A conversation between friends

Hey man, thoughts on the Apple announcements today?

A few things …

iTunes 7 is pretty slick, but I am disappointed in the high-end iPod. And I think they are over-thinking/over-engineering the iTV. All it needs to be is an Airport Express with HDMI out.

I thought you wanted my thoughts?

Go on.

The large iPods are nice. Nothing great. I was hoping for 60 and 120GB though.

Apple has purchased the 100GB Toshiba drives. We know this. So I was baffled at the 80GB.

Nanos are nice. Interesting color schemes, though. I think it’s funny that they reverted to the old mini colors. I love how they’re segregating the rich by making them black. Kinda reverse racism.

Yeah, no white anymore. There goes a truckload of color-matched addons. I swear, iPod add-on vendors must swerve between elation and complete horror during these announcements.

iTunes 7 is slick (good word). I like the new “views.” The new iPod management system is nice. I really hope they bought the guy who developed Coverflow out or hired him.

Yeah, I owned that. I should get a credit.

Ah, the site has been updated. Apple bought him out. Good for Apple.

Heh, good for Coverflow Guy.

iTunes 7 “transfers content from computer to (authorized) computer.” I guess they’re finally catching on to this …

No kidding. The gapless playback is a godsend. Have you tried it?
In the webcast Steve said that gapless playback was “encoded into the MP3” which is a flat out lie. I’m a little concerned by that. If you install Linux on the iPod you get gapless playback.

Well, I think it is not a complete lie. I believe iTunes is mucking with the ID3 header, ticking it so that iTunes and the iPod know what song to play right up against the end of the current one.

Hrm, the gap?

I could be wrong. I mean, if they put it in the iTunes XML file that would suck. That’s the reason ratings don’t transfer with the songs. But the jawdropper for me today was a friend who mentioned that iTunes actually analyzes the waveforms of the songs to make sure the transition is flawless. That’s amazing, if true.

I was never a big fan of the gap. I mean, when the pref pane gives you the option of “0” I would expect gapless.

You’d think, yeah. My trusty Audiotron even did that.

I haven’t gotten to iTV yet in the webcast.

Oh man, I am so ready for that. But again, I really wonder what the wait is. This is nothing more than an Airport Express with video out. Give me a break. 1Q2007? What kind of DRM hell are they negotiating on the device-side, I wonder. Why would you even need to?

Overall, a few thoughts. iTunes is becoming a whole new Finder. I mean, it’s almost it’s own operating system.

Interesting. It is fun to watch iTunes mimic the OSX interface and vice versa. And the PC version of iTunes is like a MacOS UI virus infiltrating Windows.

I’m not sure how I feel about the button-up. I kinda like the black turtleneck.

Nice observation.

Once again, the event didn’t live up to the hype. No full-screen iPod, no iPhone. But the iTV was a nice tease.

I think I cried when I saw that the iPod was not full-screen. Can’t recall through the haze of despondency. Good talking to you, Len.