Much of the new Showtime event centered on introducing a fall refresh to the iPod line that, frankly, didn't deserve more than a press release and some promotion in the Apple Store. The new full-sized iPod is brighter: Good, because other recent PlaysForSure devices have had better screens for almost a year now. The battery life is longer (we'll believe the claims for exact playback times when we see them)—again something that the competition has been doing a better job than Apple on. The price reduction is welcome, and I guess bumping up from 60GB to 80GB is meaningful for both the people who actually watch video on that itty bitty screen.
New Nano? Again a pretty basic refresh, offering colors and aluminum, which makes them look just like the Mini that was so short-lived (though the new ones are smaller). The new Shuffle design is the only really new thing in the lineup, but the old stick-of-gum form factor was pretty lame, honestly. The new and improved headphones are a "feature" that should have been there for the last two years, because the old iPod headphones are absolutely god-awful.
Where's the Wi-Fi? Where's the "true" iPod Video everyone has been talking about, with the touch screen? Actually, a touch screen is a terrible idea because you'll just get smudges and scratches all over your screen, and you'll have a really hard time hitting the controls blind (say, while it's in your pocket). Still, the big iPod needs a screen that fills up at least 2/3rds of the front of the device. Still no built-in FM radio or radio recording? Lame.
For the most part, the changes to the iPod line are things Apple should have been doing to keep ahead of the competition over the last year. The true next generation of iPod that we all wanted Apple to launch to stay ahead of iRiver and Toshiba and Microsoft was nowhere to be found. And still, Apple fans are cheering.
I love me some Pixar movies. Really, I do. But I don't love any movie enough to pay $13 for a sub-DVD quality file that's loaded with DRM and can't even be burned to a DVD-R. It's telling that the only movie studios Apple could get on board with the iTunes program so far are the ones owned by Disney: You know, the company that Jobs practically owns now. The iTunes Movie Store is just as much of a crappy deal as all the other movie stores online right now (you know other places sell movies online, right?). Just buy DVDs, people. Getting 'em onto your hard drive or portable player isn't that hard.
Apple updated their TV shows to 640x480 up from one quarter that resolution (320x240). That's a step in the right direction, but $2 to download a TV show is still a bad deal. Networks don't get $2 worth of advertising on regular broadcast TV per viewer, so you're paying them more for the privilege of adding on the DRM. Downloading TV on iTunes is still no substitute for an actual TV recording, DVR-style application, which Apple still hasn't got. Nothing's in HD, either. VGA resolution is the minimum we should have had from the start.
iTunes 7 adds some new organizational features that are really welcome, especially after using Media Player 11, which does a better job of presenting your music collection. Cover Flow is pretty cool, but you can't really see enough of your collection at a glance. The library view in Media Player 11 is more useful, I feel. Microsoft's player has been adding album art to your tracks (and other missing track info!) for awhile now, so the automatic album art thing in iTunes 7 is a great addition, but one that should have been there ages ago. I guess it's nice to know that all your pirated music can look as good as the stuff you rip legitimately or pay to download.
iTunes needs a subscription service, not higher-res TV shows and sub-DVD quality movies. This per-track and per-video stuff is not a good deal. While I'm building the ire of scores of iTunes users, let me add this: Bragging about 1.5 billion songs sold in the last 3+ years doesn't seem like a great idea to me. Let's say the average CD has about 12 songs on it. That means in over three years, the iTMS has sold about 125 million CDs worth of music. Even conservative estimates put yearly sales of audio CDs at over 600 million a year, in the U.S. alone. So in three years, iTMS has managed to sell worldwide about as much music as one quarter of the annual U.S. CD market. But gee, that 1.5 billion number sure sounds big, doesn't it?
The product that everyone seems to be going gaga about is the iTV (Jobs said they need to come up with a better name for it). What's all the excitement about? We've had similar network media players in the PC market for a long time now. iTV is a Media Center Extender, only for Front Row instead of Media Center. There's still no TV recording. At $299, I doubt the "802.11" networking includes draft 802.11n and probably not 802.11a, either. Good luck streaming high-quality video across your average house with 802.11g or, god forbid, 802.11b. I get the feeling users that do more than photos and music are going to be plugging in that Ethernet jack and stringing CAT-5. Now, if Apple added a good quality DVD player into the box, it could have a welcome place under our TV, replacing our current DVD players with something that can do some cool network media stuff, too. For $299 I can get an Xbox 360, which is a full Media Center Extender, DVD player, and next-gen game console (though without built-in Wi-Fi). Maybe the best thing for iTV users would just be to rip all their DVDs to their Mac and stream them to the iTV, but that doesn't say much good about the iTunes Movie Store, does it?
Oh, and we didn't exactly hear Steve Jobs talking about some other "features" of iTunes 7, like how it breaks that QTFairUse program. Don't worry, a new version of QTFairUse dropped in less than a day that sorta works with iTunes 7.
I swear, whenever I see Steve Jobs take the stage to talk about the company's amazing innovations lately, I feel like putting a telethon number up. He's a consummate salesman, asking a willing audience to "pledge their support." That much is established. But do we have to be such willing participants to the show? Do we have to treat everything the company does like a moon landing? Can't we sit calmly in the audience and watch Jobs do his shtick, making critical notes like, "Didn't another company do this first?" or "Remember to test claims about battery life against competitors'" or even "how many tracks have sold on CDs in the last year?"
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