It's been a long time. Now, about this iTV

Yes, it's been a long time since I've posted. Although a huge amount has happened in Apple-world, I'm not going to go back and discuss any of it right now, it's already been done.

The majority of interest and discussion right now is what's going to be announced in Apple's press event later today (well, later today UK time).

An iPod Touch with front-facing camera and the retina display from the iPhone 4? Yeah, well, makes sense. A new iPod Nano, small, square and with a touch screen? Could be interesting.

The main thing, as far as I'm concerned, is the new iTV. Or Apple TV. Or whatever it's going to be called.

I've recently started putting in to place my new home media setup, with my shiny new internet-enabled Sony TV, and I was absolutely on the edge (I mean, literally entering my credit card details) of buying a Mac Mini, now that it has HDMI output, when I caught wind of a new Apple TV, at $99.

iOS based? Inexpensive? I need to wait and see what it is before spending any more money. I didn't get the previous (current?) Apple TV (mostly because I didn't have anything to plug it into), so this could be interesting.

What I can't fathom is this. Control. User Interface. How is the user going to interact with the thing? The front-row style interface with the Apple Remote is one thing, but is it, well, "Magic" enough for Apple?

I'm happy to be proved wrong, but I'm not convinced how well the rumours of using other iOS devices as some kind of touch-screen proxy input device will work. On MacBreak Weekly last week someone (Andy Ihnatko I think, apologies if it was someone else) proposed that this might be the gap that the Magic Trackpad would fill. However, I can't see this happening - surely if this were the case, the screen would have to have some kind of, well, pointer, so the user can tell where they are on the screen. Moreover, would Apple really have launched the Trackpad that far ahead of creating the gap that it's supposed to fill? Thirdly, the i/Apple TV would have to be bluetooth enabled to support such a device, although I admit that this isn't such a leap.

So, if this TV thing really does exist, how is the user going to interact with it. My guesses:

1. Yes, an iOS device is going to be a touch based input for the iTV. But, the screen of the iTV will be mirrored to the iOS device so you can see what/where you're clicking on the screen.

2. Apple has come up with some "Magical" gesture-based input, using the gyroscopes on the iPhone 4 and which will also be included in the new iPod Touch.

3. The iTV will have a camera, and the user will interact with by waving their hands around, Minority Report-style (too similar to Kinect/Project Natal?)

Admittedly, I'm not being entirely serious with all of these, I'm just jumping on the typical pre-Apple announcement bandwagon. We'll just have to wait and see.

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Footnote: As a Brit, it's difficult for me to see it being called an iTV, since we have a TV network of the same name. Frankly though, I doubt Apple really cares about this.

They're heeeeerreeeee

Ok, well, maybe it should be "it's here"...

230 Megs, very slow to download...

Clear the local DNS cache in OSX

In Leopard (10.5) (or higher):

dscacheutil -flushcache

In earlier versions:

lookupd -flushcache

So quiet...

In the UK, it's half past three, and still no sign of the 3.0 firmware...

Perhaps I should get back to work...

3.0

The much anticipated 3.0 firmware for the iPhone arrives tomorrow. Now, I'm not in the market for a 3G S (yet) thanks to O2, but there are a few features of the firmware which do interest me...

Copy and paste

Actually, copy and paste doesn't interest me all that much - I think the number of times where I've truly been hindered by not being able to copy text from one application in to another can be counted on one hand. What does interest me is the enormous outcry there was when the phone didn't have C&P in it's original incarnation, and again when it didn't have it in the major 2.0 upgrade ("Well, apps are good and all that, but no copy and paste? This SUCKS!"). Oh well, each to their own. I'll keep an eye on whether I really do use it, apart from trying it out for the novelty factor.

Tethering

I must admit, I was really looking forward to tethering. I don't get many chances to work out of the office at the moment, but I could really see that having tethering available would give me more of a chance to do so. That is, until O2 announced the pricing.

Now, I understand that the "unlimited internet" that you have access to via the iPhone comes with "fair-use" conditions, and there's a lot of stuff going on in order to keep down the actual bandwidth usage, such as compressing images and not allowing podcasts larger than 10Mb to be downloaded (which is really annoying, let's be fair), but the price just seems a bit steep - 15 quid a month for 3GB. I'm going to give it a miss for the mean time, and see how I get on.

MobileMe Find My iPhone

This is a bit of a gimmick, frankly, but I've twice mislaid my iPhone in the last 6 months and not remembered where on earth I've left it. This would have saved me a couple of hours of hunting (I'm such a dolt).

MMS

Frankly, I can take it or leave it, but I do have friends who like to send me pictures, and having to log in to the O2 site to look at them is a real pain. I'm lazy, basically.

What it hasn't got

I've mentioned it already, but the 10MB podcast download limit is a real pain in the neck. Now, this is probably a per-carrier option, and it's all about limiting the bandwidth, yadda yadda, but there's not a single podcast I subscribe to which has episodes under 10 megs... and I'm not talking about video podcasts either, mostly I listen to audio podcasts. Here are the sizes of the most recent versions: This Week in Tech - 41.8 MB, Adam and Joe (BBC) - 56.9 MB, Fighting Talk (BBC) - 23.2 MB. Not a chance.

Oh well, let's wait and see what tomorrow brings.