[by Carleen Hawn] Nevermind the iPhone, that’s six months away: So what can Apple fans get right now? Well, February. iTV, renamed today as Apple TV. This is the home entertainment system Jobs introduced in September that allows you to view all of your digital media (music, photos and video) to your wide-screen television. The system is anchored around “a really cool box,” essentially a server, to which you can wirelessly download or stream media from up to 5 Macs in your house, from the mac (or PC ) of any friend or colleague. You can also stream movies off of Apple.com to your home system in real time – which Jobs demo-ed. It has a 40GB hard drive to store up to 50 hours of video, 9,000 songs, 25,000 photos or a combination of each and is capable of delivering HD video. The AppleTV comes with:
—Apple’s, now standard, Intel processor
—720 pixels per square inch for HD video
—An internal 40 GB hard drive that can store up to 50 hours of video
—802.11 Wi-Fi networking compatible with ‘b’, ‘g’, and ‘n’ standards. (I’m not hip to why this got such a huge round of applause.)
AppleTV costs a paltry $299—a stunning price considering a similar “cheap” PC-based system laid-out by the indefatigable New York Times tech writer, Damon Darlin, just over a week ago was priced closer to $1,000. Happily Apple TV will ship in February. Apple is taking orders now, so get in line.
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Carleen Hawn is a San Francisco-based business journalist. Her work has been published in Forbes, FastCompany, Business2.0, Outside and San Francisco.