Another Apple announcement has come and gone, treated with the understated calm that we’ve come to expect from the technology giant. That’s bull, of course, asking Apple to announce something quietly is like asking that same thing of Brian Blessed. Of course, I’m going to propagate the hype myself now by blogging about it.
Incidently, I wrote about last year’s music event and made some semi-serious predictions for 2010.
Of course, the event began with Steve Jobs’ usual self-congratulatory ejaculation as he delights in just how well his products have sold, ignoring the criticism that the iPhone 4 had. Then he spends half an hour rolling around in piles of your money. YES! YOUR MONEY! YOU PATHETIC PRICK!
Ahem…
The sixth-generation iPod Nano is perhaps the biggest overhaul, mainly because it’s no longer a Nano — more a result of a horrific gene-splicing experiment between the Touch and the Shuffle. It’s inherited the Shuffle’s belt-clip and restores the square form factor that the third generation Nano had. Instead of the new Nano being a diminutive version of it’s Classic brother, it now sports a fetching touch-screen. This multi-touch (and no, I don’t know why you’d need multi-touch on an iPod Nano) and capacitive addition essentially does away entirely with the original iPod layout we’ve all come to know which, given that no new Classic announcements were given, marks the death of it’s former look. Instead of a click-wheel, the entire front of the device is a touch-screen, allowing navigation of the device. From the images I’ve seen, it does look like this screen is far too small and cramped to be comfortably used, although the newly redesigned interface for the Nano clearly has a touch-screen in mind. But the main reason I’ve not bought an iPod Touch already is the notorious fragility of touch-screens — I’m not convinced.
The iPod Touch has also had a minor touch-up, but nothing like the plastic surgery of the Nano. It’s slimmer, which by now is practically assumed of any newly released device, and has a screen supporting Apple’s randomly-named ‘Retina Display’. Another throwback to the iPhone 4 is the front facing camera (and the inclusion of a back-facing camera) to allow Apple’s new video-calling service FaceTime over Wi-Fi — given it has no 3G antenna band to get screwed up, this iPod might be less of a commercial balls-up than it’s cousin, iPhone.
In perhaps the biggest U-turn since Clinton, Apple have reunited the iPod Shuffle with it’s buttons. The last iteration of the cheap and chirpy noisemaker removed almost all the physical buttons on the device itself, meaning it had to be controlled instead by the buttons on the tinny travesty of headphones that come in the box, and navigation was aided by an almost as tinny voice. Though the voice remains (which is fine given most Apple fanboys hear voices anyway, mainly telling them to buy more Apple products), the buttons are back.
In a display of balls-out ripoffery, Apple have taken several chapters out of MySpace and Spotify’s books and will introduce a music-oriented social-network feature into the next incarnation of iTunes, known as ‘Ping’. Essentially, this will broadcast your appreciation of ‘The Fast Food Rockers’ to your friends, leave you without any friends and persuade you to find solace in the purchase of an iPad. I kid, of course. The real point is that you see what your friends are listening to and then you (because life is one big futile attempt at gaining social acceptance) purchase the same songs to demonstrate just how like-minded you are with your mates — kerching for Apple. Like a bit of Tinchy Stryder do you? No, you don’t. Nobody does. Everybody just thinks they should.
Something happened to do with the Apple TV, but that’s irrelevant seeing as nobody bothers with them — not while we’ve got Sky+ at least. It’s smaller, obviously, and is just a media streamer for your computer to your TV but with it’s own film and TV rental service. Boring.
All in all, the Nano is the biggest change, which is usually the case at Apple’s September music event. I’ve always loved the Nano precisely because it’s a middle-ground between the cheap but relatively feature-less Shuffle and the complex, expensive Touch — now, the Nano is less intermediate and more horrendously choreographed mix’n'match. Nothing unexpected or unusual, Steve Jobs didn’t come out in a floral dress and announce his impending sex change. Nor did he emerge holding Bill Gates’ hand, vindicating years of rumours. Once the Nano hype has died down, the tech world will breathe a collective ‘meh’ at yesterday’s announcement and we can all get on with our lives.
Is this for real? How can you navigate on a touch screen that’s so tiny? box cup