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.

Sep 9th Apple Event

Steve Jobs has confirmed the September Apple Event. It will take place Tuesday Sep. 9th. The only clue Jobs has given is the Tagline, “Lets Rock”. Hmmm… iPod updates maybe.

Photo above is an Artist Rendering

David Ewalt (editor forbes.com) in an interview had some down to earth predictions for this event. New ipods are a strong possibility and the most likely, is the Nano update. The rumor of a taller thinner Nano (like the old Nano) with a larger rectangular screen perfect for movies seems to be plausible.  A price-cut for touch is likely and even though Ewalt says there is no good hint of a laptop upgrade. Ewalt warns, “you never know what might come out. We could get The Tablet”. Chris Hardwick from Gadget Pron, speculates that, with a 41% increase in Apple laptop sales, we might see some style updates.

David Ewalt also crushed the rumors of Apple offering a subscription model for iTunes. Stating, in order to offer a monthly free for all music fee, Apple would need to make some major deals with its existing music company partners, and that just hasn’t been evident.

As in the past expect that the basic stuff will be available right away, while the really cool announcements will have you waiting a few months for release.

Never the less. HooRay!!! Apple Events are awesome!

Mobile Me

Apples Moble Me service has had its ups and downs since its launch. I have had a mobile me account for about a month now and haven’t been affected by some of the described problems aside from a few momentary outages of Mail and Homepage. Nothing as drastic as losing the contacts from my iPhone, as was the case after a sync bug struck Monday morning. The bug was caught and fixed by the afternoon and most where not aware the problem existed.

This after Steve Jobs announcement to the Mobile Me team at Apple., “It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store,” he says. “We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence. The MobileMe launch clearly demonstrates that we have more to learn about Internet services,” Jobs says. “And learn we will. The vision of MobileMe is both exciting and ambitious, and we will press on to make it a service we are all proud of by the end of this year.”

I bought Moble Me mainly for its sync capability, and have been happy with the service. Knowing that every change I make to my iPhone will be moved to my other computers without a second thought is worth what I paid. Oh yeah I got my Dad and my Brother to pitch in and we share a family pack. I would suggest getting some family or friends together, or even sell off those 4 sub accounts in the family pack. A Hundred Bucks is a lot for one account. Family pack is the way to go.

All in all, I am excited to see what MobleMe rolls out in the next few months. Some great improvements from dot Mac include, the ability to add a domain name to your website, iWeb is much better than the old online web editor. Making online galleries and uploading photos is improved. However there is still much room for improvement and that overall feeling of Apple reliability. Check out a 60 day trial of mobile me at www.me.com