Apple TV officially unveiled by Apple Inc

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Certainly the talking point of the Macworld 2007 keynote was the iPhone but Steve Jobs also touched other topics during his speech. The first product he talked about, after reporting the great sales results of iTunes, actually was Apple TV.

Jobs confirmed some of the features that he already introduced last September. The box has the following rear connectors: USB (to update the firmware), Ethernet, HDMI, component video and audio plus an optical audio connector. The Apple TV will feature a 40GB hard drive, an Intel processor and will offer 802.11b/g/n connectivity. Its wireless capabilities allow the Apple TV to receive streaming content from up to five devices.

The user interface will be pretty intuitive as usual with easy access to all the kinds of multimedia playable by Apple TV: movies, trailers (streaming directly from Apple.com), TV shows, music and podcasts. If you are used to the iPod interface working with Apple TV will be an easy transition. The price of Apple TV is set to $299 USD and it will begin shipping in February but it is already possible to order it this month.

After announcing the iPhone and the deals reached with Cingular, Google and Yahoo!, Jobs unveiled another big news. To reflect the variety of devices designed by Apple, Jobs announced that the company is dropping the Computer word from its name. From today on the company will just be known as Apple, Inc.

One thing missing from this year keynote was the unveiling of new computers. The CEO of the "new" Apple, Inc. said however that some news will arrive in the next few months. We’ll have to see how Apple TV and the iPhone fare on the market but this was certainly an exiting keynote (as the iPod 2001 was).