Articles by Dieter Bohn
They’ve sold 4 Billion songs, 125 million TV shows, and 7 million movies. However, that 7 million mark is lower than they’d prefer. So today, Jobs has announced iTunes Movies Rentals.
On board – every major movie studio! Steve presented them with a “and by the way.” They will launch with 1000 films by the end of February. They will be on iTunes 30 days after their DVD release. You can watch on iPhone.
You can also start watching within 30 seconds of downloading. You have 30 days to begin watching, then once it starts you have 24 hours to watch it. You can also transfer even as you’re watching.
Older titles will be $2.99, new releases are 3.99. It launches today and free software updates are available for all compatible devices (iTunes, iPods, and iPhones)!
Movie rentals will also be available in HD quality for $1.00 more (That’s $3.99 for DVD quality and $4.99 for HD quality). You can also shop for these movies directly from your television with Apple TV 2.
It’s a $20 upgrade to existing iPod Touch users – you can get
- Notes
- Maps
- Stocks
- Weahter
The new software will be preloaded in new Touches, but the cost is disappointing to current Touch users.
Steve jobs announced several new iPhone features in the keynote at Macword, including:
- Maps with location
- Webclips
- Customize Home screens
- SMS multiple people at once
- Chapters, subtitles, and languages in videos
- display of lyrics
The features fall very much in line with the previously leaked 1.1.3 update.
The new Google maps not only does location, but it also allows you to edit routes and add “pins” to the maps anywhere you like.
The SMS client allows you to send to multiple people, and the “thread” you create allows you to re-send to that same group multiple times.
There is a new “plus button” at the bottom of Mobile safari. Merely by tapping that “plus” button you can add any web shortcut to your home screen. Even better – web clips remember where you’ve zoomed and panned to – to customize the thumbnail on the home screen.
Jobs also confirmed the moving icons around the home screen does indeed use the “jiggly method,” which clearly indicates to the user that you’re in “re-arrange” mode.
The software update is available today and for free!
They’ve sold 4 million iPhones in 200 days – 20,000 iPhones per day on average.
On US Smartphone marketshare, the quarter ending in September, In its first 90 days of shipping it garnered nearly 20% of the smarpthone marketshare. They nearly equaled Palm, Motorola, and Nokia combined. Jobs expects they’ll do even better when the December numbers come out.
At today’s keynote, Steve Jobs announced “Time Capsule.” It’s a full Airport Extreme base station that also includes a “server-grade hard drive.” It is meant for wireless backups for notebooks. Time Capsule runs on 802.11n.
The 500gb drive version is only $299. The 1 terrabye model is $499. It will ship in February. “It’s the perfect companion product to Time Machine.”
We’re here and we’re live! The show got started a little late, but it’s still on, baby!
We won’t be fully liveblogging every moment, but we’ll be doing a big new post for every big new anouncement. Stay tuned! Steve is on stage now! He’s looking back at 2007, talking about the iMac, the iPods, and “of course the revolutionary iPhone.”
4 things to talk about today.
Thing 1: Leopard. They’ve solved over 5 million copies. Steve is talking about Leopard’s capabilities, its accolades over Vista. Microsoft Office is going native on Intel. It was Time Capsule
Thing 2: iPhone!
Google gone and got itself all dolled up for Macworld. I’m a big fan of the new tabs and an even bigger fan of the new http://igoogle.com, which is pretty much the only web portal I’ve ever bothered with (besides, of course, just the plain jane Google page). They take full advantage of Safari’s capabilities with neat AJAXification throughout. If you’re a Google user (and you know you are) and if you’re an iPhone user (and you’re here so that’s likely true too), it’s worth a look-see. There’s other improvements, including:
Customization of tabs
New and improved Gmail
New and improved Calendar
iGoogle for the iPhone – Official Google Mobile Blog: Google on the iPhone: Macworld Makeover
As long as we’re talking Google, check out this Christmas miracle:
The New York Times reports that, based on internal data from Google, more iPhones were connecting during Christmas than any other mobile device, despite the fact that industry figures show only two percent of smartphones worldwide as belonging to Apple. A few days after Christmas, iPhone traffic dropped below that of phones using the Nokia-backed Symbian operating system, but kept a second-place ranking. – Electronista | Google gains iPhone traffic, updates apps
…Looks like more than a few lucky folks received an iPhone for Christmas, no? That’s one benefit of Apple’s non-standard activation agreement – it’s a heck of a lot easier to gift an iPhone than it is any other phone in the US.
Above: a big yawner, courtesy of twob
It happens every year lately – a day or two before the big Keynote, some tiny site1 claims to have the outline of what Steve Jobs will announce. The supposed goods on the iPhone: 16gb at $499 (really going on a limb there), arrival in Japan in March, and the unveiling of the SDK. A full unveiling, actually, with lots of details.
All of which are pretty safe bets.
After the jump: the full supposed outline. Give it credit for being realistic — heck, give it credit for being boring. But do not, we hope, give it credit for beingreal.
1 Yes, we are a tiny site as well and we know you thought it earlier. Be Nice.
A little non-iPhone news:
A widely read piece at Wired on the origins of the iPhone is pretty much must-read. It would have been nice if the article had more named-sources, but on the other hand the entire thing rings very true. If you’re interested in how Apple negotiated the complicated carrier and technical details of the iPhone, it’s the best article on that in the past few months.
But we’re all about Macworld this weekend, so this tidbit caught our eye:
Jobs had reason to be confident. Apple’s hardware engineers had spent about a year working on touchscreen technology for a tablet PC and had convinced him that they could build a similar interface for a phone.
Oh, so Apple was already working on a tablet concept before the iPhone. If it took some work to re-engineer their tablet technology into the iPhone, methinks it would take less work to re-engineer that technology in to a tablet.
Of course, it would be even easier to integrate that technology into a massive touchpad on a thin MacBook, per MacRumors (who gets the credit for the above image).
Our forum integration is hurting just a bit right now, so comments are temporarily down. Expect ‘em back by the big day!
The internet is all abuzz over the latest Macworld rumor – AppleInsider has spotted Apple banners with the slogan “There’s something in the air.” My guess hope is something rather less revolutionary than WiMAX Apple devices or a 3G iPhone – both of which I consider very unlikely. WiMAX is just not widespread enough yet and too much of it is controlled by Sprint and Clearwire. No way Apple is going to get in bed with Sprint given their relationship with AT&T, and Clearwire is just too small.
Instead, I’m hoping for .Mac services on the iPhone. Radically improved .Mac services have been something I’ve wanted to a long time. What I’d really like: Google services integration, iWeb mobloggling from the iPhone, and access to .Mac’s online storage. Please Please.
Meanwhile, check out what our forum members think is coming at Macworld.
