Wither MacWorld Expo – Enter AppleWorld Expo

If it wasn’t clear by Apple, MacWorld Expo is ending as we know it. Today Apple used the MacWorld Expo venue to do three things:

Introduce Apple TV, a consumer device to shuttle media from your computer to the television

Introduce iPhone, a brand new phone platform

Change its name from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple Inc.

See a theme here? Think Differently is well in place at Apple Inc.

So lets talk about these products.

Apple TV

Alright, I bought one for the following two reasons:

Apple in the living room interests me

I wanted something to play with the 802.11n Airport Express I was ordering also

I have some questions about Apple TV though. Here are a few:

Does the Apple TV upscale to 1080i or does the TV need to do that? My Toshiba has a poor scaler and if Apple TV leaves this up to the TV, it will look poor.

Of course I want to rip my DVDs onto a server for playing them on Apple TV – When will a instant Handbrake for Apple TV be available?

As mentioned, I ordered an Airport Extreme for the speed, but as with other 802.11x technology, the speed of the network is only as fast as the fastest devide on the network. This means if I use the router with my laptop, or my girlfriend’s laptops, or my Wii, the performance will be negated.

Will Apple sell 720p content? If not, what 720p content do they expect me to watch?

I think this is a fascinating first step for Apple. I plan on giving them a lot of feedback.

iPhone

Alright, we can finally stop talking about the rumors, and now speculate about what it will and won’t do! Lets see some concerns I have over the iPhone as shown today. (I will skip the obvious drooling of the amazing stuff it does)

Battery, battery, battery. Whats with the built in battery? Its ook for an ipod to go dead, but watching a movie on your phone will surely reduce the battery life by a large amount. So then you get an important phone call and oops, its off. Slide finger, damn. dead.

Memory – 8 gigabytes is awesome for a phone, but its not enough to replace my iPod. So I will still need both. I guess that fixes the above problem. Altho a card slot would have been nice.

Applications – All indications are that we will not be allowed to install our own applications. I hear that the binaries are digitally signed and the SDK will be closed, and the future iPods will all have digitally signed applications as well – no more linux on ipods. The real reason for this move is likely virus control – Neither Apple nor Cingular will have to support your screwed up phone if you installed a malware application onto it.

3G – I’d really like a faster internet connection than EDGE

Touchscreen – Ok it rocks, yadda yadda. Until I use it, I am skeptical.

One handed use – This is a biggie, even when just walking around, I want to be able to answer, dial, etc one handed. Again I won’t know until I hold one if this will be possible.

No mention of a voice recorder. This feature is invaluable when parking in the Disneyland parking structure. No joke.

Charger – What is the charger going to look like? Another brick to carry around with me? At least the car charger should just be an iPod car charger. I bet someone makes a charger with two dock connectors on it now.

No mention if we’re locked into lame Cingular pay per ringtones or if we can do what we should be able to do, make ringtones from segments of songs right in iTunes.

There are just too many questions that popped up during the day. Time will provide answers.

iPod

What I would buy, like now is an 80gb iPod with that screen. Yum.

Leopard

What the hell? Its MacWorld. Where were the secret Leopard features?

iLife

Again, no iLife? What’s going on in Cupertino?

iWork

I see a pattern emerging.

Summary

In summary, this really was a big day for Apple. Apple has not been just a computer company for a long time, but now they’re really not a computer company. Apple will learn – Apple will take their lumps, listen and keep innovating.

I’ll own an iPhone – Just not sure which version I’ll own.