Apple announces new iPods, iTunes, iOS and Apple TV

Jan Vermeulen

Jan Vermeulen is a technology journalist and web developer at MyBroadband. After receiving a Computer Engineering degree at the University of Pretoria he worked at...

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During a special event held by Apple today in San Francisco, Apple announced a host of new products and updates in their music and TV line of products.

Unlike previous keynotes by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, if you had an Apple device you could view a live stream of the event. Unfortunately, even with the installation of QuickTime or QuickTime codecs/libraries it wasn’t available on Windows or Linux.

Steve Jobs kicked the event off by introducing an update to iOS, Apple’s mobile operating system.

iOS 4.1

Many of the bugs that plagued the launch of iOS 4, including those with the proximity sensor, bluetooth and the iPhone 3G have been solved, Jobs said.

Apple has also added High Dynamic Range (HDR) photos, the ability to upload HD video over Wi-Fi and TV show rentals.

The update to iOS also introduces Game Centre, which looks like a kind of Xbox Live or Steam for iOS. It allows you to invite friends to multiplayer games, view their profiles and achievements, as well as leaderboards.

Jobs provided a sneak peek at iOS 4.2 which will add printing as well as photo and video streaming to other Apple devices. AirTunes will be renamed AirPlay as video and photo streaming will be added to the existing music streaming feature.

iOS 4.2 is a free update set to become available for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch in November.

iPods

Moving from iOS to the iPod Jobs said, “This year we’ve gone wild. We have all new iPods this year for every single model of iPods. The biggest change in the lineup ever.”

The iPod Shuffle will regain the buttons that were removed in its latest iteration, but retain VoiceOver and playlists. It has a 15 hour battery life and will sell for $49 for a 2GB Shuffle, Jobs said.

iPod Nano got smaller and lighter, but also had its click wheel removed in favour of a a multitouch screen. It will sell for $149 for 8GB and $179 for the 16GB version in the US, according to Jobs.

Jobs then announced that the iPod Touch had taken the crown of “most popular iPod” from the Nano. He went on to say that the Touch is the number one portable game player in the world, outselling Sony and Nintendo combined with over 50% worldwide marketshare.

The new iPod Touch will run on the Apple A4 ARM-based chip which is the same processor used in the iPhone 4 and iPad.

It will also get Apple’s Retina display which has four times the pixels at 326 pixels-per-inch (ppi). Jobs also said that the Touch would get a 3-axis gyro, iOS 4.1 with Game Center and FaceTime with a front camera.

FaceTime is Apple’s equivalent to video calling which currently only works over Wi-Fi and not over 3G.

There’s a rear facing camera on the new Touch as well and as with the iPhone 4 the iPod Touch will be able to record HD video and edit video right on the device with iMovie.

The iPod Touch will have 40 hours of battery life and be available in the US next week in three models: 8GB for $229, 32GB for $299 and 640GB for $399.

iTunes 10

Other than a new logo, the big announcement for iTunes was the addition of “Ping.” Jobs describes it as a social network for music. “It’s like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes.”

As can be expected from a social networking app you can follow artists and other users and be followed, provided that you’ve made yourself followable.

Jobs said that you can be as private or public as you want. Even if you make yourself followable you can set Ping to ask you to approve followers.

Ping is on the iPhone and iPod Touch as well and open to 160 million iTunes users in 23 countries immediately.

Apple TV

Concluding the presentation Jobs presented a new, miniaturized Apple TV device and a revamped Apple TV service.

Rather than buying and downloading content users will only rent content. According to Jobs this was to remove any storage management issues and decrease the price of the content.

People don’t want to manage storage on their TVs, Jobs said. They also don’t want to sync as most users don’t even know what that means according to the Apple CEO.

The new Apple TV device is a quarter of the size of the original and comes in matte black. The power supply is built in and it has an HDMI, USB, optical audio and ethernet port. It also has Wi-Fi support and comes with a remote.

All content will be streamed in HD where available. Movies are set to cost $4.99 and series $0.99.

Series will continue to be commercial free, Jobs said. He added that currently only ABC and Fox have signed up to the service as going commercial free is “a big step for some of the studios to make.” But Jobs is confident that the rest of the studios will “see the light.”

The device also supports Netflix, YouTube, Flickr, MobileMe and streaming from your computer.

Jobs said that the device would also support AirPlay. A movie you started watching on an iPad can be instantly switched over to Apple TV instead.

The new Apple TV will go on sale for $99 in the US with content available in six countries: US, Canada, UK, France, Germany and Australia. Jobs said that more countries would be coming soon.

According to the press release sent out after the event iTunes TV show rentals (along with Netflix) is only available in the US.

New iPods, iOS 4.1 and 4.2 and iTunes 10 << Did Apple impress?

Apple TV << Would you want a device and service(s) like this in SA?