By Harry McCracken | Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Today, Steve Jobs and company announced iPhone OS 3.1 (Genius mixes, ringtones); iTunes 9 (iPhone LP content, iPhone app management, fancier syncing, media transfers, new look); cheaper iPod Touches with more capacity; iPod Shuffles in new colors with a lower starting price point and a stainless steel version; a capacity bump for the iPod Classic to 160GB; and an iPod Nano in fancy new colors with with a video camera, FM tuner, voice recorder, and pedometer. It also gave a bunch of iPhone OS game companies a chance to show their new wares. Oh, and Steve Jobs returned to the stage and Norah Jones sang a couple of songs.
Seems to cry out for a T-Poll:
September 9th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
The Steve aspect was far more compelling and intriguing than anything regarding their product line-up. And what was the deal with doing it on 9/9/9? To shroud it in “Beatles, Maybe?!” mystery or something?
September 9th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
I try to think of any tech company that can release such a wide variety of “upgrades” that improves a line of products, in clear and understandable, and is ready “now.”
I can’t think of a one.
September 9th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
The only think that we knew for sure going into today’s announcement was the the iPod Touch was getting a camera. Every rumor site reported it as pretty much a done-deal. That they failed to deliver on the one thing that everyone was expecting is a pretty big disappointment.
Had they added a camera to the 16GB Touch and priced that at $199, Zune HD would be DOA. By leaving the Touch unchanged, for the most part, they’ve really left a door open for the Zune HD.
September 9th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
@Seumas,
I have a feeling Apple chose the date in case a deal was struck in time to offer Beatles music. It obviously didn’t happen and now they’ll probably won’t say anything about why they chose that date. Their events are usually on Tuesdays so they REALLY wanted that 9/9/09 date. Something must have gone wrong.
September 9th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
The rumor mill was obviously very active this time. We do have some idea that at least some iPod models were having issues with their cameras, so it’s very possible that the upgrade we were hoping for was postponed and the announcement pushed the products that were fully ready instead. Now whether or not this means that the Touch will get a camera later is still anybody’s guess.
However, before you go saying the Touch [i]has[/i] to have a camera, keep in mind that such an upgrade could easily pull sales away from the iPhone, what with the possibility of VOIP getting added to the app store. Personally, I more prefer the fact that the video camera went into the Nano, putting it in competition with the Flip, Panasonic, Kodak and a number of other manufacturers who have similarly-sized video-only devices at about the same price. By adding the camera to the iPod Nano, you can have your video camera, and your music too.
Even so, all the upgrades and improvements listed were hardly attention-grabbing headlines. The upgrades to iTunes 9 are ok, but where hitting the ‘+’ key used to let you switch between the mini player and the full window, now it barely resizes the window and you have to use a keyboard shortcut instead… to me a very annoying change. The other changes seem nice, but it’s going to take me a while to get used to them; they’re not as intuitive as iTunes used to be.
However, the ability to synchronize libraries on multiple machines within one household is really neat, it eliminates the need for 3rd-party synchronization apps and does it more elegantly, making it easy to pick and choose what you want from the other machine and add it to your own library. It really can be frustrating when you synch both libraries automatically and discover the only difference between two copies of a tune is how you tweaked the info tag.
As for iPhoneOS 3.1, again it seems to be a nonevent. I can’t really see where there were any noticeable changes, though I admit I’m using a 3G, not a 3G(s).
September 9th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
@Vulpine:
I’m very much glad that Apple abandoned iTunes’ improper resize button response. The button should behave uniformly across all applications.
If you still want the old behavior, though, just option-click it.
September 9th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
it was ok for me, i wanted camera in my ipod touch. so i won’t be spending my $400 this year on apple product, oh well.
September 10th, 2009 at 6:41 am
I think the date had more to do with the fact that they were dealing with labor day weekend – that they are always on the day after the week starts to accommodate travel. They couldn’t do it on Monday due to Labor day and Tuesday could have cut off people unwilling to travel on a holiday weekend.
I think it is merely a coincidence that it fell on the Beatles Rock Band and the remastered album release date being that they both happened early in September. I think that Apple knew the Beatles were not going to be there, after all why use the title of a Rolling Stones song? All those banners and things were not determined on a whim – those were well planned out.
September 11th, 2009 at 8:37 am
The nano is a very cool product and they have made it extremely competitive now. Yes people are upset that the iPod Touch did not receive a camera, but remember the blame for that dissapointment must be shared with the rumour sites etc. They always hype and dictate what Apple should be making, when these products do not materialise most people are upset and feel done over.
Forget what was expected and concentrate on what has been released; the nano is a very strong product, the iPod Touch was a strong product to begin with, they have made it even better for the target audience – even if this is subtle they have empowered it as a games machine with the faster processor + graphics set. The storage has increased to 64GB which is huge. I am running the 3GS and the difference is fantastic, night and day.
But at the end of the day, with all companies and products, if you don’t like their stuff don’t buy it.
iRob – Isle of Man.