Big announcement today from Apple. Along with all of the nice enhancements to the iPod line, and to the iTunes software/store, Apple made two announcements that stood out to me. First, they announced that you can now download games to your iPod. Second, they announced that in early 2007 they’ll release a settop box for your living room.

Games on the iPod isn’t too surprising, and actually I’m a bit surprised they haven’t embraced that before now. Sure, they had a few very simple games, even on the early iPods, but they couldn’t compete with the even the trivial games on my mobile phone. Apparently, the 5G iPods (iPods with video) have enough muscle for some custom versions of very popular casual games, such as Zuma and Bejeweled. Looking at some “animated screenshots” of the games, it appears that they translate very faithfully, even including Bejeweled’s cool level transitions (though I suspect they’re video clips on the iPod, whereas on the PC they’re 3D tunnel effects, but I’d love to be wrong). Of course, the games have been tweaked for the clickwheel interface. I’ve yet to find any more details, such as whether Apple will be opening up the iPod to other developers or what their future catalogue will look like.

Update: Apparently, some folks have already done a bit of reverse engineering on the games…

I’ve also not yet found any details on what the processing power of the 5G iPods are. Sure, they can play some pretty high quality video and decompress various codecs on the fly, so they’re doing better than my old 286, but they’ve likely got specialized chips optimized for decompressing streaming data — chips that are likely not appropriate for general purpose software (much like the vector units on a PlayStation2). If anyone has any pointers to some specs, I’d be interested (the Apple site, not surprisingly, is crawling right now).

The settop box is very interesting. Very small profile (half the thickness of a Mac Mini), and it eliminates all the “clutter” normally associated with media center devices. There’s no powerbrick, and the network connection is wireless (with an optional wired connection). I assume it has the same electronics inside it as a video iPod since it can do all the same stuff and doesn’t require a powerbrick or fans. I’m curious as to whether they used a standard harddrive instead of the smaller drives used in the iPods to save some money (but it is pretty small!). The price is great ($249), and the usability looks to be flawless (as expected). I look forward to grabbing one, particularly if the iTunes movie service really picks up. (I’m crossing my fingers that they do some kind of rental option, or Netflix-like subscription service.)

But let’s put two and two together… they’ve got games on the iPod. Great casual games, fine-tuned for the super simple click wheel interface. And soon they’ll have a settop-iPod in the living room, hooked up to your TV, controlled by a little white remote with the same click wheel interface. While Steve Jobs didn’t mention playing games on the “iTV” … I can’t see why one couldn’t! It looks to be the same hardware (or at least equivalently powered hardware).

So, my question is this: will Apple bring casual games to the living room? Microsoft is trying to do that with Xbox Live Arcade on Xbox360. And sure, the Xbox360 has all those media center elements like the iTV will. But, this is Apple, and the footprint is significantly smaller, and the interface more dedicated. Could we be seeing the birth of the casual games console?

So, this is the first post from my new MacBook Pro… interesting, huh? Not that much different, I guess. Anyway, just trying to figure out what to do, since I don’t really have any Mac software… but the web is universal, I guess!?

Okay, so I’ve gone and done it… I’ve drunk the kool-aid. I just ordered a MacBook Pro. Fully decked out with all of the extras Apple would give me. This is my birthday present to myself (and I guess, maybe a pre-emptive father’s day gift as well?). And my family was kind enough to chip in on it as well… which may end up covering the $600! in Canadian sales tax… Glad I got a 17% discount through EA employee purchasing. I knew giant corporations were good for something!

I decided to go with the 100GB harddrive instead of the 120GB harddrive because I could get the 100GB at 7200rpm. My current laptop, a Dell Precision M60, has a 7200rpm harddrive and it makes all the difference when compiling software (the disk is by far the biggest bottleneck — so much so that the latest build machines have 1GB+ solid-state, i.e. flash memory, harddrives that they use for their working sets; ramdisk anyone?).

I always thought my M60 was a honkin big laptop. Of course, if you look at the “desktop replacement” laptops it looks quite portable, but compared to the low-powered “business user” laptop it’s quite fat and heavy (around 7.4 lbs.). The MacBook Pro weighs in at 6.8 lbs. (with optical drive and battery), so it’ll be a bit lighter… but it’s actually bigger! I always thought that my M60 was a 17″ laptop, but referring to the specs on Dell’s website (which are customized based on my laptop’s serial #, a very handy support feature), the M60 is a 15.4″ laptop, which is the smaller MacBook Pro. So, I’m actually getting a “bigger” laptop, though it’s actually a half-inch thinner, lighter weight, and just about a half-inch to an inch longer and wider. I hope it at least feels a bit more portable since it’ll be thinner and lighter.

So, the display is bigger, 17″ compared to my M60’s 15.4″. But the resolution is lower. The MacBook Pro is 1680×1050 native at 17″, while the M60 is 1920×1200 native at 15.4″. To normalize all of that, you can factor the “number of pixels per diagonal inch,” which gives you 116 for the MacBook Pro and 147 for the M60. Some would say that the M60 has a “better” screen, and it technically does if you’re just looking at it. But, if you’re having to read it, I can quite confidently say I’m looking forward to the “lower” resolution MacBook Pro. The M60 just hurts my eyes… and I’m probably not the only one, as the the M70 that came out shortly after the M60 (and replaced it, AFAIK) maxed out at 1680×1050 even though it had an upgraded video card (nVIDIA Go700 FX vs. nVIDIA Go1000 FX).

I was definitely on the fence about this purchase… I knew a traditional PC laptop would give me more performance bang for the buck, particularly since most of my heavy lifting apps would be running on Windows XP. Obviously, BootCamp made this a harder decision because it meant I could run Windows XP on basically any laptop on the market, but I could run MacOS on only one. It was the MacOS part that persuaded me, though…

I’ve never been anti-Mac by any stretch of the imagination… but I’ve always used Windows because of games, game development, and in general it’s just what I grew up with and knew. I’m experienced enough with computers to keep Windows XP running without problems, unlike (apparently) the unwashed masses who seem to junk their Windows installations trivially. But, I’m more concerned with getting stuff done than farting around with my OS (which is why I’ve dodged Linux since college — of course, most of the apps I use regularly don’t run on Linux anywho). But browsing the Apple website last night changed my mind…

Several key features won the day for the MacBook Pro:

• iLife ‘06
• Built-in iSight webcam
• ATI X1600 video card
• BootCamp

BootCamp is pretty obvious. I realized I would not be happy without Windows XP. I’ve got a ton of games for Windows. I’ve got a ton of software for Windows (Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, Premiere, After Effects, Visual Studio). And a huge majority of people who would ever use any software/games I created would be using Windows. Sure, most of the software I use has MacOS versions, but they aren’t free. So BootCamp, like I said, makes the MacBook a possibility. And, as I understand it, Windows runs pretty nicely on the MacBook Pro, comparable (and sometimes ahead of) Wintel laptops with similar hardware.

Laptops always suck in the video card department, at least compared to their desktop cousins. They usually lag by a year, certainly at the same price point, and even then they’re usually clocked lower to be friendlier to battery life and heat sinks. My M60 had the fastest laptop video card you could get at the time… though within six months it fell behind rapidly as they introduced “laptops” that had PCI express cards (some even with desktop cards). The ATI X1600 appears to be pretty good. It’s not the fastest thing ATI has (they now have the X1800), but it’s at least on par with my desktop card (GeForce 6600GT, I think), so the desktop won’t necessarily have a leg-up on the laptop when it comes to gaming.

The webcam built into the bevel above the LCD is brilliant. I’m not sure if Apple did it first (and I don’t really care), but it’s a good idea and leads to much more natural webcam use (something I’m just now starting to leverage for communicating back home to the parents). I’ve heard really good things about Apple’s iSight cameras and video chat software, so I’m looking forward to playing with it.

And finally, the real deal winner for me was the iLife ‘06 package. I think Apple could make a killing if they ported this to Windows and opened it up to a wider market. It seems like a perfectly adapted, though reasonably comprehensive, yet still simple suite of software that hits the “creative” generation right smack in the middle of the head. It’s to the creative, web-savy individual what the MS Office suite is to the pragmatic, business-savy individual. I’m really looking forward to GarageBand (I always enjoyed Acid on Windows). To be honest, I don’t know how someone couldn’t read through the iLife promotional material and not feel inspired to use it and do something. In fact, my brother (coincidentally) e-mailed me this very morning and told me that he had just picked up a new Mac Mini. He urged me to run out and grab a Mac because of how amazing MacOS X felt (he still has an IBM Thinkpad with Windows XP that he enjoys). What really got me was this quote…

What can I say about OS X/Apple machines that hasn’t already been said. Best looking, most elegant and seamless OS on the planet. I’m serious, Troy. This thing rocks. iLife rocks. I’m actually getting back into my creative mode after a much too long hiautus (music, design, etc). It feels good.

If that doesn’t make you want to run out and buy a Mac I don’t know what will.

So, yeah, I’ve drunk the kool-aid, and it hasn’t even arrived yet. The Apple Store tells me it’ll be next week at the earliest before it ships (then it 4 or 5 days after that before I get it). Looks like it’ll arrive right about the time someone else is scheduled to arrive… looks like this may be the best birthday ever!