4 posts tagged “mac”
Incidentally, my lack of posting recently has been due to a pretty busy period at work, which looks like continuing for the new few weeks. But since it's the weekend, I'm making up for lost time. :)
Anyways, I came across these two Apple-related links and [these are good].
The first is a blog entry on why the AppleTV is going to be successful, from ZDNet's Alan Graham. I think Graham pretty much hits the nail on the head, and certainly expresses why "I WANT MY APPLETV!". Basically, instead of trying to force a computer into people's living rooms, like M$'s MediaCenter or whatever it's called, Apple have again gone the simple route and designed a device that does what people want : give them a way to watch TV that they've downloaded on their TVs, with the simplicity of a DVD player or Tivo.
It's not surprising to me at all that one of the usual rumor sites reported that Apple has already sold out their initial order of 100,000 AppleTVs, totally surpassing their own expectations. 100,000 x US$299 is a cool US$30 million of brand new revenue. I have no idea what kind of margins Apple might be getting on AppleTVs, I'm sure that they are going to end up making a lot from them, since they are basically 40GB harddrives with A/V out, a wireless 802.11n chipset and a cheap Intel processor to handle decoding.
Moving to the second link, it's a Flickr gallery of someone's basement Mac museum (Thanks again to the ever-interesting Daring Fireball for the link).
And I thought my collection of Macs was bad...
Steve hasn't even left the stage yet, but...words just can't describe how amazing the iPhone is. It really isn't just a phone. It really is a handheld Mac, essentially.
Wow. Wow. Wow wow wow.
No announcement on release date yet, but it's so spectacular that I don't think that makes a difference anymore. People will just wait until it's out.
As for me - I'd buy it just as an iPod alone, because the screen is so beautiful, but I hope that there'll be a way to make this thing work here in Singapore, even if it isn't officially supported.
Again...Wow.
Note: I'm going to try and resist the urge to post more about the iPhone or the keynote until later today, when I've had a chance to digest it all (after catching up with work back at the office!). I haven't even started on Apple TV (the actual name of iTV) yet, and that I'm definitely getting).
An interesting article by John Markoff for the NY Times, predicting that Apple's big announcement at tomorrow's Macworld keynote will be a handheld Mac - basically Apple's answer to the Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) that Microsoft 'launched' unsucessfully last year. The main difference is that, besides the obvious PDA and media-playing functions that a handheld Mac would be useful for, this would also be a phone.
In other words, Apple is relaunching the Newton, but done right. And it's a phone, too.
I like this idea, and suspected that Apple had some kind of PDA device in the works when they unveiled the enhanced scheduling features to be added to Mail and iCal in Leopard. Business-wise, it also takes away some of the pressure of producing a successful iPhone, because a handheld Mac would have appeal to a wider audience and wouldn't stand or fall purely based on how many people wanted an iPhone.
More importantly, it's a lot more Apple's style to create a whole new product category, instead of just trying to make a better phone. Jobs can say, "Well, we think this thing is gonna change your life, and if you want to, you can make calls on it."
We'll see...it's just a little under 30 hours to go till Steve Jobs takes the stage in San Francisco.
For those not interested in the previous entry on football...
My Current iTunes Library Stats
13794 items, 39.9 days, 66.97 GB
1972 artists, 884 albums
Painstakingly genre-ized, rated and smart-playlisted.
Favourites in 256kbps, with the rest mostly 160kbps or higher.
Think I need a bigger iPod...
Current track : 'Everything Counts' by Depeche Mode.
