MacMost Now 131: New iPod Nano, Touch, Classic and iTunes 8

Gary Rosenzweig takes a look at today's announcements by Steve Jobs of a new iPod Nano, iPod Touch and iPod Classic. Also, new iTunes 8 and iPhone software update 2.1.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary Rosenzweig bringing you a rundown of today's apple announcements in this episode of mac most now.
Steve jobs took the stage this morning and made some announcements of some new products. First of witch was itunes version 8 which will be a free update of itunes.  First thing that he mentioned is that it is going to have high definition TV episodes to download for a buck more then standard episodes.  In addition NBC is going to return to iTunes now all the NBC shows including the ones they produced even if they weren't shown on an NBC station were removed from iTunes due to disputes between pricing and other things, but all of these shows are going to be coming back soon.  In addition to that Jobs talked a lot today about a new feature called genius.  What genius does is it makes suggestions about music and artists that you may like based on music that you currently selected, music in your playlist.  And it does the same thing for music and movies as well.  In addition to being in iTunes 8 it will be available on some of the ipod products, that we are going to talk about next.
So there are updates to three parts of the ipod line and the first part is the ipod classic.  The descendant of the original ipod.  Now the ipod classic will go to a single model and it will be available in 120 gigabytes.  For $249.  But it is going to have a thin form factor of one of the two previous ipods.  Now as expected the ipdo nano is getting a major update.  It is getting an entire new look.  It is going to be thin, and it is going to be tall.  It's going to have the same exact screen that the current one has, but in a different orientation.  So what's new in it is it's going to be the accelerometer, the same ones that is in the iPhone.  So it can detect when it's turned on it's side or when it's turned upright.  and it can adjust when the screen looks like according to that video will be shown in the wide format.  The prices are going to be $149 for an 8 gigabyte version and $199 for a 16 gigabyte version.  
The accelerometers will be used for more then just orientation, for example there will be a shake to shuffle feature where  you can actually shake your  ipod nano and it will skip to the next song.
And also the iPod touch is getting a makeover it's going to have a mirror design to match that of the iPhone.    In addition it's also going to add volume control on the side and a speaker.  There will also be built in functionality for Nike Plus.  Which basically puts a sensor in your shoe and you can get all sorts of statistics about your running.  In addition to that the new prices are going to  be set at $229 for an 8 gig  version $299 for a 16 gig version and $399 for  a whooping 32 gigabytes of storage space.
What's even more interesting is there is even more talk about games at this event.  There are three game demos all using the iPod touch.  And a new commercial for the iPod touch that basically shows it off as a gaming devise so it looks like  once and for all Apple is really competing with the Nintendo DS and the PlayStation Portable in the portable games space. 
Now Jobs also announced iPhone software update 2.1.  This is going to get us fewer crashes, better battery life, and fewer dropped calls, and also will speed up the backup procedure which happens just about every time you syhc your iphone.
Jobs also mentioned some interesting accessories for all of the different ipods.  One was a microphone for the iPod nano, that will allow voice recording.  Which should make it a really useful devise for especially students who could use it to record lectures and such.  
It looks like a lot of these new devices will be shipping by the end of the week or by this weekend.  Including the software updates.  So check them out and until next time this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now.

MacMost Now 131: New iPod Nano, Touch, Classic and iTunes 8

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