blackrimglasses

This went to non-super-techy people, so forgive obvious statements

Apple TV

The Apple TV is running a scaled down version of OSX again, on what I suspect is the Intel Viiv chipset. That chip was big news at last years CES because it supports in hardware 3D acceleration, video decoding and other things that the Apple TV has in spades. The device will connect to your home system through HDMI or component video (so HD sets only!) and optical or coax digital out.

Apple had 30 or so Apple TV’s setup with Sony LCD screens running at 720P (the devices ideal and ONLY resolution so far as I could tell). The experience of using one is pretty great. The device acts as either something like an iPod, auto-syncing with content on your computer, or streaming content directly from the computer. The experience is seamless either way. In sync mode, it’ll take say the last 10 videos you downloaded and put them on the 40 gig hard drive inside the device.

The interface is similar, but more information rich than Front Row. You can’t buy content directly from it, just browse trailers, but since it does allow parsing of info from the web (the trailers, etc), its safe to say further upgrades will allow more Web interactivity.

Video on the device looks really good. The latest iTunes videos (those that are VGA resolution) look about the same as non-HD content from digital cable. They didn’t have any HD content to test, but if you look at still photos on it (which are HD by nature) they look pretty much what you could expect. The device takes up to 1280×720 content (mid-HD). I’ve tested that resolution with a MacMini on a plasma, and it looks indistinguishable from HD over the air.

The remote is the same as on all the Macs and functions the same. The device is extremely quick, easy to configure and integrates instantaneously with both Macs and PC’s running iTunes (it uses a technology called UPNP/ZeroConf/Bonjour to do this).

Overall: as an extender, its amazing. Those with MacMinis might be better off hooking them to a LCD or Plasma, but those without, 299 gets you what amounts to the best media extender next to the X-Box (in M$ land). It makes the rest from DLink and NetGear look kind of lame.

New Airport Base station

This was not announced, but its on the site. Apple upgraded the Airport Extreme to the form factor of the Apple TV, and it now supports the “draft-N” wireless standard. This standard, which is actually built into all new Mac’s, is 5 times faster with a few magnitudes better coverage than 802.11G (the older standard). It’ll allow streaming of HD content through Wi-Fi. Apple is releasing it in February along with the Apple TV, and an updater for MacBook Pro’s and iMac’s and Mac Pro’s to turn on their Wireless N support.

Supsiciously absent

This is the first keynote in a while that was so singularly focused. There wasn’t even a “one more thing…”

Apple is sitting on a few things right now:

• - The “top secret” features in Leopard. What is known most certainly is that there is a new UI, and it’ll look a lot like iTunes. No one has seen this however.
• - iWork 07 and iLife 07 - both are in need of updating, and Apple now has a spreadsheet application ready for iWork and a rewrite of Keynote (which incidently, Steve was using today I believe)
• - Updating .Mac - this will be the hub of the iPhone experience but any mention of it was glossed over, meaning its not ready yet
• - HD content - when? With Apple’s relationship with Google, they have the bandwidth now, I think they are waiting for the OS.

I think that once Leopard enters the next beta, there will be a slew of updates. Why? Because a metric shit ton of new software being written right now REQUIRES Leopard. An OS that is not near release. Why is that? Underneath iChat’s blue screen functions and things like that is the fact that the core of Leopard is quantum leaps above any prior version of OSX in terms of stability, visuals and consistency. Most software manufacturers (Apple, Microsoft and others included) are waiting for it before high profile software releases.

Expect the “one more thing” to be either quiet releases (like updated Mac Minis, also conspicuously missing today) or a press event in San Jose.

Technorati Tags: apple