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Macworld news: Apple TV and iPhone

January 9, 2007 › Sandy McMurray | comment

Apple CEO Steve Jobs stepped into the spotlight today in San Francisco and announced two big new products.

Apple TV (pre-announced last year as "iTV") is a wireless gadget that bridges the gap between TV and computer. With Apple TV, you can use your big screen TV with your computer to view movies, video, and photos, and listen to digital music. Apple TV will be available in February for US $299.

That was the warm-up act. The big news of the day is the iPhone, the long-rumoured and much-anticipated Apple-designed cell phone.

The reality may actually exceed the hype: the iPhone is a slim touch-screen device that will serve as a cell phone, a video iPod, and a wireless Web browser. It's really a small computer, running Mac OS X, the Mac system software.

The iPhone will be available in June, following FCC approval. It will be sold exclusively by Apple and its carrier partner Cingular in the United States.

International carriers were not announced, but Canadians will remember that Rogers was the Canadian carrier partner when Apple and Motorola launched the first iTunes phone (the ROKR).

The iPhone promises to be a great product. Like most fancy handsets, it will cost a bundle: suggested retail through Cingular will start at US $499, and will requires a two year contract.

More new stuff Although today's keynote address was mostly about iPhone (with a side order of Apple TV), there were some other interesting announcements: * iTunes music sales are rising, not falling - over 2 billon songs sold. Apple sells more than 5 million songs per day, or 58 per second * Paramount will add its movie library to the iTunes Store * Both Google and Yahoo! are iPhone content partners * Apple will drop "Computer" from its name to become Apple Inc.

One new product not mentioned during the keynote: a new Airport (WiFi) wireless device, based on the 802.11n protocol, is five times faster than the previous version (and the heart of the video streaming ability in Apple TV).

The iPhone and Apple TV should give the tech press enough to chew on for this week. I expect there will be more product announcements next month, after the flurry of CES news has passed.

January 9, 2007 › Sandy McMurray | comment on this item