The One Paragraph Apple Music Event Report
September 9th, 2009So, in no particular order, Steve Jobs returned to the stage thanking the person whose untimely death gave him a second chance at life. Predictably, there was a new iTunes release, version 9, with simpler, smarter navigation, “genius mixes,” and the ability to copy songs among your home computers. While the iPod retains 73.8% of a mature market, Microsoft has a mere 1.1% with their Zune. You wonder why they are wasting shareholder’s money to build an iPod touch clone? Maybe it’s time for a shareholder’s revolt. In other developments, the iPod classic stays in the product line, and storage is restored to 160GB. The new iPod touch starts at $199 with 8GB, with a 32GB version of $299 and a 64GB version at $399. The iPod shuffle receives new colors: black, silver, pink, green and blue, and a stainless steel version is added for $99 with 4GB storage. But instead of delivering a an iPod with a camera, as the rumor sites predicted, Apple pulled a big one out of their hats once again, with a “one more thing” introduction of a camcorder feature for the new iPod nano, available at $149 for the 8GB version; $179 for the 16GB edition. The Flip video’s $149 camcorder only has 4GB of storage, by the way. The new nano also receives an FM radio and a built-in pedometer. Talk about reinvigorating the iPod line! The session closed out with music from Norah Jones. And, no, there was no Beatles-related announcement folks!
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There is some complaining in the press that no camera-equipped iPod Touch was announced. According to one or two press reports, the reason seems to be that one was being manufactured but Apple was unhappy with some quality issue and stopped the production run. I wouldn’t be surprised if the very generous price cuts in the current model in its various sizes is to clear inventory, and that a new model will be released sooner rather than later.