Apple Announces iTunes 7, Movies, Set-Top Box

necro81 writes, "As anticipated, Apple announced several additions and upgrades to its iPod and iTunes lineup. The iPod now comes in an 80 GB model, with a $50 price drop for the 30 GB model. The 2nd generation iPod Nano harkens back to the iPod Mini with metallic, multi-colored shells (though as diminutive as ever) and comes in an 8 GB model. The Shuffle has been completely redesigned and shrunk down to the size of a matchbook. All of this comes with the release of iTunes 7, which includes support for downloading full-length movies from iTMS." All 75 movies initially available are from Disney-related studios. The new iTunes will download cover art for all the songs in your library, no matter where you got them from, as long as you have an iTunes account. (A confirmation dialog says: "Information about songs with missing artwork will be sent to Apple. Apple does not keep any information related to the contents of your music library.") There's a new album-cover browsing view of your library. And Steve Jobs gave a sneak preview of a project code-named iTV: a Mac Mini-like wireless set-top box. Engadget has a blow-by-blow of Steve Jobs's presentation.

Comments

Re:Yawn

[dangermouse]

A big part of the appeal of the Shuffle is that it had an integrated USB connector - you could use it to replace a USB flash drive and get an MP3 player to boot, without having to carry around a cable. Now you need a cable - a stupid proprietary one at that, not even a standard mini-USB connector.

I was happy to see the new Shuffle, until you pointed this out. Not because I want or need a USB flash drive, but because it's just less convenient. My girlfriend has one of the white Shuffles, and it's been great for mindlessly grabbing some music to take with us. I've always thought of it as a sort of sample syringe for music: You jab it into the laptop, it sucks up whatever's in there, and then you pull it out and you're good to go.

A dock isn't so bad if you have a desktop computer, but with a laptop that moves around a lot, it's suddenly a third component to keep track of, where you really only want two.

Re:I liked the old nano...

[metroplex]

The major complaint about the Nano was that its surface got scratched too easily. Apple fixes this by going back to alluminium while keeping the same size factor, and adds "fancy" colours (ok, I'm not a big fan of those either, but you can get a black or silver one anyway), and people keep complaining? Geez.