Apple’s big “Let’s Rock” event just finished up and as expected, the iPod Nano stole the show. As you can see from the picture above, the new Nano is longer and has some more rounded features, but it also comes in a whole rainbow of colors sure to please anyone.
New iPod nano features:
- Front of nano is curved glass
- Thinnest iPod ever!
- Enhanced user interface
- Now comes with accelerometer which means photos and video can be viewed in landscape mode
- New recording feature accessible when it detects a microphone
- Can create Genius playlists right from the nano (will explain Genius playlists below)
- New “Shake” feature – shake your nano to activate the shuffle mode
There are two different storage sizes available – 8GB for $149 and 16GB for $199. the 8GB should be available today and the 16GB should be available at the latest, by early next week. This new nano definitely incorporates some of the elements of the iPod Touch and the iPhone.
Other Announcements at the “Let’s Rock” event:
Updated iPod Touch
The iPod Touch was redesigned and updated, as expected with a thinner, contoured steel design. It includes an integrated volume control on the side, a built-in speaker, genius playlist creation right from the device, and App store access.
App Store UpdateIt’s been 60 days since the app store launched and over 100 million apps have been downloaded, although we don’t know now many of those are paid and how many were free.
iTunes!
iTunes Statistics – available to users are:
- 8.5 million songs
- 125,000 podcasts
- 30,000 episodes of TV shows
- 2.6K Hollywood movies
- 3,000 applications for iPhone and iPod Touch
Jobs was sure to point out that they are the #1 music distributor in any format – ahead of Wal-Mart and Best Buy. Not too shabby.
In addition to the offerings above, iTunes will now have TV shows in HD available for $2.99 per episode. Regular definition shows are $1.99. NBC is also coming back to iTunes.
iTunes 8
iTunes 8 offers some new browsing opportunities. There’s also a “Genius” feature which in a nutshell, will automatically make playlists for you from the songs in your library that go great together, with one click. The Genius feature also shows recommendations from the iTunes store of songs you may want to buy.
iPhone Update coming Friday…
Yet another update for the iPhone is coming. It is supposed to fix “lots of bugs” – in particular, improved battery life, fewer dropped calls, fixes issues with crashing problems, and increases the speed for iTunes backups.
Lots of iPhone owners have been eagerly awaiting this update, particularly because it is supposed to fix the dropped calls issue.
Updated headphones
Finally, worth noting is that Apple announced some new in-ear headphones. Jobs says that there are two drivers in each (woofer + tweeter) and they will cost $79. He says, “they finally got it right this time.”
Source: Thanks to Gizmodo’s GREAT live coverage!
I’m glad to know that finally Apple and NBC decided to bury the hatchet. NBC has very cool TV shows.
“Genius sidebar is not available in your country”
¬¬
Great…
(btw, I live in the remote and small country of Mexico)
I was underwhelmed. I expected the iPod touch to get a camera or GPS or something (like the iPhone without the phone part), partly because so many App Store apps use GPS or the camera. Also, I thought the newer iPod touch would be cheaper. The 4G Nano is nicer than the one they had before this one though.
Cool…new overrated mp3 players…yay:\ Can get the same thing cheaper…
Also need to pay for the new iphone update if you didn’t buy 2.0…man, that is messed up:\
Glad to see TV shows are making it to legal download:D Just curious about the DRM… Seems like this event was rather uneventful.
I think a camera would have been a good fit for the device, but I’m guessing they want to try and keep it as thin as possible. GPS probably isn’t an option considering that the iPhone use cell tower data to help triangulate the position as well.
To be honest, I don’t think you’re missing out! I’m not too impressed with it.