Nano 4G available, iPod Touch revamped, iTunes 8, Apple fanboys drool everywhere
September 9th, 2008Apple, iPhone, iPhone 3G, ipod, ipod nano, iPod Shuffle, iTunes
Wow! So many amazing innovations from Apple in a single day! Looks like it’s time for a list:
iPod Nano
The 4th generation iPod Nano has been completely redesigned, confirming spy photos from a few days ago. The design has the same basic shape and as the 2nd generation Nano, but has a shallow curve at the edges which allow it to be thin enough for Steve Jobs to proclaim it the “thinnest iPod ever”.
Additional improvements tend to be mediocre, but in the Nanos’ case I had to stop and stare. From the Apple website:
The accelerometer comes to iPod nano. Give it a shake to shuffle your music. Turn it sideways to view Cover Flow.
Wow! (Can I say that again?) I’m ordering one of these right now! Comes in 9 snazzy, retro colors: silver, black, purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, pink. 8GB and 16GB models for $150 and $200 respectively.
iPod Touch
The new iPod Touch has had been slightly changed, featuring a tweaked design similar to that of the iPhone 3G (the curved back). The metal backings’ sheen is still there and additionally, the price has been dropped 70 big ones to $229. Touch now supports Genius playlist creation (keep reading).
iPod Shuffle
The iPod shuffle has gone through a very minor update - the colors have been swapped, matching that of the Nano. The design is unchanged from the last update.
iTunes
iTunes has undergone a major version upgrade - to 8.0. Apple claimed that 8.0 would be ground-breaking enough to deserve th 8.0 title. I’d say it does - aside from grid view and the new visualizer (seen above) there are 2 main brand spankin’ new features that are pretty cool:
Genius Playlists: Select a song and hit the Genius button. A playlist is instantly created containing songs in your library that are similar to that of the selected one. Pretty useful if you have a monstrous music library.
Genius Sidebar: Essentially just a bigger and badder MiniStore, Sidebar finds trends in music that you play often and recommends other music like it to you. It only recommends music from the iTunes Store.
On a side note, Apple updated all the new earbuds to include their own woofer and 2 tweeters - offering superior sound quality. These could be out already (included with the new Nano), but they are not available by themselves in the iTunes store yet.
Definitely some cool new toys from Apple to check out.
