iPod nano with video, iTunes 9 and more: report from the Apple Event

on-site report by Bill Palmer

It may have been a foregone conclusion that the return of Steve Jobs to Apple’s keynote stage would have trumped any product announcement that he might have made once he got up there, which it’s tempting to dismiss the company’s latest rollout of iPod and iTunes updates as a series of impressive – but not blockbuster – new products. A new iPod nano with a built-in camcorder and FM radio. A slightly cheaper iPod touch. A higher-capacity iPod classic (Apple still makes that one?). The iPod shuffle in colors. And the ninth version of iTunes. All good stuff. No centerpiece.



Or maybe not. The live performance by an electric guitar-wielding Norah Jones at the end of the event may have been worth it all on its own, but as I walked out of Yerba Buena, I was left wondering what the event’s center was supposed to have been. Something Beatles-related that didn’t happen? An entirely new product that ended up not being ready? Phil Schiller’s fifteen minute recap of the existing iPod touch experience, followed by a merry go round of developers plugging their iPhone apps, still only propped the event up to being just over an hour long. It wasn’t until I went over to the playroom next door, where Apple traditionally has the new products on display for us to, well, play with, that my tune began to change. The new iTunes? Fantastic. As the once music-only iTunes Store has continued to grow ever more crowded over the years, interface enhancements have become desperately needed to make it easier to not only navigate amongst the various departments of the store more quickly, but also to be able to interact with the store’s content more easily as well. iTunes 9.0 addresses both of those issues head-on by adding drop-down menus that allow you jump directly from, say, the iTunes jazz section to the App Store travel section. But more space-agey is the ability to purchase, preview, gift or even share out to Facebook or Twitter any song you encounter within the store, even the songs on the top ten list. This extends to albums, as you can now click on the “i” button on any album cover your encounter and a preview/purchase pop up window on demand. This ability to interact with music without having to drill all the way down to the music’s page is the kind of innovation the iTunes Store has needed for some time.



Equally impressive is the iTunes LP feature, which takes the long-tired idea of attaching a simple PDF booklet to the album and replaces it with a full-on interactive multimedia environment complete with not only the artwork but also photos and videos of the artist. While there are currently only a limited number of albums available in the iTunes LP format, if it catches on this may finally be the twenty-first century answer for those holdouts who still purchase CDs solely for the purpose of being able to “experience” the album beyond the music itself.



While iTunes 9 may have taken a few minutes to sink in as being a significant new product, the new iPod nano was an even more gradual warming-up process. Initially appearing to be nothing more than the same old fourth generation nano with a video camera and FM radio embedded, my hands-on time with the new nano changed my perception entirely.



True, the video camera is the main reason to upgrade from the outgoing nano to the new one. But it’s been implemented well, just about flawlessly from the time I’ve spent with it. The quality is strong, the interface simple, and once you get used to holding it in your hand in such a way that you’re not inadvertently blocking the camera lens, shooting is easy. Furthermore the FM radio feature, which has never been requested by more than a small-ish minority of (very vocal) users, has been implemented in a typically Apple way. Instead of including a built-in antenna, the nano uses the earbuds (any earbuds, including your favorite pair) as an antenna. The on-screen interface is not only sleek but includes the ability to pause live radio for up to fifteen minutes of lag time, and then catch up later by scrolling forward through anything you want to skip. If the radio station provides track info then it’ll display on the nano’s screen, and – for those of you wondering just how Apple plans to profit by giving you a radio – tag those songs for future potential purchase in iTunes later. This sly move, if it turns out to be popular, will allow Apple to sell even more music by giving its customers access to free music on the radio.



But there’s more with the nano. During his presentation Steve Jobs opined that the colors had finally been perfected, and it wasn’t clear what he meant until I got see the new models in person and noted that while the color choices themselves hadn’t changed, the look of each model had been altered so that each was noticeably brighter and shinier than its predecessor. The metal even felt slightly silkier to the touch, but that may have been an illusion based on the increased visual vibrancy (more one this once I get my hands on one of the new nanos for real and can compare it directly to the old). And there’s also a tiny speaker on the back of the nano, added for on-screen video playback, but also usable for music playback (“usable” being relative when you consider the meager audio quality, but the tiny pinhole speaker sounds better than it looks like it would).



Aside from any disappointment about what all wasn’t announced, everything that Steve and Apple did share during the event seemed to fall into the “good news” category. You can’t argue with price cuts for the nano and touch, or color choices and cheaper model for the shuffle, or increased capacity for the classic. And iPhone users got something out of it as well, with the 3.1 software update for iPhone and iPod touch which now includes ringtones and a number of minor new features. And yeah, oh by the way, iTunes 9 now includes the ability to arrange your iPhone apps in any manner you want, right in iTunes, before you sync them to your iPhone.


With the benefit of a few hours of hindsight, this feels like one of those “middle of the road” events where there was plenty to cheer but also plenty more to have reasonably expected. Just how close were we to seeing the “Beatles on iTunes” rollout today? And how far off is that Apple tablet that Steve has supposedly made his personal priority since his return to the company? Who knows. The more relevant questions, for now, are whether the new iPod nano finds a second life as a favorably priced and sized alternative to the Flip camcorder, whether iTunes 9 manages to liven up the overall iExperience, and whether today’s modest price cuts serve to boost the iPod’s ever-dominant lead. For those keeping score, according to Apple’s own numbers, the iPod has 73% of the U.S. market, while SanDisk has about 7% (down from nine percent a couple years ago), and the Zune – for all of Microsoft’s marketing efforts – is holding steady with a laugh-out-loud 1.1% of the market (no that’s not an eleven; that decimal point is supposed to be there).



One More Thing would have been nice, even if it were just a glimpse into the not-yet-ready future. But with the mountain of new goodies introduced today, all of which are available right away, it’s hard to complain.



What may have been most significant of all was the manner in which Steve Jobs returned to the public spotlight, not only looking healthy but also sounding very human when he pointed out that he now has “the liver of a mid-20’s person who died in a car crash” and then making a quick plea on behalf of organ donation before sliding into the product announcements as if he’d never been ill and Apple had never been without him.



It came as a surprise that Steve was willing to put himself out there today without any earth-shattering new product announcements, knowing that he himself would end up being the story, something that he’s desperately shied away from in the past. But while he and his health may be the story of the day, the mere act of leading a public product rollout ensures that his health is no longer nearly as much of a public question mark. And if that was the goal, then he succeeded with flying anodized aluminum colors.