Today’s Apple iPod event
Today Steve Jobs made a number of announcements at the Apple music event in San Francisco, many of them about the iPod product line, from new prices to new devices.
The first part of that news is big: it was Steve Jobs taking the public helm and leading the presentation, with help from other Apple executives and a number of iPod Touch app developers. Still, it was Steve that was running the show, and that was more important than the announcements themselves to any number of Apple investors. He was back, looking healthy, and even mentioned his health when he first took the stage, by saying, “I am very happy to be here. I had a liver transplant five months ago; it was donated by a person who died in a car crash.” He urged others to become organ donors, adding, “I’m vertical, I’m back at Apple, and I’m loving every day of it.”
Jobs waxed poetic about the iPod Touch, touting it as a gaming device, the lowest price-point for entry to the Apple App Store, and even taking about it as the true netbook computer: small, lightweight, inexpensive, powerful. Jobs and other presenters spent a great deal of time on the Touch as a gaming device, touting the 21,000 games in the App Store, their variety, and their quality, as live-blogged by MacNN. He was backed up by a number of game developers, who talked about the Touch as a platform and the new games they were developing. When it came time to announce the camera for the Touch, it was almost a throwaway line, surely since the rumor mill had made it inevitable. The same is true of the new video capability of the Nano line.
The press had also sussed out the new prices and specs of the new iPods, so those announcements were also a bit anticlimactic. The following are the new price schedules and memory sizes:
iPod Touch
32-GB is $279, reduced from $399
16-GB is $249, reduced from $299
8-GB is $189, reduced from $229iPod Nano
16-GB is $149, reduced from $189
8-GB is $129, reduced from $149iPod Classic
120-GB is $229, reduced from $249
All in all, there were few surprises on the iPod side, but mainly because the rumor mill had already made the bulk of the “announcements” on cameras, pricing, and other specs. And, regardless, the biggest announcement of the day was not made so much as lauded with a standing ovation: the return of Steve Jobs to the public Apple helm.
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