Last week, Apple hosted an event to show off their new music stuff. This included a new version of iTunes, a range of new iPods, and new software for iPhone and iPod Touch. I didn’t get up a 5am like the last event to see what Apple was announcing, I could wait till later because I don’t need an iPod and also a lot of the announcements were already rumored around the internet, mainly due to a Kevin Rose inside source.

To sum up everything in a paragraph, new version of iTunes, 8.0. Adds grid album art view and Genius which makes playlists from songs similar to the one chosen. New iPod Nano, old slim design, accelerometer and Genius plus also a gimmicky (useless) feature, shake to shuffle. New iPod Touch, same as old one, slight design changes, Nike+ built in, volume on side. 2.1 software for iPhone/iPod Touch, fixes the bugs in 2.0 and adds Genius. The only things that interest me is the iTunes 8.0 update and the 2.1 software.

I installed iTunes straight away and I have noticed that it works better than 7.7 did in Vista. It still isn’t perfect but I guess the only way to make iTunes work perfectly is to get a Mac. As you know, I prefer to play my music by album so the album art grid view is great for me. It allows me to select an album to play pretty quickly. I also had a quick play with genius. I was happy with the selection it made, although it could probably have made better choices here and there, but I’m sure it’s playlist selections will get better as time goes on. I think Genius is a great way to find similar songs that go together in your library in a quick and easy way. It also allows to rediscover some of the music that has been buried in your library for a while. I think it is great alternative over Party Shuffle in iTunes and definitely the shuffle mode.

I have yet to upgrade my iPhone to 2.1 but I am really looking forward to being able to. Genius on it is going to be great, although I am a bit worried about how well it would work with only one third of my music collection on it. In saying that, it has most of the songs, well albums, I enjoy listening to anyway. Also the bug fixes to the keyboard lag, random app crashes and long sync/backup time will be greatly appreciated. I’m just waiting for QuickPwn for Windows to get released and I’m on the bandwagon. I need the unofficial third party apps as much as I need the official ones, that is why I haven’t gone through with the upgrade already.

So the event was prety dull. I think it would have been more exciting if the products hadn’t been rumored in such great detail beforehand. It kind of ruined the anticipation of the announcements. Although I wasn’t expecting any new computers (MacBook please!) to be announced, that will be the thing I am looking forward to the most. I think I am turning towards the Apple side!

Yesterday was the day that Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, made his yearly MacWorld Keynote about his consumer products. Last year at this event, he announced the revolutionary iPhone, a device that amazed everyone. This year, the amazement was back with the announcement of a new MacBook. I set my alarm to get up in time to get live updates of the goings on in the keynote, but I managed to sleep through my alarm but woke myself up just in time to see the announcement of the MacBook Air.

The MacBook Air, a ultra-slim notebook computer that weights under 1.4kg and at its highest point is under a measly 2cm. It is amazing how slim it is, but what is even more amazing, it all the functionality and power they have put in the tiny package. But if you want one of these, you do pay a premium price of $2999 NZD for the base model. Sure, you can get more powerful computers for a lot less than that, but you won’t find a computer this thin, that still has all this functionality left in.

I do think the MacBook Air looks amazing and would love to own one of these, but in reality, a computer like this would not suit me, I would need something ore powerful. There will be many people in this same boat that don’t care that much about size and wouldn’t get a product with reduced performance than a bigger notebook computer. The computer is nice and would be great for people to carry around everywhere with them in their bag or something. This would suit someone with a more powerful computer and wouldn’t mind a small notebook without a bit of performance and wouldn’t mind something small and can afford the price for this.

Last year, Apple announced their entry onto your television. They admitted that they failed to deliver, but they are going to try again with Apple TV Take 2. Take 2 has a few new features such as viewing photos from .Mac and Flickr and a new interface, but the biggest change is the fact that it is now an independent product, it no longer needs a computer for you to take advantage of it. The store is now accessible from the Apple TV and you can buy music, movies, television shows as well as download podcasts right for the device. And all this, is available to current Apple TV owners in a software update available in a few weeks.

But that’s not all, there are now iTunes Rentals in the store. For a small price of $3.99 USD for new releases of a dollar less for library titles, it is an attractive option to rent movies. There is also HD movies for the Apple TV which cost $1 more and are around 4GB in size for a full, 720p resolution movie. This is a great way of getting movies right when you want to see them, at nice HD resolutions. When you rent the movie, you have 30 days to start watching it, and from when you push play, you have 24 hours to watch the movie, you can also watch the movie as many times as you want in that 24 hours.

I think it is good of Apple to give people the Take 2 software for free and not make a new product. I also hope that they have a huge success with the rentals, because I do think it is a great way to rent movies. I live in New Zealand so the iTunes rental stuff won’t be here for a long while, but when it does come here, it would be a great way for me and my family to get movies, much easier to get movies when we want them and not have to pick them up from a video shop. I do hope that they lower the delay from the DVD release and the iTunes rental release so they can compete with the video rental stores. If I want to see a movie when it comes out on DVD, if I can borrow it cheaper then the video shop, but if it is not there and I really want to see it, I will make that trip to the video shop to watch it now, not in 30 or so days. It is a brilliant start and I hope they roll it out internationally as soon as possible.

Those two big announcements were amazing, but the thing that interests me the most was the thing that was under-looked by everyone. The hype of the other announcements overshadowed this, but then again this isn’t anything evolutionary or really anything to be excited about. The product I am talking about is Time Capsule. Basically, all Time Capsule is, is an Airport Express with a hard drive in it. The product was mainly based around the wirelessness of the MacBook Air and the other MacBooks, but also the amazing backup feature in Leopard, Time Machine.

Time Capsule is nice because you get the benefits of the Airport Extreme, with gigabit ethernet and 802.11n, and on top of that, you get Network Attached Storage, with either 500GB or 1TB of storage. At this point, this is the only way to backup using Time Machine to a network drive and makes the backup process just that much more easier, convenient and completely automatic. You are no longer required to plug in a hard drive into a USB port.The price of the product is very competitive and not that expensive, you are not paying much more for having all these features put into one easy package.

There was another thing that was announced, which are new features of the iPhone and iPod touch. They were cool and make me want them, but they are irrelevant to me and I don’t really have much to say on them. I later watched the keynote video and I was interested right through to the end, well except for the performance at the end. Steve’s keynote speeches are always interesting and amazing, even though there weren’t many things that were so innovative that it blew me away. I’m waiting to see refreshes for the two older MacBooks which I am sure we will see sometime during the first half of 2008. I can’t wait for the next Apple Event and a bunch of new announcements.

Yesterday I managed to make the frontpage of Digg. This is a difficult thing to do in my opinion, although there are people that are naturals and get heaps of stories on the frontpage daily. Anyway, I strategically got a story that was bound to make it to the frontpage to get there before someone else submitted it.

First off, I needed to work out what the reader wanted to see and/or know and find a place that would be able to provide that information. I decided to go with the big topic of Apple’s new iPods, one that is seen on Digg at least 5 times a day. I was going to submit one of those stories!

One thing that hadn’t been done is the dissection of the new iPod Touch. Okay, it may seem like nothing but one question that is on a lot of people’s minds is Bluetooth, is it or is it not in the iPod Touch? The only way this could possibly be answered if in one of two ways, either Apple confirms it, or someone rips apart a unit and discovers a chip for Bluetooth.

I knew where I had to go to find the story. iFixit had recently taken apart the iPod Nano and iPod Classic and I was positive that they were going to do the same to the iPod Touch when they got their dirty hands on it. I frantically waited for signs of them having their way with her, refreshing the page every minute. The iPod was out and they had to have one by now.

After about an hour of refreshing, in fine print down the side of the page was the first sign on life “Check out our first look at the iPod Touch.” I click and saw a bunch of unboxing pictures. When are they going to rip into her? Are they going to? There was no mention on the site about taking it apart, but they had to! I refreshed a couple of times. I went to submit it to Digg, entering in all of the field waiting to submit it. I went back to iFixit. After more minutes of refreshing, finally there as a sign, they were going to take a look inside.

This was when I finally submitted it. I was hoping no one else had submitted it during my period of hesitation. To my luck, I was the only one. My story is bound to be on the frontpage by the time they finished stripping her naked. I get Peppery to digg it, he did as well as twittered it. I submitted it to Pownce, thats where a lot of the Kevin Rose Fanboys… errmm… I mean Diggers hang out.

Every 10 minutes, a picture of the iPod Touch went up, each one more less article of clothing from the last. After two hours, she was completely stripped of her glory and out there for the world to see her bits, every single component, every single chip. Every hour, I got one or two diggs. 6 hours later, my story only has 20 diggs. The problem was the timezone conflicts. I was going to have to wait till the morning to see the progress of my story. I went to sleep. In the morning, I wake up to discover my story hit the frontpage an hour ago. 400 diggs by the time I wake up. Yay! I got there! I win!!!

I’m going to quickly touch on my opinions on the 4 new iPods that were announced yesterday at Apple’s Keynote.

Lets start small with the iPod Shuffle. New colours, big whoop! I have never really though of the Shuffle as a proper iPod. Its really just a thing that plays music that looks pretty nice. I’m not a huge fan of the new colours though, I preferred the old ones. Whenever I see a shuffle, which is rare, I think of that person as someone that can’t afford a real MP3 player.

3rd Generation iPod Nano’s look a little squashed and plumped. The colours aren’t that nice either. Yes it now plays video but how good of a player would it be in a small screen? I suppose I’d have to use one to properly judge it. I have never been a huge fan of the iPod Nano’s, or the Mini’s for that matter.

The iPod Classic looks pretty similar to the iPod Video, and the functionality is pretty much the same too, but with minor differences there and here. One of them being the implementation of coverflow, a feature I would find myself using quite a bit. Its also at a very nice price too and comes in the 80GB and 160GB models.

Last but not least, the one everyone as waiting for, iPod Touch. This iPod has most of the functionality of the iPhone, but without the communication feature. I was disappointed to find out it only comes out in the 8GB and 16GB varieties. I would have preferred if they had gone with Hard Drive storage for bigger capacity than going with Flash memory. I wouldn’t pay the money for a 8GB, or a 16GB iPod touch knowing that I can get the 160GB iPod classic with more storage, even if it has less features and no touch screen.

To sum it up, I wasn’t that pleased with the new iPods. I couldn’t justify buying the iPod touch at the price point it is since it only has a minimal amount of storage, 16GB at the most. I can see myself paying for the pretty reasonable 80GB iPod and if I had $399, I can see myself getting it without a second thought.