Breaking Apple Event News: iTunes 8 and iPod Nano revealed

Davey Winder
Tuesday, 09 September 2008 23:11

IT Industry - Strategy

The Let's Rock Apple Special Event has been running for nearly an hour now, so what's new and exciting in the world of Apple? iTWire brings you the announcements so far regarding iTunes 8 and the new iPod Nano...

Steve Jobs kicked off the much anticipated Let's Rock event in San Francisco with a joke about how his death had been exaggerated. But things soon got serious with the news we had predicted about iTunes 8.

After the usual marketing and statistical waffle, as interesting as it was recounting that there are some 8.5 million songs available on iTunes around the planet, as well as 125,000 podcasts and even 3500 hours of TV, the iTunes 8 specific announcements started.

First up was confirmation that high definition television content is to be included in iTunes 8. Initially these will apparently be restricted to the US and cost USD $2.99 an episode.

There will be HD versions of Heroes and The Office, and they will play on Apple TV or on your computer. Which is nice.

As is the much rumoured Genius functionality that will make music recommendations that are based upon songs already in your music library, what you play and what stuff you buy. The Genius sidebar will also make recommendations from the iTunes Store, of course.

What has not changed is the user interface, despite speculation that it would. If you want a look then Apple says iTunes is available from today, although I would not bank on being able to get it courtesy of the mad upgrade rush that is likely to happen.

iPods were next on the agenda, and more marketing stuff: 160 million iPods sold since day zero.

Things are changing on the iPod front pretty much as expected, with the Classic 160GB being discontinued at long last. However the 80GB model will now come with an extra 40GB for no extra cost, which is good news.

The new iPod Nano is exactly the same as those pictures, making it so Apple says, the thinnest iPod ever. It has some nifty tricks up its sleeve as well, like being able to create Genius playlists without being connected to a computer.

Now that is cool, the Nano does the calculating and analysing on-board. It also does the really cool iPhone accelerometer thing for auto portrait and landscape viewing. Nice.

Oh, and want to shuffle then shake it. Yep, you shake the Nano and it shuffles. Now I like that, but I am a mug for silly gimmicks it has to be said.

Pricing has been announced as USD $149 for the 8GB version, USD $199 for 16GB.

More to come...