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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.
Gapless Payck for iPod! Wonder if they will update the 5th gen with this?? Please???
How much can your pocket hold? That's up to you and your iPod. It holds up to 20,000 songs, up to 25,000 photos, and up to 100 hours of video -- or any combination of each.
If only Apple new that I like 10 minute songs, 4096x3072 pics, and 3 hour movies.
For fuck's sake. I hate giving money to Apple. But now my girlfriend's going to insist on having one of these new iPod Nanos for Christmas. And what really winds me up is that she isn't even going to care about the capacity, or the battery, or the patented scroll-wheel interface, or iTunes integration, or anything like that. She's going to want it because it's blue.
Looking forward to this - but the big question will be, can you import video, or does it all have to come from iTunes Music Store? Namely, will Apple support via iTunes, just as they do for CDs, importing DVDs? Because a set top box that can only play video from an iTunes-bearing computer is relatively useless in comparison with Tivo/DVR/EyeTV/whathaveyou. Combine your standard cable company's DVR box with EyeTV and you can get any video you want on your Mac mini. No need for an "iTV" then. I guess if they just want to make it easy for people to get their iTunes videos onto their TV screen, that'll be good for most, but I would hope they at least provide some advanced functionality.
Why is it that we eagerly participate in a mad rush to publicize every single product at every single Apple PR event? No one else *ever* gets that kind of coverage.
Two reasons. One: we love new iPods. and Two: Apple nearly wrote the book on this sort of marketing technique, and we still love to fall for it every single time.
That was the make or break for me. I could deal with a $10 movie price as long as I could burn the movie to DVD and watch it on TV.
Without it - sorry, folks, but I'll wait.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
I don't know, I kinda dig the new Nano. I liked the colors, espically when a family has kids (or adults) with more than one nano in the house. It helps to seperate them. Also, you could always get the skins for the Nanos, but then the size got bigger. I would liked to have seen some bluetooth or wifi capabilities for transfering the music/video wirelessly, but guess not.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
Putting "Blow by blow" and "Steve Jobs" in one sentence really wasn't a good idea.
Summation 2
It was blue (and other colors) before.
Behold! The iTunes Icon Timeline! Note that the icons on that page are the real deal until you get to "Alternative iTunes icons", then the rest are mildly crappy "fan art". (Ugh.)
I know this is not new, but enabling this functionality for iTMS tracks only is a real dick move.
By the way, that sinking sound you hear coming from Redmond is the hope of Microsoft in taking over the living room through Zune, the XBox 360, and Media Center PCs.
Although, it could also be a chair sailing out the window. I bet they're bolting down everything in the campus today.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Interesting that they did a preview of a product they're not ready to formally announce yet. Rather uncharacteristic
It's been pointed out that the only reason most iTMS users would buy full-length movies online is so they could watch them on their TV set. Since DVD burning isn't an option (yet?), Apple had to announce their intended set-top box to give the movie announcement some real weight..................
It looks like Mail.app. That's 10000x better than the all-brushed-metal monstrosity it was before.
I downloaded The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as a test.
- The movie is 1.22 GB, and downloaded in about 20 minutes on a 100 Mbps connection (Internet2).
- The movie was able to be played before downloading was finished, and could skip to anywhere in the content that was already complete.
- The content shows itself as being protected by "FairPlay Version: 2".
- The bitrate is 1.5Mbps.
- The framerate is 24fps.
- The audio on this particular movie is Protected AAC, stereo, 128kbps, 44.1kHz.
- The video on this particular movie is Protected H.264/AVC0 640x272 (Widescreen format, probably just 640x480 with the black bars eliminated).
- The video looks very good (indeed, "near DVD quality") on a high quality 20" LCD. (I'm not a "videophile", but this is absolutely more than watchable on a nice quality large TV or monitor, and I suspect most consumers would agree).
- The video can be played in QuickTime, and uses QuickTime Chapters for DVD chapters; chapters are also accessible in iTunes.
- The video file can be burned to a DVD, but you cannot burn the file as a video DVD.
- You can play the file on multiple computers (I *believe* up to three as opposed to five for music), or on an unlimited number of iPods (if the usage rights haven't changed with iTunes 7; I haven't looked through the terms - if someone knows this to be different please correct me. In any case, it's already less restrictive than Unbox).
- iTunes 7.0 requires QuickTime 7.1.3.
- Pretty much every movie I looked at was $9.99; some new releases were up to $14.99, but were cheaper if preordered.
- When used on a Mac in a media center configuration, or with the forthcoming iTV solution that will presumably be much like a video AirPort Express (and yes, I know it's not an AirPort Express, but it will probably act a lot like a AirPort Express functionally, except allowing the streaming of video to your TV), this will be a pretty compelling and vertically integrated solution for most consumers.
I love that somewhat Orwellian slide that Engadget has from the presentation:
Apple is in your den
Apple is in your living room
Apple is in your car
Apple is in your pocket
What's next?
Strength Through iTunes
iTunes Through Apple
Apple Prevails
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Best. Tie Clip. Ever.
I wanna Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro
I wanna Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro
...
I wanna Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro
I wanna Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
When are they going to utilize the brown note?
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
The last time Apple did an iTunes upgrade, they added a minibrowser mode which would basically call home and tell Apple what you were listening to, so that the store would give you recommendations. There was a big hue and cry about the privacy concerns, so Apple changed that to be off by default, instead of on by default.
With iTunes 7, Apple will now let you get the artwork for your entire music collection, even if it wasn't bought from iTMS. This means that Apple has now given you a reason to willingly tell them about your entire music collection, effectively letting them get the information they want about your musical tastes. Very smart!
Where've you been? Brushed metal was ditched with iTunes 6. And none of the cosmetic changes with iTunes 7 bear any resemblance to Mail.app.
:(
The most noticable difference appears to be the new scollbars. I agree with the original poster -- I don't like them.
Can we please just get everything looking consistent again Apple? Please? Before you stick Java scollbars on iTunes 7, can we please ditch brushed metal in Finder (and a half dozen other Apple apps that ship with OS X)?
I mean seriously, OS X is starting to look more frankensteinish than your typical Linux installation. I can count 5 different application "looks" now:
- iLife (darker, unified toolbar, squared off corners)
- iTunes 7 (same as iLife, new scrollbars)
- Mail.app (unified toolbar, lighter than iLife, rounder corners)
- Safari/Finder/iCal (etc) (brushed metal)
- TextEdit/Preview (etc) (older non-unified look)
I love my MacBook Pro, but I'm not sure what happened to that consistency that Macs were supposed to be known for.
I love that somewhat Orwellian slide that Engadget has from the presentation:
Apple is in your den
Apple is in your living room
Apple is in your car
Apple is in your pocket
What's next?
Strength Through iTunes
iTunes Through Apple
Apple Prevails
It's always like that. Apple is going along, brainwashing people. Things are great. And then when we are watching a Steve Jobs special event presentation on a giant screen in an auditorium some athletic chic from IBM comes running in and throws a big hammer at the screen. Bummer.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I don't think that's the case. What Apple appears to be doing is dropping a huge hint in terms of how they expect the whole downloadable visual media thing to work.
Before the announcement, most people were talking about "downloadable movies" in terms of watching them on iPods. This was seen by most people as completely ridiculous, even assuming a "video iPod" was just around the corner with a larger screen. So the talk moved towards the idea that perhaps you were supposed to watch the movies on your laptop, or hook up a video card to your computer that would pipe the output to a TV. These are all ugly options for various reasons, and they certainly take away from the idea of this as more than a gimmick.
Now imagine the year 2010. You have broadband in common with 95% of the country. You flop in front of the TV, and select the program you want to watch and watch it. The programs come from a variety of sources: free video blogs, CNN newscasts available on a subscription basis, serials available on a subscription basis, free sample pilots, plus movies you're either renting or downloading.
How are you doing this?
With the products Apple announced today (and some its already announced.) That's how. You already could buy TV shows from Apple. You can now buy DVDs, and (once Jobs and the studios work something out) the chances are that movies on a PPV basis will probably be available too. The other thing necessary is the TV, the whole "flop on the couch" thing, and that's iTV.
They couldn't have announced the products they did today without announcing iTV. The question isn't why they pre-announced the iTV today, it's why they announced the movie store today without the iTV being ready.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Ditto that. I had to get a new skin for my phone because the GF...
/. then?
Ok, you had me up until that point, but girlfriend? Please. What are you doing on
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.
There is an app out there that will unify all of the OS X apps (even Firefox) with a common skin. It skins them to be a pretty standard OS X-ish feel, a much like Mail.app (w/o unified buttons), exept slightly darker. It also stips the brushed metal from brushed apps. I haven't ran it in awhile, so can't say if it works with the new iTunes. Its called UNO.
If the interface schizophrenia is getting to you, it might be the best solution, until Apple at least realized that their getting slightly off base with the "a style per app" philosophy. How hard is it to just use some stardardized Aqua on everything? Do individual apps really need to stand out, can function speak for them? I damn well know I'm running iTunes (sound coming from speakers, etc), and don't need it to be styled in such a way to let me know that "yep, thats itunes" when I look at it. Its annoying that they screw up their own standards.
Sorry for the rant, preaching to the choir.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
According to the website of the old CoverFlow.app, they did in fact sell their software to Apple, and that's what's being used in iTunes 7. Good for them. I bet they're glad they didn't end up like Watson or, to a less extent, Konfabulator (though they did manage to get bought out by Yahoo!).
The old shuffle had its USB interface built in, and you could use it as a USB key to take some data with you. Now you have to carry along a dock. This is less geek-friendly.
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.
"Words of wisdom: drop that zero and get with the hero" -- Vanilla Ice
When you try to download album art for a particular song, iTunes throws up a message box saying that they don't collect personal information. If you're the sort who thinks this is a bald-faced lie, then what's to stop Apple from phoning home the entire collection without any interaction on the user's part at all? Why wait for the user to request album art?
For the people who've reported gapless playback in existing generation iPods, can you double check? Any further details? Firmware versions? Won't work for me. I guess I'll have to listen to one of the new iPods in store before purchasing.
Say hello to zMac.
So they increased the resolution from 320x240 to 640x480, very nice. But what about people who bought videos at the old resolution? Is there any way for them to download the newer version of those videos, or do they have to buy them again to get the higher resolution?
Front-Row is a product designed to be turned on and used with a remote with 5 buttons and no skills. The iTV (!!) box is designed and marketed to be plugged in to a television and used with no skills. It is also sold specifically to be attached to a TV to watch movies, it is not bundled into a general purpose PC guerilla marketing style by PHBs that mistakenly believe that once the user realizes he has a media center on his desktop that he will move his PC to the living room and attach it to his television.
In comparison, MCE is something that is really only owned accidentally by people who don't even know they have it (because it was bundled with their PC from Best Buy), it requires the PC to be near the TV rather than on a desk and requires the user to know how to configure it and operate it with some crazy 300 button remote control (exaggeration, but the point is clearly made). It would probably require a class to get a user comfortable with the relationship between and configurations of MCE and Microsoft Media Player (and the derivitaves such as Amazon Unbox). It really doesn't matter if MCE can do any of the things that Front-Row does (which it really doesn't because Microsoft doesn't use zero-conf [bonjour] and whatnot). The simple fact is, it is not designed or marketed in a manner that will ever be used that way by the common man.
To say that something *can* be done is not the same as saying that people *will* do it. You *can* write an assembly language CGI script library for publishing a Blog site. But I doubt you *will*...
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving