If you have managed to go about your day without hearing abut the BIG announcement from Apple, consider yourself to be officially living under a rock.
Today around 9am in San Francisco, California, at the 2007 MacWorld Conference Expo, Steve Jobs, co-founder CEO of Apple, let the world have a peek into his ever growing bag of tricks, and it was even more magical then initially anticipated.
With the late James Brown’s famous tune, “I Feel Good,” playing in the background the man of the hour (who certainly had to be feeling good) readied the crowd for the most astonishing and unmatched products that would debut in 2007.
As predicted, Jobs provided more in depth details about Apple TV. Apple TV allows users to view movies, TV shows, music, photos, movie trailers, and podcasts wirelessly from your personal iTunes library on your Mac or PC. The device has a 40 GB hard drive and is capable of holding up to 50 hours of video content. With the help of the Apple Remote (included with purchase of Apple TV), users can navigate through easy to use menus on any widescreen television and with the click of a button can quite literally have the world of iTunes at your finger tips. Apple TV will be sold for $299 and will beginning shipping in February, so go ahead and order yours today!
While the news about Apple TV was undoubtedly thrilling, the much anticipated first details about the upcoming mobile device from Apple, which will in fact be dubbed iPhone despite the Cisco trademark issue, pushed the technological world over the edge. Jobs and his team tapped into the world’s addiction to their Black Berry’s and PDA’s, and gave new meaning to the words “customer satisfaction.”
The iPhone is three revolutionary products–a mobile phone, widescreen iPod with touch controls, and an Internet communications device–combined into ONE. Users can access email on the phones desktop, in addition to maps, web browsing, internet searches, text messaging, and more with a touch of a button.
Just like on a regular iPod, the new iPhone iPod allows you to view and listen to all your iTunes content including music, videos, audio books, and movies on a stellar 3.5 wide inch screen. One of the new added features allows you to glide through album art work with a flick of a finger using an application known as Cover Flow. In addition you can pause, play, fast forward, or rewind any movie or song by using the touch controls on the screen. Apple also announced that Paramount movies will be added to the list of movies available on iTunes for purchase.
Not only does the iPhone change the way you listen to your music, but it obviously changes the way you use your mobile phone. With the iPhone users can touch a name or number from a favorites or frequent caller list and be immediately connected. Need to have a conference call? No worries, just like with everything on the iPhone, a quick touch on the screen lets you merge two or more calls together. While ordinary telephones require you to listen through all your messages, the iPhone allows you to listen to your voicemail in any order – just like an email. For those who just can’t get enough of text messaging, the iPhone has something for you too; a SMS application with a predictive QWERTY soft predictive text keyboard that can catches and corrects common spelling mistakes – making messaging easier than punching miniature individual keys. Also, the iPhone has a 2-megapixel camera and a photo management application that allows you to take and store your favorite photos, upload or access photos from your computer and easily attach them into an email.
The iPhone also uses the most advanced web browser on an mobile device, Safari, and allows you to create a favorites list, search Google and Yahoo!, and view satellite images on Google Maps; just like you would on the computer. The iPhone informs you of incoming email messages, and lets you view text and pictures all on one screen. It also keeps you up to date on the latest news, weather, stocks, and much more.
This new and revolutionizing product puts a new spin on the phrase ’smart phones’ and puts all previously labeled ’smart phones’ to shame. The iPhone will be begin shipping in June and is priced at $499 for a 4GB model, or $599 for an 8GB model. The prices include a 2 year contract with Cingular, who will be the iPhone’s exclusive partner in the United States (for now). The phone has 5 five hours of battery life and can hold 16 hours of audio alone, and of course is Bluetooth compatible.
After all the exciting new details were presented, Jobs announced that the company will no longer be called, Apple Computer Inc., rather just Apple Inc. Jobs ended his Key Note speech some two hours later and left the audience with a simple quote by Wayne Gretzky to remember him by: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”
