I was at last night's London beamback of the announcements from Apple (sorry for not blogging it live!) and had a few thoughts to add in addition to those that Charles pointed out earlier.
iPod: I got my hands on the new kit, and while the iPod changes are all nice they're hardly a huge progression: the nano styling is merely replicating the mini, the Shuffle 2.0 is dinky and much less chavtastic than the old one, but it's still a shuffle. But from the blank stares given to me by Apple insiders I spoke to last night, I think we might see more iPod hardware over the next month.
iTunes: Logical progressions in software, and the addition of some third-party software inside the player in CoverFlow (which I pointed out months ago). I can't get very excited about "gapless playback", which clearly excited concept album fan Steve Jobs.
Movie store: The big news was what we all expected... but when is the rest of the world going to get video and movie downloads? Sometime in 2007 - that's a long, long time after the US, and I was disappointed we didn't see any content deals announced for the UK or Europe. I was also surprised that they couldn't announce anything beyond Disney, where (I'm sure you're all aware) Jobs is a director - I was expecting the announcement of a widely-leaked deal with Lionsgate.
iTV: Pitching a product more than three months ahead of launch? That doesn't seem very Apple. That's one reason why, In many ways, the introduction of this product felt more like a corporate pitch than anything else: Jobs telling Hollywood that this is coming, get on board now.
However, I'm more positive than Charles was on the prospect for this gizmo: at least as the opening salvo in a proper living room strategy. Of course I'm surprised that it's taken so long, but it looks easy to operate and will work with PC or Mac - and even at an inflated $299 price point, it's a damn sight cheaper than buying a media center computer.
One joke doing the rounds made me laugh, though: it's taken the technology industry years of hard work and marketing so that you can do something incredible like... watch movies on your TV set. What progress.
