HD For Indies

Take a look at Apple's front page today - a black background with a black iPhone. What is the UI on that iPhone? Colored icons on a black background.

Then take a look at their latest computer designs - in particular the black Macbook (such as I'm writing this on), aka the BlackBook.

We've seen the user interface for the new iPhone, which is scheduled to ship in late June...which is after Leopard ships. While Leopard doesn't seem to have many visual changes from Tiger according to the sample animations on Apple's site, I read on Daring Fireball the other day:

The Aqua theme is now 6 years old, which is a longer lifespan than that of the Platinum theme from Mac OS 8 and 9. I expect to see big changes, not the sort of refinements we’ve seen in previous major Mac OS X updates. At a technical level, the new UI will be resolution independent. At a design level, it will elicit both a lot of love and a lot of hate, just like Aqua did in 10.0. The subtext will be to make Windows Vista look dated before it even ships to consumers.


...and I agree with him - that logic makes sense, especially that last point.

I think the next rev of pro laptops is likely to sport a darker look too, but I don't know if that would fly for the towers. Apple is famous for tying the hardware and software looks together - maybe we'd get anodized black towers? With a black based UI for the OS? Wouldn't that be potent?

Just conjecture...I have a lot of that today...

Other conjecture - Paul was quick to point out in my comments that we didn't see iLife/iWork because there may be iPhone versions coming - that makes a lot of sense, too - that iPhone ships after Leopard (most likely), and that new versions of iWork/iLife may come along that better integrate with the iPhone - a for-pay version of iWork that includes not just Universal Binaries of the apps, but also an included (or optional?) version for the iPhone as well.

I have some research to do for a meeting Friday, but I'm dyin' to do a long piece on iPhone, even though it totally isn't HD related...but I am so getting one of those...my T616, even though it is tiny and syncs well for calendar and contacts, iPhone does soooooo much more...and is clearly the winner new product for Apple.

Apple's goal is to get 1% of the market in 2008 - that'd be 5-6 BILLION dollars in phones sold at $500-$600 a pop. If they sell hundreds of thousands or even a million Apple TVs (based on current movie availability) I'd be surprised.

I bought Apple stock for the Apple TV, but iPhone is going to do MUCH more for Apple I'd bet - and this is just the first one, too, don't forget. Keep in mind how much better, smaller, and cheaper iPods got over the last five years. Prediction - in 2 years, there will be an iPhone half the volume with more features than this one at half the price.

-mike

Update - AppleInsider | Mac OS X Leopard to sport next-gen DVD Player software (images) - yep! I'm at least partially right.