Spring typically evokes images of lambs, flowers, nuns in the Swiss Alps, Segways and segues to Apple product launches. Heralding the Xmas sales machine, tech media across the information super highway have been placing their bets and pinning their hopes on the next refresh, restyle and revelation that Steve Jobs and his Pixar-inspired merry men can output.
Today—at 3am Melbourne time (my eyes bleary with sleep-deprived hate)—in a live stream to the world, Steve announced a range of new stuff. There’s the requisite refresh for the iPod family, iTunes 10 with social networking, iPhone OS updates and a fairly major update to Apple TV. What I found to be most notable and what I think will shake shit up the most are the iPod Nano redesign, iTunes Ping and (USD) 99-cent movies on a box not much bigger than of a packet of Holiday 50s.
For the new iPod Nano, the form factor is now only a little square. Apple have dispensed with the seemingly old-school click wheel in favour of a tiny touch screen—whilst there’s nothing amazingly revolutionary here, I just know that a lot of people will want one of these, including kids with iPhones. As sad as it seems, this here slave-to-a-system has already made up his mind to get one for the gym.
iTunes 10, with its new logo (they’ve removed the CD image so that it’s relevant to children who’ve never seen one), has hit what I think will be a milestone for the software with Ping. Touted as Last.fm meets Facebook, Ping hopes to create a meaningful relationship between the listener’s own music, own social circle, fave musicians and ultimately with the iTunes store; after all, that is what it’s all about. Last.fm should feel a little bit threatened right now. iTunes’ current user base of 160M should be able to use Ping immediately, or as soon as they stop ignoring their software updates.
Anyone that has followed the speculation over the last couple of days won’t be surprised to see that Apple TV has received a rather huge tidy up. In my view, it has never rated well when compared to Apple’s other gear because there just wasn’t a place for it in most homes and it is tethered to the iTunes store. There are a few things that I think will make the new Apple TV a lot more appealing this time. First up—it’s now a black box and it’s tiny! It actually appears to be quite underwhelming and with a price of AUD$129 I’m sure they’ll move a few units. You can also stream content wirelessly from your iPhone or iPad to your TV. But core to the device’s appeal will be (USD) 99-cent, streamed rentals of TV shows from ABC and Fox with other studios expected to follow and (USD) $5 movie rentals. The death knell tolls for traditional video stores.
Love it or hate it (most of us subscribe to one of the two), you cannot deny Apple’s formula for success; what I call sameyness. All of its products and services tie in with each other to create a sheltered cocoon of minimalistic bliss. As the world’s slickest live ad-show neatly wraps up and as pot-bellied media folk file out of the theatre, we cut to Coldplay’s Chris Martin vomiting up Yellow in a litany of strained falsettos (serious; Google it).