- iPod: 60% brigher screen. Increased battery life (which it desperately needed). New headphones. Gapless playback on digital music (matching their (old) iTunes feature of crossfade slightly). Instant searching for music. You can play games on the iPod now (albeit sucky ones when you consider what PSP has but their point is to ad a perk to the iPod not give you portable gaming). Price is down to $249 for 30gb.
- iPod Nano: comes in thinner, aluminum and colored. Battery life increased considerably. 40% brighter display. New headphones. Double the storage for same price ($249 for 8gb). New iPod charger.
- iPod shuffle: even smaller. Instead of losing a packet of gum you can now lose something a fraction of that size. Aluminum case with a built in clip so you can wear it—basically as big as half your thumb. Comes with a USB 2.0 dock, 1gb storage and earbuds and it’s being sold for $79 bucks.
- iTunes: Funny, he kept reemphasizing “legally distributed music”. Itunes is one of the top 5 sellers of music: the top 4 are physical cd sellers (1: Walmart, 2: Best Buy; 3: Target; 4: Amazon).Cleaned up the menus and libraries. Added new views that (1) lets you see the album art and (2) Cover flow view of every playlist (which seems redundant to me. It’s basically just giving you a shot of the cover with a cool interface) then if you have an iTunes account and you don’t have album art they give you a free download—no mention of doing the same for the cover art. Videos are now being delivered at 640×480 for better quality. Updater in iTunes instead of having to do that (slightly annoying) synchronizing bit. What’s cool is that they have a feature that lets you do the 10 most recent unwatched shows to synch into your ipod so you don’t have to manually do it. Gapless playback which has zero gap between songs. Finds the songs that were meant to be played gapless so that this works (like Dark Side of the Moon). Movies are going to be available on iTunes the same day they’re released on DVD and priced at 12.99 for new releases then they go up to 14.99. Library titles will be 9.99 everyday. I think its a tad expensive for “near-dvd quality”.
- iTV: lets you enjoy your media on your tv. It’s not the real name yet. Takes the movies you have on your computer via a wireless broadcast and sends it to your tv. USB2. Ethernet. HDMI connector. Component Video. Optical Audio. Let’s you see movie previews, podcasts, your photos, music from the internet, your computer, the apple store on your tv.
2 responses to “Apple Keynote: Taking Over Your iLife”
That was the most clear and concise wrap-up I read all day. Thanks.
Too bad I just bought Cocoa a white Nano for her 10th birthday. She’d have liked the blue. (On the other hand, she keeps in a case all the time anyway…)
Thanks man. I’m torn between the Nano in aluminum (sleek) and lime-green (I thought about justifying that with a Matrix reference but it wouldn’t hold water).