Rubenerd

Apple has released new stuff, so because Slashdot and the like dub me an Apple fanboi it's my civic responsibility to discuss them… from my iTelephone. We still don't have home internet, you see :(.

iPod shuffle

Don't get me wrong, I adore Apple products because they're the only consumer electronics company that can design things (and yes that includes B&O!) but only Apple could remove buttons from something, make an advertising campaign out of it, then put the same buttons back and advertise it as a feature ;).

iPod nano

A very interesting change having a touch screen, but I wonder what impact it will have on usability, especially when you're walking around with your hand in your pocket. The ClickWheel was such a boon because you could operate it without looking, and you could memorise the order of the menus.

It also lost the ability to play video (which they heavily advertised in previous versions) and it no longer has a built in camera. In many ways its like the transition from the iPod Mini to the nano, they're two completely different devices. It's basically a slightly larger iPod shuffle with a screen.

iPod touch

There are lots of people who can't justify buying an iPhone 4 and an expensive new phone plan, and I know if I was one of them I'd be really considering getting one of these now that it has the "retina display" too. I mean I look at the screen on my iTelephone and look at every single other phone on the market and I feel like someone has rubbed grit into my eyes, or my glasses are really dirty!

Apple TV

It has an A4 chip which I think we were all expecting. They were able to keep the interface true to the original though. Unfortunately, I must be one of the few people in the universe who doesn't like black or think its cool, so the new colour is a bit of a shame. Oh well, I'm weird.

iTunes

For a brief moment in Leopard, iTunes looked like a Mac native application with a consistent interface. Now it looks different again, and I strongly doubt they've made it a Cocoa application either. Honestly, iTunes is the easiest application to use to organise lots of music (as the name suggests!) but it's also the most unstable, unreliable application Apple ships. People were asking about 64 bit, but that won't happen until it's rewritten in Cocoa owing to Carbon's 32 bit limitation.

I suppose they don't want to do an Objective-C rewrite because they have so much invested in the current codebase, and they still want to make it reasonably portable for Windows users. Bummer.

Ping

The new iTunes music social network thing. As someone who's worked as a network administrator, I shudder a bit at their choice of name. Oh well, if people use it and like it. I prefer the Whole Wheat Radio model, personally.

Conclusion

Some interesting changes, and its good to see Apple can still deliver stuff. I won't be getting any of it though. I mean, my iTelephone 4 has an iPod in it ;).