My impression of the new iPods/iTunes releases…

Brighter Screen not Bigger Screen
It was September 12… I remember being at work and being a bit anxious to get home so that I could see the Apple Media event. I knew that movies would be released, I heard rumors of new iPods but I was still anxious to see it… See I’m one of those folks who is holding out for an iPod with a wider screen so I was wondering if this would be the day. I got too anxious to wait until i got home so I logged on to engadget and kept that in the background while working on my maps. I read the highlights and saw that there were newer iPods on the scene. A Nano that looked like a thinner version of the mini, New 80GB ipod w/video cheaper price… was all excited cool… I read brighter screen but was disappointed that it wasn’t a larger screen. Brighter is good I guess, then I went back to my mapping project albeit a little disappointed. I’m glad the screen is brighter, I’m glad they brought back the colors and aluminum shell, I’m glad for the new searching features but why is the screen still the same size?



iTunes 7 at Last- Coverflow Included and Movies
When I reached home the first thing I did was to fire up my computer and click software update. That brought me up to another version of Quicktime and iTunes 7. I almost fell out of my chair when I had read that coverflow was incorporated as a view and wanted to check it out for myself. A few minutes later iTunes 7 popped up, found tracks in my library with gaps and fixed em and found some album art. Not sure what happened to the album art coz I noticed that some of my older ones went missing after the upgrade. I have to say that I really like iTunes 7. The new views especially made me notice some music in my collection that I had simply forgotten was there. The coverflow view also worked for tv shows and movies so that was nice. I heard about all the movies that were available as well and that they had near DVD quality. I checked out the preview for Cars to check the quality of the new resolution and thought that it was indeed quite nice. Wish I had waited to buy Pirates of the Carribean. I bought 1 movie that I had wanted to see for sometime and the quality was really good. At full screen its as if I had popped a DVD in my computer so they weren’t kidding about the resolution. The resolution for TV shows were also better although I thought they didn’t match the resolution of movies exactly. One thing I found myself wondering about was why they did not have some sort of subscription plan for the movies. I suppose this would be a bit hard to manage for their first debut and if one was to subscribe would you “own” the movie or rent them and they expire after a while? I abandoned the thought and started to compare the price I would pay for movies if I went to my local video store. At the local video store I can purchase three previously viewed library titles for about $25 or $20 depending on if its a fairly new release or not and the deals they have going. Now I have to say that these aren’t always available right away, you have to wait for a month or so and sometimes you might get a DVD with a scratch. Anyway, this works out to $8.33 per video. Library titles at the iTunes store are $9.99 so 3 of them would work out to be $29.97. So the question to ask is how much is $5 less worth. I have to physically get in my car, stand in line, burn some gas (we know how much this cost nowadays) and there is the possibility that I will get a video that has a scratch and have to return it. So how much is this worth? I have to say that the iTunes store is looking pretty sweet for videos except that I want to support my local economy so I’ll probably purchase new releases via iTunes and library titles locally. A new release around these parts will cost me at least $19.99 compared to $14.99 on the iTunes store or $12.99 pre-ordered. For new releases you can’t beat the iTunes store at least not where I live…

In conclusion, I’m happy about the new changes in iTunes and the UI change is quite nice as well, it makes things easier to find, is more informative in general and better organized. I am a little annoyed that the high end Nano does not have video capabilities and that the new iPod with video does not have a larger screen. I do think that there is hope yet that Apple will pull out a new iPod with larger screen just in time for Christmas. Just notice a tendency for them to lower the price of a product before introducing “one more thing.” There maybe something to the fact that the iPod with video is now $249 and $349. Will we see a new iPod with larger screen for $449 sometime soon? We just might especially with the new talks of that ugly thing that Microsoft has yet to release called Zune. I like the reported features but whether it sells like hotcakes or not I still think it ugly. I do like the screen size though. Hint Hint Apple…