Apple Announces New iPods, iTunes 10, Social Network, AppleTV 579
Steve Jobs gave his iPod keynote this morning. He started with iOS 4.1 and Game Center which will be coming out next week. iOS 4.2 will add printing to the iPad and will be out in November. The new iPod Shuffle has buttons again, and costs $49. The new iPod Nano has a tiny multi-touch screen, and an FM radio, and starts at $149. The new (thinner) Touch has the iPhone 4 screen, an A4 chip, and FaceTime over WiFi, starting at $229 for 8GB. They all ship next week.
iTunes 10 looks the same, but adds a social network called "Ping," which basically looks like Last.fm integrated, and should be out today.
AppleTV is updating: 1/4th the size, no purchases — only rentals. 99 cents for TV rentals (ABC & Fox), Netflix on Demand built in, and for $99.
Re:AppleTV? (Score:3, Interesting)
It will be interesting to see how it compares to GoogleTV once that launches. If GoogleTV does even half of what they say it will, things will get mighty interesting mighty quick.
Hoping for Shuffle UI improvement (Score:2, Interesting)
I use a Shuffle to play nasty industrial "music" to get me through gym sessions. The gen. 2 Shuffle worked very nicely, but eventually succumbed to some combination of sweat and battery cycle limit. The gen. 3 that I got to replace it has been a bitter disappointment.
I can only hope that the newly announced Shuffle has cured itself of the extreme idiocy of having the controls embedded in the earphone cord. "Ear buds" do not work for me - they fail to block external noise, and they fall out of my presumably alien mutant (not-Apple-spec.) ears. I ended up having to buy a $20 Belch-kin accessory to be able to use a decent Sennheiser sports headset.
Navigation with the single-button control has been an unspeakable horror. Having to click 3 times to move backward, would be a challenge for me if I were doing nothing else, and is made worse while I am grinding away on a stationary bike. I end up getting voice titles, fast forwards, replays, and anything other than the steady backward progression through recently played songs, that I wanted.
I want something small and minimal: no glowing screens. I want something that was designed to be USED.
Bluetooth for the nano (Score:2, Interesting)
they just kicked Facebook in the balls... (Score:1, Interesting)
... I'm a little stunned that the ping 'iTunes Social Network' isn't getting more attention. They just completely ripped off Facebook, basically verbatim. It will have proper privacy controls, be linked in to all of your iTunes media purchases... and basically instantly on all iOS devices. Sure it was pitched as a way to talk about music, but only to distract people from the fact that it does everything Facebook does (pictures, general status updates and conversations, Liking, etc). I don't see how they avoid a lawsuit from Facebook, but more directly, I think it will be an instant smash hit and will erode Facebook's userbase considerably-- particularly if they do privacy controls properly.
Don`t forget Apple TV (Score:3, Interesting)
If I wasn`t living in one of countries which Apple/MPAA/RIAA whatever makes impossible to buy/rent stuff from iTMS, I would order Apple TV right now.
If it has no hidden evil terms, 100 dollars, quicktime/itms, I am sold.
This was a test... (Score:3, Interesting)
A test of the new Apple data center.
I read that this event was used to test out the ability of the new data center that Apple built. I assume that the new Apple TV content will be served from this site, and they wanted a good test to see how well it worked out.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/20/apple-data-center/ [techcrunch.com]
The only thing I was hoping for (Score:2, Interesting)
was iTunes Lite. iTunes doesn't need to be a 100MB behemoth; Red Chair Software had great iPod syncing software that fit within 5MB, a streamlined Winamp install can take less than 10MB, and you can't POSSIBLY lead me to believe that the other 85MB is required to make purchases. Cut it down to a manageable size, remove the networking crap, and stay the HELL out of my startup entries. Am I being unreasonable here?
Re:appletv = fail (Score:3, Interesting)
* You can not mount a network hard drive (without hacking it)
* You can not mount a usb hard drive (without hacking it)
* Format support is very limited. For example: you can not play xvid, divx and a bunch of other formats
I think you're currently better off connecting a computer to your tv and run VLC on it... unless of course you like apple dictating what technology and media you have access to.
How much is your time worth? It's $99 !!! No cables, no computer in the loop. You can use your computer while the kids watch the video. And if you need to do all the BS you want you can just do that on your computer and stream in in H264 to the device. Don't give me some rubbish about the transcode from xvid ruining the picture quality. If you care about that then you are 0.00001% of the market.
Apple TV will own the market. (Score:4, Interesting)
This is the change that EVERYONE was waiting for. This puts Tv on demand at the pricepoint that even cheap-ass ol' me will even pay. That's $12.00 a year per TV show (as most tv shows are half assed and only release 12 episodes a year / season) So if I get rid of Comcast or Dish at even the low price rate of $39.00 a month. I can watch 39 specific TV show episodes per month for the same price. This is far more than I can watch anyways because 99% of what is on cableTV sucks. And these are commercial free.
This means I'll pay about 1/3rd of what I pay for cableTV a month to get the programming I want. The ONLY problem is that TV shows like Colbert Report and Daily show are 4 times a week, and I cant see the audience of those tv shows paying $32.00 a month just to watch those two shows.
Now, what I want to know is does the interface give me a custom "shows I like" menu that will show that I have not watched or what is new, or will it be like the crappy current interface where I have to go searching for everything......
Steve said over and over "it is easy to use" well; easy to use is a menu of only my stuff I like....
Internet a la carte TV; don't need DVR (Score:3, Interesting)
You forgot the >$60/mo for cable TV service to get data to that DVR.
This is (well, is the beginning of) what-you-want when-you-want pay-for-only-what-you-want Internet-driven "a la carte" TV in a cheap ($99) convenient (power, HDMI, done) small (hockey puck) package which people have been clamoring for. It renders the DVR obsolete.
Wonder when networks will talk Apple into pushing free, but commercial-laden, episodes.
Re:The top things AppleTV users requested... (Score:3, Interesting)
What they've given you instead is a way to cancel the DVR service ($10/mo) and cable service ($60/mo) and instead get the 10-20 episodes you actually watch for $0.99 each without missing anything or getting overwritten by a President's speech. It's a la carte television! If Comcast let us pay for only what we watched you'd be dancing in the streets. Instead people love to find a way to hate Apple.
TiVo already does DVR pretty well. What could Apple really have added there?
Re:Apple TV will own the market. (Score:4, Interesting)
No way I'd pay $1 to watch a TV episode once. Don't know about others, but assuming a $1 price point to own a song is more or less legitimate, can't see paying that much for a single viewing of a TV show. I value the vast majority of TV shows less than a single good song, so even $1 to own a TV show episode is pushing it (this may be why the only TV shows I own copies of are Firefly, Flying Circus, and Fawlty Towers).
Question for Apple fans.. (Score:1, Interesting)
So we have the iPad now, which many of you rushed out to buy. It's missing a lot of basic things connectivity and storage wise. Things what it's obvious people wants.
So Apple of course planned this and the Next iPad will Solve All Your Problems. Nevermind that your problems are artificially created.
So my question is, when you rush out and buy the Next iPad that Solves All The Problems that Apple made inherent to the current iPad specifically _so_ you'd buy the next one, won't you feel really stupid? I mean, seriously? We both know it's going to happen.
Re:Really? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I am prob one of the only people here with an (Score:1, Interesting)
Accommodate early adopters with buyer's remorse? I would think that the number of DVD drives sold independently of PCs would show that adding an upgrade for 1/10 or 1/20 the cost makes a lot of sense. It may be that this generation of AppleTV will only have TV's x years or older as a market, but that is the market that first went HD and so likes toys. If Apple is able to upgrade AppleTV over the years to be the equivalent of *latest features in new TVs* and the TV manufacturers don't make their TVs software upgradeable (and what is their incentive to do so?) AppleTV could be viable longterm. After a little experience in this market, they could parlay their alliance with AT&T into designing a friendly user interface for U-Verse.
Re:Question for Apple fans.. (Score:3, Interesting)
When the market is awash in ipad killer competitors that do everything the ipad doesn't, THEN I'll get involved in fanboy bashing with you, but until then, the ipad may not be perfect, but you can at least actually BUY one.
And the icon for this article... (Score:3, Interesting)
... is a decade-plus-old Palm--why, exactly?