There's always a lot of speculation leading up to an Apple event. Even though invites for the Spring Day event were only sent out a week ahead of time, information was flying around for a number of weeks before it took place.
Rumour sites were dissecting details of a supposed new Apple TV product, called the iTV. Of course, the name was proven wrong when Apple revealed its new Apple TV multimedia HD player, on 1 September - and nobody expected some of the other product unveilings.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs went out on stage and spoke about the iPod and what a sales success it's been, with 275 million units sold since launch, in 2001, of which 120 million have been iOS devices (though this includes the iPhone).
To make more people buy them, the prices have to drop, and Apple also has to listen to its customers. The latter is something it said it did with the new iPod shuffle: Apple reintroduced the buttons to control playback, something it removed to make the previous model smaller.
It retains the voice-over technology, which reads out the current track name over the headphones, and will now only be available as a 2GB model, for a paltry $49. In local speak, that should make it around R500 when it lands here.
Second in line for a drastic makeover is the new iPod nano. I remember seeing the first nano in 2005, and it was pretty damn awesome. Four generations have passed, with all but the third resembling the original. Now, Apple has really pulled out all the stops.
Jobs said they wanted to make the nano smaller, but doing so meant removing the buttons. So they did. And now it's just a multitouch screen - sort of like an iPod touch, the size of a shuffle. The dinky screen works in exactly the same way as the iPhone or iPod touch, even the icons look the same. It doesn't run apps, though.
Sadly, the nano now loses the video and voice recording capabilities that were added to the fifth-gen model.
The 8GB and 16GB flavours will be on sale in the US for $149 and $179, respectively. Add some foreigner tax, and those prices should be R1 499 and R1 799 when it comes here.
Trim 'n tiny
The third iPod announcement was for the new touch. Apple's really making things hard for itself - or at least its industrial designers - because things can only get so small before practicality is affected.
In this case, the new nano is already bite-sized, and the touch has gone on diet, too. It's now 1.3mm thinner and 14g lighter, despite having gained elsewhere.
WiFi, while the rear camera can do HD video.
So, basically, it's an iPhone 4 without the ability to receive calls. Some might joke that makes it exactly like the iPhone 4.
Apple also boasted about the touch being its most popular iPod, and a very popular gaming platform. The App Store has tens of thousands of games and entertainment apps, so that's no surprise. I'm not so sure about Apple's claims that the iPod touch is more popular than the PSP and Nintendo DS, though.
US prices are $229 (8GB), $299 (32GB) and $399 (64GB) - so expect to pay about R2 000, R3 000 and R4 000, respectively.
iOS update
Details were also spilled for the new version of iOS, powering the touch, iPhone and iPad. Version 4.1 will be available in the second week of September, while version 4.2 - the first time the iPad will get version 4 - is slated for November.
September's release features mostly bug fixes, most notable of which is improved performance on the older iPhone 3G. Those of you currently using iOS4 on a 3G will welcome this news - but the proof will be in the pudding.
November's release adds wireless printing for the iPad and a new streaming media service allowing iOS devices to wirelessly access shared media on a network.
Home screen
The final product announcement of the evening was the new Apple TV. This is Apple's high-definition media player - sort of like an iPod for your TV. It has no storage, though. Instead, video content is streamed straight off the Internet and to the connected HDTV. Of course, this requires a meaty Internet connection, the kind they have in abundance across the pond, and an online digital delivery platform.
This makes it unlikely to go on sale here, at least not until somebody (read: Apple) steps in and offers content for South Africans. Which is to say: we want an iTunes video and TV store offering the American content, but with the ability to pay using our own credit cards. It's not that complicated, really.
We did get the previous version here - the one with the hard drive - but I played with it and was left underwhelmed. It had no support for the mainstream video formats and its real strength was in accessing the iTunes store for premium content.
Apple also released a new version of iTunes for Mac and Windows. Version 10 has a revised user interface, and the biggest new feature is Ping, a social music network. Apparently it's like Twitter and Facebook but for music, but we really know it's like Apple's version of Last.FM.
The latter still offers streaming music, and has been around for a long time - it'll be interesting to see how many people migrate to Ping, simply because it integrates more easily with their iPods.
Cutely, Apple changed the logo for iTunes 10. It says that iTunes music sales will overtake the CD by next year, so it wouldn't be so apt to have a disc in the software's logo anymore.
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