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Jobs Unveils Long-Awaited Apple Phone, TV Box
Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs confirmed months of speculation Tuesday by unveiling a new mobile phone and a set-top box that allows people to stream video from their computers to their televisions.
Jobs said Apple's phone would "reinvent" the telecommunications sector and "leapfrog" past the current generation of hard-to-use smart phones.
"Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything," he said during his keynote address at the annual Macworld Conference and Expo. "It's very fortunate if you can work on just one of these in your career. ... Apple's been very fortunate in that it's introduced a few of these."
Apple TV, as the video box is known, is designed to bridge computers and television sets so users can more easily watch their downloaded movies on a big screen. A prototype of the gadget was introduced by Jobs in September when Apple announced it would sell TV shows and movies through its iTunes online store.
The product could be as revolutionary to digital movies as Apple's iPod music player was to digital music. Both devices liberate media from the computer, allowing people to enjoy digital files without being chained to a desktop or laptop.
"It's really, really easy to use," Jobs told the crowd at San Francisco's Moscone Center before demonstrating the system with a video clip of "The Good Shepherd." "It's got the processing horsepower to do the kinds of things we like to do."