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
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...
