You'll have to wait till June to get your hands on this!
Apple Funfair
from www.tech.co.nr
I wish I could have made it to MacWorld 2007, or CES for that matter, but of course, with school 'n' all, I couldn't make it, much to my disappointment.
No matter though, for the good ol' Internet has kept me as well-informed as anything as to what's been going on. Who stole the show? No surprises... Apple, with their iPhone! You didn't know? Well, if the 101 fake leaked pictures hadn't already suggested, the iPhone is a touchscreen wonder, that is currently topping my Feb 15 Birthday list. At least it would be, but in Europe this beauty has a launch date of Q4. Elsewhere it's June... So unfortunately, not for my birthday.
With the iPhone, along came a tiny Bluetooth headset, which looks set to outsell the Microsoft Zune within it's first 48 hours of launch. That said, before Apple went and stole the show with MacWorld, Bill Gates didn't do an all that bad job of delivering a keynote speech to thousands of tech-hungry ravenous press vultures and ProBloggers alike at CES.
Moving back to the iPhone though... What do we know so far? It has spiffy looks (Just check those pictures!), it has a spiffy OS, (OS X to be precise! WOW!), and a whole tonne of spiffy specifications to accompany the spiffyness. What am I on about? A 11.6 MM device... (That's thin by the way... VERY thin!) with a 3.5" touchscreen (WOW!), up to 8GB of storage (Can I christen this thing the king of all things ubery?), automatically engaging WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, a 2 mega-pixel camera, quad band GSM radio with EDGE, and of course, only the best Internet connection going!
For those of you wondering, Job's iPhone's number is 408-996-1010, or so the big screen behind him at the conference said... Visual Voicemail is another cool feature that caught my eye, along with the menu system on the phone. Why do I bother mentioning it? You know what Apple are capable of, and they've delivered alright! The calls section somewhat reminds me of the latest Skype interface, except it looks far more polished and professional.
Widgets on a phone! How cool? Very self-explanatory though. Apple have chosen to partner with Yahoo! Widgets on this one, (Previously Konfabulator if my memory serves.) In-built Google Maps. Does this mean GPS? Safari web browser? Dude! This is sweet stuff, combined with full, rich-HTML e-mail.
Built in Yahoo! Mail too. Free 'push' IMAP e-mail. Why not GMail? Well, perhaps it might have been, had Google simply stripped the service of it's beta tag.
Who made a surprise appearance this time? No, not a rock singer, but Google CEO, Dr Eric Schmidt. Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo! also made an appearance. It's unclear to what extent the two rival search companies collaborated on this project, but I'm guessing it can only be good news. Both search companies may have had chance to discuss more unified methods of refined searching. Let's What for the Yahoogle! launch any day.
Oh... And Apple Computers Inc are no more. Now to be known simply as Apple Inc! This phone is state of the art. Forget Samsung. Forget Sony. Forget Blackberry. (Could it be? *GASP!*) If any one company wants to compete with Apple, they seriously have their work cut out. Apple are brilliant. Design. Power. Simplicity. Apple my friends, are the future.