Apple’s “Let’s Rock” iPod and iTunes Event

I was very interested to see what sort of new products would be unveiled by Apple on Tuesday, and I have to say, there's some interesting news based on what they showed us.  If you were following any speculation leading up to the event then there isn't much in the way of surprise, but what I'm most interested in is the way they're trying to market some of their products moving forward.  Let's start with iTunes.

iTunes 8.0 was officially released Tuesday, as always a free download, and it brings some new functionality to the old standby application which the bulk of people turn to for their music management.  Firstly, you get a new gridview for music that's very similar to the layout of the stacks gridview.  Really this was sort of already implemented into iTunes with the App Store though.  If you have downloaded any applications for your iPhone or iPod Touch you'll have noticed that the applications tab basically lists your installed mobile apps in a gridview.  Take that feature and apply it to your music albums and you get the idea.  They also brought NBC back to iTunes so if you're hankering for some new episodes of The Office this Fall you can get them from iTunes for $1.99 (standard definition) or $2.99 (high definition).  Apple has also figured out how to make the high definition content viewable on your computer so if you don't have an Apple TV you won't be left out.

The most important feature added in iTunes 8.0 is Genius.  Genius does its best to create playlists for you based on certain songs in your music collection, similar to how Pandora or Last.fm work.  So for example, if I'm listening to a Deftones song and I would like to make a playlist of 25 songs that Genius thinks is similar to it, I click the Genius bar and bam - all of the songs that are similar to my Deftones track are ready to be played in succession.  The only downside is that, since Genius is only limited to your iTunes library (despite making recommendations from the iTunes store) you won't get as many accurate matches as you do from Pandora or Last.fm (services which pull from their own, expansive libraries of music).  Right now I'm listening to a Genius playlist based on the song by Deftones called "Anniversary of an Uninteresting Event," a relatively mellow song, and so Genius has pulled in 24 other songs it thinks are similar.  Some matches are spot on like A Perfect Circle's "Vanishing" or Team Sleep's "Our Ride to the Rectory," while others are a little more questionable.  For instance, how is DragonForce's much heavier "My Spirit Will Go On" or "Storming the Burning Fields" similar to "Anniversary of an Uninteresting Event?"  Both are heavy power metal songs where as, like I said, "Anniversary of an Uninteresting Event" is a melodic and atmospheric piano piece for the most part.  Intriguing to say the least.

Still, Apple promises that as more and more users use Genius it will become smarter over time (it makes records of everyone's iTunes libraries anonymously).  I still wish there was a way to approve or disapprove matches though.  In any case Apple's event on Tuesday wasn't all about iTunes - there was plenty of iPod news to go along.  First off, to no one's surprise, they showed off the new version of the iPod Nano.  Gone is the "iPod Phat" design from last year and now we get a nice tall, skinny version of the tiny player with a nice curved design and widescreen display.  The Nano even has some accelerometer functionality.  Steve Jobs showed how you could shake the Nano in order to initiate a shuffle of your music!  As cool as it sounds I think this feature might suffer from the Nintendo Wii complex; that is it sounds cool in theory but is anyone going to want to shake about their MP3 player in public?  The Nanos come in a plethora of new colors as well, ranging from professional-looking black and aluminum to  the more fun pink, orange and (my personal favorite) green variants.

Next up is the iPod Touch.  Now, I just got an iPod Touch not too long ago so I was sort of hoping in the back of my mind that the updates wouldn't be too significant.  Needless to say I'm a little disappointed.  Aside from getting a much-needed price drop the Touches were also graced with a bit of a hardware design and new hardware features that I'm envious of.  The most notable features are the new volume rocker and external speaker, two features that I'd honestly love to have on my 1st generation iPod Touch.  The physical volume rocker is kind of obvious - it would be nice to be able to change volume without having to even take the device out of my pocket - but the external speaker is a justified phenomena that you might not understand unless you have an iPod Touch or iPhone.

I'm not sure if the same is true for most iPod Touch users but I find myself carrying mine without headphones.  There's so much you can do with the iPod Touch that doesn't require them that I find myself content to just browse the internet, check my email and use applications rather than listen to music or watch videos.  Still, it's that one time when you'd like to have your headphones with you and you don't that makes you realize how important the external speaker is.  For example, what if you want to watch a YouTube video?  You don't really need great sound to watch a YouTube video, just something passable.  However if you're like me and you tend to leave your headphones behind then you're kind of stuck.  The external speaker is perfect for that.  Basically what it does is make the iPod Touch more of a portable computer than just an iPod that also has computer-esque features.

I think one important thing to note about the new iPod Touch is how Apple has chosen to market it.  It's no secret that the App Store is full of a bunch of different games, some of which are free and others that cost money.  Because of this they dedicated an entire portion of their presentation to showing off some upcoming games for the iPod Touch, and have labeled the iPod Touch the "funnest iPod yet!"  Sounds to me like they're going after some of the portable gaming market.  Maybe they were inspired when John Carmack noted that Apple's mobile offerings are more powerful than either the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP?  I think the fundamental difference between the iPod Touch and other portable gaming consoles is that Apple wants to sell hardware, not software.  Sony and Nintendo are glad that you're purchasing their systems but where they really make money is on the games.  Is the same true for Apple?  A lot of the games, as I mentioned, are free or relatively cheap.  I'm not sure how that will figure into their strategy but it may have an impact.

Apple made some other announcements of course, such as that of the iPhone and iPod Touch firmware 2.1 release this week, the iPod Classic moving to just one SKU, a 120GB model.  Neither announcements are really that important I don't think (the update is mostly bug fixes/Genius integration, and the iPod Classic is probably product phase-out).  So that's it really.  No huge changes, just some expected news that was leaked by Kevin Rose and others well before the actual event in true Apple style.  There is one last part of the keynote I wanted to share though, and that's Steve Jobs poking fun at some of the unrest about his health.  After WWDC questions were flying as to whether Mr. Jobs had been stricken with cancer again, and to that he simply replied "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."  Well said, I think.

If you want to watch the keynote you can now view the quicktime version by clicking here.

Now Playing:
DragonForce - My Spirit Will Go On
Crysis