Musings from The Software Underground

Today Apple released not one, not two, but three new products.

First up was the new iMac. The new iMac is pretty sweet. Apple made it thinner, and faster, added a built-in iSight, remote control and SuperDrive, bundled Front Row and PhotoBooth software and priced it at about the same as before. Amazing. This is one incredible package.

Front Row is nothing short of really, really cool. Microsoft, are you taking notes? Front Row is how this stuff should be done. With it you can easily play your music, movies, video, DVDs and picture slideshows. It also serves up movie trailers right from Apple's QuickTime site. Ok, maybe not the most useful thing, but it ranks right up there on the "oh wow" scale. As cool as the new iMac and Front Row are, I'd KILL for a wireless box that I could connect to the TV, one that served up content off of my Mac and played it through my stereo and TV. KILL I TELL YOU. Apple is so close to this, you can almost taste it.

Next Jobs introduced the long rumored iPods with video. Now these are a couple of trick devices. They added a bigger, 2.5" color screen, video support for both MPEG-4 and H.264 AND made both the 20GB and the 60GB thinner than before. The way the new iPods look in the pictures must be an illusion, because supposedly they are the same width as the models they replace.
Finally Jobs showed off both iTunes 6 (6? Didn't 5 come out a month ago?) and the new video store functionality. You can now buy music videos, episodes of some of your favorite ABC and Disney TV shows, and some of the Pixar shorts, all for $1.99 each. Not bad, but honestly, the quality just isn't there. The 320 x 240 res isn't much to write home about. It seems that like music downloads, Apple is shooting towards the lower end of the quality scale. While buying episodes of your favorite TV shows for $1.99 to play on your iPod is kind of novel, it's not the best quality for your home entertainment center with that Plasma TV. I think video podcasting is far more intriguing. But really, Apple has hit a couple of home runs with the new iPod and the iPod nano. It makes you wonder how their competitors can even hope to compete. It's nice to see a company dominate based on innovation and design rather than monopoly.