Apple Announcements: iTunes 8 with Genius, HD Video, NBC returns, new iPods, and more…
Let’s see how my predictions for today’s Apple event stack up…
Evidently, Steve Jobs’ kicked off today’s announcements by referencing the 17-page Steve Jobs’ obituary that Bloomberg mistakenly ran a couple of weeks back with a slide reading “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
Detailed live reporting can be found on Engadget, but in the meantime, here’s my thoughts on it all as I see it pop up on all the different live streams I’m watching:
$2.99 HD TV Shows & NBC returns: Meh. It should’ve already been there. Considering everything is moving to HD now anyway, setting up a new $1 more expensive price point seems a bit of trickery to me, especially considering that you can watch most of this stuff streaming for free online via sites like Hulu. NBC returning to iTunes after leaving the store for about a year or so is also cool, but, again, they already conditioned me to watch all their content for free on Hulu by yanking it in the first place.
iTunes 8 (*) with Genius: The big push so far seems to be the new Genius feature, which sounds like Pandora or Last.fm, but specifically with your iTunes folder. I’m suspicious that this is a reinvention of the suggestive features of the “it-never-took-off” mini store feature of iTunes.
New iPod Lineup Apple Store Screenshot
New iPods: 120GB iPod Classic for $249 isn’t too shabby if you do your cellphone business with anyone other than AT&T. If you’re an AT&T customer, just buy an iPhone already. Sure, it won’t hold 120GBs worth of music, but you can stream music via the Pandora / Last.fm’s apps over EDGE/WiFi/3G. That’s a huge win over the iPod.
New iPod Nano
New iPod Nano: As expected, it looks like the leaked cases and Kevin Rose were both correct. It’s a new tall but thin iPod nano with a bigger screen. 2 cool points: it has an accelerometer built in (GAMES!?) and the Genius feature appears in the form of “Genius playlist creation.” It looks like you watch video on it by turning it sideways. Accelerometer works for changing it into cover mode. Rainbow colors. 16GB for $199 and 8GB for $149. Again, just go buy an iPhone.
Ridiculously priced in-ear headphones: $79?! Go buy some Bose / Shure’s or something much better if you’re going to enter that price range.
New iPod Touch: Surprising. I didn’t think they’d really update the Touch. Adding stainless steel, built in speaker (but no mic yet. VOIP still not as easy there as it could be), and volume controls on the side. All you sporty runners out there will be pleased that Nike+ is not integrated into the iPod Touch so no need for that oh-so-fashionable dongle. 8GB is $229 (I guess to push people to go iPhone), 16GB is $299, and 32GB is $399.
Now they’ve moved on to Phil Schiller (*) demoing Spore Origins (*). Uh. I think the show is over at this point. I doubt there will be a “One more thing…” with Phil on the stage.
Steve Jobs returns to the stage to praise the iPod Touch some more. If he invites John Mayer (*) out, then it’s over… He’s showing an ad, so probably close to over…
One nice new thing, iPhone 2.1 firmware update free to all available this Friday, promises a lot of bug fixes (let’s keep our fingers crossed).
No John Mayer. Instead, it’s Jack Johnson (*). So I guess that is it. No iTablet. I’d say my predictions were pretty good.
It’s over. FINAL SCORE FOR THE EVENT: 3 out of 5 I’m going to go download iTunes 8 now… ah, crap it’s not up yet.
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