Unless you were living under a rock since last week you couldn’t help but hear about last week’s music event held by Apple in San Francisco. What has become an annual event was greeted by many as something of a let down, but then that’s not really surprising given the usual pre event hype that always precedes pretty much anything Apple does. While we didn’t get anything revolutionary from Apple, what we did get was a pretty solid round of updates including what I think marks the maturing of the iPod Nano line, and possibly the last iteration of the classic. I’m not going to go into too much detail about the various specifications of what was released because there are plenty of other sites that have covered that in detail by now, but I will share some of the thoughts I have had since the event about some of the announcements that were made and some of the things that I found interesting.
The Event
What was pretty much the main attention grabber at the event was undoubtedly the apparent health of Steve Jobs. The single keynote slide making light of the recent un-intentional publishing of his obituary was a clever, light hearted way to deal with the weeks of press regarding the health of Apple’s CEO. Unfortunately this probably won’t be the end of it. as the media has become quite obsessed with the well-being of the cupertino executive.
Another curiosity that I haven’t seen that much commentary on was the extent to which the details of the event were leaked before hand. Virtually every single announcement had been picked up on, and in a significant amount of detail. I don’t recall the last time an Apple product launch had been leaked in such a complete and total manner. Most of the credit goes to Kevin Rose of digg fame. The weird thing about it is that Apple didn’t seem too bothered. I wonder if this was intentional to lower expectations for what many have called an underwhelming event (a sentiment with which I disagree)?
The Nano
The iPod Nano was probably the star of the show. While the newly designed form factor wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone given that it had been splashed all over the internet for the previous week, the new interface, and the new headphones, coupled with the increased capacity at the same price make it a solid upgrade. I see it as the maturing of the nano line. I think they’ve been playing with the form factor since the beginning but it never found it’s niche. Don’t get me wrong, the nano has always been a great product, but with the new one you get the impression that its design has solidified and this will probably be the basis of the line for a while, in the same way that the classic hasn’t changed much for the last couple of iterations. It just seems right. The fat nano always seemed to me to be the in between model, much like the iPod 3g (the one with the stupid glowing buttons). I think the addition of voice recording and remote on the headphones make it a great all round product and certainly the most feature complete version Apple has ever shipped. If they’d included a built in radio they would have satisfied pretty much every request anyone has ever made of the line.
One of the curious things about this new model, and the new iPod touch is that they can no longer charge over firewire (according to wikipedia) so if you have an old charger lying around it may be time to put it out to pasture.
HD TV Shows
The announcement of the availability of TV shows in HD on iTunes is great news for anyone who has a HDTV and an AppleTV (and lives in the US). It greatly increases the quality for TV viewing over the current files which barely qualify as the “dvd quality” for which they’re advertised. There is however a limited line up at the moment but that will undoubtedly grow. The files are fairly large too weighing in at 1.3gb for an average 40 minute show. Purchasing an episode of a show in HD also gives you the accompanying standard definition file which is good news if you want to watch it on an iPod or iPhone too. This pushes each download closer to the 2gb mark. If your broadband has a bandwidth cap this will eat it up pretty quickly. One curious oddity though is that at present you can only purchase HD shows through iTunes, and not directly on the AppleTV which is strange seen as the AppleTV is the ideal place to watch the shows in HD in the first place. I suspect thought that this will be rectified with a future update to the Apple TV’s software.
Interestingly enough, if anyone is interested, all four seasons of Battlestar Galactica are available in HD. Considering there is no sign of the series being released on blu-ray any time soon if you’re a fan of the show and want it in HD this may be the way to go. Only the mini series is unavailable in the new higher resolution format. I’ll have some more detailed thoughts on this and the future of downloads in a future post.
Another interesting TV related announcement at the event was the return of NBC. This is fairly significant considering the very public spat between the two companies. There has been lots of discussions online as to who caved but both Apple and NBC are claiming they didn’t so who knows. iTunes does now offer older shows from NBC at a reduced price so I suspect that there was a compromise all round.
iPod Touch
The iPod Touch has also received a fairly significant upgrade, and in particular they addressed much of the issues people had with the first generation of the device, in particular people’s main bugbear, the lack of volume controls. Not only did they add physical volume controls, but they also gave the touch remote capability via the newly announced headphones (more on that in a minute) and added a speaker for, as jobs put it, “casual listening”. According to Chris Breen who reviewed the new iPod Touch for Macworld this might be a generous description. I suspect the added speaker is more to facilitate games and Apps than actual listening but considering the size of the iPod touch this is more than forgivable.
The most interesting thing about the iPod touch upgrade is Apple’s marketing pitch. You couldn’t help but take note of the clear push to position this as a gaming device, aiming it squarely at the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP. How successful this strategy turns out to be remains to be seen, especially given recent developments in the long running saga of Apple’s relations with its iPhone developers, but clearly this is a market they want to take on. Any potential success rests on the willingness of game developers to port titles to the platform and the news that EA is bringing one of their biggest franchises, the Need for Speed to the iPhone/ iPod Touch platform as a simultaneous release is a big deal.
iTunes 8
Apple’s digital hub strategy would not be complete without the actual hub, which is of course iTunes. iTunes was revved to version 8 and the upgrade gives the software a new look, a new visualizer (which wasn’t mentioned at the event at all) and a new playlist generating feature called “Genius”.
The new look revolves mainly around the new grid view which is much better than the old album view and is reminiscent of the iTunes Store interface on the AppleTV. The view which is basically a grid of Album covers makes for a nice visual way of accessing your content. There are some other interface tweaks too which some people have argued over in depth.
By far the biggest new feature is genius. If you haven’t seen this already, Genius generates a new playlist based on the song you are currently playing when you activate the feature. The idea is it chooses songs that go together and is based on collated data from the iTunes library of everyone who opts in to the service. I’ve tried it out a few times and I’ve been really impressed with the results. I know a lot of people have complained about the results, but a lot depends on your musical tastes, and the relative obscurity of the track you start with. I think too, that if you are any way a music aficionado, and have strong views on what should go together then this probably isn’t for you, but if you just want to quickly generate a playlist then this works a treat. I picked a Christmas song in my library, hit the genius button and was greeted with a pretty good Christmas album.
The results will get better too as Apple collects more data now that it is out of their testing phase and loose on the world. Their intelligent algorithm collects data at regular periods (anonymously of course) and sends it to the iTunes store (“in the cloud”) which in turn sends the data back to your library. The other cool thing about Genius is the speed at which it works. Once you go through the initial set up phase, generating a genius playlist is pretty much instant. All in all a solid upgrade.
Headphones.
The only thing that was announced at the event that wasn’t pre leaked as far as I can tell is the announcement of a new set of headphones from Apple. Actually, two new sets. The default earbuds gets the addition of an iPhone like remote and microphone nub on the cable and, unlike the iPhone’s remote, volume plus and minus controls. These seem to be shipping as standard with both the new nano and the touch and is the first time since the early iPods that Apple has shipped a remote as standard.
The second set of headphones is a new in ear set of high quality canal phones. Apple claims that these are high end high audio quality headphones, and the specs certainly seem to suggest that, but until they’re available we won’t know for sure. One of the curious things about these new headphones though is that they are only officially compatible with the new iPod Nano, Classic and Touch. The iPhone is not listed as being compatible which is odd as the iPhone’s headphone socket has the extra ring connector and already comes with a remote which uses the same connector. Unofficially Apple told reporters at the event that they are compatible with the iPhone except for the volume controls. It’s unclear whether Apple could add volume control functionality to the iPhone at a future date.
Round Up
That’s pretty much it apart from the announcement of Nike+ for iPod touch. This feature now comes with the new iPod touches and no longer requires the dongle to be fitted to the bottom of the iPod to work, but this feature does not work with older iPod touches or the iPhone. Some people have given out about this but the receiver is not standard wifi as some have suggested and does require new hardware that is not in the older models in order to work.
Over all this has been a solid round of upgrades from Apple. I disagree with the idea that this has been underwhelming. The lines have been given a good strong refresh. If there were no “wow” announcements at the event it was because they were all leaked before hand. I think it answers the criticism of those who say the iPod line has reached saturation and the end of it’s effective life with a round of upgrades that will probably do very well (particularly the iPod Touch) leading into the holiday season.
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