Well, I was going to wait to start blogging a little longer but quite frankly I just don’t think I can. So I will start off with Apple’s big news they threw at the world earlier today. I made sure to read Engadget’s live blog of the keynote in San Francisco in class as it was happening. The world knew what Steve Job’s planned on unveiling from the moment invitations where sent out to the press. I even warned a few friends of purchasing new Apple gear previous to today so as to avoid any impending disappointment. But enough with the hype here are the details:
iPod Shuffle: New Colors
iPod Nano: Redesigned to accomidate a 2″ screen for video. It’s much squatter and fatter but should still be pretty small. The battery will play up to 24 hours of video and 5 hours of audio and comes in 4 GB and 8 GB models priced at $149 and $199 respectively. Personally, I think its ugly but a step in the right direction nonetheless.
iPod Classic: Yeah you read that right what we have all come to know as an iPod is now an iPod “Classic”. Besides the name change, it now comes available in 160 GB and 80 GB mobels at a price range of $249 and $349 respectively.
iPod Touch: Basically an iPhone minus the phone. It has wifi, safari, and all the touch screen iPhone visuals. They seem to have fixed a few iPhone snafus with the operating system like typing in landscape mode (this is likely to carry over with the next iPhone update later this month). Battery life is said to be 22 hours of audio and 5 of video and it comes in 8 GB and 16 GB models at $299 and $399 respectively.
So that is all the big details. They anounced the ability to browse and buy from the iTunes music store from both the iPhone and the new iPod Touch (via wifi). They also announced a new Starbucks partnership that allows you to browse and buy music being played in Starbucks and use their wifi for free on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Most of those details are less then exciting. The last few exciting things to come out of all this is with the mention of an iPhone firmware upgrade coming later this month as well as an iPhone price drop from $599 to $399 on the 8GB model. This comes at no surprise being that they discontinued the 4 GB model and will likely release a 16 GB and 32 GB model in January (thats just my guess). For more details check out Engadget’s coverage.
Adept