what's left for the apple expo?
The special Apple press event has finished and the updates have been rolled to the Cupertino website. So what has been announced? Were the rumours true? And what new announcements does this leave for Apple Expo in Paris two weeks from now?
The ipod mini flash: This rumour turned out to be quite accurate - being named the ipod nano, although not many people expected it to look so similar to the existing range. It small though - so very small. Check the stream from Apple and be amazed how it fits in the change pocket of a pair of Levi's! The decision to change the storage medium from a hard drive to flash memory means that the thickness (or rather thinness) is its main selling point. Initial impressions suggest that Apple will have some work to tidy up their range as we now have considerable overlap between the memory sizes of the shuffle and nano (the iPod mini being effectively retired).
iTunes phone: The Motorola ROKR is official, but of all three major announcements, we think that this is the one that could potentially cause Apple most reputational problems. While they have paired with US network Cingular and the handest is manufactured by Motorola - we have a large departure from Apple's usual insistence on total control of both hardware and software manufacture. As noted previously, the mobile phone will be the next big media battleground, so it was inevitable that iTunes would need to get some sort of presence to hold its market share, but Forenoon Filings does wonder if this aim will hurt the Apple user experience reputation by closely pairing the delivery of their product - with what seems to be - a handset that differs greatly from a typical Apple product. One area that this product seems to have the edge, will be the ease of syncing music to and from the desktop - something that is painfully difficult on the Sony Ericsson platform currently (notably the W800i - well for Mac users anyway). It will be telling to see how various network partners perform in different countries - and how that affects peoples' perception of iTunes mobiles.
iTunes 5: Well this may not garner so many headlines, but there is a new feature (which we at Forenoon Filings have been lobbying for in the feedback reports over at Apple): Nested playlists - it is now possible to group playlist into folders, so this adds a greater level of organisation (currently the Forenoon Filings iPod has scores of playlists which are kept in order by prefixes in their titles - e.g. 5*, ALBUMS, ARTIST, FORGOT, UNPLAYED). Enhancements to the shuffle feature have also been included - giving you greater control of how to define the shuffle behaviour.
The ipod mini flash: This rumour turned out to be quite accurate - being named the ipod nano, although not many people expected it to look so similar to the existing range. It small though - so very small. Check the stream from Apple and be amazed how it fits in the change pocket of a pair of Levi's! The decision to change the storage medium from a hard drive to flash memory means that the thickness (or rather thinness) is its main selling point. Initial impressions suggest that Apple will have some work to tidy up their range as we now have considerable overlap between the memory sizes of the shuffle and nano (the iPod mini being effectively retired).
iTunes phone: The Motorola ROKR is official, but of all three major announcements, we think that this is the one that could potentially cause Apple most reputational problems. While they have paired with US network Cingular and the handest is manufactured by Motorola - we have a large departure from Apple's usual insistence on total control of both hardware and software manufacture. As noted previously, the mobile phone will be the next big media battleground, so it was inevitable that iTunes would need to get some sort of presence to hold its market share, but Forenoon Filings does wonder if this aim will hurt the Apple user experience reputation by closely pairing the delivery of their product - with what seems to be - a handset that differs greatly from a typical Apple product. One area that this product seems to have the edge, will be the ease of syncing music to and from the desktop - something that is painfully difficult on the Sony Ericsson platform currently (notably the W800i - well for Mac users anyway). It will be telling to see how various network partners perform in different countries - and how that affects peoples' perception of iTunes mobiles.
iTunes 5: Well this may not garner so many headlines, but there is a new feature (which we at Forenoon Filings have been lobbying for in the feedback reports over at Apple): Nested playlists - it is now possible to group playlist into folders, so this adds a greater level of organisation (currently the Forenoon Filings iPod has scores of playlists which are kept in order by prefixes in their titles - e.g. 5*, ALBUMS, ARTIST, FORGOT, UNPLAYED). Enhancements to the shuffle feature have also been included - giving you greater control of how to define the shuffle behaviour.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, September 07, 2005 at 10:20 pm.
