreen and 5 hours of battery life for video. It is extremely easy to scroll through your music just using your finger. When you turn the device on its side it uses its accelerometer and can tell that you are doing so. When it is turned on its side you can flip through the cover art of your music using CoverFlow. Great idea, it is much easier to look through your albums in this way and when you tap on a cover it will flip over and show you a list of the songs on the album. When watching video if you touch the screen it will have an overlay of the controls for it.
The phone part. It’s amazing. It is easy to use, it can tell when the phone is next to your face so the screen turns off and the touchscreen quits sensing touches. The speaker for speakerphone is on the bottom of the device so that when you lay it on your desk it won’t muffle the sound. You can choose which voice mail you want to listen too. It shows a list of your voice mails so you only have to listen to the ones you want. When text messaging it brings up a keyboard using the touchscreen and it will do a type of predictive text that can tell knowing the letters around the ones you used showing what you wanted to type at the bottom of the screen, when you push space it uses the one at the bottom. Next up photos. It has a 2 megapixel camera. To zoom in on the pictures you touch two fingers on the screen and spread them apart to zoom out squeeze them together. If you have a portrait layout picture and you turn it on your side it automatically turns the picture.
The Internet Communicator. This part is cool. It has a full featured browser in it. It is of course using Safari. It will can use Wi-Fi to connect to the internet and will automatically switch over when a hot spot is in range. If you double tap on the page it will zoom in a certain amount or you can do the “squeeze technique.” The phone has a html email reader. Yahoo will give each iPhone owner “push” imap support for free with Yahoo mail. Google maps is in there as well. It uses the “squeeze” for zooming. During the keynote Steve Jobs searched on the app for starbucks and within google maps you can choose to call businesses that you search for. Then there are widgets and this is when things get interesting. It would be great to have all of my RSS feeds as widgets in my phone. When I’m out and about and bored I can just grab my phone and read some news.
There is so much to talk about and I suggest you go and watch the keynote for yourself. It is so amazing. It’s just exciting to watch. Watch it here.