Thoughts on the new iPods

So if you want to know really what Apple did today, it is confirm the fact that they are moving away from “computer as your digital hub” into “we are making an undirected graph structure that encompasses your digital life.” Quite wordy! But its pretty much true.

You can see this in the fact that Apple now, as I predicted a while ago, is entering the Holiday season with half their product line having 802.11 wireless and OSX running on them:

  • Mac Mini
  • Mac Pro
  • Mac Book Pro
  • Mac Book
  • iPod Touch
  • iPhone
  • AppleTV

Lets consider that for a moment. That means Apple has a device potentially on your desk, lap, TV and in your pocket all running a derivative of the same operating system, and all capable of wireless connectivity with the world and with each other. Apple today released the wireless iTunes music store. I wager that by the holidays we’ll have a high definition iTunes Movie Store made for the AppleTV. I also wager the little form-factor bluetooth keyboard is for this purpose as well.

Apple is basically saying that no matter what modality you want to experience content, commerce and community in you have it. I don’t think showing Facebook on iPhone was coincidence, I think Apple is positioning the iPod Touch and iPhone as a community device.

Here is my bet:

Apple will enable wireless purchase from AppleTV of HD quality movies. I think I heard they are only accepting HD movies right now anyhow. And then… wireless sync. Then “friend” features (suspiciously missing, but easily doable). And then Leopard integration comes.

Apple has a trojan horse on their hands. And the scary and awesome thing I think, is that they have 2 in my pocket and one on my TV.

2007
09/05
CATEGORY
observation
3 comments
    • Ron
    • September 5th, 2007

    Wow, Apple’s heading into Sony territory now, with the seamless integration of products, computers, and new technology. It’s really impressive, and amazingly ambitious.

  2. What strikes me as odd is they made such a big deal about the Airport Extreme being 802.11n, and now they introduce a device that’s 802.11g. My understanding of the Airport is if you connect to the network with a g device, the entire network slows down to g. Even the Apple TV runs on n.

  3. It’s not really that surprising – do any of the the really small wifi circuits do 802.11n yet?

    As to a g device slowing down n networks to g speed… not my experience. Of course, your g device will never get the n speeds but that’s not going to stop the n devices pushing more through the air.

  1. No trackbacks yet.

Asides

    Andreas Schlegel currently lives in Singapore. He likes to write programs that generate audio, visual, and physical output. He enjoys doing projects with syntfarm.

    via sojamo.de

    Posted via web from ethank's posterous

    - #

    ["Five measures prove to be useful: A, the area of the isovist, which gives us a measure of size (in 3-D this is a volume); P, the perimeter of the isovist, which gives us a measure of the boundary length (in 3-D this is an area) excluding the horizon and excluding Q, which is a measure of the length (area) of the radial, component of the isovist boundary; M2, which is a statistical measure of the variability of the boundary’s distance from x; and M3, which is a measure of the asymmetry of M2." From Benedikt]

    If we dimensionalize the data from any given social framework online, could we apply isovistic theory to the quantification of perceptual awareness around a user in this textually augmented reality we now find ourselves?

    - #

    Infra-mince, Duchamp declared, cannot be defined, but can only be described by examples, such as the difference in displaced volume between a clean shirt and the same shirt worn once, or the taste of one's mouth lingering in exhaled smoke.

    Infra-mince was a new way to think about physical and temporal dimensions (decades before Mandelbrot discovered fractals). Holes in some of Duchamp's artwork link the 2nd to the 3rd dimension. Sometimes he shot the holes out with bullets, echoing infra-mince again in the delay between the sounds of the shot and the impact.

    via everything2.com

    Add this to the isovism concept and you basically describe a social network.

    Posted via web from ethank's posterous

    - #

    A single isovist is the volume of space visible from a given point in space, together with a specification of the location of that point.

    via en.wikipedia.org

    Isovism is an interesting concept when applied to the creation of a website. Quantifying the perception of space in a given point. How far can you see from your homepage for instance into the larger n-dimensional world a site creates?

    Posted via web from ethank's posterous

    - #

    The new iPad has lots of space. The screen offers 1024x768 pixels.

    via tuaw.com

    What excites me the most about the iPad, I think, is that it takes paradigms and approaches and lets us expand them. Good art, whether visual or interface, comes from working against constraints imposed by the medium. The iPhone imposed very strict constraints and amazing new paradigms of interface design came out of that. These new approaches have bled their way into Mac OSX apps, Windows 7, etc. I expect the same to happen with the iPad.

    Posted via web from ethank's posterous

    - #

    The funny thing is, if Adobe does not take the steps to make tools to address a future with HTML5, what we'll be left with is tools others create. And chief amongst those others will most likely be Apple. Flash's stance here reminds of Microsoft's during the creation of Blackbird and later their migration toward Visual Interdev and Frontpage. When you build the walls so high around your garden, the fall will just kill your plants.

    [From Flash, iPad, Standards – Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report]

    - #

    Rest in piece little buddy.

    [From xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe]

    - #

    Idiotic. Copy paste wasn't missing because of an ideological reason. It was missing because it wasn't ready. Same with an SDK and an App-Store. Multitasking presents a usability challenge that I wager they are nearly set in addressing. I bet the camera is supply chain related (same with the iPod Touch). WIth Apple products, what is MISSING is the interesting part, as it usually leads to exposure to ideologies, challenges or works in progress.

    [From What We Learned About Apple Yesterday]

    - #

    I wonder if they are also seeing concurrent apps running from the same device, and that's how they know? I imagine the Tablet will be able to run multiple apps in a grid of some sort, given the screen size.

    [From Apple Tablet: The Second Stage Media Booster Rocket ]

    - #

    A pretty big deal I think, especially considering the move from entertainment companies from "impression" based metrics to revenue.

    [From Boxee Blog » Coming soon: Boxee Payments]

    - #