We have something of a tradition at my place of work. Every time Apple - or more accurately, Steve Jobs - does one of his keynotes, we watch. Or rather read - Apple don't stream their keynotes in live Quicktime-o-vision these days - and debate. Debate inevitably turns to disagreement, and often confusion; some of my colleagues just can't get their heads around my love of all things Apple.
This year, sadly, we had work to do while Steve did his thing, but that didn't stop us from monitoring various live-blogs whilst we busied ourselves with our work.
Initially, there wasn't a great deal to be excited about. After the obligatory Microsoft bashing - which this writer is getting a little tired of: do we really need to see the Zune logo in flames? - the first "announcement" of the keynote arrived.
It's from Apple... and it connects to the TV... so we'll call it...
Steve announced the new name for iTV - Apple TV, a name that must have taken the Apple boffins literally minutes to dream up. Why didn't they call it this when Jobs unveiled the product some months ago? The product has virtually no surprises: it streams your iTunes music and movies from your computer to your HDTV. It also streams your iPhoto photos. And, well, that's about it.
Apple TV has a hard drive which will store 40 gigabytes of video/music/pictures, and features an incredibly dull, Front Row-esque interface. It features a limited set of video playback options - no DivX or Xvid here, and from what I can gather MPEG2, the format of DVDs, isn't supported either - and isn't extensible in any way (as far as Apple have let on).
It is relatively cheap though: $300/£199/€300. This makes it a lot cheaper than any existing machine running Microsoft's Media Center, or Vista. Admittedly, this isn't an apples for apples comparison (if you'll pardon the pun), as the Apple TV is more of a Media Center Extender device than a full blown Media Center. A more appropriate comparison would be the Xbox 360, and in this light the Apple TV comes off quite badly, assuming you're remotely interested in gaming. Microsoft's console matches the Apple TV product quite well for streaming media, video on demand, and IPTV functionality these days.
Article comments
1 - Andrew
So who _is_ their target customer? I'm not sure Fortune 500 customers will feel all that comfortable with Yahoo as their email server, as you implied (some people actually like having their own Exchange server, or relying on Blackberry's back-end services; otherwise they could just all just use HotMail ;-).
If this is targeted to the corporate elite, its toward the independent designer/architect/movie star type who isn't part of some large organization, has lots of money, and won't think twice about $500. Or maybe it's targeted at the average schlub who wants to appear that way...
2 - thornhill
The phone doesn't do MAPI and I doubt it will anytime soon, so the entire corporate world is going to stick with the blackberry. The non-tactile keyboard will probably also slow down typing speeds, so again, blackberry users are not going to want to switch.
I think apple overestimates how much the average consumer is willing to pay for a phone. By the time this thing comes out, Razors are going to be so cheap that they'll be the standard phone you get with a contract.
3 - Nick
Apple doesn't have first-mover advantage here. True blackberry/smartphone users aren't going to lose function for sexiness. This will be an also-ran. Tech specs are still needed. Battery life? Connection methods? Plan costs? NO NASTY iSoftware hopefully. There are few things more evil than hooking up iJunk hardware to Windows via iSoftware. Those who have fought with AppleTalk and iPod w/USB 1.1 know what I mean. Someday Apple will get plug and play. Everything they have offered so far has been RTFM very carefully and then plug and PRAY :(