September 9th: The Aftermath

Now that the dust has settled and the “Lets Rock” keynote is over, it’s time to sit back and take it all in. The morning started off with Steve Jobs taking the stage, and setting the “theme” for the rest of the presentation. Like most Apple Keynotes, there was  one main topic, today’s was music, but anyone who’s been paying attention already knew that. Steve still looked pretty skinny, but honestly I don’t think it matters. I truly believe he’s in good health, he looked happy to be there, and he even made a joke about the recent accidental publication of his 17 page obituary. After all people, its not like he’s coming out there with a walker hacking like an 90 year old man with a smoking problem.

The famous Apple Co-Founder started off by talking about iTunes’ success and how its become the #1 Music retailer, and that they have 65 million customers, 8.5 million songs, 125k podcasts, 30k TV Shows, 2.6k movies, and 3k applications. He also mentioned in the keynote that they had sold 100 million apps in the 60 days the App Store has been open. Steve then went onto say that they were adding onto that today by adding HD TV Shows, for $2.99. This is something I know people have been wanting, but to me it makes no difference. I did compare some previews between the same clip in SD (which still sell for $1.99) and the new HD, and there’s a dramatic difference. To add to the “hype” of new TV Shows, Jobs announced that NBC would returning to iTunes. After these few announcements Steve then announced that today they were going to be releasing iTunes 8. I hope to have a video review of iTunes 8 up soon, but for now I’ll just highlight some of the new features.

The biggest feature that Apple is plugging is the addition of “Genius.” Genius is actually two things, first there’s normal Genius, which lets you click a song, and it’ll make a playlist out of songs the songs in your library that are like it. Second, there’s Genius Sidebar, which is kind of like what “Mini-Store” used to do (mini-store was that thing at the bottom that you turned off every time you installed iTunes on a new computer). However, Genius sidebar is more intuitive than mini-store, it deals with what you’re going to like, not what’s related. However, I think its interesting that mini-store has disappeared in iTunes 8 and that Genius has filled its space in the menu. However, I love how they separated the two, one is stuff that helps you find music in your own library you may have forgotten about (and since its yours they’re not making you buy anything), and the other, is something that lets you discover and buy new music. The second, feature is a new view for iTunes 8, it replaces that middle “artwork view” with a new tile view. It’s a lot cleaner, and organized, and I think I’m going to use it a lot. Other features include accessibility/voiceover and new visualizations. 

Jobs then demoed all of these new features, and announced it’d be available on iTunes today, for free. That’s when we moved into the new iPods (c’mon we all knew it was coming). Steve started with the iPod Classic, no new UI or design, just a storage/price change, for the last few years (and basically since the iPod was released) Apple has sold the iPod in a “thick” model and a “thin” model. However, the “thick” models don’t really sell, so during the keynote they upgraded the 80GB model to a 120, and dropped the 160 model. So now the iPod classic only comes in a 120GB model for $249. One thing that wasn’t talked about in the keynote was that, the iPod Classic does do the Genius feature, but that’s the only new feature it received. The other thing that wasn’t talked about during the keynote was the refresh of the iPod Shuffle colors. The iPod Shuffle, now comes in blue, green, red (but a brighter red than normal), and pink.

Finally we get around to talking about the iPod Nano’s, when Steve introduced them, he got right to the point, he showed some of the previous generation, and then pictures of the new one. He didn’t toy around like he normally does sometimes, but that’s probably because there were so many features to talk about. First it has a curved aluminum design, and it’s a lot thinner than any other model they’ve made. These new nano’s supposedly look like they disappear when they’re turned on their side. Steve went on to talk about how they put in an accelerometer, so that when turned on its side, coverflow appears. This accelerometer also works in photos, like you’d expect it to. However, they’ve added a new feature that uses the accelerometer, that’s not featured in the iPhone or iPod touch. That feature is the shuffle feature, when you shake the iPod, it goes into shuffle mode. Personally, I think it’s VERY innovative, but first off, I don’t shuffle my music often, and I’d think that’d get annoying if you turned it on by accident (especially if you jog with your nano). The Nano also features a new user interface that’s gorgeous (pictures of a very similar iPod UI came out on gizmodo about an hour or two before the keynote). Apple also introduced voice recording, which in my opinion, is really random, but I guess it’s convenient. Obviously, the nano works with the Genius feature (which works by holding the select button and getting a pop up menu). After showing off these features, Steve then talked about the new colors, it comes in silver, black, purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and pink. However, unlike all the other generations these colors are available on all models, so just because you buy the cheaper one, it doesn’t mean you can’t get the color you want. The Nano comes in an 8GB for $149 and 16GB for $199, obviously not the price drop we were hoping for, but oh well.

Steve then went on to announce new headphones, that have a click remote, (like the one on the iPhone) volume control, and a microphone. They also announced new in ear headphones that sell for $79 and are supposed to be a world better. Personally, there’s a much larger list of things that I want instead of new headphones. After that, Steve announced the revamp of their final iPod model, the iPod Touch. The new iPod Touch now features much thinner body, a back thats shaped like the iPhone 3G’s (but still with that stupid metal), a built in speaker, a volume button, and of course a software update. The software update is available for free if you’ve upgraded to 2.0, if you haven’t, then its $9.95. This new update, features support for Genius of course, but it also adds support for the new built in Nike + receiver. So, when you want to use Nike + all you need is the shoe receiver. A nice, but again, unnecessary feature.  The Touch will be available in 8GB for $229, 16GB for $299, and 32GB for $399.

After that, they showed some new games coming to the App Store, the only one that caught my eye was the new need for speed game which looks pretty amazing. Finally, Jobs introduced the iPhone 2.1 software, which will fix some bugs, like short battery life, and call drops. Jobs then invited Jack Johnson out on stage to play them out. So yeah, that was the keynote. Thoughts? Comments? Leave them all below. 

Review: PowerBook G3 “Pismo”

    For those of you who follow me on twitter, you know that I was given a Powerbook G3 “Pismo” (aka Firewire) , and so even though it’s eight years old, I wanted to write a review on it. First off let me give you a little background on this specific laptop, because of its age, its got a few specific issues with it. First, the screen suffers from “Pink Screen,” and it also suffers from flickering and if the brightness is turned up enough, it’ll go out until the computer is put to sleep and then awoke. Finally, the battery and DVD drive don’t work (however, the battery is to be expected). 

Specs

    The Pismo features a 400MHz G3 Power PC Processor, 640MB of RAM (it originally came with 64MB), a 10GB Hard Drive, 1 MB Cache, and 8MB of Video RAM. Overall, the Pismo isn’t too slow of a computer, especially being eight years old, and in it’s day it was probably one of the fastest laptops you could find. It’s easy to forget, that this laptop was primarily sold to the Pro market, therefore it had to be speedy enough to handle anything its users threw at it. This PowerBook is running 10.4.11, and running it at incredible speeds!

Performance

    As I mentioned above, the PowerBook was a laptop that had to be able to handle high-end graphics work, and therefore Apple tried to make sure that this laptop was always running the latest and greatest processors. When I was told that the machine was running Tiger, I thought to my self, “Well its great that it’s running a modern OS, but it’s going to lag like crazy!” Well, by the time it had finished booting for the first time, I was already eating my words, this laptop booted extremely quick and I’ve not seen a lot of lag. Firefox 2 was already pre-installed on the laptop, and just for kicks I decided to upgrade to Firefox 3. Even though the laptop meets system requirements, it just didn’t end up working quick enough, so in the end I downgraded back to Firefox 2. As long as you’re being reasonable, the Pismo is a very speedy laptop.

Design/Features

    The Powerbook has a very innovative design, that’s not really seen on other laptops. It features a black plastic case, that’s very curvy and stylish. However, you can definitely tell that that this product was influenced by the “Scully Era.” However, after the G3, Apple’s focus on design completely changed. Steve Jobs pointed out this ‘change’ when he introduced the Pismo’s successor, the PowerBook G4 Titanium, or TiBook as its come to be known. He stated that they wanted “the powerand the sex.” That’s when the company changed in an iconic way, they made it so that a powerful computer, didn’t have to look like a “computer.” (I mean computer in a IBM thinkpad sort of way, and sorry to anyone who loves the Thinkpad design.) This is when we started seeing the true end of the “Scully Era” and the beginning of a new company.

    Finally, in terms of features, the PowerBook features a 14” screen (which is nice, if yours isn’t one that suffers from any of the defects), a lot of ports on the back, plus a PC card slot on the side, and two expansion bays. The two expansion bays are on the front, bottom of the laptop and if they have something in them, the device can be easily ejected by pulling a latch on the front. The left expansion bay is a battery only bay, but the right bay could hold all sorts of things, such as CD/DVD Drives, floppy drives, ZIP drives, Hard Drives (there were only a few hard drives that were compatible with this slot, and they were hard to find), etc. However, the coolest thing about the expansion bay was that you could have two batteries in at once, which automatically doubled your battery life. The laptop also featured a full sized keyboard (which is a pleasure to type on), two (very loud) speakers, and a one button trackpad. The keyboard and trackpad are both a unique bronze color, but the keyboard is actually transparent. The other unique feature of the Keyboard is its ability to lift out, and give users access to the computer’s components such as, the RAM & Hard Drive .

The Jist of Things

    So, in conclusion, if anyone offers you a Pismo, take them up on it, they make very nice computers, nothing too fancy, but they’re a cheap alternative (considering they run on ebay for under $50). Definitely put Tiger on it (10.4), there’s no reason to run OS 9 on your system when it can just as easy run an Operating System thats still very modern and up to date. If you’re one of those people who are looking at a Pismo, but are worried about the screen, keep in mind that it has a VGA port so you can hook it up to a monitor without hassle. In closing, its a great machine that lives up to the Apple brand, and the Power moniker it so proudly carries. 

My Thoughts for September 9th

    So with the upcoming Apple Event (which is now official), everyone is posting their thoughts on the rumors, what will most likely happen at the even (when they actually stop and be reasonable about it), and finally what they wish would happen.

The Main Rumors (and my modifications)

    Obviously, like every other September, there have been a select few rumors, that seem to “catch on” and stay with us until the event finally passes. The biggest rumor out there, which also seems the most reasonable, is the revamp of Apple’s most popular MP3 player, the iPod Nano. Earlier, I was reading the comments on TUAW’s September 9th Predictions, and one specific comment caught my eye. The commenter said they’d discontinue the iPod Nano and iPod classic, take the Shuffle and give it an LCD and a larger capacity. They’d also drop the price of the iPod Touch, release iTunes 8, and do some more. The part of the comment  that was most interesting was the bit on dropping the Classic and the Nano, it really got me thinking. If you look at this from a business and marketing point of view, this is a horrible idea (since the Nano is the most popular MP3 player out there). However, Apple did this with their last player that ranked “most popular MP3 player,” anyone remember the iPod Mini?

     I think if Apple were to do this, their best move would to merge the iPod Nano and the Classic, after all, the difference between the two is quickly fading. So basically, they’d take the iPod form factor (as far as thickness goes), the iPod Classic’s shape, screen size, storage capacity, and sell it for about $99 bucks. It’d blow away the competition. Then they’d discontinue the iPod Shuffle, because for $99 who’d need it? Furthermore, they’d do what the commenter said by dropping the Touch’s price (to about $199) and that’d be the new lineup. So basically, they’d have the iPod Classic (which is Nano+Classic iPod I was talking about) in a $99 (60GB) and $159 (120GB) model, and the iPod Touch in a $199 (16GB) and $299 (32GB) model.

The Reasonable Expectation

    Now when we stop throwing our opinions into the mix, and think about what Apple will most likely do. The event will probably start with some form of iPhone “talk” (like where it’s at and how well its doing), which will result in a possible capacity bump, and at least a 2.1 upgrade (which will hopefully bring copy/paste and MMS support). Then they’ll move onto iTunes, which will result in the release of iTunes 8 which will have some kind of mind blowing new feature (something that we would have never thought of), including iTunes unlimited. Then hopefully we’ll finally be able to get rid of the “Beatles” rumor which has plagued Apple rumor sites for about 3 years. Finally, they’ll move over to the iPod Nano which will probably be the form factor that we’ve seen nonstop since Kevin Rose blogged about it. Unfortunately, that’ll probably be the end of the event. Apple has actually stopped doing a huge amount in their events, like they used to. It used to be that their events meant a bunch of new, cool, and exciting products, not what has been rumored for the last few months. However, I guess that’s the price they pay for their growth.

    On the contrary, I think Jobs has a bunch of tricks stuffed up his sleeve, which means those “cool and exciting” products that we’ve not been expecting. 

Update: According to Apple Insider – they have reason to believe that there will be no subscription services unveiled at the event.

Also you can follow www.twitter.com/techtalkchris  so you’ll know whats going on when september 9th rolls around