After the Buzz

Now that we have had some time to check out the new iPods, Play with iTunes 8, and wonder why there was a conference just to show off this, pretty cool, but not so impressive update. Lets review this stuff.

iTunes 8 is very cool! Its like a new program and sorts your music by album cover in the same fashion that iPhoto does. The Genius Sidebar is cool when you want to buy music, but the Genius playlist feature is amazing. Simply choose a song in your music library, click the Genius button and it pics similar songs from within your library and builds a playlist in a second. Whatever your in the mood for from your own music. Sites like Pandora, last.fm and Finetune have been doing this type of playlist generation for a while and its nice to be able to do it to the music you own. Its new visualizer is pretty cool too.

The new iPod Nano is nice and thin and they have added an accelerometer, so when you tilt it to the side you can scan through your album covers with coverflow. Even though they don’t boast about it, the new nano plays video just like the previous nano, but with its new wide screen its better for watching 19:9 (wide) formatted movies. Genius playlists have also been added to the Nano.

The iPod touch received a price drop and some features that move it closer to the iPhone. Its thinner, has a built-in speaker with volume controls, and with the new 2.1 software it has longer battery life, quicker backups, and more stability when running apps.

On Friday (Sep 12) the 2.1 software will be available for the iPhone as well. Like the Touch this will bring longer battery life, quicker backups, and more stability when running apps. It will also include Fewer call drops and no app crashes.

All in all, these are some great updates. I would have liked to hear something about Moble Me, and would have loved anything new in the laptop area. This event didn’t have that big item that would have had everyone talking, but you cant be wowed every day I suppose. We will just have to look forward to the next event.