crafterm's weblog

Updated Apple Hardware!

After hitting refresh far too many times on the Apple store, finally the new offerings from Apple became available last night, during the special media event Steve Jobs held in the US.

3 updated products were outlined, including a new iPod that supports video, an updated iMac that includes an inbuilt iSight, remote control and media center software, and an updated version of iTunes that includes music videos on the iTunes store, amongst other things.

The new iPod looks really great with a 2.5" screen for showing video at 320x240. It can decode H264 and MPEG 4 in real time. I've been quite impressed with the H264 codec - just recently I got a copy of the Australian Football Grand Final which was 1.92 GB, H264 encoded (around 2.5 hours footage in HDTV) and the quality was excellent, even when lots of fast moving action was on.

The iPod is also thinner than previous editions (not as thin as the nano naturally), but still only holds 60 GB of storage. I'd be expecting an update as soon as Apple can source some 80 and 100 GB disks, as video will take up much more room than audio.

Apparently you can also play the video on your TV, from the iPod - I'm interested to see what this looks like and whether you can play higher resolution video from the iPod when it's connected to a larger display - or whether it's always limited to 320x240.

Browsing the technical specs for the new iPods, I noticed that Firewire is not mentioned at all, USB2 only. Looks like Firewire has been removed from the iPods all together now. Also the U2 iPod has also dropped off the Apple online store - no mention of that either (although Steve Jobs did use a U2 video to demo the new video iPod during yesterday's media event).

The also mention a "new apple remote control" that works in combination with the universal iPod dock that looks like it might replace the navipod (and similar accessories).

The new iMac looks really sweet, I've been looking at these for a while now and with the inbuilt iSight and new remote control they're even more enticing. Interestingly it's an updated PowerPC system (2.1 GHz at the high end) - I haven't actually heard anything from Apple about their plans for retiring their PowerPC systems when they start introducing Intel based machines (ie. the order in which they will replace them, and also the lifetime of PowerPC machines after they've all been replaced - when will they be EOL'd? anyone heard anything at all?).

"Front Row" is the media software that's activated when you use the new remote control and it gives you access to your DVD drive, photos, music and videos on your machine. Will be great to combine this with an external 50" plasma TV for example, so we can act like real couch potatoes :)

I guess the question we will all be asking now is, will Front Row (and the capture utility PhotoBooth they also announced), and the new remote control be available for the other Mac machines Apple offers so we can all enjoy them?

The iMacs are all shipped with a Mighty Mouse as well now.

iTunes updates look good to me, although I've never really used the iTunes music store before, only recently for podcasts. The new "video" menu item next to the playlists is cool, as it shows all video you have in your iTunes library (didn't even realize that I had some already!). It will be a nice way to manage my video snippet/etc, collection alongside my music.

The other iTunes updates include the ability to write reviews for items available on the online iTunes music store, etc, and the ability to give others music, etc, as a gift.

Everything is all explained in detail at the event, which can be seen online from Apple's streaming media servers.

What's missing now? Well, larger storage iPods would be great now that we'll be able to store video on them alongside photos, podcasts, audiobooks and music (not to mention just using them as external disks).

Firewire 800 support for the iPods would be great with all that space, but since it looks like Firewire has been dropped all together, we probably won't be expecting that soon, if at all.

There was no mention of the unofficial updates to the Mac mini - and seeing the latest Mac mini's are almost as fast (1.5GHz) as my 17" Powerbook (1.67GHz) an update to them would be warmly welcomed.

The Airport Express is really cool, but it would be great to be able to use the inbuilt USB port to host an external disk via wireless in addition to (or rather than) a printer.

Many other updates would be cool too - let's see what else is updated/released in the near future!

Update: looks like the eMac's have also been removed from the Apple store as well.

Update 2: Gizmodo has some close up photos of the new iPod and iMac - the video quality in the photos looks quite nice, as does the new black colour scheme!

Update 3: AppleInsider is reporting imminent updates to the Powerbook and PowerMac line.

Update 4: Makezine has reported that the new iPod's also do high quality stereo voice recording. The technical specifications indicate that two settings are available, low (22.05KHz, mono) and high (44.1 KHz, stereo). While browsing the technical specifications, I also noticed that some of the photo slideshow transitions are similar to what's available in Keynote, including the beloved cube transition. Awesome!

Posted by crafterm at October 13, 2005 02:43 PM | TrackBack