In Wednesday’s rabidly anticipated San Francisco announcement of Apple’s fall lineup of media gizmos, there were a few fairly predictable developments and a couple of unexpected ones. Going into it, most observers knew there were going to be replacements for Apple’s most popular iPods—the nano and the full-sized video iPod. In particular, the latter was getting long in the tooth, without a major upgrade in over a year, an eternity in iPod time. What Apple fans hoped for was that the flagship iPod would be replaced by something that looked and worked like the iPhone but had no phone (and no monthly AT&T subscription with a bill delivered by wheelbarrow).
In a vintage performance—decked out, of course, in his trademark black mock turtleneck and jeans—Apple CEO Steve Jobs delivered pretty much all of that. If you were thinking that Apple might take a break on making its music players more attractive, powerful and affordable, forget about it: once again the dominant company in digital music has widened its lead on an increasingly hapless group of competitors. “We run scared,” Jobs told me after the presentation. “We reinvent ourselves frequently, because we think we have to stay ahead, and because we want to make cool stuff. Sometimes our competitors have had better stuff than other times.” But there were some surprising, and in a couple of aspects, disappointing elements that will make the annual holiday iPod hunting season a bit more complicated than in previous years. Here’s a rundown, with some (literal) color commentary.
iPod shuffle Not much new here—just a bunch of new colors with the straightforward descriptions of green, purple, silver, red and blue. But isn’t the purple more like violet, and doesn’t the blue look a lot like teal? Apple isn’t going there. “We don’t go for the fancy color names we used in the early iMac days, like Bondi blue or snow,” says Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller. A price cut for the shuffle would have been welcome—imagine, an iPod under $50—but it seems cheesy to gripe about a clip-on iTunes music player for $79, now in purple. For the record, Apple’s Schiller says the price “is so low already I don’t know what difference [a lower price] would make.”
iPod nano Of all the iPods introduced Wednesday, the nano, a total remake of Apple’s most popular player, is the one that comes closest to perfection. Jobs says that the No. 1 most requested feature in the iPod universe has been video for the nano, and here it is—TV shows, movies and even Apple’s beloved cover flow (a way to flip through album art) on a gadget that’s slimmer than a Junior Mint and shorter than a salt shaker. The smuggled pictures of the new nano that leaked out on blogs last week made it look stubby, but in person the device has that got-to-have-it Apple sheen. Even though the screen is only two inches, a high pixel density (the same amount of dots as on the full-sized iPod) makes the picture so sharp that you don’t feel you’re watching a movie on a postage stamp. It handles a revamped iPod interface—with a split screen between menus and images of the album cover/poster/photo you’re considering—quite nicely. Priced at $149 (4 gigabytes, 1,000 songs’ worth) and $199 (8 gigs, which could add a couple of TV shows and a movie to those thousand tunes), it will be an irresistible purchase and the best way into the iTunes universe for newcomers.
iPod classic Destined to be overshadowed by its smaller and newer companions, the successor to the original iPod—the one that’s only barely pocket sized—looks hardly different. But the newly named classic has one thing that no other iPod has. That’s a hard disk drive capable of storing even the most massive music collection. It comes in a $249 80-gig version and a $349 160-gig model that stores 40,000 songs. You would need 20 iPhones to store as much stuff. It also can play music for 40 hours without charging, which is something that even jam bands can’t do. Though it displays video, the classic really is for music nuts only, since movie and TV show lovers won’t settle for anything less than the …
iPod touch This is the one people were waiting for—a true iPod with the iPhone’s 3.5 inch “multi-touch” screen, a Web browser and Wi-Fi connectivity. It’s about half as thick as the iPhone, and makes the iPhone look clunky in comparison. It also has the OS X operating system, which will allow for any number of cool applications. As of yet, Apple is parsimonious in developing such apps (or allowing others to write them), so its main screen looks a little unfinished, with a lot of black space that, one hopes, will one day be filled with icons. In the meantime, plenty of developers are creating Web pages tailored for the iPhone that will also run on the iPod touch’s Safari browser.
Those who have played with the iPhone already know how the touch-screen technology and the stunning 3.5-inch screen transform the iPod experience. In the brief exposure I had to the iPod touch on Wednesday (it won’t be shipped until later this month), I found that it worked just like an iPhone. But now, for the first time, Apple is letting you use an iPod to actually connect to the iPod store. (Duh.) Pressing an iTunes icon on the screen takes you to Apple’s online emporium where you can instantly download songs, TV shows and movies—the same way you do it on your computer. And at the same price as it costs when you buy via computer. (Jobs promises that an upgrade will extend this feature to iPhones as well.) What’s more, in a special deal with the Starbucks chain, you can waltz into one of the coffee giant’s shops and use the Wi-Fi free to connect with iTunes—and even make an instant buy of whatever trendy music is oozing through the store’s speaker system. (To use the Starbucks Wi-Fi for Web surfing, though, you have to go through the usual signup-and-fee rigmarole.) My own dream—that Apple would use its first Wi-Fi-enabled iPod to let users peek into the music collection of fellow white-ear-budders—apparently didn’t make the first cut. But there’s always hope.
Apple isn’t putting much of a touch on those who buy the iPod touch. The low-end version, holding the 8 gigs of storage that the iPhone boasts, is only $300—in the range of regular iPods. A 16-gig version cost a hundred bucks more. Apple says that for most iPod users, that amount of storage is plenty. But certainly those who desire all the bounteous storage that the iPod classic delivers would be happier if their songs, movies and photos were housed in an iPod touch. When I asked Jobs why not offer a hard-drive iPod touch, he extended his thumb and index finger to invoke the concept of width, or lack of it. This is one of the iron-clad rules of Jobsdom, applied in computers and especially iPods: you can’t be too thin. Also, the flash memory in the iPod makes for better reliability and longer battery life.
One is tempted to call the iPod touch the poor man’s iPhone—except that Jobs ended his presentation by announcing a dramatic price cut for the 8-gigabyte iPhone, the one virtually everyone bought. (The skimpy 4-gig model is now history.) Instead of $599, the iPhone is now $399. Jobs says that this isn’t a desperate attempt to boost sales, but a calculated gambit to nudge fence-sitters into the iPhone corral. In surveys of those who held off buying phones, or bought competitors, Jobs says, “They all want an iPhone, but the ones who didn’t buy it couldn’t afford it. Holidays approaching. If we’re ever going to go for it, now’s the time. Clearly we’re not going to make as much profit, but we’ve got a great deal with AT&T, so there’s other ways we make money from the iPhone.” And what would Jobs say to the unfortunate souls who recently bought an iPhone for $599? “If they bought it yesterday, I feel for them, and they should go back to where they bought it and chat about that—but we’re not harming anybody. And I think it’s in everyone’s best interest if a lot of people use iPhones.”
Still, with the iPod touch available, there’s a real temptation to ditch the whole iPhone idea—how satisfying to wave goodbye to AT&T and its pokey network!—and use the new kid on the block for video and Web surfing instead. Also, while you can buy an iPod touch with 16 gigs of storage, iPhone users are stuck with a meager 8 gigs. Of course the iPod touch lacks many vital iPhone features including e-mail, camera, Google maps and, um, a phone.
There are going to be some hard choices to make when choosing a new iPod this year. Should you go for storage—and a poorer video experience? Or will you grab the flashy new iPod touch and consign yourself to frequent sync sessions to make sure you have fresh video? If you’re a power user willing to double up on devices, maybe the best combination is a Blackberry and an iPod touch. That combo doesn’t bother Jobs in the least. “I’d rather people do that than not buy anything from us,” he says. “It’ll teach then to use the iPhone so when they get one they’ll know how to use it.”
The only scary prospect for Jobs is that, frozen by indecision, you retreat to your closet, plug yourself with ear buds, and escape to the aural pleasures of an aging, but still music-worthy, iPod you already own. This fall, as in previous years, he’s done all he could to stop that from happening.
