News for Tuesday, 9 January 2007

So, where to start?
I followed the keynote on the web from my hotel room, then ran like hell to Moscone West as soon as it was over. I got there just before the huge crowed pouring out from the keynote, as you can see from the picture:

Entering South Hall, you couldn't miss the HUGE AppleTV banners, and the even bigger crowd gathered around the Apple booth.

I think Apple deliberately chose to push and emphasize the AppleTV, so as to try and catch some attention, when everyone was actually coming here for the iPhone. More on that later.
Here's me trying to put my dirty hands on an AppleTV, and as you can see it's quite small, the size of a Mini but finger thin.

Here's a shot of the back of the device, with all the ports (from left to right: power, USB, ethernet, HDMI, component, RCA audio and optical audio).

I asked half a dozen Apple drones about the USB port, which is mentioned clearly in the demos they run at the booth, but all I got was a stern "It's purely for servicing and support". Yeah right and I'm purely going to buy a Zune today. This looks like there's gonna be a way to hook up USB devices on the AppleTV, and a nice fat external USB HD would be a great idea for storage.

OK, onto the really interesting bit: the iPhone. I must tell I was more or less sure that Apple wouldn't announce it, but I'm happy I was wrong. I got to get close to a demo unit rotating in its transparent display case, complete with attached security guy. Let's get it clear: it's gorgeous. It might look bulkish on the pictures, but it is actually really thin and diminutive, it doesn't feel beige than an iPod, in fact it looks smaller because it is longer. Check out these pictures of working demo units (these are no dummies, unless it was a video running on them):



It is incredibly sleek, and the comments around me ran from "wow I want one yesterday" to "man, this is so sexy"... and that wasn't just your usual geeks, but people from all ages and styles.
Here are some shots of the live demo running on the giant screen. The demo was being done from a REAL working iPhone, with the screen being deported to the giant screen. The guy actually did some real calls, you could see the Cingular signal icon moving between 4 and 5 bars, and the iPhone refused to work a couple of times like when he tried to show how the display adapted to the landscape/portrait position of the phone.

This is the phone in the "locked" mode, displaying the background picture, phone network and airport signal strength and battery state. To unlock the phone you just move your finger from left to right on the arrow icon (on the picture the "lock" arrow-like icon has been slid ed to the right).

This is the phone's main menu, with icons for (top left to bottom right): text messaging, calendar, photos, camera, calculator, and the stocks, google maps, weather, and note widgets, the last one being the settings icon. At the bottom we have icons for the main features: phone, mail, safari and iPod. The icons look really good, and that's probably due to the fact that the screen is 160dpi (!!!). One thing I noticed is that all the graphics and icons used in the demos are VECTOR graphics, which hints heavily to the resolution-indepedent UI in Leopard and erh, Leopard Mobile?


That's the Photo Library mode: first you choose the albums, then you have thumbnails of the photos and you can view them. It looks a lot like iPhoto, so it will be familiar to OSX users.

This is Google Maps, it's quite amazing, it uses your cell phone network data to localize where you are and give you location-aware information. You can switch to satellite pictures, it's just like the real google maps.


Next is the iPod feature, which allows you to listen to music, show album art and even browse using CoverFlow. It looks exactly like on OSX, complete with on the fly reflections and all. It's also all really fast and smooth. While listening to music, the guy got a phone call and the phone just faded out the music and paused it, so that he was able to answer the phone. As soon as he ended the call, the music resumed.

Talking about calls, this is the screen you get while a call is ongoing. You can actually access all the iPhone features while doing a call, and the guy showed how he could email a picture while talking on the phone. Pretty sweet.

The iPhone can do rich-html email, and as you can see on this picture, you can have a split-screen view just like in OSX Mail.

Surfing the web is done using Safari, or a mobile version of it, and it looks really smooth. The display is pixel perfect and you can zoom-in/out using gestures, and even open multiple web pages and switch between them by just brushing your fingers on the screen.

OK, so what's the bottom line? The AppleTV left me pretty unimpressed. OK, it's a nice piece of hardware, but I have a MacBook hooked-up to my LCD TV so I don't need it. But the streaming and HD caching features are nice. But the iPhone was the show-stealer. Everyone was cheering and applauding the demo, the display units were almost impossible to reach because of the crowd around. The only stopper is the price, if you consider that it goes for $499/599 (4GB/8GB) with a two years Cingular contract. So what if you already have a contract with them? Will you be able to buy one and "unlock" it, or buy one without the subscription?
Well, we'll have to wait for more details.
Meanwhile, it's sunny and cool in San Francisco, and there's no way I'm gonna stay underground in the Moscone Center, so I'm off for the waterfront.

Stay tuned to Hardmac for more...

Apple Computer, inc. as we knew it until now, changed name. This is to reflect the product line evolution. With this announcement, Apple, inc. is not "only" a mere computer company any more.

Precedently announced as iTV, it is finally Apple TV that was unveiled by Steve a few minutes ago. This Apple made Media Center is presented as the iTunes' best friend. Concerning technical specs, that's what it is:
- a 19.7 cm base, 2.8 cm thick, weighting 1.09 kg.
- Apple Remote
- Intel CPU (which one ?)
- 40 Go HD, with 33 Go for data (what's left is used by the system)
- wifi 802.11b, g, or n. The fact is that "n" will be welcome in order to benefit from HD resolution.
- HDMI for video and audio (mandatory for HD, up to 1080i)
- video component (3 RCA RGB) for video
- optical audio (necessary for 5.1, yet is it enabled?)
- RCA Audio (red and white, "classical" ones)
- Ethernet 10/100 base-T
- USB 2.0

Officially supported formats are those used with the iPod Video and those found on the iTunes Store. For video :
- h.264, protected or not, with a data flow of 1.5 Mb/s in 320x240 or 640x480
- Mpeg-4 up to 2.5 Mbit/s in 640x480
For audio :
- AAC protected or not up to 320 kbit/s
- MP3 up to 320 kbit/s
- Apple Lossless, AIFF and WAV.
For pics:
- JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF, TIFF.

Strangely enough, Apple announces a maximal resolution of 1080i, yet the Apple TV would be able to decode only 640x480. Either there's upscale in the air, or Apple forgot HD supported video formats. Knowing that the CPU is from Intel and given the product price, it is more than likely it is simply a 1.66 Ghz single core, unable to decode HD 1080i files... so you'll either have to use files from the iTunes Movie Store (none available in France yet), or to reencode your films in 640x480 if their resolution is superior.
It all works with iTunes. As for an iPod, it is by syncing your Mac with Apple TV, to transfer your musics, videos and pictures, that it works. Yet as opposed to an iPod, according to what we saw during the Keynote, it will also be possible to stream contents directly without using the integrated HD.
Apple TV might be bought imediately, but delivered only in February.

One of the main limitations of the HD-DVD format is its capacity of 15 Go per layer against 25 for Blu-Ray. To catch up with their competitors, Toshiba will try and have a new format validated by the DVD Forum. Their new medias will sport 3 layers of each 17 Go data, for a total 51 Go amount, a tad more than that of double layer Blu ray ones. To go from 15 to 17 Go, they increased the focus of laser so they could reduce the "holes" size.
Toshiba didn't mention if the current readers will be able to use those medias, be it natively or through a firmware update. If not, the DVD Forum choice might just result in trouble by underming the consumers' confidence in those new formats.

Though Steve didn't mention it during the Keynote, Apple just added a new Airport Extreme base station to their site.
It brings two new features that justify a slight price increase (€ 179) compared to the former model :
- 802.11n : based on a draft of the next wifi standard that's not finalized yet, it will increase both range and flow (theoretically twice and 5 times more).
- Sharing a USB drive, connected to the base station USB port.
- switch 3 ports 10/100Mb.
The USB port is the same that already allowed sharing a printer. With a USB hub, it might be possible to share the 2 peripherals at the same time.
As for the 802.11n, most of the Mac are already compliant to this new standard in their integrated wifi card. A next Mac OS X update should activate it.
Delivery is due for February, yet it is possible to order it right now on the Apple Store.
[Upd.] On the following link, http://www.iphone.org/airportextreme/specs.html, you may read that the base station will be delivered with an update that activates the 802.11n functionalities on a Mac !
The compatible machines are all the Core 2 Duo Mac (except the 1.83 GHz 17" iMac) as well as the MacPro.

As usual, we will try our best to cover Steve Job's Keynote. We will try via our sources to get information fast enough to give you the best "real-time" coverage.
We will post the link to our "Keynote Special Event" webpage later on today. One of our team member, Moose, is already in SF and will try his best to share the last minute photos, rumors or information with us. Live coverage should start around 18h00 CET. Do not hesitate to comment in the dedicated topic of our forum: here.
We hope that our new servers, installed since Mac Expo Paris September 2006 will be able to face the usual peak of visitors.
Live coverage: starting around 18h00 CET
events.hardmac.com (in English)
events.macbidouille.com (in French)

Some manufacturers have offered external video cards designed for laptops before, but these solutions were always hindered by weak performances.
The introduction of the Express Card slot changes this. This is because inside the connector two types of interfaces are available: USB2 and a PCI-Express 1x bus.
Seizing this opportunity, Asus is offering what they call "the world's first external graphics card station for notebook computers": the XG Station

Once connected to a laptop computer via the Express Card port, this external station hosts a regular PCI Express slot, allowing the use of any video card, then plugged to one or two displays. It also hosts two USB 2 connectors, and a 5.1 audio output. Technically, if its Express Card connector is the 34 format, nothing should prevent that product to operate properly on a MacBook pro, which could then run not one but 3 external screens.
Of course, the 1x slot won't allow the card to express its full potential, but as long as Mac OS X includes the necessary driver, it should work.
One serious issue remains: this product is announced with the very hefty price of 600$. It would probably be desirable that another manufacturer offers a simpler version, with less features and only allowing to plug any PCI-Express card on a laptop. Imagine the productivity gain one could make by plugging a S-ATA II card and a few disks in a RAID array on a laptop.

In addition to its Blu-ray burners, Pioneer will release in Q2 2007 a Blu-ray disc combo drive, able to play BD media (HD video) and burn CDs and DVDs.
Such drive might easily find its way in computers, giving consumers the taste of HD video, leaving BD burners for high-end hardware models.
Apple might really well be using such product in a near future; however, Apple will have to update its iMac, notebook and displays models, as none of them is HDCP compatible today. Buying such a computer today will not allow you to benefit of full HD video features (1080) in the future, even if you installed such BD Combo drive, the DRM chips is missing. For the Mac Pro, one can imagine installing a HDCP-compatible graphic card to upgrade current models.

Just arrived in central San Francisco, the weather is great and the city is covered in iPod ads...


We drove by the Moscone Center on our way to the hotel, conveniently located 5' walk from the expo halls, and the iPod frenzy gets incredible around there...
I'll go for a walk and try and get some close shots of Moscone...
Stay tuned for more!
OK, it's quarter past 8 (pm) and I'm dog tired... got my Expo pass, did some sightseeing around Moscone, didn't see anything weird appart from the oldest security guy I ever seen, wearing an Apple Security jacket.
Here are a couple shots:

The Apple (iPod?) Store.

OK, Apple really wants us to know that 2007 is gonna be big.
I'm heading to the Expo tomorrow morning araound keynote time to try and grab some hot news...
Don't change the frequency, you're tuned to the right station.