OK. Engadget has notes on the whole thing here…
My thoughts –
- AppleTV is still really exciting, and it makes sense that it pulls your movies onto the unit’s internal drive. 720p HD is pretty neat, though the 40GB drive is gonna fill fast. Jobs said it will stream from 5 computers but didn’t say if it would stream in HD. With computer monitors getting more and more like TVs this box will have to be less than $300 or offer additional features to catch on, especially considering other options like the XBox 360 that do so much more. The key is convincing people who are already used to watching movies on their computers to move back into the living room, and convincing people who are still using VCRs that they need to get a life and get with technology.
- The iPhone is way slicker than I would have ever expected.
- I want one, but…
- $499 for 4GB and $599 for 8GB seem high considering the required 2 year contract. It is the only cell phone that I’ve ever been excited about, but that’s still a lot of money for a phone.
- How do you keep it from getting all smudged up?
- Guess they got the whole trademark thing taken care of.
- What about the widescreen/touchscreen stand-alone iPod? Is Apple willing to leave out every potential iPod customer who either doesn’t want a phone or is stuck in a contract with another provider?
- The iPhone is definitely the coolest phone on the market, but fails as an iPod compared to the regular iPod lineup. When I can get 80GB for $349, 8GB for $599 doesn’t make sense. Jobs spent a lot of time showing off the media management capabilities (Coverflow!) and widescreen aspect ratio, but what good is it if you can only store 3 movies at a time (at current iTunes Store file sizes)? Is the iPhone trying to be too many things at one time? One of the major complaints with current cell phones is that they all have cameras and music players and Java games, but are crappy phones. Jobs talked a lot about the “phone” feature being the killer app, but I can’t help thinking that things like video playback and the camera added more costs than usability. I love the widescreen video, but with so little storage it will be a juggling act betwen music, movies, photos, apps and OS requirements.
- If it were $299 and $399 I’d be a lot more excited about what essentially comes down to replacing gadgets I already have with something cooler.
- Where’s the Leopard news, Macintosh news and iLife updates? Guess they wanted to keep the spotlight on iPhone, but it would have been nice to hear these things presented in the keynote.
- The 5G iPod has been out way too long without a real update. I’m hoping we’ll see one by the end of the week. Widescreen. 100GB HDD. Touchscreen. No phone features.
