Apple Rocks: rest of World is underwhelmed!

Apple this evening held its much hyped Let’s Rock! event, the first after Peter Oppenheimer said that Apple had in the pipeline “technologies that our competition will not be able to match”. Rumours of tablets and new ipod models ensued.

[eminimalls products="ipod touch"]

iTunes 8

The latest update to iTunes includes the following:

• HD TV shows for $2.99
• SD TV shows now $1.99
• NBC is back
• New navigation (Genius)

In case you forgot NBC will bring Monk, The Office, Battlestar Galactica, 30 Rock, Heroes and some more (all HD).

In iTunes 8, you can now browse by album cover and toggle Albums, Artists, Genres and Composers in the tabs at the top. So, for any artist, you can scan through all their albums if you scrub over their icon, just like in iPhoto.

Genius allows you to automatically make playlists from tracks in your library that sound great together (in theory). The sidebar also make recommendations from the iTunes Store that ‘Go Great) with what you’re playing (I hope that can be switched off as it’s basically just clever spam!).

iTunes Nano

It’s just as predicted by so many renderings circulating the web for the last two weeks, Smooth, rounded elliptical profile. Steve tells us that it’s the thinnest iPod ever.

Features:

• Shake to shuffle
• Coverflow
• Eight lurid colours (no white!)
• 8 GB ($149)
• 16GB ($199)

Steve also makes many claims about the environmental friendliness of the new nano including:

• arsenic-free glass
• BFR-free
• mercury free
• PVC-free
• highly recyclable

iPod Touch

Also redesigned. It’s thinner and in coloured steel. Also features:

• Integrated volume control
• Speaker
• Genius playlist creation
• Built-in Nike receiver
• 2.1 software
• Nike+
• Genius playlists

Who cares about any of this? Does it really justify a media event or could it have just been posted up on the Apple.com site as a collection of incremental upgrades?

This story on other sites

• Live from Apple’s ‘Let’s Rock’ event in San Francisco
• Apple Let’s Rock Event Coverage Starts Now [Apple]
• Last minute Apple “Let’s Rock” rumors
• Let’s Rock: The Liveblog
• apple lets rock - Apple ‘Let’s Rock’ event Live Blog reminder …
• apple event - Apple ‘Let’s Rock’ event Live Blog reminder: 10am …
• apple lets rock apple
• apple event - My Predictions on Apple’s ‘lets rock’ event by …
• apple lets rock apple rumors
• Apple Let’s Rock Event

Tags: Apple,iPod,ipod-nano,itunes,itunes 8,nano,Steve-Jobs,