At Apple’s highly anticipated “Music Event” today in San Francisco, CA, Steve Jobs unveiled a pretty impressive new lineup of products. Actually, most of these products wouldn’t be considered “new” at all, but Apple has made some favorable updates (and nice price drops!) to their already popular lineup:
iOS
iOS 4.1 for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad will be available next week as a free download from iTunes. The update will include some bug fixes for proximity, Bluetooth, and iPhone 3G performance as well as adding High Dynamic Range (HDR) photos, HD video upload over Wi-Fi, TV show rentals, and Game Center.
Also, Jobs announced that iOS 4.2 will launch sometime in November for iPad. The major features of the release will include “simple, powerful” wireless printing and Airplay, an Airtunes update to support streaming video. And finally, multi-tasking capabilities!
iPod
A new Shuffle was unveiled that appears to be about the size of a postage stamp. It includes buttons and voiceover, support for playlists and Genius mixes, and has a 15-hour playback time. The price for a 2GB model in your choice of 5 colors is only $49.
The Nano has been changed to an entirely new chassis-style (again!). This time, Apple has taken away the buttons in favor of a tiny multi-touch screen. While it looks cool, I always appreciated the ease with which Apple’s button controls let me navigate my media. Hopefully, they’re not sacrificing that here to accommodate the very cool look of the new Nano. It will be priced at $149 for the 8GB version and $179 for 16GB, and in a wide variety of color choices.
Though the look of the iTouch hasn’t changed in a notable way, the new model has added features that make it seem more like an iPhone minus the phone. It will include an A4 processor chip, a front-facing camera with Facetime support, an HD video camera on the back, and the much-hyped iPhone “Retina display”. The battery is supposed to last through 40 hours of playback time. Pricing is $229 for 8GB, $299 for 30 GB, and $399 for 60GB, with pre-orders available beginning today.
iTunes
Apple has basically made iTunes 10 into its own social networking client with the addition of Ping. Like Facebook or Twitter, Ping allows you to “friend” people you know (and those you don’t, including celebs) in order to follow others and share your opinions and tastes on music.
Reactions to Ping, from both myself and friends who were “live tweeting” the event weren’t overly enthusiastic. While it would be nice to have some social networking support included in iTunes, the addition of an entirely new social network seems like overkill. If you’re interested in such a thing, however, Ping is now open for business.
Apple TV
Jobs revealed a new, streaming-only Apple TV that is a fraction of the size of the last model, with a major price drop. It features a built-in power supply, HDMI, ethernet, a USB port and 802.11n wireless support.
An “all-rental” content library will be strictly HD, with a fair pricing structure: $4.99 for first-run HD movies and commercial-free HD TV rentals from ABC & FOX for $0.99. There is also full Netflix streaming support.
At $99, the new Apple TV has the potential to put some serious pressure on rival Roku.
Final Thoughts
All-in-all, it seemed like a pretty good showing from Apple today. While there’s nothing I want to jump online and buy today, there are definitely some nice-looking products that Steve Jobs showed off.
What’s your reaction to today’s event? Excitement? Disappointment? Let us know below.
