OHAITHERE Apple Fangirlishness, you have returned. You may proceed with the blog.

Wednesday 1 September 2010

September 1st, time for an Apple music event.




So once again my fangirl gland will pulsate excitedly whilst I stare at a computer screen. Well, this time I probably won't have the luxury of such a large screen. See, Apple has done something a little bit odd for today's announcement. Steve Jobs will be presenting the event from far away San Francisco and the whole saga will be broadcast live online for anyone to watch. Well, not quite everyone, this is Apple afterall.

You only have the priveledge of watching live from an Apple product and as my Macbook is 60 odd miles away in Lincoln I'm stuck with the tiny screen of my iPod.* Oh Apple, you really need to stop acting like an upmarket, overpriced members-only club. Even if that's what you are. And if that's what you are then I darn right want a few more wingback chairs in Apple store.
*Let's ignore the fact that pizza stopped me from watching it live at all. Damn cheesy goodness

Give me a drum roll please for the big announcements.

Apple TV

$0.99 TV rentals? Awesome. $4.99 movie rentals on the day of DVD release? Awesome. The new smaller improved Apple TV box at only $99? Awesome. All rentals no purchases? Awes... wait, what? Suddenly Apple TV is nothing but a pretty, expensive box. It's basically a DVD player.... that'll only play rented DVDS.

So a $0.99 TV episode isn't too bad when you first think about it. But really think about it. Firstly note that this is Apple and in their world $99 equals £99. Just compare the UK and US Apple Store websites. Second do the maths. Say it's approximately £1 per episode to rent. An average TV drama is 24 episodes. That's £24 for the whole series. My boyfriend just bought Mad Men series 1 and 2 (that's 26 episodes) for £20 and that won't disappear after the rental period is up. That'll sit on his DVD shelf, making friends with the other boxsets and any time we want we can enough the wonder of Christina Hendricks' breasts.

Plus there's many other products and services that do a much better job of this than Jobs. You can get rentals from Love Film from £3.99 a month with no start up few. If you're lucky enough to have a PS3 you can rent movies from the PlayStation Network from $2.99 in the US, way cheaper than the Apple prices. (I'm not sure on the info for in the UK) And better than all that, there's products like the Western Digital Live Media Player from which you can play media from a harddrive (it's not exactly a great task to rip a DVD to your computer) or stream live from the internet eg. YouTube. As ever Apple are releasing a product that's already on the market in some for or other, but not quite as good. (Though a lot prettier)

iPod Nano Nano




"I lost the bloody thing again!!!" Cries heard across the land from people who think a good feature of an MP3 player is that it's small enough to swallow. I don't really have much to say on this because I'm not remotely impressed. When a few case designs were leaked showing the new screen everyone was talking about the iPod Shuffle suddenly getting a shiny screen. But no. Stevey's just shrunken the Nano. What happened to the middle off the market?! The Nano was a nice middle ground between the big shiny iPod with it's many features and the tiny iPod shuffle with it's... tininess. Suddenly the Nano is little bigger than the Shuffle... oh and woop di do, you can fondle it.

Not impressed, Jobsworth, not impressed.

And no, the much improved oh god i want it iPod Touch doesn't entirely make up for it.


Social Networking Through iTunes



Ping! .........................Ping! That word I associate with Blackberry owners like myself and our ability to make each other vibrate and make loud noises. Not that I think it should stay that way. This was my favourite announcement of the event. That is, iTunes 10's Ping feature. A new music sharing social network (possibly to rival MySpace). And of course Facebook and Twitter connect. Not being one to share playlists from Spotify (or even use Spotify much at all) I welcome another way of sharing music.


Everything Else

The iPod Shuffle - Anybody else notice now the new 4th generation is essentially exactly the same as the 2nd generation. Apple clearly realising that people don't want to be forced into using the Apple headphones with the button. Or more likely it's some kind of evil marketing ploy. Damn you Apple, why did I let myself get pulled into your evil world?!

The New iPod Touch - Basically they've brought it back up to essentially being an iPhone... without the phone. Add in the new games centre and I seriously want to upgrape my own battered and bruised iPod Touch.

Le sigh. Once again Apple coughed up a mixed bag of wonderment and sparkly turds. Oh Apple.

0 comments:

Post a Comment