I love the Apple invites and the instant deconstruction of meaning in every bit of them. Check out the shadow of the 12 is a 5… as in “iPhone 5”? I would have put cash money down that the next iPhone would follow the iPad lead and just be “the next iPhone.” Premonition or head fake by Apple? We’ll see on the 12th…
It’s for real, if you believe screenshots from a German website… I’ve been a fan of WunderRadio as an over the air content provider on the iPhone. Now there’s a similar on demand podcast tool coming soon. No more docking necessary!
How long have I been wanting this? Wishing for this? Rumors are that the iPhone’s next software update will include the ability to download podcasts from “the cloud.” Niiiice. Only took 18 months, but I won’t quibble.
Now, syncing a to-do list with iCal? Helloooo?
I’m blogging this as we go along… here’s Apple’s new stuff as announced by elJobso this morning in San Francisco:
9:18 AM – Time Capsule, a new network attached storage device that merges the Airport Extreme with a big old hard drive. Wireless backups for your notebooks… $299/$499 (500GB/1TB)
9:22 AM -iPhone and iPod Touch get a a lot of new goodies, most notably the ability to find yourself on a Google map automatically. Nice feature. The Touch will now include a lot of apps from the iPhone, most notably Mail. Weird part? Apple’s throwing in a $20 fee for upgrading current Touch owners… kind of surprising there.
9:36 AM – iTunes Store now offers rentals… most surprisingly it includes ALL studios, including Universal. Universal owns NBS and we all remember that they yanked TV shows from the iTunes Store this season. You have 30 days to start watching it, and once you start you have 24 hours to watch and finish it. Movies are all transferable to iPods and iPhones. $2.99 for older titles and $3.99 for new titles. HD is also now available for a buck more.
9:44 AM – Apple TV Take 2 – an upgrade of the current allows movie and TV purchases & rentals from the screen. The YouTube offerings have increased as well (presumably for iPhone owners too). All purchases sync back to your computer. More HD podcasts as well… good news for those of you who jumped on this! Also new: Flickr integration. That’s pretty nice… definite upgrades to a product that was coolly received so far. Existing owners get the new software for free, and new units ship in 2 weeks (with a price drop to $229).
10:08 AM – What we’ve all been waiting for (and by “we” I mean me) – the MacBook Air. Jobs describes it as the world’s thinnest notebook… .16 inches thick at its narrowest point, .75 inches at its thickest (!?!). Fits in a manilla envelope. It has a backlit 13″ LED display (that’s lower power consumption… nice touch). The screen trackpad has multi-touch just like an iPhone too. It can be skinny because it’s using iPod hard drives in it. “Ships with 80GB drive, option of 64GB SSD.” So, not a notebook for storing a ton of stuff, but they didn’t compromise on speed… its got a full Intel Core 2 Duo in there that’s slower than the other MacBooks, but it’s probably because it’s 60% smaller than the ones in the MacBook line.
USB port and a headphone jack on one side, but no internal optical drive. Apple has an interesting new system that allows the MacBook Air to “borrow” an optical drive wirelessly from other Macs on network. External USB drives are available too for the people that need to spin a DVD or CD. 5 hour battery life… this sucker ships in 2 weeks… $1799.
Day two was significantly quieter… I suspect Vegas claimed a few victims overnight! Going to one more session on social networking proved to be one too many as the info wasn’t as helpful as yesterday’s sessions. I just finished a session on mic technique by the rep from Shure – the crowd was pretty sparse, which was a shame because he put together a nice (if a bit techie) piece. Shure mics are outstanding for the more advanced podcasters out there (their price points tend to be higher than I’d recommend for newbies).
I got to meet Rob Walch at the Wizzard Media booth, and we had a nice chat about all things podcasting and – of course – the iPhone. Rob’s an important voice in podcasting (Podcast 411 is a place I tell all people to check out). I also got a chance to see Justine from iJustine wandering about. She was the one with the massive iPhone bill video that got a kajillion views this summer on YouTube.
All in all, a great show. I think I’m going to skip out on the Mark Cuban keynote… if he was going to talk about whether he was going to buy a hockey team, I’d probably go, but for now… I’m ready to grab some coffee and wait up for my red eye back to DC. I’ve got a lot of work to do based on some of the great info and networking here!
Apple has announced it’s releasing a toolkit for developers to create 3rd party applications for the iPhone. The kit should be out in February… not sure if the folks who hacked their phones with AppTap will be happy with waiting that long. Apple took a bit of a hit over it’s 1.1.1 firmware release, since it bricked a bunch of phones and also rendered the AppTap apps useless. I suspect the February release will probably include a lot of changes (like a frieking to-do list… helloo!?). I’m quite sure there will be a slew of apps created by Apple that Jobs will unveil at the MacWorld keynote in January. Also, there’s rumors that the iPhone will be enhanced when Leopard (OS 10.5) hits store shelves on October 26th… we shall see…
As you may have notice from the dearth of posts, it’s been a bit of a crazy week here at Nineball Media. I’m currently working on a major recording project that I hope to finish up by the end of the week, plus I’m off to Boston today to do some work with one of Nineball’s newer clients, Boston University. Thankfully, the news on new media and tech has been pretty slow lately (comparatively), unless you want to read more stories about iPhones bricking, or AOL’s massive layoffs (coming Friday, allegedly).
Anyone in the DC area interested in supporting a good cause… I’m on the board of the Tranquil Space Foundation, and we’re holding our first gala tomorrow night. Come on down and support a great cause… details at tranquilspacefoundation.org.
Even the lauded AppTap installer for third party applications on the iPhone has reportedly been disabled. When the price drop was announced Rob at Today in iPhone went on a rant of gargantuan proportions… given his love for AppTap, I’m thinking he’s going to need some lozenges for the next post-show recovery unless the AppTap folks can counter this update.
This, by the way, is the game that will play out for a while… Apple will disable, outsiders will re-hack. Then, Apple will disable… etc., etc.
Have a great weekend!
Don’t say Apple didn’t warn ya. On Monday, they said the new iPhone update would disable unlocked iPhones, and lo and behold, iPhone Update 1.1.1 did just that. Looks like some methods to install third party apps suffered the same fate… I’m sure the Internets will be abuzz tomorrow with the full details. Meanwhile, the update apparently fixed some bugs for the rest of the iPhone owners that paid attention to Apple’s threats.
Also, the update included the brand new WiFi iTunes Music Store… and, after all has been said, podcasts aren’t included. Something tells me some enterprising hacker is working on an app to make this all happen. I hear rumors of betas flying about…
UPDATE: Ouch. Looks like some people who tried to un-unlock their phones for the update still bricked em. Again… ouch.
All of you early adopters, the time to get your $100 credit is here… check out the fancy schmancy
way of getting it here. Worst part? I gotta burn one of my 200 text messages this month to get it. I s’pose I’ll recover when I get that hundred bucks…
Turns out it’s a free SMS after all… thanks Steve!
Have a good weekend!
