Apple Showtime: ‘iTV’

Rare pre-announcement from Apple: their long-awaited TV set-top box is coming in early 2007. Code-named ‘iTV’, it will cost $299 and looks like a much-thinner Mac Mini, and yet has a built-in power supply so it doesn’t need a brick on the power cord. All sorts of cable ports for hooking up to your TV and stereo, but it grabs media — movies, TV shows, music — from your Mac or PC via Wi-Fi, and can also grab previews from the Internet. You navigate using an Apple Remote and a Front Row-style UI.

I’m thinking it has to have a hard drive in there for caching, but perhaps a gigabyte or two of flash memory is all it needs. Tech specs, as far as I can tell, aren’t yet available.

★ Tuesday, 12 September 2006