Supposedly, in about 30 minutes, Apple drops iOS 4.2 for my iPhone 4 and iPad. Cannot. Wait.
What’s the big thing for me? Folders on my iPad. I have (perhaps) ten pages of apps on my iPad, sorted by type of app. Folders will be amazing to fix this little side effect of a lot of storage, and loads of great third-party functionality.
Tick, tock, tick, tock….
Just moments ago, Apple dropped the long-awaited B-bomb — the Beatles are on iTunes!
Now, for me, it’s likely not to be a huge big deal. I bought the big box set last year (and love it!), so there’s probably not much there for me. However, it does point to a thawing — at least a financial thawing — between Uncles Steve’s Apple and The Fab Four.
There’s even a series of commercials promoting this marriage of classic music and technological giant. I can’t remember anyone ever doing anything like that before.
It’s been a long time coming. Welcome to the party.
While we were in Fraser, I got word that my AppleTV was shipping from China. I fully expected it to arrive in St. Louis after me, but somehow, it blazed a path from China, cleared customs, and made an attempted delivery within about two days time. FedEx rocks. After a call to FedEx to hold the package, I finally got home to pick it up from the local FedEx office today.
When I unpacked the thing, I was really taken by the physical size of the thing — slightly bigger than a hockey puck, with only a power cable (no power brick or wallwart) coming with it. I’d stopped at MicroCenter to pick up an HDMI cable — that’s all the little device has a video output — so with my cable bridging the gap between my AppleTV and the Sony, I cranked it up. Set up was dirt easy, just like so many other setups I’d gone through with Apple gear. It found my wireless network easily, and after a couple of short miscues, I had it streaming my iTunes library from the iMac. Even sending the stream wirelessly, the video and audio quality were terrific.
@braddog had been extolling the virtues of Netflix for quite a while, and I’d just happened to get a free trial offer before we left on vacation. With the AppleTV supporting the Netflix streaming model, I felt like there was nothing to lose by giving the trial a try. Big mistake.
I started surfing through the AppleTV the pretty dang big storehouse of streaming treasures at Netflix, and began watching one thing after another. Cartoons to regular TV to movies… I was being pummeled by a tidal wave of video gooeyness. Manohmanohmanohman…
I’m fairly confident that my backside might never leave the comfort of my La-Z-Boy again. But if it does, I can watch Netflix on my iPad, MacBook Pro, iMac, probably even my phone. It’s so doggone ubiquitous and platform agnostic, and it’s all you can eat for only $9/mo. I just can’t imagine how Netflix is pulling that off for that price, but I’m certainly sold. If it gets quiet around here, you’ll know why!
Next week, the last element of my reversion to a cave-dweller arrives — our UVerse installation! I may never see the light of day again. 🙂
Today at noon (our time, anyway), Apple put a black t-shirt on Uncle Steve, and like Willy Wonka, he proceeded to extoll the virtues of all the new things we didn’t know we needed.
First off, let me start by saying that I want a guitar like the one they used for the signature image from the keynote:
Now on to the fun stuff. Beck, @braddog and I went to lunch — regular Wednesday occurrence for us — knowing that during lunch, Uncle Steve would begin the presentation. As it ends up, the place we frequent has apparently put in a wifi hotspot. Score!
Apple had announced that they would stream this event live, so with the discovery of wifi, I set up my iPad to watch the keynote live. Jay had his iPad following the Engadget live text feed from the auditorium floor, and I did the same with my iPhone. Yes, it was geekapalooza.
So what’d Steve announce? Well, in no particular order…
New iPods were all over the place. There was a refresh of the iPod Shuffle announced. Apple decided that the pill/hairclip/borg-implant format of the now-previous version of the Shuffle wasn’t exactly a big hit. I mean, there were no buttons on it anywhere. Aside from providing a mystery for our childrens’ childrens’ children when they cull through the landfills we left behind, there’s really no use for a device with no obvious interface. Enter the new Shuffle… or, is it the old Shuffle? It was really a back-to-the-future moment to see the new Shuffle rolled out, looking almost exactly like my old trusty red Shuffle. It’s a tad bit smaller left-to-right, but still sports the great big ol’ alligator clip on the back. Hurray! Nothing new for me though. Mine’s a 2GB, and I think the new one will go to 4GB. For what I use it for, there’s not much need for the extra capacity, Voice Over, Genius Playlists or any of the other new little things.
The refresh of the iPod Nano was definitely a cooler machine… kinda. About the size of an iPod Shuffle, the new Nano has no click-wheel, with everything controlled through a touch-screen interface on a teency screen. This one also has an alligator clip on it, which I think is a great addition for something that small. But — and there’s always a “but” — there are some missing features. The new Nano does not have a camera, leaving the Nano 5G as the oddball of the line for having one. I’ve also been led to believe that you can’t watch video on the new Nano. These are both kinda big things — philosophically — for me. Uncle Steve sold us on a Flip video killer last year with the 5G Nano, with the ability to shoot 640×480 video, as well as watch video shot with the thing or imported from iTunes.
My guess is that the drop of the whole video concept has a lot to do with the success of the iPhone 4, and the introduction of the new iPod Touch. The new Touch has a front-facing camera for FaceTime video chat, as well as a rear facing camera (although my understanding is that it’s not as high resolution as the one in the iPhone 4). Cameras have been rumored for a looooong time on the Touch, and it’s nice to finally see them show up. The Touch also gets a high-resolution Retina display, just like the iPhone 4. I was disappointed though that the capacity wasn’t really increased from the current top end of 64GB. If I remember right, the original introduction of 64GB to the Touch happened mid-model year, so maybe an increase to 128GB will happen a little later.
And to support all this, iTunes 10 was announced. Frankly, these are normally just updates to handle the new devices, but this time, there’s the addition of a social networking element to sorta tweet your music purchases, preferences and likes to an opt-in community of other music fans. This sounds kinda cool, but until I see it, my jury is still out. You see, I kinda expected to come home tonight, and be able to download it. No such luck so far. Even the iTunes site at apple.com is still sporting iTunes 9.2 with a “coming soon” for version 10. Uncle Steve probably said something about it not being available yet, but I missed that.
Another cool announcement was for iOS 4.1, which is available next week. Instantly, I thought my iPad would finally get the benefits of multi-tasking and folders, but this was not to be. That’ll come in iOS 4.2, which is due in November. Bummer. However, Uncle Steve threw us a bone. Along with bug fixes, iOS 4.1 will add an HDR feature to the Apple-supplied camera application. This is cool, cool territory, and definitely a bit of a trendsetting move. Basically, it’ll take three shots in quick succession — not three images from the same pixel capture on the sensor, apparently — and then blend the underexposed, properly exposed and over-exposed images into a single image with a broader range of light captured than a single image can produce. This has been easy to do in software on the desktop for a while, but the addition of this into iOS 4.1 will really rock. Can’t wait until next week to try it out. (Privately, my prediction is that by the end of 2011, it’ll be hard to find a camera that doesn’t have this feature built-in.)
The last big announcement — the “one more thing” moment — was an updated version of AppleTV. This product’s been around for a while, and has sorta been the stepchild of everything at Apple, being called the “hobby” by Uncle Steve. Well, no more. Basically, the new device is a streaming device for your TV, letting you rent streaming content (films and TV episodes) to your TV, stream content from iTunes on your computer, stream photos from iPhoto, and apparently loads of other new things. No storage, a quarter the physical size of the current Apple TV, and no power brick (man, everyone should get that message!), all for $99. No subscriptions, no contracts. Way cool. And yes, I ordered one. It’ll be here in four weeks. At that price, it’s hard to make a mistake in picking one up, even if the thing is incredibly crappy, which I’m not expecting.
Yeah, I know I haven’t mentioned AirPlay yet, but frankly, I’m not sure I understand enough of what it does to describe it yet. One thing it does seem to do is allow you to stream video or audio from your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch to your TV through the AppleTV unit. That’s as much as I know about that one so far.
So… what’s the score?
I think Uncle Steve wins!
EDIT: iTunes 10 is available for download now!!!!!
So, actually, I’m just now downloading the update to my iPhone 3G. However, in reading MacRumors take on what it’ll do, I can’t wait! (Click the image to embiggen.)
I mean, who knew that Pandora could serve up music… with smells!!!!!
This past Tuesday, like so many other folks, I spent spare moments trying to get an iPhone 4 pre-ordered for delivery on the 24th. Unlike many, I was able to finally get one on order through Apple around 6.30pm Tuesday. Apple ran out of units for delivery on the 24th, as did AT&T. Six hundred thousand units were reported to have moved on Tuesday, and in the next sixteen hours, the next batch were sold, due to be shipped around July 6th. And now, if you pre-order one, it’ll ship by July 14th. I wouldn’t at all be surprised to see it be August or September before you can walk into a storefront and walk out with an iPhone 4.
After having sold two million iPads in its first two months, and following that up with these massive sales figures, I’ve gotta think it’s gonna be a good year in the Jobs household.
As for my iPhone 4, it’s leaving Hong Kong today, and I fully expect it to be here on Thursday. I can’t wait!
Tomorrow is the iPhone 4 pre-order day. A choice of white or black is in the cards.
Now, I like the black phones, especially with the new iPhone 4 “pancake” design. It’s industrial, and white just doesn’t hit me with the same industrial feel. Unless…. one takes a look at some of the Apple gear over the years that’ve sported white enclosures. Those have sported an industrial look and feel from time to time.
So what will I pre-order tomorrow morning? I dunno. But it’ll be an iPhone 4, and it oughta be pretty dang cool.
Obviously, this guy just found out about the new AT&T rate plan.
So I go to Colorado for a week, and AT&T seems to have lost their mind.
OK, so those two events aren’t actually connected, but… I stand by my conclusion.
When the iPad was announced, Steve Jobs proclaimed, to the jaw-dropping gasp of everyone in the room, that the iPad would have a month-to-month all-you-can-eat plan for $30. And the throngs rejoiced.
Scarcely a month into the availability of the iPad 3G, AT&T has now pulled a Darth Vader, and changed the terms of the deal with Apple’s customers. Ya see, after promising the availability of the world for $30/mo atop a bandwidth hungry platform, AT&T now cried “uncle” and soured the deal to 2GB of bandwidth monthly for $25. For a device that folks were praising as the second coming of computing, AT&T has now clipped its wings, and made it harder for the iPad to live up to its hype.
The good news is that I bought my iPad 3G when I did, and will be grandfathered in with my all-you-can-eat plan… supposedly.
So some people take their iPad love a bit too far. Well, maybe waaaaay too far!
iPad + Velcro from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.