Apple
September 5, 2007 09:23 PM PST
Apple's New iPod Lineup
So in case you missed it Jobs got on stage and announced the latest round of changes to the music side of the business. Here's what we know:
- Now you can buy Ring tones!!! Seriously, and they are only an additional .99 over the price you already paid for the song. Oh and you can only make ring tones from some of the songs, not all.
- The shuffle is now available in new colors - yawn.
- The nano has been replaced by the nano fatty(tm). It supports Qvga res movies on a two in screen. It has a new interface with coverflow. Batt life is 24 hours music, 5 hours video. 4G is 149 in silver only, 8G in many colors for 199.
- The current regular iPods are now called the iPod classic (kinda like coke classic?) and have a new metal case. They are thinner than previous and available up to 160GB. They also have a new interface with coverflow etc. 80G is 249 with batt life of 25 hours music, 5 hours video. 160G is 349 with 40 hours music and 7 hours video.
- New 3rd party games are available for iPods and for sell on iTunes.
- And the item everyone has been waiting for - an Apple PocketPC, err, iPod Touch. This new iPod is basically an iphone minus the phone and camera and shiny chrome bezel. They are a little shorter and only .315" thick. They only come in flash based versions of 8G or 16G. The big surprise was that they went ahead and included WIFI. (Review my predictions on that). It has the same screen as the iPhone, and most of the same apps and features, including Safari and the awesome web development model. No need to re-mention all the features here. 8G is 299, 16G is 399. Batt life is 22 hours music, 5 hours video.
- Itunes Wi-Fi music store. -Of course. Can buy music from the iPod Touch or iPhone and download direct to the device. When you sync it copies the tunes back to your computer.
- Partnership with Starbucks. Eventually (and I do mean eventually) you will be able to access the iTunes Wi-Fi store for free from any S-Bucks. You will also be able to see and purchase the song currently playing in the store as well as the last 10 tracks.
- And the big whopper: 4G iPhone is out, and 8G has been price reduced to 399! - Ouch to those that bought early.
Commentary:
I'm jazzed about the wifi. That was a gamble since it would cut into the iPhone a bit. But surprise, Jobs countered by reducing the iPhone price to only $100 more. I'm disappointed that they didn't announce any bluetooth support. I'm still going to hold to my previous prediction on this and say that I'll bet the Touch has bluetooth built in to be 'enabled' at a future date. At any rate we'll find out as soon as they start shipping and some net-tard disassembles his live on YouTube. Many people are disappointed that the touch was not available in a hard drive version. I guess I'm on the fence here. We all know that flash is the future. But on the other hand it kinda sucks that your new expensive shiny won't hold all your tunes, not to mention all the sweet videos you want to load it up with.
Other things missing from the announcement:
- The ability to buy from iTunes direct to the Apple TV.
- The ability to stream from your PC directly to the iPod Touch. - I'm sure it is coming.
- Any mention of adhoc wifi support ala Zune. Apple has plenty of opportunity to make that capability cool (Think Nintendo DS).
Comments (13)
Another thing I really think they should have / will do at some point is the integration of a camera with the iPod. -At least with the HD based iPod. A camera would let you record full frame rate mp4 video in addition to photos. With the Wifi you would be able to upload content directly to Flickr, YouTube or .mac. -This sort of thing seems a natural fit for Apple's new 'consumer' focuse. It also seems a natural complement to the iLife app suite.
The thing that I take away from this announcement is the possibility of what might be. The wifi on the iPod is just the beginning, but it's still missing the camera, larger capacity, trading with others, etc. I guess we'll have to wait until Apple trickles out those features over the next few years.
I was also hoping that they'd announce that The Beatles would appear (sans DRM) on iTunes. I like enough of their songs that I'd probably buy a few albums.
Personally I think they should have gone portrait mode on the nano (ala zune). That would force you to hold it on it's side to watch movies, but at least they could have kept it similar to the old nano form factor.
Here is an interesting factoid:
Old nano:
* Height: 3.5 inches
* Width: 1.6 inches
* Depth: 0.26 inch
* Weight: 1.41 ounces
New nano:
* Height: 2.75 inches (69.8 mm)
* Width: 2.06 inches (52.3 mm)
* Depth: 0.26 inch (6.5 mm)
* Weight: 1.74 ounces (49.2 grams)
3.5 x 1.6 = 5.6 sq in
2.75 x 2.06 = 5.665 sq in
Ok so technically it is the same size. But the new one does way .33 ounces more.
This pricing is just another example of the "myth of the phone subsidy." Time and again we see hardware sold without any service agreement at basically the same price as the supposed subsidized carrier phones. Remember when you could get a VGA width Dell Axim with 624mhz processor for $300, and yet the equivalent phone was over $300, WITH a 2 year agreement? Same thing here with the iPod Touch / iPhone. Won't someone make an unlocked phone that just accepts any freaking SIM card?
Agreed that the ringtone thing is ridiculous, haven't read any reviews that think it's reasonable. It's a freaking music player - just point the ringtone to an existing song! I guess the iPhone hacks already let you do this for free. I wouldn't be surprised if it was AT&T pushing for this additional charge (which Apple was happy to get a piece of).
I like the "classic", it seems like a reasonable update and the 160GB capacity is pretty awesome.
Totally agree that the nano should have been in portrait mode. Much better use of space.
Standard Apple hobbling the iTouch device by (apparently) not including bluetooth to support a headset/mic for VoIP calls. With that capability, I'd consider this a great deal over the iPhone. I use the phone feature so little that the $2K contract is ridiculous for me, but I still need to take that occasional call. I'm fine with using data only in WiFi zones.
I'm fine with the capacity and the lack of camera. I'm a DSLR guy so these minicams just don't cut it for me anyway. I'm most interested in using the iTouch as a mobile web browser. It's the best mobile web experience I've ever seen. I hate to still have to carry around my cheap phone though...
Overall I'm pretty excited about the future direction, and we've sure seen a bunch of other manufacturers planning for doing touch screen phones now too, so the market might heat up.
Do you guys know if the iTouch is going to have a virtual scroll wheel? It would seem strange that the new interface is just a scroll bar, since so many iPod clones had the scroll bar. If it supports multitouch, it should have been easy to do a circular touch wheel that maybe pops up with more than one finger on the screen.
In related news Apple drops the iPod Hi-Fi. This product was about as good an idea as the Foleo... :-)
First: "a bunch of other manufacturers planning for doing touch screen phones...". What you mean is that the 'bunch' of manufacturers that have already been selling touch screen phones for years are finally going to get serious and make them usable. Just because people never noticed touch screen phones before doesn't mean they haven't been on the market for many, many years now.
Second: the iTouch is not going to have a virtual scroll wheel. The interface is exactly the same as the iPhone. Flick to scroll.
Oh John, don't you know that nothing exists 'till Apple markets it? :-)
Flick to scroll may work for the smaller storage size of the iPod touch. But I'm not sure what the resistance has been to doing a virtual scroll wheel.
Check out the guided tour. It will show how they deal with large libraries. Flick is a natural interface. Moving your finger around in a circle is not. -It works well, just not a natural.
http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/guidedtour/
Jobs is giving out 100 dollars to all existing iPhone owners! Granted it is in store credit, but again Jobs surprises me.
Desperately trying to fit your entire music collection into a 16G iTouch? A product has popped up that claims to cut the size of your mp3 files in half with no* noticeable loss in quality. (* ok that really depends on a lot of things). Their scheme is supposed to do a better job than most MP3 encoders VBR settings and works on existing MP3s rather than having to start over from the CD source. Wired checked it out here. It costs 40 bucks though! Is it worth it? Would any of you use something like that so you can cram 32G of music in 16G of space?
Somebody really likes the iTouch.
I'm going to pick up one of these dogs with my $100 coupon and employee discount.