Funny to see Apple basically admit that the iPod Mini was a better design.

And the new Shuffle is fucking rad.

shuffle --> kickass
iTV pretty promising if you don't already own a 360 and windows media ed. or a mac mini.

new ipod ---> bit of a let down reall.y I expected 100gb harddisks and possibly more screen realestate ( with the ipod being held horizontally with the clickwheel on the side)

still very impressed with the shuffle.

I fully agree. The mini was an amazing design, the 1G nano not so much.

Ugh, I want everything Apple announced today... I think I have some kind of Apple disease.

i'm just pissed i purchased all those venture brothers episodes at 320x240, and now all the TV shows are 640x480.

But free cover art and CoverFlow... hot damn

Too bad you can't search in iTMS anymore. I was rather fond of that functionality. I guess I'll just have to take their word on what I want.

"I'm Steve Jobs. I am trendy in my black polo and jeans. Pay attention to me, oh ye faithful minions. Look at this new crap, just like the old crap except BETTER!"

Having said that, the new shuffle is kinda nice. I might have even considered one if it weren't for the fact that most of my music is in high quality WMA and I don't want to suffer the conversion loss by converting said music into the horrible AAC format or MP3.

Creative Zen ftw!

And I hope they change the "iTV" name. It's the name of a major television broadcaster in the UK. I'll stick with my 360.

The iTunes store is my life saver. I live most of the year in Europe and it lets me still keep up with Lost, 24, and other TV favorites -- it's a connection to my friends and family in the US in a way. Just downloaded the new version.

Thanks for the heads up!

Pink iPod Nano.

Must resist.

I can already smell a lawsuit.

HUUUUGE letdown. Basically, a cosmetic overhaul for the holiday buying season to combat Microsoft's Zune launch. How are we supposed to watch widescreen movies on that tiny fucking screen?

i was actually expecting an announcement regarding macbooks with the new intel dual-core processors. i'm glad they didn't, because i totally would have bought one. the day will come soon, though.

What, you wanted a complete overhaul, Gen 4 is less than a year old. Personally I think the video aspect is nonsense unless you're trapped on a transcontinental flight or need to show somebody "Ask a Ninja" in a bar, but people use it. Immediate TV downloads for people who don't have TiVo or Cable pretty well rocks, too.

Even without all that, it's 80 Gigs with a 20 hour battery for $350. I'm sold.

I still use my 10 gig touchwheel iPod, and I'm not gonna buy a new one 'till this one croaks.

The new iTunes is pretty awesome. I really like the album art downloading feature, as well as the flip through album art option. But the kicker? GAPLESS PLAYBACK! It's about time.

wrt re-encoding, whenever possible i go to 256kbps MP3, thanks to a long round of blind sound-testing and a tendency towards open formats. i have a friend who maxes out the bitrate to 360kbps, but i have a fetish for hexadecimals. as disk capacity increases, the size of a chunk of media becomes less relevant; meanwhile, lost detail cannot be regained [save by re-encoding later].

the Shuffle: this is the sort of archetypal industrial design for which Apple is rightly loved and admired; and object which, once made, one cannot imagine the world without, an 'of course' object. i especially admire them for taking a product line that was poo-poo'ed when it created, and instead of letting it languish, they've done what they do and refined it down into its core self. plus: the idea of gifting someone [say, a new crush] a Shuffle that's been pre-loaded with 240 of the songs that mean the most to me is a fine one. solid state music capsule.

video: i agree with those who feel that this makes less sense on a tiny screen; and indeed, Steve originally said the same thing. but, Apple tends to take the long view, and the ultimate end of linking this media to a display, at whatever resolution, makes it all add up for me. like Municipal above [i also ditto Crossfade happiness], i'm going to wear down my 2nd gen U2 iPod til it croaks, happily and without upgrade-lust, just as it replaced my 1st-gen iPod before it.

but maybe at some point i'll allow myself a Nano.. erm, a Mini.. er, a Nino. oh, and a Shuffle. hm. this is getting spendy.

Mahasiddha