A concise rundown of today’s Apple announcements – iPods, iTV, iTMS Movies
I thought I’d post some notes from Apple announcements today.
Video of the event can be found here. Engadget has a rundown here.
Overall:
- New 5G iPods – 30GB and 80GB
- New Nanos – 2GB, 4GB and 8GB
- New Shuffle – 1GB – friggin tiny
- iTunes now supports movies
- iTV, media extender for iTunes announced (released next year)
- No large video screen iPod
- No bluetooth iPod
Detailed info from the presentation (my comments in bold)
Market info:
- 75% market share – is this a decline? I thought they were up around 85%.
- 60M iPods shipped by the end of last quarter.
- 70% of 2007 model cars offer iPod connectivity as an option
- Nike+iPod kit sold 450,000 in less than 90 days since it came to market
- Sold 10M iPod shuffles
- iTMS has 88% Market share of legal US downloads
- 1.5Billion songs sold on iTMS
- Sellers of music in the US 1. Wal-Mart, 2. Best Buy, 3. Target. 4. Amazon, 5. iTunes. iTMS projected to beat Amazon in the next year.
- 2 new models – 30GB (US$249) and 80GB (US$349)
- 60% brighter screen
- 75% increase in battery life
- New headphones – they look the same as the old ones to me
- Gapless playback
- Search capability (songs, artists, albums, podcasts etc)
- Quick scrolling – a letter pops up when quickly scrolling through content
- Games – designed around the wheel - pretty basic looking games (pac man, poker etc), not sure the hardware is designed to handle high quality games ala PSP et al
- 3 models – 2GB (US$149), 4GB (US$199), 8GB (US$249)
- Made from aluminium
- Thinner than 1G
- Available in 5 colours (similar to iPod mini)
- Battery life increased from 14 – 24hr
- Quick scrolling, Search, New headphones, Gapless playback, 40% brighter display
- Comes in smaller packaging. 52% less packaging which makes it more environmentally friendly – or as Steve Jobs puts it “this turns out to be an environmentally great thing”
- New Nano ads – they look sexy!
- New 2G shuffle available (US$79)
- 1GB capacity
- It’s tiny
- Aluminium casing
- Built in clip
- Apple claims that it’s the worlds smallest
iTunes/iTMS
- iTunes 7 announced
- Now supports movies:
- – 75 of them to start with
- – New releases US$12.99 for pre-order of new releases. After the first week US$14.99
- – Existing library titles will be US$9.99
- – Same day release as DVD releases
- – Disney owned titles available – Disney, Miramax, Touchstone and Pixar
- – Same DRM as their TV shows downloads
- – 2007 they want to take it international – not sure if that includes Australia
- – You can watch movies as they download – so you don’t have to wait for full download
- Improved video res to 640×480 – (sarcastic) wow – a full 640×480
- New view of media called “cover flow view” – looks very sexy! JRMC are you listening?
- A whole bunch of hoo-ha about gapless playback in iTunes – JRMC (and others no doubt) has been doing this for years
- Whole bunch of new features which I (and by extension, you) could care less about
iTV
- It’s a media extender for iTunes – Same concept as Microsof’s MCE Extenders except MS supports PVR
- Due out next year
- Priced at US$299
- Will extend iTunes on mac or PC
- Network connected – wireless and wired
- “iTV” is a codename
- Connectors – HDMI connector, component video, optical audio
- Very sexy looking unit – it’s very small
- Not to mention the user interface is sexy – looks like frontrow
- No TV/PVR capability
- Engadget has more deets here and here.
-dg
Categories: Entertainment, Technology
Market info: Only 70% of new cars sold in the US have iPod connectivity (not 75% or worldwide!).
iPod: Only a 60-65% increase in battery (not that anyone should believes anything Apple says about their battery lives!). I don’t know if the iPod hardware is the limiting factor regarding the complexity of the games available – or simply Apple not wanting to compromise their clean/simple design philosophy with gaming controls on a music player.
iTMS: I know from a computer display perspective 640×480 doesn’t sound hi-res, but when you consider DVD is 720×576 (PAL) and 720×480 (NTSC) – it’s not far off – so I would imagine playback on a TV or an iPod would be pretty good.
iTV: Seriously? You think the iTV interface is sexy?
Finally: I don’t know if it’s just me, but when they finish with:
Apple is in your den
Apple is in your living room
Apple is in your car
Apple is in your pocket
I get scared!
Car connectivity: Correction – it is 70%, but he did specify US only.
640×480: I reckon that if you’re selling video content, specifically movies, to be streamed over to a TV in this day and age, you want better res.
iTV: Did u watch him use the video of him demoing? I thought it was slick.
World Domination: Thank god I don’t have a “den”.