Despite being an event devoted to developers with cameras and media not officially allowed in, the iPhone 4 keynote bogged down with the hundreds of laptops and iPads in the room liveblogging the event. So it's quite interesting that the new iPhone 4 announced offers a few features that would help a journalist or blogger cover an event like the latest Apple keynote.
Although Steve Jobs presented only eight of the "more than a hundred" new features available on the iPhone 4, at least two of these have potential for bloggers or freelance journalists. First of all, the audio quality should drastically improve with the addition of a second microphone for active noise canceling. And there are lots of events with more excited and noisy people than even an Apple keynote and new hardware demo.
Beyond the audio, the new "FaceTime" video chat feature may offer an interesting angle on video interviews depending on access to the video stream on the receiving end.
The camera is better and can now record HD video. That's not the real story, though. For field reporters (be they for the family reunion or the Financial Times) the addition of convenient video editing software in iMovie enables on-site creation of seamless video clips that can be immediately uploaded to the web. That will be a welcome change for viewers of this content who often sit through the more than occasional shot of press conference ceiling and floor before seeing what they tuned in for.
It's not directly connected to the output of the journalist to be enjoyed by his or her readers, but there is another element of the iPhone 4 that should be mentioned. With competing platforms offering truly beautiful high resolution screens such as AMOLED, recent iPhone revisions have been widely criticized for not keeping up. The new "Retina Display" appears to change that. At 326 pixels per inch, the new iPhone 4 display will offer resolution rivaling good quality printed text in the same physical size as the current iPhone models.
That should help lots of potential iPhone 4 customers who might otherwise be on the fence, but what is the connection for the journalist community? Well, reading scores of complaints, demands and otherwise generally harassing emails from their editors should be, if nothing else, at least a little easier on their eyes. (The new iOS 4 also offers threaded viewing of emails which will also allow intrepid reporters to keep those back-and-forths with the boss from taking up too much inbox space.)
