David Emery OnlineApple hits it out the park
12 September 2006
I was privileged enough to attend the live telecast of the Apple “Showtime” event today, and boy – was it a good one. Sometimes the Apple rumour mill gets so ridiculous that almost no matter what happens it seems like a disappointment. Not this time, though. A quick rundown below:
Mildly updated big iPods: Obviously these weren’t the touch-screen iPods that some people were expecting, but I wasn’t – the current big iPods are a very nice package, and the addition of more storage, brighter screen and longer battery are obviously welcome ones. It didn’t need anything else, to be honest. The mild software tweaks – searching and letter pop-up on scroll – both look like they’ve been implemented really well and just put the iPod even further ahead of the competition.
iPod Games: This is a very interesting move from Apple – it’s the first time they’ve opened up the iPod to external software developers in any way – it’ll be interesting to see if they allow other developers to start developing for it (my guess: not yet, but eventually). I can see the iPod game market becoming pretty large, and I think the price – £3.99/game – is the right one.
iPod Nano: I’m very, very slightly disappointed with the new Nano, even though it’s perfect. The looks I think are just a bit too much like the iPod mini, but I’m sure they will sell like hot cakes.
iPod Shuffle: WOW! No one saw that coming! The size is pretty amazing, and the price – £55 – is nice and low; I’m trying to come up with a reason why anybody wouldn’t want one – I certainly do, and I already have a full size iPod.
iTunes 7: All the new features are really nice – obviously the new CoverFlow view is the headline feature here, but they’ve finally done a bit of reorganisation which make the whole program make a bit more sense. I am, however, extremely disappointed with the interface look – other then CoverFlow, it simply doesn’t look good. Not only doesn’t it look good, it doesn’t look like a Mac app at all – all the buttons and scroll bars are all different, and throughout the app new interface elements have been created. It looks a mess, and I really expected more from Apple.
Movies on iTunes: What I expected really – nice to see the res being upped to 640×480, but otherwise nothing too exciting. I may get more interested when both movies and TV shows are actually available in the UK…
iTV: I want one. Now. Personally, this looks like the perfect solution to the problem of how to interface the computer with the TV. The interface is perfect (and also what Front Row will look like in Leopard, I presume), and the price is right as well.
All in all, I think this may have been one of the most interesting events Apple we’ve had in ages. It’ll be interesting to see what they do next.