Slashdot Mirror
iPhone, Apple TV Headline MacWorld Keynote
Steve Jobs kept his audience rapt at the MacWorld keynote today. He rehashed the announcement of the iTV, now called Apple TV, and announced the iPhone, a revolutionary phone/ipod/wrist-computer that had MacWorld attendees sitting on the edge of their seats. Retailing for $499 (4 gig)/$599 (8 gig), it has to be seen to be believed. It uses a touch screen with a new form of input control, runs OSX and many standard applications, and connects to the internet via WiFi. It has a camera, functions as a movie player, a music player, and can send emails and photos in the middle of a phone call. From the Engadget coverage: "'[OSX] let us create desktop class applications and networking, not the crippled stuff you find on most phones, these are real desktop applications.' He's quoting Alan Kay - 'People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.' 'So we're bringing breakthrough software to a mobile device for the first time.'" Seriously, go check this out. They're going to print money with this thing.
$499 (4 gig) $599 (8 gig) with a 2 year plan is a lot and Cingular forces you get a smart phone data contract plan with a smart phone to get the 2 year deal price.
It is $ 40 just for the data.
So like you will $60 + month $40 for data $20 + for voice.
Thats $599 WITH a 2 year Cingular contract.
ARG thats insane. Probably $899 by itself if even available.
By the way, you can see the live transcription of the MacWorld at http://www.macrumorslive.com/ .
ilex paraguariensis for all
Sadly no. The Keynote focused on the Apple TV and th iPhone.
Not mentioned in the article Apple Computer, inc. has changed it's name to Apple, inc. Just a tidbit I thought I would mention.
Got a problem? Call a monkey!
That's not the reason. Vista has already been released to manufacturing, and there certainly would not be any significant changes between now and consumer availability (real soon now).
Throw the bums out!
Pretty sure he said 5 hours talk time and 16 hours of "just music" playback.
Not anounced in the keynote, but Apple is shipping a mini/tv form-factor 802.11n hub. Appletv will have 802.11n.
I didn't see anything on CNBC's web site, but CNET says that heard it directly from Cisco.
10:32--Cisco calls CNET News.com reporter with a statement about Apple's use of the term "iPhone" for its new product. "Given Apple's numerous requests for permission to use Cisco's iPhone trademark over the past several years and our extensive discussions with them recently, it is our belief that with their announcement today, Apple intends to agree to the final document and public statements that were distributed to them last night and that address a few remaining items we expect to receive a signed agreement today."
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Tech specs
It's GSM, Apple will sell it separately, presumably unlocked, so you can use it on T-Mobile in stead. Probably pay an extra $100 up front for it.
http://www.apple.com/iphone/
why no new mac systems / hardware?
Where is the duel quad-core macpro?
If apple does not go to quad-core soon dell and others will be able to have better systems for less.
Way no head less mid-rage mac?
This is need to get mac into more homes and business.
Its running OS X from what I have read. As to if this is a OS X I dont know, but from what people have said it will run normal Apps on it, so it might likely be the full blown version.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
While Jobs didn't talk much about Leopard, Xcode or the other great stuff Apple has coming this year, I can picture a nice scenario where one will be able to choose "iPhone Project" in Xcode and code like they would (albeit with a very different GUI notion) for the Mac. I also suspect that DashCode was released just to make it easier to build custom widgets for this thing.
If you can buy it without the Cingular/AT&T service from Apple, then it might be worth the cost, since the WiFi/Bluetooth is cool enough and I already have Verizon (along with the entire fam).
5hrs life, tho... gonna be tough if you use it as a cell phone.
Mind the gap...
You must have missed this part: IT IS A TOUCH SCREEN IPOD! So a VERY smart phone and an ipod for $500...not too bad. There is likely to be a version without the phone soon as well.
From the bottom of http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/index.html
"All these features and more are delivered to you in one universal, fully accessible, 64-bit operating system. Coming spring 2007."
Why does my post history abruptly stop? I want to laugh at the stupid things I posted as a kid.
You are incorrect. I have Cingular, and have unlimited data. I send many many megabytes of data on my phone. I am charged $20 per month.
From apple.com/iphone/technology/specs.html
Screen size 3.5 inches
Screen resolution 320 by 480 at 160 ppi
Input method Multi-touch
Operating system OS X
Storage 4GB or 8GB
GSM Quad-band (MHz: 850, 900, 1800, 1900)
Wireless data Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) + EDGE + Bluetooth 2.0
Camera 2.0 megapixels
Battery * Up to 5 hours Talk / Video / Browsing
* Up to 16 hours Audio playback
Dimensions 4.5 x 2.4 x 0.46 inches / 115 x 61 x 11.6mm
Weight 4.8 ounces / 135 grams
I don't think The Steve even mentioned this,
but check out Apple's new 802.11n base station
(sadly, named the same as the previous one):
http://www.apple.com/airportextreme/
If you don't have 'N in your present machine,
network it to this little guy for that AppleTV
goodness...
Quoth the Moose: Any job worth doing is worth complaining about.
Funny, I'm paying $20/month for unlimited GPRS data from Cingular. Just get the data plan on your phone. The plan doesn't care who's requesting data, whether it be the phone or the computer. You don't have to get a special "plan" for your laptop unless you're not smart enough to figure out how to interconnect them on your own.
John
Noticed. But iTunes still DOES NOT pull down my Beatles album art, nor does their store yield search results for any real Beatles tunes...
Help! (Gotta put in your own Beatles album art.)
On the bright side, optical discs still boast higher quality than downloads!!
BlueRayMan
...and, my roommate has this phone. It's certainly not bad, but Jobs' keynote speech really did hit the nail on the head on the awkwardness of this and similar phones.
My roommate's general comment: "it's really great, but one of the most difficult things to do with this phone is actually use it as one."
Are you sure you read the article? I quote:
Battery life: "A lot of these phones have low battery life. We've managed to get 5 hours of battery of talk time, video, and browsing. 16 hours of audio playback."
"5 hours of battery of talk time". There you go. No idea what the standby time will be like, or if that's a realistic estimate, but considering that 2 to 3 hours of realistic talk time is reasonable for a "normal" cell phone...
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
I thought so too, but then I realized that the iPhone runs Mac OS X, and perhaps the AppleTV thingy also does. I consider that a positive sign.
It's probably your phone's fault. In rural areas, T-mobile has a roaming agreement with Cingular. If you can't get T-mobile service, you should roam to Cingular on 850Mhz. Same as dropping the 1800Mhz Cingular signal and picking up the 850 GSM when you're a Cingular customer.
I have driven across the country a few times and had good coverage from T-mobile (sometimes roaming on Cingular and other networks) most of the way. I-70 between Reno and Salt Lake City is a vast dead zone, so if that area matters to you, then maybe someone has a CDMA signal there.
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
On my Sprint Treo, the unlimited data is $15.
$30 is unreasonable.
Cingular and T-Mobile do not share the same network.
There are 4 major wireless networks in the USA currently:
Cingular
Verizon Wireless (CDMA)
Sprint/Nextel
T-Mobile
Cingular and T-Mobile do share the same network technology (GSM/GPRS), which might be what you're thinking of.
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
Actually GPS is integrated. The more interesting question is whether it's an open platform or not. Since it's OS X based one can hope. Since it's billed as another iPod it seems unlikely though.
The price will come down. The exclusive carrier agreement was probably the only way that Apple could get any carrier on board on the terms they wanted. Remember the ROKR? It was crippled because short-sighted carriers demanded ridiculous limitations to the device.
I have one (Sprint PPC-6800. It's the same model though) and it really does do cool things, but it really sucks as a phone! My company purchased it for me so I can remote into the servers with it via Terminal Services and VPN, but this Apple IPhone is what I really want.
Proximity sensors so it turns off the touchscreen when it's close to your ear! I can not tell you how much of a problem that is on the 6800.
Hence the confusion. Well, that, and T-Mobile being the latest name for Voicestream, Omnipoint, etc, and thus a "new" network nobody's ever heard of.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
He doesn't do that every time. Probably doesn't want to ruin the effect of the "one more thing" by over utilizing it...
I am amazed that not much was said about Macs as computers (Apple TV is a CE device, not a computer.) This is after all Macworld!
The two articles were posted, and commented upon, by two different editors.
No reason to disparage Zonk, just because taco turned out to be a clueless twit.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
Cingular is surprising in how open its phones are. If there's a USB plug, or bluetooth, you can pretty much be sure that if you got it through Cingular you can sync up your address book and move files onto/off of the device simply by connecting it.
Which, of course, means that its features get used that much more. I can experiment with ringtones based on my own music library, or actually use it to take pictures that aren't stuck on the phone. I can't do *everything* on it, but most of the important things people want to do to customize their phones are possible out of the box.
So, to me, this iPhone thing isn't surprising at all. Cingular isn't out to nickel/dime people for inherent features, and they're already using GSM (so Apple only has to support one network for the whole world). The only thing I'm skeptical of is the internet features. It's still a f'n expensive phone, though.
I would have guessed that more consumers have fancy stereos with optical inputs than have widescreen televisions. I would have expected a mini-Toslink/analog combo (like the airport express) and an "old-fashioned" mini-din providing s-video and component via a cable adaptor.
Maybe buying that standard definition TV 2 years ago was a mistake.
--
The N800 is functionally very close without the Cingular connection.
Same here, that 20 a month gets me unlimited media net (WAP access via the phone browser) and 1500 text messages. What most people seem to be referring to here is the broadband non-WAP usage (like hooking your phone up to your laptop via USB/BlueTooth and using it as a modem) which is indeed around $60/month.
But that's cheap when you shop around. Last I checked, Verizion wanted $79.95 and doesn't have much better coverage.
That is indeed what I was thinking of; I lived in Southern California at the time, and the memory of this stuck.
I stand corrected.
D
It has an optical audio out jack.
I have a shitty sig!
Ditto for my SonyEricsson M600i. Except the iPhone does everything my phone does -- but does it better, faster, easier, and prettier. I expect the same is true with your SLVR.
But as much as I want one, I won't get one for a while. I don't do cell phone contracts. Never have. Never will.
I'll just wait for unlocked ones to hit the Asian or European markets and get one there.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
That problem might be caused by the biggest software flaw on the phone (and if you already know this, ignore me):
It doesn't close built-in and first-party applications when you close them (many third-party apps do close properly).
If the phone is sluggish, misses calls, or locks (doesn't come out of standy instantly), go to: Start->Settings->System->Memory->Running Programs and hit "Stop All" (or just stop the ones you want).
Unfortunately, there's no way to pin this control panel to the start menu or to place a shortcut to it in a more accessible spot, but it should stop the phone from being sluggish. Window Live mobile, while awesome, is the biggest offender I've found in this regard, it frequently makes the phone unresponsive in standby if I leave it running.
That's a software problem-- so Apple (with the Fingerworks engineers) solved it. Your fingertip is larger than a single key, but the center of your fingertip can be calculated and can be matched to a single key. The problem is a lack of tactile feedback to correct our tendencies to drift, but it looks like they have keypress popups and spelling correction to compensate.
Take a look at the Fingertouch keyboards.. They've been around for several years, and stopped production when Apple bought the team/company/IP in 2005. Don't let the pictures fool you-- there are no "keys". It is a completely smooth surface, and all the buttons and gestures are fully re-programmable. All sensing is done in the keyboard and converted to keystrokes and mouse movements for the USB.
Granted, the linked keyboard is laptop sized, but the point is that they calculate the center of the touch.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
"Cingular is surprising in how open its phones are. If there's a USB plug, or bluetooth, you can pretty much be sure that if you got it through Cingular you can sync up your address book and move files onto/off of the device simply by connecting it."
It's the same with T-Mobile - their phones are uncrippled. Quite a nice change from my days as a Verizon customer. Of course as a T-Mobile customer I won't be able to get an Apple phone; but as cool as they look I don't really know that I want that particular feature set.
I know Apple goes out of its way to not step on its own product announcements, so I'm betting on a (near) future announcement for their widescreen iPods. That's what I really want... I just hope my 3G iPod's battery doesn't totally crap out before that day.
#DeleteChrome
VOILA!
Alas, it is not up yet.
A B A C A B B
Cingular has a good selection of phones, good plans, and good coverage (in my area). Cheapest family plan I could find anywhere, and the bundled "free" phone wasn't a 1980s brick like the one T-mobile tried to give me.
The one thing that kills Cingular is the customer service. I've spent upwards of 6 hours being bounced around their call centers and my issue STILL hasn't been fixed... and I know I'm not alone in that. My friend used to work in Purchasing for a major company that used Cingular for all their company phones, and he was the one that got to call their customer support weekly for any number of different issues. He had tons of horror stories.
You can get a third party app called magicbutton which does what you want. By default it will close something if you push the X, but you can set up inclusions/exclusions, so that frequency used apps stay in the background.
I suggest heading over to http://www.modaco.com/
I support around 50 users of the 6600, which blows, and I've been testing the 6700. These specif phones or really just PDA's with basic phone functionality added. My company uses these phones in tandem with Fujistu Lifebooks to send orders, update db's, etc. We also use Goodlink on the phones, which works great, except for an issue to two.
Here are my notes on the 6700, if you're curious, after a weeks use....
First phone, unusable after a few hours. Had the BSOD equivalent but it was WSOD instead. Had to be replaced.
EDIT - Figured out the reason for this error. If you have Goodlink installed and enable the password protection, included on the device,
You are stuck with no way out. You must hard reset and start over.
After a hard reset or a fresh setup of the device, you must skip the password setup, or you'll have to hard reset and start over.
Synch issues -
Windows Firewall must be disabled to sync. Had to connect the cable directly to the phone, as it would not sync through the cradle. Seems random after numerous tries. Seems to work either way, now.
Battery -
Seems to have a much shorter life and if Wifi is on, the battery dies very fast.
Goodlink -
Menus are a little different, but seems to run fine/same
WModem -
Now defaults to USB with no serial option
The phone connection is mini-usb
Keypad -
The keypad has been moved, from the bottom of the device, to a horizontal slot.
When you open the keyboard the screen reorients to a horizontal position and vice versa.
Very nice and much more user friendly.
Phone - The reception is no better than the previous generation. Now has voice, speed dialing, functionality. Drops my data password more than my previous 6600, by far. still testing
Resets - Very few soft resets so far, but it's still early.
Directional pad has been replaced by a toggle switch. Would seem to be very fragile, for our needs. I think this would be broken by quite a few reps.
Camera - Better quality than the 6600, 1.3mp. The camera button on my phone doesn't work so I must open the program via menus.
Wifi - It's great for those of us who can use the functionality.
Memory card - It's now Mini-SD instead of regular size SD memory cards.
Transmitting - more testing needed. BT is a major pain and not worth using. Sending through normal means - tethered usb cable - very problematic. I was only able to connect for a few seconds before I'd get an error and dc'd. The msg said - cannot send data through tethered and Bluetooth - even though Bluetooth was disabled on the phone and fujitsu.
Form factor - much smaller screen size, feels more like a phone instead of a PDA, unlike the 6600. It is a bit thicker though.
UI/Software Changes - Battery power icon now on the desktop. No longer have to manually set button lock via software. Now set by default.
Hardware - No visible external screws like unlike the AV6600. On the AV6600 we had 2 outer screws which would both fall out over time and lead to the devices being randomly hard reset. A definite plus, on the new phone. The cradle comes with and extra usb port and space to charge and extra battery.
Accessories - There's a great aluminum case - retail $30 - which is the best I've seen in terms of protecting a phone of this type. Very good shock/drop protection yet all buttons are accessible. Great for us since most users who break the AV6600 do so by dropping or crushing screens.
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
TODO: Insert witty sig
Cellular service with a particular carrier tends to vary wildly from region to region, but in this area the coverage is fairly spotty (last year there were long periods where even downtown coverage was bad, mostly when they were trying to eliminate supposed redundancy from the AT&T merger) and their customer service has been less than stellar (high turnover with account reps doesn't help).
... and apparently had been discountinued anyways since the website had removed it from the list of options.
The real killer for us, though, was SMS service bad to the point of being unusable - messages regularly delayed for hours, a high percentage of messages never showing up, several instances where their mail gateway simply rejected or bounced messages, and so forth. They had us reset phones (which often would result in all delayed messages delivered at once, but never solved anything long term. They had us try several models of phones. They tried claiming that there was a problem with *our* mailserver (sorry, no, not only did we send from multiple networks, but I can see the errors your gateway is returning in the logs). One sales rep tried to sell us an "enterprise messaging plan" that cost more but gave no additional guarantees
Ultimately the accounts were cancelled and Sprint contracted instead. That was about a year ago. We recently got a couple phone to trial and have had the exact same issues.
yep! back in may. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_C omputer
Cingular has great coverage in the two areas I care most about (Chicago and Minneapolis). In mpls. I experianced none of the nasty dropped calls and things that all of my verizon friends experianced with the terrible network coverage there (tmobile also worked fine though). In Chicago my coverage is great and it is in fact only Cingular customers who get who get usable coverage everywhere in my dorm building. Elsewhere in the city I always have great coverage (though I think if I went alltel or us cellular or something I would get service IN the subway tunnels but I am willing to accept that loss of service for great service everywhere else)
My biggest reason for going with the cingular (other than seeing all the verizon people experiancing bad service in my area and having to deal with Verizon's locked down phones) was that they use GSM phones. Stick in a new SIM and I am good to go. Travel to europe? grab an international SIM and I have a phone I can use. The selection of phones they offered me was great and if something happens to my phone its not hard to replace with any unlocked phone out there. The plan itself was a pretty good deal. Ended up getting too many minutes on the 2-person family plan (personally, most of my calls are probobly covered in nights/weekends or the free calls to other cingular subscribers) and have accumulated a ton of rollover minutes in case I do go over. Its a handy feature to have and is still useful even if you get close to your limit every month. As to their service, their customer service is known for long waits but I havnt had any issues that had trouble getting corrected. The other part of customer service is the part you dont see, the work they do on the infrastructure when it has issues affecting bigger groups of people. A tower went down in a storm here once and the cingular customers were all having trouble...issue was fixed in a day...a new one was up before the fallen trees were even cleared from most of the streets around here.
Bottles.
I bet that Cingular will be paying them on a monthly basis for the users that sign onto their service and use the premium features... If they sold unlocked phones, there'd be no way to attribute the feature use and then they'ed have to charge even more for the unit. That, or make separately branded versions for all the major carriers... And ever since surviving the days of having 20-30 products out there, with barely different model numbers, i'm sure Steve would have nixed any idea of building specifically branded phones for all the major carriers...
But maybe again, maybe they will in time. That way they can see:
A- how many current cingular customers upgrade to the phoneB- how many new customers cingular acquires that get iphones
C- after a year or year and a half, how many customers switch to cingular and get the phone
D- how many people contact them and say they'd love to get one, but for one reason or anther can't or won't switch from their current carrier.
T-Mobile, however, does have a roaming agreement in place with Cingular.
Why is this critically important? Well, for those lucky T-Mobile folks with phones that'll work with Cingular's 850Mhz GSM towers, they drastically improved their indoor coverage.
This, to me, is what "sharing" means. If you have a toy and you let the neighbors play with it, you're sharing your toy. Cingular's sharing its toy. The two share the toy. The toy is shared?
Lots of the iPhone features will be available this month on the FIC Neo1973 Smartphone. It is also an open platform.
http://www.openmoko.com/press/index.html/
actually, edge is a LOT faster than gprs:
EDGE can carry data speeds up to 236.8 kbit/s for 4 timeslots
The maximum speed of a GPRS connection (as offered in 2003) is the same as modem connection in an analog wire telephone network, about 4-5 kB/s (depending on the phone used).
from wikipedia
Look at any of the legal disclaimers on Apple's site (there's one or two on most of the products' tech spec pages). It looks like they're all in css classes with sosumi in their name.
The specs say it has a proximity sensor to turn off the touchscreen when you hold it up to your head to prevent erroneous input and to cut down on power usage.
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
It has a USB port, it probably runs some kind of OSX (since it seems to display the iTunes album interface, front row, and has a local 40gb disk cache). While I wouldn't bet on it without testing, I'd guess it can use the eyetv usb tuner. It can definitely stream video over the network, so it can probably use an eyetv tuner attached to another machine, windows or mac.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
It says 'Cingular' under Rogers because they're both GSM networks and they have a roaming agreement with each other. The "AT&T" thing with Rogers Wireless was a marketing partnership that has since ceased; Rogers is a completely independent company from AT&T and Cingular.
That said, it's almost a certainty that Rogers will be the carrier for the iPhone whenever it is released in Canada, because of the simple fact that Rogers is the only real Canada-wide GSM network (especially since Rogers bought Fido, which was it only competitor in this aspect). It's a safe assumption that Apple is not intending on making a CDMA version of the iPhone, so Rogers is their only real choice for Canadians.
The big question is when. Canada's wireless providers have consistently lagged behind those in the US in the arena of "finally bringing the price of [some new feature] down to sane levels", and Apple is apparently promising a certain level user freedom that wireless providers have traditionally been reluctant to provide. Rogers, for instance, strongly encourages users to get songs on to their music phones via it's own iTunes-like service: "Rogers MusicStore songs start at $1.99 plus a download fee". Start at $2, and then you're still nickel-and-dimed for the bandwidth. I don't think they'll be happy if offering the iPhone means letting Apple undercut them on all their prices.
Very few televisions have digital audio in, outside of HDMI. If one must hook up with component, one will probably also be using R/L analogue audio.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I asked the obvious question right after the house lights came up, and there is no public SDK for this device, just like the other iPods. This was right from Ron Okamoto (Apple's VP of developer relations.)
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
My friend works on the iPhone and was telling me about the predictive typing on the thing. He says at first it felt weird, but if you trust the phone you can type really really fast on it. It knows that if you are trying to type "hello" and your fingers instead mash on "hrllo", it knows that you meant hello because "hrl" is just plain silly. I asked another friend who has used the iPhone before and he agreed - at first the lack of tactile feedback is odd, but it is definitely fast to type on.
:D
Personally, my only worry is that it'll be harder to use while driving... I like to keep my eyes on the road while driving and i can dial a number without looking at the phone (or hit 1 + send to call girlfriend, yay for speed dial). And yes, I use bluetooth in the car - I don't hold the phone to my head while driving. Unlocking this thing looks like it would take TWO hands (one to hold it, one to slide from left to right) and then you'd have to look at it to dial - even speed dial... unless there is some sort of voice recognition I'm not familiar with.
Then again, perhaps the fact that people can't use this easily in the car will be GOOD for humanity as a whole
1. Cingular is not subsidizing the iPhone
What this means is that the iPhone really costs $499 and $599 (minus the hefty markup that Apple likes to add) not the $800 some of you are assuming by factoring in a subsidy.
2. The 2-year contract and long-term partnership is a payoff to Cingular for doing what Jobs says.
Cingular demanded something to work with Apple on features like Random Access Voicemail, and not subsidizing the phone (which is a huge selling point for service based companies)
3. The price point allows Apple to continue to sell iPods at their marked-up prices.
If you can get an 8gb iPod in a phone for less than a regular iPod next time you renew your cell contract, why would you ever buy an iPod?
Jobs wants to sell phones, sell iPods, and maintain the pay-more-for-higher-quality image that Apple enjoys. This is how he's going to do it.
Umm... Macs have been running Unix for quite a while, Ace.
Real Unix.