One More Thing...

Apple had its big "It's Showtime" event earlier today, announcing several new products including:

• iPod goes from 60gb to 80gb with better screen resolution and battery life, but still no widescreen format.
• iPod Nanos get new colors and form factor, get bumped to 8gb at the high end and the 1gb Nano is retired.
• iTunes 7 released with an updated layout and gapless playback (translates to iPod too).
  
• Movies now available for download from iTMS.
  
• A new set top box dubbed iTV that will help marry iTunes on the computer to the living room (available Q1 2007).
  

Nothing that surprising, considering the name of the event. I think all those "in the know" predicted the movie store at least, and the rest is just a natural extension of that. For me personally, the thing I'm most interested in is the new Nanos. I could care less about watching movies on an iPod and the prices seem a little steep to me ($9.99 to $14.99). I would have hoped they would be significantly cheaper than buying the DVD, maybe $9.99 as a top-line price.

But the new Nano is interesting to me for the fact that they have now been increased to 8gb, and also because they have gone "old school" a little bit and brought back the design element of the former iPod Mini. I think this is a good move, as it gives the Nano its own personality, so to speak. I just hope the new Nano is as durable as the Minis were.

They also revealed a new iPod Shuffle, which looks like an aluminum version of the iPod remote. It's cute and all, but it doesn't really interest me personally.