Even though this year's MacWorld does not compare to the previous ones where Steve Jobs introduced groundbreaking products, there are still some interesting news and products that parents who own an iPhone or iPod Touch should care about:
Ultra Small Projector from Microvision
This projector will be available from Microvision later this year and will support any mobile phone with TV out capability. Note that iPhone will probably need an AV cable in order to use such a projector.
Small projectors like this one can be handy when giving presentations, etc, but I am thinking how cool it would be to watch movies in our backyard with our family and friends. A friend of ours invited us to such a movie night at their backyard, bringing and setting up a big projector from their office. We watched the movie under the stars cuddling under our blankets. It was a great experience but the setup was cumbersome. If we owned a mini projector like this, we may be able to have a backyard movie theater whenever we want! It is battery operated, so no need for power cables. Read more about this projector at PCMag.com. Here is a video clip that shows Microvision projector in action in the last year's CES: watch
No more DRM for iTunes Music
This was probably one of the biggest news of the MacWorld 2009. This means that the music you purchase from iTunes will not have Digital Rights Management attached to it. This means, technically you can copy, convert music as you wish (legally, I am not sure), as if you digitized it from your CD. While this is exciting for everyone, what would be even more interesting for us iParents is that if this will apply to the movies we purchase from the iTunes store anytime soon. I would not think so but we can wait and see. See article for more on the iTunes DRM story.
VixML: A New Development Platform for iPhone
Developing for iPhone is "difficult and painful process" as many programmers would put it. This could be one of the reasons for the lack of great educational apps and story book type of applications in the App Store. VixML is a new development platform for iPhone where simple apps can be developed with minimal iPhone programming knowledge. The below video looks very cool, and more on this news see the TechCrunch article.
SoundClip iPhone Volume/Speaker Enhancer
In my previous posts, I mentioned the speaker of iPhone is not powerful, especially if you are watching something in a noisy environment and not want to use headphones. Ten One Design came up with a sound enhancing device that plugs at the bottom connector of iPhone and directs the sound coming from the bottom speakers of the iPhone towards the front. More on this is here.
Watch Cable TV on Your iPhone
Sling Media's iPhone App will soon allow users to watch any cable and DVR'ed shows on their iPhone. Apparently their app will be submitted the App store in Q1. The company says that you need network connectivity for TV watching. Does that mean any network connectivity would do it (e.g., that I will be able to watch my DVR movies when I am at a friend's house) or I need to be on the same network as the cable box and the DVR, I don't know. But in any case, this is pretty cool. TechCrunch article here.
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