Today’s Apple Special Event was indeed very eventful with updates to all of the iPod families (except the venerable hard drive version) and announcement of Apple TV version 2 as well as updates on iOS 4.1 and 4.2. You can watch the full Steve Jobs keynote here:
Here are some the highlights:
iPod shuffle
Physically it’s reverting from the last buttonless incarnation to the previous button-ful look while retaining the VoiceOver features [$49]
iPod nano
Radical new design that’s looks like an oversized iPod shuffle with the front being a touch screen. NOTE: he new nano appears to lose the previous model’s camera and video playback support [8GB/$149, 16GB/$179]
iPod touch
Bill’s wishes appear to have come true as the new iPod touch gains all the goodies he was hoping to see:
- Retina display
- Front and rear facing cameras
- Support for FaceTime
- HD video recording
- A4 processor & 3-axis gyroscope
In other words, it’s exactly an iPhone 4 without the phone part [8GB/$229, 32GB/$299, 64GB/$399]
Apple TV
The Apple TV loses the internal hard drive, the ability to sync with your computer, the ability to buy movies and video rather than just rent, and significant size and weight while gaining Netflix support and a huge price cut ($99!) I’m a tad bit annoyed by the loss of on-board storage but the Netflix support alone is a big win.
You can also now stream video from your iPad, iPod touch or iPhone to the Apple TV using AirPlay, an expanded version of the old Air Tunes remote speakers feature. No announced support for doing the same from your iMac or MacBook but hopefully that will be coming in a future Mac OS X update.
iTunes 10
The new big revision of iTunes brings more interface tweaks and Ping which brings social networking to the iTunes Store (“Ah, I see you have the machine that goes PING!”) FaceBook fans will probably rejoice while everyone else will just say “Meh”.
Oh, and Apple is replacing the venerable old CD based iTunes logo with a new stylized one that didn’t seem to impress Collin very much.
This is supposed to be available today but at the moment the Apple iTunes page just says it’s coming soon.
iOS 4.1
Coming next week, iOS 4.1 is mainly a bug fix for the issues created in iOS 4.0. It does however add potentially very useful features: High Dynamic Range photos, HD video uploads to YouTube and Game Center. This will be a free update for all iPhone and iPod touch owners.
iOS 4.2
iPad owners will really appreciate this one. Coming in November, iOS 4.2 beings all the cool 4.0 features (multi-tasking, folders, etc.) to the iPad. It also brings something that we’ve all been clamoring for: PRINTING. Yes, Apple will finally provide support for printing from iPad, iPhone and iPod touch devices. This will be another free update for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch users.
And that’s about it. Follow the links for more details and leave your comments below.
Comments & Trackbacks
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OK – this appears to be all good stuff. To me the new Apple TV sounds a bit like a cat chasing its tail. See if I have this right. You no longer sync music from the desktop to Apple TV. You can stream music from your iPad, iPhone, iTouch. To get music on these devices, you sync music from your desktop but you can’t stream music from the desktop? Something is missing here, this can’t be right. I am glad they kept the name Apple TV instead of using iTV.
Carolyn
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From what I can gather you can no longer sync anything to the Apple TV because Apple removed the internal hard drive, probably replacing it with just enough flash memory storage to handle streaming. You can stream music, photos and movies from your desktop Mac to the Apple TV. In addition you can send video from your iPhone, iPod touch and iPad to the Apple TV but I’m guessing only external video out and not mirroring the display.
What I didn’t see mentioned is the ability to stream video from a Mac to the Apple TV, i.e. to treat it like a secondary screen. That would be really nice. Hopefully it will come later.
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Well…. I do have two minor squabbles with the touch. First, the rear camera is no where near as good as the one in any iPhone that has shipped to date. Also, the LED flash from the iPhone 4 is missing. The inferior camera is no doubt a consequence of the ultra thin form factor the iPod Touch uses. I would have traded a little bulk for a better camera.
That said, most of the photos I’ll take will most likely stay digital rather than be printed. For those cases, the camera is fine. Anyone who wants to print photos taken by the touch will probably be disappointed.