Just a few thoughts about Apple's
Special Event held yesterday in San Francisco.
iTunes 7.0 - Slightly new interface but seems much cleaner now. People complained about the excessive white space on the left column, but I like it. It's more logical now with the categories standing out. My favorite feature so far is the cover browser view. I love how iTunes downloads all my missing cover art and displays them in a slick 3D view as I scroll. Bravo Apple!
iTunes Store - Formally known as the iTunes Music store, the name change was needed to reflect that they also sell TV shows and now movies. Still iTunes sounds like a music store. iMovie is already taken by their fine digital video editing product so that wouldn't make sense. iMedia Store would be better but I guess they didn't want to rock the boat with the powerful name recognition of iTunes.
Movies - As strongly rumored, Apple now sells full length motion pictures, albeit only from Disney at the moment. This is most likely going to change as other studios apply the wait and see approach. I see that Steve Jobs lost the battle of consistent $9.99 pricing for all movies. Now they are only that price at the low end, and could be as high as $14.99 for the premium demand movies. Normally I wouldn't complain, but you can buy a brand new DVD for about the same price, that sports a higher resolution, contains all the extra bonus DVD features and with no difficult to circumvent DRM restrictions. Again, this isn't really Apple's fault, but comes from studio greed.
Increased resolution on all videos - This was a must have feature for movies, especially at the above mentioned prices, but even at 4x the resolution of the old videos (320x240) the new res (640x480) still falls short of the 720x480 of current generation DVD's. With Apple claiming that
last year was the year of HD, and that they are part of the
Blu-ray consortium, you would think they would have a high definition option. Perhaps they are waiting for their next big product to be released first...
iTV - In a very uncharacteristic Apple move, Jobs previewed a new A/V home device called the iTV. It's essentially an Airport Express for streaming movies to your TV in addition to music and other iTunes media. Details on how it's really going to work is still sketchy at this time but my only beef is in the form factor. Jobs is making it half the size of a Mac mini, which normally is a good thing but it looks really out of place on top of standard width A/V equiptment. I still think Apple should go for the DVR market and come up with their own full size Tivo killer that has enormous hard drive capacity for ripping DVD's that you already own in addition to streaming movies that you bought on iTunes, all in HD resolutions. I hope you are reading this Steve.
New iPods - Normally I'm indifferent when it comes to new iPods as it seems like a new model comes out every 6 months but these new models are cool. I love the new form factor if the shuttle, I can't believe how tiny that thing is! The up to 24 hour battery life of the nano in addition to the scratch resistant aluminum cases are much welcome features. Another bonus for Dave is that Apple quietly increased the resolution of the 5G models to the new iPod standard 640x480, all with a software update. Nice!
I was flipping through my old MacWorld magazine that Rob brought back and noticed that registration for the 2007 MacWorld Conference & Expo began on Sept 18th. Sure enough I checked and all the pricing and registration information we were all looking for has been added to the website. 
