It’s Showtime

Finally, Apple’s ‘It’s Showtime’ fall product announcement is over. The new products and services are out for review. You can find the full list of new products and services at CrunchTech. But here is my review of what I thought was really cool:

• The movie downloads: Very cool and far superior than Amazon’s Unbox but I’d have preferred rentals. That said, I’ll shop for old classics.
• The iPod 80GB: Great with an additional 20GB but I’d hoped for 20GB more and FrontRow for the iPod.
• The iTunes 7.0: The new media libraries makes it easier to keep track of the different media formats and enables movie and TV-show tagging. The iPod synching preference update makes it possible to pick individual movie or TV-show. It’s a leap and will save iPod space. But when do we get the “Import DVD” feature.
• The increased download quality from 320×240 to 640×480 is awesome. Harder to realize than most people think.
• The promise of iTV – a wireless set top box for the TV – is awesome. I’ll buy it unseen.

All-in-all, I think this announcement was the best in a long time (+1 years). It really confirms where Apple is moving: into the living room. I’m also glad the the long-rumored iPhone didn’t materialize.

That said, I won’t swing by the Apple store for another few months since I have most of the hardware I need and don’t want to pay for the incremental upgrades. Spending money on iTunes is another story. Since Apple introduced TV-shows a year ago we have cancelled our cable and now solely watch paid for, downloaded TV-shows from iTunes on our big LCD screen or on our travels.

The cost-benefit is high: no ads, no appointment viewing, portable and free choice for less than a monthly cable subscription. You only pay when you use the service and it’s accessible from anywhere in the world. Eat that AT&T.

Blogged with Flock