The iPhone is Great But What About The Rest?
Don’t sit there and deny it. Don’t tell me that the iPhone and AppleTV deal was enough for you because, in all honesty, it certainly wasn’t for me. Don’t tell me you weren’t waiting for Stevey J. to say his famous “oh, and one more thing” line, hopefully talking about Leopard, iLife or at least something!
In truth anything else mentioned at the keynote after or before the iPhone announcement would have been pretty much insignificant, including Leopard. Nothing could have topped it and considering the keynote lasted a good hour and 45 minutes, I dare say there wasn’t much time for anything else. Are we therefore in agreement that, slightly disappointed as we were, it wasn’t Steve Jobs’ fault? Okay, fair enough, it wasn’t his fault, but that doesn’t give me my fix on Leopard and iLife info, does it?
Although it’s anyone’s guess as to when the next keynote packed with this information will be, the chances are that it’s likely to take place in mid-April at the NAB2007 – the world’s largest electronic media show. How do I know this? Well, I don’t know for sure that Apple won’t offer a keynote any sooner, but taking a look at this page and Apple’s lovely booth number, it kind of speaks for itself.
So with all the stuff that’s gone on over the past week, what can we expect or at least speculate Apple to be announcing come April?
Leopard
Technically, Leopard should be released before this date, but it’s not like Apple to release an operating system without some big fancy party to celebrate it – the NAB2007 is the perfect venue for this. If you take a look at our very own Chris Howard’s rating announcement chart, you’ll see that this is likely to be the king of the show with a ‘Major’ rating. There’s not a lot more to say about Leopard at this point that we don’t already know, so I’m just going to offer a couple of links for those of you that haven’t quite got all the information you need yet.
- Official OS X Leopard webpage
Wikipedia OS X Leopard entry
Chris Howard’s article – What is Leopard Up Against in Vista?
My article – What We Know & What We Can Expect
Now while we all, myself included, were questioning why Leopard didn’t make an appearance, I would like to say that Steve Jobs did say last year that Leopard wouldn’t be released until Spring of this year, which makes the NAB2007 even more likely a venue for its unveiling. All this talk about Apple releasing the operating system early is just assumptions based on Apple’s previous years of joyfully surprising us with an early release – it was the Mac community that got us wondering where the Leopard announcement was at Macworld, not Apple.
iLife ‘07 and iWork ‘07
It’s safe to presume that iLife ’07 will be released at the same time as Leopard as the two sort of go together hand in hand – if you think of Leopard as the Dad and iLife as its creative Child. There’s no saying what updates are going to take place in iLife ’07, but I’m guessing it will probably be usability features over anything, as we saw in the update from iLife ’05 to iLife ’06. Of course iLife ’06 did bring us iWeb so whether there’s a new application in the package to bump up the price is anyone’s guess.
The more certain rumour though is for iWork ’07 which was touted to be released this week during Macworld. At present iWork ’06 offers Pages 2 (a word processor) and Keynote 3 (a presentation package similar to MS Powerpoint), but as from about June last year we’ve been hearing reports of a spreadsheet style application to be included with iWork ’07 called Charts. The great thing about this is that it will supposedly support importing and exporting of Microsoft Excel documents – now if they could just offer .DOC support for Pages then I’d be a much happier iWork user. There’s not a lot else on this topic but ThinkSecret does have a nice little article on Charts, which is worth a read.
New iSight
This update rumour has no basis other than Apple now no longer sell iSight – I guess you could call it iSaw now. iSight featured 640 x 480 resolution with 24-bit color at 30 frames a second and in terms of today’s technological standards that’s rubbish, in fact, it’s abysmal. The camera itself did look nice though albeit a bit big, again by today’s standards. Whilst the iMac and MacBook ranges feature built in iSight cameras just above the screens it’s fair to say that an update is still needed. Now this is a tricky one for Apple. Do they release a new iSight camera with at least 2-mega pixel resolutions, or do they scrap that idea and just release iSight through their display line and computer line? The latter idea would obviously put older Mac users who don’t have built in iSight on their machines out of the frame. Of course, for arguments sake Apple could just release both an individual iSight camera and have the updated camera in their display line and computer line.
New displays
I’ve always seen the displays Apple sell as over-priced although they are of high quality – because of this I just instantly associated the displays with MacPro users as no screen is included with those machines. Of course, Apple’s line of displays are suitable for MacMini’s or even PC’s, so why not revamp them a little bit to appeal to a wider market?
The first thing Apple would need to do is lower the price of these beasts a little, or at least offer a smaller/cheaper version for home users like you or I. Now this update would maybe coincide with the update I mentioned above – built in iSight cameras. I personally don’t think business or professional users would make much use of a built in camera on their display, other than to take a snapshot of a someone who has just stolen your display, of course – okay that wouldn’t really work unless it was an iMac or MacBook.
HDTV
There’s now no denying that Apple have entered into the media market, especially with their recent name change from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc. Apple TV is Apple’s answer to streaming content from your computer to your T.V, so wouldn’t it be nice if Apple began offering Apple branded HDTV’s? After all, I think it’s now fair to say that with their computer line being out-numbered by their media and communications line (Mac verses iPod, AppleTV, iPhone), Apple are competing more with the likes of Sony than they are with Microsoft or Dell.
And 2007 is apparently the year to buy a HDTV, with parts becoming all the more cheaper and HDTV’s becoming the ‘norm’ in the T.V department – I’ve certainly not seen the old CRT T’V’s for sale in a long time now, and all the new flat screen TV’s that come out appear to only be in High Definition.
Now that Apple are no longer just a computer company, there could be a number of different routes they could take, including HD-DVD players, so perhaps the last assumption on my list of what could be announced by Apple in April, if ever, is a bit much.
What do you expect Apple to announce at their next keynote, whenever that may be? And could you see Apple entering the HDTV market?
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@roboTech
Don’t know if you’re makin’ fun of me or not.
My father use to work with the first IBM computers while working in the bank. He talks about huge machines in huge rooms, and a lot of handwork like the first telephone operaters did.
He has got bad eyesight and is always trashing phone makers because they put too many options on it so that the buttons and the screen get smaller. He can’t see what he’s doing and is upset when he gets somewhere in the menu and doesn’t know how to get back. So then my mom (80) must be his eyes, which leads to a lot of heated discussions. Also she can’t understand when the phone asks KEYBOARD LOCK IS ON DO YOU WANT IT OFF what exactly she should do. My mother being practical then manages to break the phones instead of admitting she got lost in the menu. It is then my task ! to buy a new one and as somehow they shift responsability for all things computerized to me I must pay for it. So I wellcome the iPhone.
My mom was very disappointed that the iPhone will not replace the ‘normal’ phone, so know she’s thinking about getting the normal phone out and relying on the Mobile totally. And all they saw was a quick flash in the evening tv news. All my dad said to me was: ONE BUTTON, son, one button.
sorry should read:
so NOW she’s thinking of getting rid of the normal phone line.
If you’re thinking this is a strange story, one thing you learn in Development Psychology, the parents - children thing never stops. Another thing I want to point out is that people put the responsability of the disfunctionality of mobiles on “too many possibilities I don’t want”. But my mom (yes 80) saw in this flash if she’s not ready for SMS the phone will not “sanction” her. She can disregard the function and simply ‘click’ call.
This is the power of ergonomics. One glance.
I hope no one is thinking that Apple believes making the Iphone a generic name is a good thing. That is the worst thing that could possibly happen to a company (marketing wise)-when the name stops being associated with them.
Calling all adhesive bandages - Bandaids, all tissue kleenex and all copies Xerox, portable cassette players “walkmans” has cheapen their brands. (oh and I believe, when brandnames are made generic, their stocks probably go down)
Can you imagine how the owners of the companies/trademarks feel when they hear things like. “Mom, these cheap bandaids keep falling off.” “This dollar-general walkman is a piece of crap, I need a new one.” etc etc etc. I bet they can just see their brand image fallign into the gutter.
It’s not Apple, or whatever company, that decides the generic use of a brand name it’s the public.
It’s not Apple, or whatever company, that decides the generic use of a brand name it’s the public. And a generic name doesn’t confuse the public about brands.
Like with the Walkman, kids make the distinction by putting ‘real’ before the generic. When a product becomes the generic name, people still make a brand distinction. «I’ve got a real Walkman, a Sony».
And by the way, people who buy stocks don’t sell their stocks in a brand because a product becomes the synonym of the pioneer, quiet the contrary. Do you think Xerox went broke because their brand name is now in the dictionary ? Or do you think this could be considered priceless publicity ?
Don’t know if you’re makin’ fun of me or not. -Wawa
Not at all. I am very inspired by your father’s very intuition of the iPhone’s potential. Here goes to your Mum, too. Cheers!
I hope no one is thinking that Apple believes making the Iphone a generic name is a good thing. -Kae
Although you have a good point, I believe otherwise. Sure, Band-Aids, Xerox, Kleenex, and Walkmans have penetrated the daily lingo and all are household names to this day. Isn’t this the purpose of advertising??? To have your “brand” become a de-facto definition of that product genre? Why is Coke and Pepsi still going at it after a century? You just can’t buy that kind of FREE advertising anywhere in the world.
Look at how Google is freely letting the public use its namesake as the chosen verb for searching on the internet. That is a masterstroke of business genius. That doesn’t mean when I “google” something that I will use Lycos or Yahoo, I will 99% of the time use Google’s services.
Now does that dilute the brand “Google”? Not at all. It even promotes it to levels we can’t even realize. For a quantification of that, just look at Google’s stock price over the last five years.
Well, the “one more thing” usually were the big surprises, no? Don’t expect a one more thing after the iPhone introduction. Instead, Mr Jobs would have had to talk about Leopard, some updated Macs, some updated iLife, and then “one more thing”: the iPhone. But he did that so many times, I think it’s good that he’s apparently abandoned it. It’s worn out.
ps: I don’t think Apple will release HDTVs or BluRay players or anything like that. First of all, HDTVs are not the same thing as computer displays. Look at all the stuff a Bravia Engine does to the tv signal before it’s displayed in order to enhance it. This is a completely different science, one Apple has no experience it. They’d have to buy a specialized company or hire lots and lots of people. Not that they couldn’t do that, but second: Apple wants to revolutionize markets: PCs, MP3 players, now cell phones. What do you not like about your (current) LCD and plasma tvs? Do they suck? Having owned a Sony Bravia KDL-32V2000, I can tell you they don’t suck at all. What could Apple improve here? There’s even less room for improvement in BluRay players, as this one is restricted to opening/closing the tray and playing what’s on a disc. I think this already works really well. I do agree Apple is going to be the next Sony of some sorts, but not by making commodity products like DVD players.
I’m wondering if the end of the “computer” in their name isn’t also the end of MacWorld.
Now that the faithful have carried them to the throne, it is time to turn on them. Power corrupts, and now that Apple has achieved virtual monopoly status in certain areas, power corrupts absolutely.
Like Microsoft, they prefer the dominate position in mediocrity rather than the minority position in quality.
Time will tell, but certain trends certainly seem to be appearing. Still, it seems odd that now they are making a computer that will run both major operating systems that they would drop “computer” out of their name.
Macworld 2008 is already confirmed for 14th to the 18th of January, I believe. Can’t remember where but I think it’s San Fran again.
I’m wondering if the end of the “computer” in their name isn’t also the end of MacWorld. -Steve
Hardly! Macworld SF (after all it is the perfect place) is the double-edged knife for the Las Vegas CES, which happens to take place in the same week of January.
Oh how those cellphone and digital living room “competititors” watched over their shoulders pondering what Apple and The Steve would unveil at their own gig in SF. That’s the power of Apple - one company that can rattle the whole electronics industry. Those same guys are now scrambling to their design depts to out-do the iPhone and the AppleTV.
And because of that power (and we know Steve loves having that) Macworld in San Fran will coincide with CES for as long as Apple wants to be the lead player in consumer electronics.
Any of you guys know something about this: http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/15/the-lg-ke850-touchable-chocolate/