by Noah Kravitz, Reviews Editor

12 September 2006

It's Showtime: Hands-On With iTunes 7 and Thoughts on iTV, iPods, and iTunes Movies

Such a Buzz

First of all, Steve, unbutton that top button. My Dad once made me button the top button on my dress shirt when I'd forgotten to wear a tie to some fancy place or another, and I looked foolish. Twenty years later, the closed top button/no tie look ain't any hipper. I mean, if you're going to ditch the signature black mock t-neck after so many keynotes, you gotta come up with something better than this. A Sex Pistols T-Shirt, or one of a kind couture from a Project Runway contestant (does Disney own them?) ... something!

So I've been writing about Apple for about eight years now and I'm still amazed at the amount of buzz they can conjure up for the release of a new product or two. It's literally amazing. You'd think they'd discovered the fountain of youth or something judging from the hype that built up to yesterday's press conference. No, it's just consumer electronics. But boy oh boy do we love our Apple goodies. So ... what was behind the magic curtain yesterday morning in San Francisco?

iTunes 7
Let's start with iTunes 7 since it's the most "computer-oriented" of yesterday's new products. iTunes 7 came hand in hand with the announcement that full-length feature films are now for sale at the iTunes Music Store. For now, only Disney-owned studios have brought their movies to the party. At $9.99 - 14.99 each, I'm not at all excited about this. 640 x 480 resolution "films" that I either have to put on an iPod that I then connect to my TV, or watch on my Mac? No thanks. That's why I have Netflix. And digital cable with On Demand. And HBO. And a DVR.

As soon as the (somewhat redesigned) Apple website was back online, I downloaded the iTunes 7 update and installed it. First thing of note was the slightly new look, including a blue double eighth note in the application icon instead of the green one in iTunes 6. The UI sports an overall cleaner look that's most appreciable in the left-side sources navigation pane. The pane is now clearly divided between "Library," "Store," "Devices," and "Playlists," with a little more space between each entry for easier reading. Numbers appear next to the Podcasts, TV Shows, and Movies entries (at least) letting you know how many unwatched episodes you have in your library.

Three library views are now available, the most noteworthy of which being the "Cover Flow" view that lets you scroll through your library via 3D cover art. This is a nifty concept that Apple seems to have bought from developers of a popular OS X shareware app of the same name. I may not use much in the long run since I'm pretty used to text-scrolling to get the music I want quickly, but then again I might - it's pretty neato. This view made it clear how many of my tracks are missing cover art. But wait! iTunes 7 will automatically fetch missing cover art for my music! Hurrah! I selected my entire music library and chose the Get Album Artwork command - took awhile but now a decent chunk of my library has artwork. Not perfect, but alot better than before. Cover Flow is also now in use in the iTunes Music Store.

More than ever, iTunes is about getting people to purchase and download content from the iTunes store. Features like TV show episode management for iPods and the aforementioned "number of unwatched episodes" ticker are geared to remind you that you've got media to consume and there's more waiting for you at the store. Other features like "Content Flow" - which lets you move media from your iPod to more than one computer (so you can listen to your music on your home and work computers) - only work with media purchased from iTMS.

This is a sound strategy from the standpoint of Apple getting more people to buy more media from their store. But it's sure to raise the hackles of a few Mac fans who long for the days when Apple was a "computer company" - nowadays it's not about pure innovation, but rather about how to monitize innovation within a tightly woven, vertically integrated consumer experience.

iTunes 7 also features gapless audio playback, and the first thing the program did when I booted it up was to start analyzing my music library for gapless playback. This didn't affect my ability to listen to music, but rather caught my attention via the iTunes status bar. Good feature that's been a little overdue in iTunes. Video playback is also a bit nicer, with overlayed controls that appear/disappear when you mouse over the playback window. Kind of like that rumored touchscreen Video iPod was supposed to do, come to think of it.

So until I hear about some security hole bug that will eat my hard drive alive, I'm glad I spent the couple of minutes needed to download and install iTunes 7. Good stuff, even if you aren't a heavy iTMS user.

New iPods
Apple also refreshed the entire iPod line, starting with an all new, wee little metal iPod shuffle. $79 gets you 1 gb of storage in a new, smaller, still-screenless enclosure. Great. No, seriously, it's very cool looking in an art-meets-technology sort of way. But it's also a 1gb music player that costs roughly twice what no-name 1gb music players cost.

The new nanos should sell by the boatload. They're sleek, hip, (relatively) cheap, and come in colors. They're also now made of aluminum - a la the iPod mini - to counteract all those nasty "my nano got scratched!" reports. Interesting that the top of the line 8gb model is the only one available in black. Just like the MacBook.

No, the mythical "True Video iPod" didn't surface today. Instead, Apple refreshed the "Video Capable iPod" line with price cuts, storage/screen/battery bumps, software updates, and new earbuds. The price cuts were very well done, IMHO: The entry-level 30 gig model is now $50 cheaper and as a bonus claims to have longer battery life, a brighter screen, and new software that allows for gapless playback, media searches by letter and downloadable games available from iTMS for $4.99 each. The flagship iPod got a bump from 60 to 80 gb, all of the above hardware and software updates, and a price cut to $349.

$249 for a 30 gig iPod is nice. $349 for the 80 gig model is downright tempting. Thankfully I haven't pulled the trigger on that $199 30gb refurb yet.

iTV
So this was yesterday's One More Thing ... and a "sneak preview" of something that isn't even shipping yet. Codenamed iTV, this is the Apple settop box so many people have been waiting for. While it's not yet available and thus subject to revision, I have to say I'm underwhelmed. I've tried looking at it from a few different perspectives and keep coming back to the same thing: Overpriced.

$299 will get you a mini mini, if you will - a very short white box reminiscent of the Mac mini. iTV has no power brick, no hard drive, and no optical media slot. What it does have is a remote control, 802.11 and Ethernet networking, a USB 2 port, and a ton of a/v outputs including HDMI and optical audio. The idea is that you connect it to "the flat screen you bought last weekend," your audio system, and your computer network. Then you stream digital media from your computer through it to your home theater system so you can watch and listen to all of that iTMS-bought (or otherwise acquired) content on the big screen. Great.

Thing is, it's 300 bucks and still requires a separate computer to serve all of that media. Maybe that USB 2 port can be used to hard-wire a hard drive full of content, thus bypassing the computer altogether, but I doubt it. So iTV is basically a $300 wireless media streamer that does the same thing that some other, less expensive devices already on the market do. But it does it Apple-style, which means ease-of-use, killer UI, and a trendy, classy, feel-good kind of vibe you'll want to show off to your friends.

So people will buy it. And if it does hook up to a USB drive as a standalone media player with iTMS and other Web access, I'll consider buying it. But I doubt it will. Probably I won't because I think it should be $100 cheaper, and for $300 or so you can get a first-gen Mac mini off eBay that will do more or less the same thing as iTV provided your flat screen has a DVI input. So that will be my rationale. And I'll shout it from my soapbox as I drool jealously over my friends' iTV boxes ... or whatever they'll wind up being called.

But still, I have plans to get a new iPod to replace the one I knocked out of the kitchen window. Only question is, do I go for the $200 30 gig refurb, or the new 80 gig model at $349. You got me Steve ... you got me today, one way or the other. Just please ... loosen that button or go back to the black mock turtleneck for the next keynote.

* * * *

Get the best price for your new iPod at PCPrices.net/ipod