iTV - iTunes Video, iPod Games and more…

The computer world was on pins and needles this week, waiting for the latest Apple announcements. Rumors have been flying around about what they’d announce for months now; Apple tends to be really secretive about what they’ve got in the pipeline, so tech-heads get antsy and start making up their own theories. Given the quality of Apple’s products, and the rabid following they’ve built over the years, it’s no surprise that Steve Jobs’ latest speech at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center was heavily anticipated.

Steve Jobs, September 12, 2006
photo: Gizmodo

This particular set of announcements wasn’t quite as thrilling as past ones, but there were still some highlights. The big iPod news was the downloadable games. For $4.99 you can put games on your 5G and higher iPods. So far they’re simple arcade & strategy games along the lines of Bejeweled, Tetris and Texas Hold’Em, — exactly what you need to keep your mind active on a long subway ride. Steve Jobs also announced a brighter screen & longer battery life, along with the much-hoped-for 80GB model.
The latest word on the iPod Nano was pretty exciting. The new models will have 2GB, 4GB and 8GB storage capacities & an amazing 24-hour battery life. They’ll also come in new colors: Green, black, silver, pink and blue. The 8GBs will only be available in black and silver — no word on whether that was temporary or permanent.

They also announced a complete redesign of the iPod Shuffle. After announcing that they’d sold 1 million to date, they showed off the sharp-looking new (hopefully scratch-resistant) aluminum case - with a clip so it can be worn. We didn’t score a photo, but our colleagues over at Engadget have a shot available HERE.

The bragging continued as Mr. Jobs expounded on the beauty of iTunes, now the 5th largest music seller in the US. Plans for iTunes 7 were also unveiled: The new version of the all-around favorite media manager is going big. It’ll feature a eparate library for music, podcasts, TV and other media, plus automatic downloads of album art & a jukeboz-style browser for it. iTunes TV also made an impressive showing — Steve said they’ve sold 45 million TV shows. They plan to continue improving the system, offering TV shows in 640 x 480-4x resolution and a new way to sync your shows to your iPod. iTunes 7 is available as a free download HERE.

Then there’s iTunes Video. You can finally download and watch movies legitimately! So far, about 75 movies have been made available; they’ll continue being released & made available the same day as the DVD release. Steve said that the downloads will take no more than 30 minutes, and that you’ll be able to watch them as they load. They’ll be $12.99 the first week, then go up to $14.99 afterward. They’re officially available to the public today; if you want to try it out, just click HERE.

Steve Jobs handed off to Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, to make what was obviously their BIG announcement. He told us all about the iTV — a wireless set-top TV box. It’s about half the size of a Mac Mini and lets you play movies, music and photos on your TV. It’ll run for $299 when it comes out early next year.

They closed the show with a live performance by John Legend. We were disappointed to see that some of the better rumors didn’t pan out; there was no mention of the widescreen iPod Video that they were supposedly releasing, or the apocryphal iPhone. We also felt a little weirded out by some of Jobs’ more grandiose claims; he said he envisions people having Apple in the living rooms, cars and pockets. It kind of sounded like he wanted Apple products running everyone’s lives — which is a little creepy, but given the quality of Apple’s stuff, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.

Technorati Tags: iTV iTunes Video MoviesGames

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