Apple's "It's Showtime!" Event Report
We've got details on the new iPods, iTunes 7, and the mysterious iTV. Full event report.
by Gerry Block
September 12, 2006 - When Steve Jobs talks, the world listens. Like a crowd of junkies outside a methadone clinic, the Apple faithful gathered this morning for the Apple's special "It's Showtime" announcement in San Francisco. It was a relatively small affair, with a capacity crowd of about 800. As usual, rumor and excitement were boiling on the internet in anticipation of anything new, and, as usual, the persistent rumors and fake mock-ups of a new video iPod and the iPhone were everywhere. While Apple traditionally plays its cards very close to the breast, it seemed certain that if nothing else today would mark the beginning of movie sales via the iTunes Music Store (iTMS).
Steve Jobs appeared on stage and immediately began talking iPod. As usual, he had excellent numbers to report, and cited 450,000 iPod + Nike sport kits sold in just 90 days. Jobs next enumerated the iPod family, namely the iPod, Nano, and Shuffle, and began discussing upgrades to each.
The iPod will be enhanced with a 60% brighter screen, with brightness control, as well as larger hard drives and extended battery life for video playback. While the 30GB iPod previously managed just 2 hours, the new 60GB model will play for 3.5, and the new 80GB model will now rock 6.5 hours. The new iPod video models will cost $249 and $349, respectively.
The iPod software will also accompany the new models. Features will include instant searching as well as games such as Bejeweled, Cubis 2, Mahjong, Mini Golf, PacMan, Tetris, Texas Hold'em, Vortex, and Zuma. The games will be available for sale off of iTunes for $4.99 each, and will work on the older 5G video iPods as well as the new 6G models.
As rumors suggested, the Nano also got a redesign today. Colored cases are now available, including green, silver, black, blue, pink, and brushed aluminum. The new Nanos will also get the new iPod software as well as a big boost in storage and battery life (24 hours). The new 2GB Nano will come only in silver and will cost $149, while the 4GB Nano will cost $199 and will come in every color but black. The premium 8GB model is retail for $249, and will be available in all colors. The new Nanos will feature a new charger, new armband, and a new lanyard.
Rounding out the iPod family upgrades, the Shuffle also got some love. A new 1GB model will ship with a metal body for $79 in October, and is reportedly the size of the iPod Radio Remote (small).
Moving on, Jobs announced another major upgrade to the iPod lineage, namely the launch of iTunes 7. The new software will offer a variety of new features and organizational tools. A variety of new approaches to finding music are now possible, including a cool looking visualization tool that allows you to find albums by flipping through a virtual book of album art. Jobs announced that iTunes will now automatically download missing art in case you've got an older collection of tunes from iTMS.
iTunes 7 will also add iPod updater functionality, and the ability to tell the software something along the lines of "I want to sync the 10 most recent episodes of all my TV shows," will be possible. TV show downloads from iTMS also got upgraded, jumping in resolution from 320x240 to TV quality 640x480.
Jobs gave the audience a demo of the new iTunes 7 look and displayed how nice the upgraded resolution makes TV shows look. He paused for a moment, and finally dropped the line every Jobs Keynote attendee wants to hear. "One more thing…"
It was movies, of course. Jobs began by touching on the success of the TV show offerings on iTMS and how the service has grown from just 1 network and 5 shows to where it is now. Today, movies will become available on iTMS, starting with films from Walt Disney, Pixar, Touchstone, and Miramax (all owned by Disney, of which Steve Jobs himself owns a significant portion).
75 films will launch today, and more will come in every week and month. They will be encoded at 640x480, which is less than DVD quality, but will include Dolby surround sound audio. New releases will launch the same day as the DVD, and will sell for $12.99 in their first week and after that will bump to $14.99. Back catalog movies will mostly cost $9.99. Jobs noted that with a 5mb/s broadband connection, entire movies will take just 30 minutes to download. The service will launch today in the U.S., and "hopefully" in 2007 internationally. The same usage rights that apply to TV shows from iTMS will govern movie use, namely the inability to burn DVDs or watch the films on anything other than a computer or iPod without an A/V connection to a TV.
Disney CEO Bob Iger got on stage to congratulate Apple for its innovation and success, but didn't say anything terribly important. Jobs returned to begin thanking the Apple personnel who made the new products possible, but paused once again for another "One last thing…" moment, a sneak peek at a new device that will launch in Q1 2007 that "Completes the story."
At this point Jobs unveiled the long rumored Apple set-top-box. The working title of the new product is the iTV, and it will be the device that will link movies and videos stored on computers to living room TVs. The box itself is about half the size of a Mac Mini and sports a built-in power supply, USB, Ethernet, some form of 802.11 WiFi, optical audio, HDMI, and old school RCA, and will work with the Apple Remote. The interface will look a lot like next generation Front Row, and will feature 3D animated graphics and menu systems.
Jobs demonstrated the device and showed off the near DVD quality of the video and the ability of the iTV to instantaneously begin movie playback upon selection. The device will work with both PCs and Macs, and will cost $299.
A solid hour and fifteen minutes after he began, Jobs looked ready to leave the stage. He stopped for just one more "One more thing…" moment, and remarked that, though technology is amazing, it all comes down to the artists in the end. So saying, he welcomed Grammy award winning John Legend to the stage, who closed out the event playing to the crowd on a full-size piano.
Source: http://gear.ign.com/articles/732/732325p1.html
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