My Bloggywog

For the last week, every single Apple geek with a Digg account has been speculating about what Apple would release on September 9th, 2008. What we got wasn’t anything all that un-expected for those of us who are dedicated to worshipping the rumour mill, but there’s some pretty exciting stuff all the same, it’s run-down time!

1. iTunes 8 – We’ve all been using iTunes 7.x for what feels like years now and now FINALLY apple’s given it a bump. There’s not that much that’s new about it really; slightly updated user interface; you can now browse your music by looking at a wall of album covers which is nice. After that though there’s Genius; a new music recommendation engine which will create playlists of music trachs which go well together. This is based on data Apple asks your iTunes account to send to its servers and then makes suggestions based on what other iTunes users from all over the planet have put together, so far it seems to work pretty well. The update also allows you to download HD TV shows for $1.00 more than Standard Definition though I am yet to see any HD content in the UK iTunes store. You can download the update now and if you’re a mac user make sure to run software update to get the latest version of Quicktime (and then again to get the FrontRow update too..).
2. iPod Classic – Now only available in a 120GB size; essentially the small classic now has a bigger hard drive and the thicker one is gone forever.
3. iPod Shuffle – The shuffles weren’t actually mentioned by Steve on stage but they did get a small update by taking on some of the colours of the new nanos, which brings me to number four.
4. iPod Nano – The new iPod Nanos are back to their original form-factor; tall and thin. This fourth generation of the Nano is their thinnest iPod yet and boasts a tilt censor which allows you to switch into coverflow by turning it on its side. It’s also useful for changing the viewing angles of photos or (and this is the fun bit) shuffling your music by shaking it; I’m not sure what’s going to happen if you go jogging with this thing; a new track on each step could get to be a little tiresome, though I’m sure you can disable it. And of course the new colours, which for my money are MUCH better than the old pastely ones are BRIGHT! They’ve got a new advert too which is pretty nice.
5. iPod Touch – The touch has a newly sculpted design which makes it even thinner than it was previously and is now curved (like the iPhone) on the back. It comes with software update 2.1 which is free for iPod touch owners running 2.0, or £5.99 for users running 1.x who wish to upgrade. The new software doesn’t add much more than 2.0 did in the first place, though it does add support for iTunes’ new Genius feature which could be pretty useful. Also all new iPod Touch models come with a built in receiver for Nike+ which is a pretty nice little addition.
6. iPhone 2.1 – Ever since first-gen iPhone owners installed 2.0, or 3G owners got their new phones, we’ve been waiting for 2.1 to be released and finish off all of the odds and ends which weren’t quite right upon release, well there is good news ahead. Come Friday Apple is releasing the 2.1 update which will take us from 2.0.2 to 2.1 and hopefully make the iPhone 3G as much of a pleasure to use as the original iPhone was.

Apart from ALL of that I don’t think there’s that much more worth mentioning and I don’t think I forgot anything. For full coverage check out the streaming video of the event and see the presentation for yourself.