I haven’t said anything about the Macworld announcement as I really don’t have a lot to say. The iPhone looks very cool but even though I’m already a Cingular customer I’m stuck with my current phone till December. And, in fact, I’m less interested in the iPhone as a phone than I am in it being the world’s tiniest Mac laptop. If they strip out the phone elements but retain all the iPod, iPhoto, and wi-fi features, then this really will be a killer must-have device!&nbso; As the days go on and the fabled Steve Jobs “reality distortion field” fades, people are taking a more sober look at the iPhone. I’ve read complaints about the expense of Cingular’s contract and data rates, complaints that the iPhone will not allow third party apps, the inability to use iTunes purchases as ringtones or to buy songs directly through the phone, etc. But the only one to bother me was revealed by C|Net. Their Crave page shows the iPhone’s video-playing capabilities leave a lot to be desired. In fact, you can’t really call it widescreen after all. The screen has a 1.5:1 display, which means fullscreen video will have black bars on the sides and 16×9 video will be cropped — defeating the purpose of a wide screen! The images on the C|Net page don’t really match up, so I created a more appropriate comparison.
Screen grab from Macworld keynote podcast
Screen grab off my iTunes Store purchase. Notice the difference?
I can only hope this will be addressed before my hypothetical widescreen w-fi iPod is released.
Another item which had held great promise was the Apple TV box. But the more I find out about it the less attractive it becomes. I am still very interested in the concept of wirelessly transferring video content from my computer to my big new TV, but Apple TV really doesn’t seem ready for prime time. It only plays what is stored in iTunes, which limits what you can play to what iTunes can play. HD content is limited to 720p 24fps (not even the TV standard of 30fps!) and there isn’t even any HD content in the iTunes Store. I’m not even sure why I need to buy Apple TV if all, since it doesn’t seem to do much more than what I can do with my three-way RCA iPod cords — which cost two hundred fifty dollars less. Right now, it looks like the Slingbox is what I want; unless Apple has bigger plans for Apple TV rev2.
I was really looking forward to Macworld, since I figured iLife ’07 and iWork ’07 would be released, and more details on OS X Leopard would be revealed. What was announced shows great promise, but here I am still left waiting.
