Apple Remote and Front Row

One of the projects I worked on at Apple has finally been announced so I can talk about it openly. I think this is the most significant project that I worked on since I wrote all of the firmware and worked on the circuit board. Apple will be making millions of these and shipping them all over the world. Its called the ‘Apple Remote’ and you can see it here http://www.apple.com/imac

An Apple Remote will ship with each iMac and can be magnetically attached to iMac when not in use (check out the picture on the bottom). It has a very simple design with only 6 buttons but only 6 buttons are necessary since the UI is designed so well. In fact Steve Jobs compared it to a 40+ button Microsoft remote and pointed out that it exemplified the Apple design philosophy of simplicity without sacrificing function.

If you have time, I highly recommend you view the keynote where Steve Jobs introduced the new iMac and Apple Remote. He starts off by introducing 3 new features and the remote is covered in feature ..3 so you can skip ahead to that part if you don’t care about the rest of the iMac. You can download the keynote here: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/specialeventoct05/

The keynote also introduces the new white ipod which supports photos, album art, and video (like music videos, home movies, etc) so its definitely worth a look.