Well the big announcement from Apple this past week was a freshening up of the iPod hardware series. This years new hardware is led by the revamped iPod Nano which has gone back to it’s roots and gone to a taller and slimmer version, bye bye “fatty Nano” it was fun while you lasted. A few software upgrades to their iTunes software now at version 8.0, for the iPhone they are moving up to 2.1 which will address some past issues and hopefully help with the power draining black-hole of a battery. There is also an update to the Touch series getting a little thinner with built in volume controls. The 3 new versions of Touch are coming with a $100 dollar price cut across the board as well, 8GB for $229, 16GB for $299, and 32GB for $399.
The new Nano was the golden child of the show though coming in 8 new vibrant metallic colors. With some added gadgetry fun, the accelerometer technology has been added to the Nano. That’s the little bit of tech that changes the perspective of the iPhone and Touch from standard to wide-screen depending on how you hold it. It also has a cool new shuffle feature where all you have to do is shake your Nano and it will change the line up of your songs.
The big revelation for the software came in the form a new preference search engine called genius. If you choose to enable genius iTunes will get a looksy at what songs you have in your library and will recommend songs from your library as well as from iTunes that supposedly mix very well with the song you are playing. Just another way for the Apple machine to get you to buy more songs I’m sure. The other cool feature for iTunes 8 was an upgrade to the visualizer a very slick update to the old standard.
So what did you think of the updates from this year’s Apple conference? I have seen a lot of grumblings that it was rather routine and underwhelming. Pretty much what most analysts were expecting with no surprises other than Steve Jobs joking about the report of his death were greatly exaggerated. Despite it being ho hum it still garnered a lot more attention than what the Zune announcement from MS will bring next week. Apple still remains at the top of the heap and the darling of the media. Please share your opinion and thanks for reading.
2 Comments
I like the slimmer version of the Nano. Looks kind of more sexy. But I agree, not much has happened with the pod family this year. Maybe Apple is keeping the best surprises for next year.
@Discount iPod Nano -
other than Steve Jobs looking skinny and pushing the gaming aspect of the iPod market i was really underwhelmed.
3 Trackbacks
[...] Apple Upgrades No Big WoWs For 2008 | Music BlogShots: Share and Enjoy: [...]
[...] Apple Upgrades No Big WoWs For 2008 [...]
[...] get your music fix online you had to purchase the tunes from your favorite online store for either iTunes or anotherMP3 selling [...]