At $99 advertised price, the Apple TV seems to be a best bet. This is in consideration of the various features that it packs for the user. Starting from easily rentable television shows and high-definition movies right from the day of their DVD release, and extending to the highly sensible remote control and iPod and iPhone integration for TV control, and including the feature which lets you access YouTube, Flickr and more right from your television, the Apple TV is all about maximum innovation.

To begin with, the gadget is so small and handy that it can fit anywhere in your room. Whether on your television set itself, or in any remote corner, the gadget fits perfectly and without any disturbance. The performance has been given a wonderful boost with intelligent circuits with high energy efficiency, no fans so no noise, and HDMI ready facility. Besides the HD movie streaming, you also get a huge list of TV rentals for not more than 99 cents.

Apple has always been outstanding in integration. The Apple TV is no exception to this interesting technology. The new Apple TV can be integrated with your iPhone or your iPod easily and you can control the gadget right from your iPod and iPhone. A new feature on the racks is the iPad integration. With iPhone application development reaching new levels, apps for the iPhone would soon be out that can let you integrated your iPhone with the new Apple TV seamlessly.

If you know what to expect from Apple, the YouTube, Flickr and MobileMe integration do not come as a surprise. Yet, no one can refrain from being astonished. Being able to watch YouTube videos on your television, and also being able to look at photo albums from Flickr is something that makes the Apple TV simply outstanding – so much so that no other such equivalent gadget can ever match it in features, specs or performance. With appropriate iPhone application development, much revolution is set to be achieved in integrating iPhones, iPads, iPod Touch and the Apple TV!

The iPod Touch is not merely a multi-touch capable iPod. The list of features that adorn the iPod Touch are simply astounding. The iPod Touch has a dual camera – for video call capability. This means if you’ve got a friend with another iPod Touch or even an iPhone 4 on Wi-Fi, you can easily make video calls to them and catch up with interesting moments on real-time. The gadget also comes with a wonderful HD video recording and editing. It would be interesting to note that the HD feature only appears on iPhone 4 – to have such a capability on the iPod is something stunning!

The iPod Touch also boasts of excellent support to almost all the apps developed for iPhones and other iPods. So iPhone application development services have more reasons to rejoice – they can create many more apps for the iPod Touch too! Other scintillating features that come up on the spec sheet are the iMovie, iBooks, YouTube App, Voice Control, Maps and more.

To call the iPod Touch a music player would be severe understatement. One look at its features, facilities and the options would clearly tell you that the iPod Touch is far more than that. It effortlessly integrates the features of an iPod with those of iPhones and also many of the interactivity features found on most Apple devices. The iPod touch comes in three variants of 8, 32 and 64 GB capacity. With this, the world of iPod and music players is set to witness one more revolution. The iPod Touch, with its multi-touch capability, HD video recording and video-call feature has already become a major trend-setter.

To begin with, let us take a look at the new entrant, the iPod Touch.

What makes Apple stand out from the crowd in the world of gadgets is that it innovates it’s products in unimaginable ways. The iPod Touch is surely the finest example. The iPod Touch integrates multi-touch facility of the iPhones and iPads seamlessly leading to an all-new experience for the iPod fans. The iPod Touch is not merely an iPod – it also boasts loads of iPhone features like excellent app support, iMovie, iBooks, iTunes, Apple Store integration, YouTube integration, video recording and editing (High-definition) and even video calling to iPod Touch or iPhone 4 with Wi-Fi support. In fact, iPhone application development is set to act for the new iPod Touch too!!

This is not all though. The iPod Touch has the A4 processor which gives you excellent gaming experience on the iPod as well. The Game Centre has been specifically designed to cater to the needs of the gaming enthusiasts. Besides these, you also get to watch TV shows, rent or buy movies right on your iPod and watch them on the retina-display 3.5 inch screen.

The other revolutions in the world of iPods are the multi-touch capable iPod Nano. As described by Apple, everything about the iPod Nano is a huge hit. Now that is an undeniable claim because with multi-touch, one-tap access, sleeker and smaller design, colourful display and very interactive interface (not to forget the powerful FM radio), the iPod Nano seems to have broken several records. 24 hours of non-stop music, and shake to shuffle features are stunning spice-ups for the Nano.

The iPod Shuffle is another gadget which the company has decided to revitalize. The new iPod Shuffle comes in various colors and with its shining aluminium finish, it presents itself as a loveable gadget. A couple of buttons have been added to the device for the new Voiceover feature which calls out playlists, battery status and track details and can speak 25 different languages. Underlining all these, the iPhone application development is also seeing a new wave of development for the new OS 4 which is already rocking!

A done deal since the end of April this year, HP (news, site) has just announced that it has completed the acquisition of Palm for US$ 1.2 bn continuing HP’s growth in the smartphone market that is now estimated to be worth US$ 100 billion.

This is the second acquisition by HP in this market in recent months — it bought Melodeo, a Lala competitor last month — but Palm’s WebOS platform was the real target of the buy-out and will put it in direct competition with Apple (news, site) when it ports it to its upcoming tablet devices.
HP And WebOS

In a statement issued by the company HP confirmed its plans for WebOS:

“Palm will be responsible for WebOS software development and WebOS-based hardware products, from a robust smartphone roadmap to future slate PCs and netbooks.”

Former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein will report now to Todd Bradley, executive vice president, Personal Systems Group, HP and will be responsible for WebOS software development and WebOS based hardware products, from a robust smartphone roadmap to future slate PCs and netbooks.

Last January, HP showcased its new tablet called Slate running on Windows 7 at the International Consumer Electronics show and while it has not confirmed it, there are reports that it has dropped the idea of running it on Windows 7 with speculation that this is one of the areas that would best suit WebOS.

HP And Mobile Devices

WebOS has been good and bad for Palm. By the time it had developed and released WebOS last year, it was clear that it had fallen behind Apple and other rivals in this space with revenues coming in well below expectations and a buy-out needed to ensure its survival.

Enter HP and its ambitions in the mobile market. At the time the HP deal was originally announced in April, Todd Bradley outlined HPs plans in the mobility market, which have been apparent for some time, but confirmed during the of the acquisition announcement.

“The smartphone market is large, profitable and rapidly growing, and companies that can provide an integrated device and experience command a higher share …Advances in mobility are offering significant opportunities, and HP intends to be a leader in this market,” he said

And WebOS is a key element in bid to be the biggest. The combination of HP’s global scale and financial strength with Palm’s WebOS platform will enhance HP’s ability to participate more aggressively in the fast-growing, highly profitable smartphone and connected mobile device markets, Bradley said.

HP And Melodeo

But WebOS is not the only mobile space where HP is flexing its muscles. Late last month it announced its acquisition of Melodoe, which streams music to its mobile apps from the cloud.

Details of the deal were not disclosed but the amount paid was reportedly in the region of US$ 30 million, a relatively paltry sum compared to the price paid for Palm.

However the real significance of the deal is that it moves HP into a space that until now has been largely dominated by Apple, notably mobile music services. With Melodeo, HP got the NuTsie’s service which scans iTunes playlists and gives users access to those lists and is available to Blackberry, Android and Windows Mobile.

With the upcoming release of NuTsie 3.0, users will be able to take entire music collections from desktops and put in into that cloud as well as giving users the added ability of picking a single piece of music on demand (the current version only allows users play shuffled playlists).

More importantly, combine this with WebOS and you’ve a really attractive mobile package. There are no indications at the moment of further acquisitions to bolster its mobile offerings, but if HP is really serious about the mobile market — and it appears to be — then watch out for a lot more action in this space over the coming months.

Source: cmswire.com