So, now I'm home - no thanks to the Northern Line, which is totally closed down. But that, of course, is incidental.
Before I scooted from the Apple launch, I had a chat with Danika Cleary and Jai Chulani, product managers for iPod and iMac respectively.
Here are the brief highlights of our discussion.
I was interested in the rather constrained way in which the video capability was touted. Should Apple have gone in harder? "iPod is about music, and this new iPod is about keeping this the best in the market," says Cleary. "Video adds a new layer of enjoyment through music videos. Steve really said it: this is the beginning of the next step."
So this is an iPod that plays video, not a video iPod. That I understand - after all, it was fairly similar deal with the photo capability. But doesn't a video-playing iPod need a huge amount of content ready to go? "Well, the deal with ABC and Disney, it's clearly the first of its kind," she said, following with talk of strong hopes that video downloading could grow at the kind of speed seen with iTMS.
So what's the overall effect? "We're just changing the whole way people are experiencing media," says Chulani, pointing to the new iMac. He compares the six button iMac remote to one of the many-button equivalents used with MS media centers: this was the same thing Jobs during the launch speech. Simplicity I understand, but I wonder about what direction this means... if you compare yourself with media center, are you talking about turning Macs into the central entertainment item in the home? Are we ever likely to see people using their Macs instead of TVs? He says not: "We talk to Mac users a lot, and we just don't see the demand."
That's no surprise - Apple is big on the difference between the "lean back" mode for watching TV, and the "sit forward" way we use computers. But then why bother with the Front Row system, and the remote control, if there are no plans to try using Macs as more integrated media hubs? The answer, according to Chulani, is that one doesn't necessarily follow the other.
Back to the iPod: I wonder about the potential size of the market for the big models. The lower-end iPods have sold well, but with the higher end units, could Apple merely end up getting earlier generation buyers to upgrade? Cleary thinks there will be many upgraders, but also a lot of new buyers. "The market keeps expanding and each new product brings in new people," she says. "At the same time, lots of people who already have an iPod will want to buy one of these. We learned a lot from the nano."
And what about the quickfire double launch - this strikes me as strange, mainly because the Apple Expo in Paris (where there was no keynote speech). Cleary said this was the plan, a way of "out-innovating". "It's that one-two punch," she says. So will the double whammy turn into a triple whammy? Cleary laughs: "I hope not: I've got to get back and spend some time in the states."
Related: Other posts from the launch event - Apple launches new video-capable iPod - New iPod: first impressions
