Ya had to see a Geek post coming, what with all the Apple activity today. New iPod, new iMac, new Front Row thingy… new iTunes 6.
I think Apple is slipping.
Two years ago I would have already ordered a new iPod. My current iPod is now two generations behind. 20GB and non-color. In good condition, sure, but when did that ever enter into the picture for something new and shiny from Apple?
Sure the new iPod is 30GB, so I’d have more room. Then again, I still have over 5GB free on my current iPod and I have no more discs to rip. Sure the new iPod supports video. Then again, so does my PSP. In fact, I find it to be pretty freakin’ ballsy for Apple to sell episodes of shows that are ordinarily free. Come to think of it, they’re “free”. I pay a shit load of cash to Comcast for my cable; they supply me with ABC analog and HD. I pay an additional fee for a PVR to record shows for me; if I cared about the shows on ABC, I’d already have them recorded. And if I had them on a TiVo, I could use TiVo-To-Go to put them on my portable device, be it PMC, PSP, or iPod. So, no the whole push for “pay for download” for TV shows doesn’t wow me. At all. Movies? Maybe, but even then I doubt it.
Oh and by the way? Nearly all of your accessories from Generations 3 and 4 are no longer applicable for the new iPod: they moved the earphone jack and got rid of the interface nubbin. They also dropped the “remote on the wire” for the iPod line as part of this… I’m not sure who is more screwed by this: the end user or the OEM’s that make iPod accessories… after all there’s already a new iTrip announced because of this design change. The only thing that comes over from the ClickWheel iPod is the Dock.
The new iMac? Integrated iSight, thinner, etc. Whoopie; it’s still a G5! If it’s not Intel powered, don’t expect me to buy one.
Front Row? A wanna be Media Center Edition, without the ability to record TV shows; I already had an MCE box that I hardly used, so you can imagine the impact on me here. No TV? That would be a deal breaker. I mean, go figure – they probably expect me to buy all my TV shows via iTVS, or something. I like the UI for it. And I like the remote that they’ve designed. I also like that it’s Bluetooth, although that also implies a shorter battery life and “charging” requirement for the remote, so I don’t know how practical that will be in a normal house. “Can’t skip tracks cuz the remote is dead!” I also can’t plug it into the Mac mini, so to even consider it, I need a new Mac? Ya know, having heard that, I don’t think I’d care that I’ll eventually upgrade my notebook for Vista – at least that will have a bunch more features than, oh, I dunno, one? I think it’s a nifty idea that has potential, but for the here and now? Unimpressed, and I blame this on the lack of TV support and the requirement of a new Mac.
iTunes 6. This one irked the hell out of me, on a Geek level. They released iTunes 5 five weeks ago and they are actually promoting iTunes 6 with a “quick to release” tag line. Are you kidding me? First off, why should the customer care that there’s a new version number? Next off, you had to go to iTunes 5: you changed the UI a good deal and you were at iTunes 4.9 – this new version should be iTunes 5.1. Maybe 5.5, but on what basis of new stuff does iTunes get a version 6? Hell, y’all added podcasting support from 4.8 to 4.9. Jeesh. New support for video was already in 5.0? Bug fixes? Lame. LAME! LAME! LAME! Since when has making fictitious version number jumps a good thing that users will welcome? I’m almost resentful that I have to download iTunes again, twice in the same month…
And after all of that, I sit here typing, and my credit card is not trying to get out of my back pocket. It should be. The new iPod is bigger in capacity and smaller physically and even comes in black now, with a color screen. There’s a new contender for a media related PC. There’s new free software that I should be downloading… yet I’m not. I’m pretty freakin’ unimpressed well on the way to annoyed with the whole 6.0 crap… that stuff just irks me. I even deliberated calling the new version of SharpMT 2.7, but given the re-write for the new framework, UI overhaul, reworking the communication layers, and restructuring the threading model, I felt 3.0 was in order.
They’ve gotta be slipping, if I’m not ordering – no other explanation.