Santa Jobs is coming to town, Apple enters its CURVED phase.
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Apple’s “Let’s Rock” event is winding down, and we’ve got some new toys to play with.
As predicted, the iPod Nano has undergone its 3rd facelift, the iPod Touch is a lot more iPhon-y, and iTunes 8 pwns.
The new iPod Nano (4G) sports a tall, skinny form factor and a widescreen display, exactly like the leaked photos described. It will come in 8 and 16 gb flavours, will cost $149 and $199 respectively, and is available in a wide variety of stunningly vibrant colours. They’ll apparently be available as early as this weekend (September 13).
The iPod Touch also got a welcome overhaul, now sharing a curved back design with the iPhone, except still made of stainless steel. New additions include physical volume controls and a built-in speaker. Available sizes will be 8GB for $229, 16GB for $299, and a 32GB for $399.
But the design and price are really incidental; what Apple really wanted to show off was teh device’s potential as a gaming platform. Showing off games like Spore and Need for Speed, and using lines like “It’s the best portable device for playing games”, it obvious Apple has drawn a line in the sand and is daring Nintendo and Sony to cross it.
A new set of earbuds was also introduced, which will be a welcome addition to any iTouch owner, not to mention a marked improvement over the already awesome iPhone earbuds.
“These headphones have a pause / play and volume control, double click goes to next song, triple click goes to previous, right from the cable, and there’s a microphone for voice recording” says Jobs.
The in-ear version will go for a pretty hefty $79, but for those of us who like keeping our iPhones in our back pockets or bags, it’ll be a price well worth paying.
Also, the iPhone got a small bump with software update 2.1.
“This is a big update, it fixes lots of bugs. Fewer dropped calls, big battery life improvements. No crashes with Apps. Backing up is faster.”
Well that’s about time. While I still believe that the iPhone is the coolest and best mobile communication device you can buy (provided you’re not an Enterprise user or deluded into believing it’s a true Smart Phone), the phone part, um, sucks. That is to say, when it works, it’s stellar, but I have never had a less reliable phone in terms of dropped calls. Hopefully 2.1 will solve this issue. We can only wait & see.
My big question, though: Where the hell is my Copy & Paste?!? It was a rumoured addition to 2.1 that was not mentioned.
But the thing most people have been waiting for is iTunes 8, which has been beefed up with some snazzy features that take it way beyond the relatively simple and functional media player it’s always been.
“We’re introducing a new featuring called ‘Genius’ — it allows you to make playlists from songs in your library that go together. It helps you rediscover music in your library. And it really works well.”
In addition to that, there’s a lot of new TV content coming to iTunes, including the return of NBC.
“NBC is coming back to iTunes. The Office is coming back, Monk, Battlestar Galactica, 30 Rock… and they’re coming back in HD.”
That….is pretty cool. According to this pic, an episode of an NBC show in HD will run you a pretty fair $2.99.
All in all, the “Let’s Rock” was more of an evolutionary event than a revolutionary one, but if you’ve been holding off on pulling the trigger on a Nano or iPod Touch in the hopes that you’d be seeing some nice new updates for the holiday season, you will likely not be disappointed.
Quote “..the iPhone is the coolest and best mobile communication device you can buy (provided you’re not an Enterprise user or deluded into believing it’s a true Smart Phone), the phone part, um, sucks.”
So it’s the best mobile communications unless you want to uhm… communicate with people using either email, voice or MMS? That’s pretty funny. You are right that it’s not a ‘smart’ phone though. 😛
Heh, by “Enterprise user” I mean clients beyond Entourage…there’s no Lotus or Groupwise support for the iPhone. And the lack of MMS sucks.
Well, at least it has a pretty SMS app. 🙂
You can’t knock that…the SMS app really is the best I’ve ever seen 🙂 Whenthey finally get around to MMS, they’ll likely keep that UI…which will be HAWT.
Hmmm … the new iPod nanos are looking distinctly Zune-like.
Remarkably, Microsoft did this form factor first. (And no, I don’t consider ‘curviness’ a significant difference, though the iPod clearly do look cooler — and of course have vastly superior interfaces.)
Agreed, there’s a touch of Zune to this update…but to be fair, if the tech had existed at the time, this is what the Nano G2 would have looked like.
Shake to Shuffle is pretty neat…but where have I heard that before?? Fairly sure there’s another MP3 player that does that.
Ah Rebel, when are you gonna take your head out of Steve’s backside? 😀
The iPhone’s SMS is one of the prettiest, but pretty =/= best. Best for the iPhone maybe, but there’s a whole world of smartphones out there. Same goes with the line in the sand re: the iPod Touch as a portable gaming device. I’m not saying it’s not CAPABLE, but by the same token, with somewhere between 70-80 million DSes out there, and available for about half the price of the cheapest iPod Touch, I can’t see Nintendo shaking in it’s boots, nor the PSP, which while still behind the DS, still has something north of 10 million units in N. America alone.
BTW, I think you mean Microsoft Exchange, not Entourage.
I’m not too surprised by the look of the new Nano. With video becoming more popular on portable devices, reverting to something like the original Nano with a bigger screen makes sense. Video can only get so small and still be watchable, though that’s largely subjective.
I’m doing most of my podcast watching on the big screen through the 360 though.
I find it interesting though that after years of speculation over what ‘creative’ thing Apple would do to achieve widescreen over a click-wheel — they just ended up doing the dead obvious thing.
Which is the one thing Microsoft ever had a chance of doing *first*.
SMS: I’d actually like to see a better SMS than the iPhone’s. The iPhone comes up short in a few departments, but IMHO, the SMS PWNS. Touch-to-dial, touch-to-email, just like any other device, plus a super-groovy interface…it’s excellent. I love it. But yes, there are myriad other smartphones out there, and I’ll be very excited to see how the BB Bold ad Thunder stack up; and I haven’t even seen the Nokia N’s or the Sidekick’s yet.
As for gaming: I really don’t think Apple has a snowball’s chance of beating the NDS or the PSP any time soon for the gaming platform of choice, even WITH their 4-year head starts. I’m just saying it’s obvious Apple wants to give it a go. But I do agree that there is potential, even with the cost…In the Touch’s case, $399 for a device that can surf the web, play music and video through iTunes, and can download new games on the fly, AND is significantly MORE portable than any other gaming device on the market? There’s definitely potential. And if the games stay in the $10 – $15 range, the price difference in the consoles becomes negligible.
My point being – maybe you should try using more ‘2nd rate’ mobile communication devices before trumpeting the iPhone as ‘the best’… 😀
PS: The anti-dote 😀
http://itnerd.wordpress.com/2008/09/09/apple-drops-new-ipods-and-a-new-version-of-itunes-fanbois-go-wild/
Well, I’ve compared it to the HTC Touch, the Diamond, the Sammy INstinct, the BB Curve, the BB Pearl, and the iPhone’s SMS trumps them all IMHO 🙂 ESPECIALLY the Instinct…what a massive disappointment that is.