When Apple announces a big media event, it’s sort of a mixed blessing. Thanks to you little bastards who prefer not to "pay" "money" for "information," even internationally-beloved tech pundits who work for great metropolitan newspapers can’t afford to spend $600 to fly 3,000 miles just for a big press conference.
Nope, I stayed home and monitored the situation via a half-dozen different liveblogs. At least I didn’t have to shave, or explain to a security screener why I had a Krull sword in my carry-on.
But the good news is that the day after a big Apple media event brings two things to IhnatCorp World HQ: hardware samples of anything that’s actually shipping, and a phone briefing with Apple. The day’s nearly over now, and I have a new toy and some new information.
Neither the iPod Touch nor the iPod Classic are apparently available to the media yet, but Santa Mel, my FedEx guy, dropped off a nice Red Bono-approved Nano at the crack of dawn. 9:30, which is close enough for a freelancer.
I can understand why Apple squashed the "leaked" photos of the new Nano. Yes, it was for the usual reasons, but also because it’s much, much tinier in person. Laying it on top of my MacBook keyboard, it’s just about as wide as three keys, and shorter than the distance from the top of the letter "Y" to the bottom of the spacebar. And as thin as it is, rounded edges make it appear as if it’s floating above your table.
Overall, it’s as if Sanrio saw the existing iPod Video and tried to make their own version. Big eyes, no mouth.
The quality of the screen is almost jarring, and no wonder: at 200+ ppi, it’s about the same resolution as a printed photo, something that’s underscored when you actually, you know, display a photo on the thing.
For all that, though, I think this is precisely as tiny as a video screen can be while still being a practical device for watching shows. You will find yourself holding this thing up to your face, about a foot or closer. I predict that the show floor at Macworld Expo in January will feature more than one accessory company making some sort of rig that will dangle the new Nano in front of your eyes at the optimal distance.
(Note to manufacturers: rent "The Jerk" and don’t replay the same mistakes that Steve Martin made when inventing the Opti-Grab.)
The real star is the new iPod user interface, which will make its next appearance on the iPod Classic. It’s truly what I would have expected to see on the iPhone, if it hadn’t been built around a multi-touch interface. The old iPod interface bore the scars of developers who were clearly straining to make features work with limited resources. The Nano shows evidence of a team that could really put a layer of polish on the thing.
I mean, I’m not supposed to say that one of the things that impressed the most about the Nano was the Stopwatch app. But there it is. You see a colorful, detailed icon of a "60 Minutes" style stopwatch, and yup, when you start the timer going you see a digital readout in hours, minutes, and fractions of a second. But you look again and gorblimey! The stopwatch icon has a moving second hand that matches the digital readout! That’s bringing a gun to a knife fight.
Cover Flow actually works. It isn’t as smooth as what you see on an iPhone and at this size, it’s easy to skate right past the album you were looking for — but give them credit: it works. Add in a true type-by-clickwheel Search feature, and I’m doubly-eager to get my hands on the new Classic.
(Note to Apple brand engineers: I love the English language. Please don’t make me type things like "new Classic." Ghosts of angry parochial-school nuns are hovering all around me, swatting my hands impotently with ghostly rulers.)
I’ll get used to the new menu structure. You have to drill down a little before the lists use the entire width of the screen. When you’re choosing among features and genres, the left side is a narrow list and the right is either an icon previewing what you’re about to get yourself into, or a "Ken Burns Effect" rendition of album art or photos.
When you do drill down, you’ll see enough of a similarity between the Nano list mechanism and that of the iPhone’s iPod app that you’ll make a note: "Ask Apple: is this thing running OS X, like the iPhone?" They’ll tell you that no, it isn’t, but it was a good question all the same.
In Mac OS terms, the transition from this new iPod OS to the ones that came before it — at least strictly from a UI standpoint — is like the upgrade from MacOS 9.2 and Mac OS X. It’s certainly the same device with mostly the same features. But things are prettier, smoother, more cozy, and it’s a welcome change.
It sort of puts to rest the rumors that clickwheel-style iPods were being eased out into the cornfield by touch-based iPods. "There’s a long future for the clickwheel," said Apple, during my briefing.
Onward to the iPod Touch, which will ship "when it’s ready" but sometime this month. Is it safe to describe it as an iPhone, without the "phone" bit and the Mail app and the camera and…?
(Yes, you Internet weasels are scrambling to the screen images, to be the first to say things like "There’s no ‘Notes’ app! He forgot to say ‘and without the ‘Notes’ app." You win the Internet. Shall we acknowledge your genius and move on?)
Pretty much, yeah. And I base that statement on my conclusion that there’s absolutely no functional difference between the version of Safari on the Touch and the one on the iPhone.
"So if I want to use the Touch to get my webmail," I asked, "Or post to my blog, or Twitter, a touch keyboard will pop up, just like on the iPhone?"
Yes, Apple said, and I was joyful.
"And the iPod edition has the same media readers, too?" I continued, skeptical. "If I email a Word document or a spreadsheet or a PDF file to my GMail account and try to open it as an attachment via webmail…it’ll display the doc?"
Indeed, Apple said, and I was cautious.
It was one of those things that seemed so useful, something that so dangerously blurred the line between "iPod Touch buyer" and "iPhone buyer" that I asked a couple of additional, and annoying, versions of that same questions. But in the end, from docs to input to interface to standards and even to online apps designed for the iPhone, Safari for Touch is the same beast as Safari for iPhone.
Neat. I’m still glad to have a phone chipset in my iPhone, but the iPod Touch suddenly makes a lot of buying decisions that much more complicated.
But like the iPhone, the Touch does indeed run OS X, and has the same sort of hardware limitations as its rich uncle. The Nano works just fine with external microphones and you can click a checkbox in iTunes and use it as a standard USb storage device; no such joy with the Touch.
We had some time left, so I scanned through my notes for more things to talk about, and wound up quizzing Apple on the deal with Starbucks…
Oh, wait…ringtones. Well, honestly, this is one of those places where you kids and I part ways. A buck for a custom ringtone whose sole purpose is to annoy the living hell out of everyone else waiting in line at the post office? Something stringy and emo that ensures that you won’t hear the damned thing ringing two times out of three?
And you want to pay a buck per?
Oh, dear. Well, you must learn the hard way, I suppose.
No, it’s not every song that can be Ringtoned, just ones from publishers that have struck deals with Apple. And you can’t even choose a specific 30-second clip, either; you’re limited to pre-approved segments.
And you look like a damned fool with those pants that you buckle below the groin. Below the groin! Who walks around like that, I ask you?
Starbucks. I actually wasn’t all that interested in this part of yesterday’s announcements. Most of the online coverage I encountered seemed to describe it as a way for iPod Touch/iPhone users to buy the music they hear playing on the in-store music system. I’m not a huge fan of technology that exists solely to sell me stuff, unless it’s stuff I want, in which case bring it on. But I can’t imagine hearing anything in a Starbucks that could change my life to the dramatic extent that my first Joe Jackson album did.
(Please don’t tell me that they’re playing Joe Jackson albums at Starbucks. My heart, children…my heart.)
But it turns out that it’s actually more ambitious, and something that the heroic masses will want to know about. If you walk into an Apple-enabled Starbucks you’ll get free access not just to these Starbucks promotional tunes…but to the entire iTunes Store.
"Entire" in this case is calculated as = Everything – (Video + Podcasts). But making podcasts part of the offering is already on the table, so there might be a day when I can be on a roadtrip and pull into any random Starbucks to load up my MacBook (and thence my iPod) with all of the programs I missed since my last dip into the WiFi pool.
You’ll also have access to everything inside the Apple.com domain, including the online store, software updates, tech notes, and support. So if the mall Apple Store have officially become Apple’s embassies across the world, the thousands of Starbucks across the country just might turn into the modern equivalent of all of those houses during the Depression with cryptic chalkmarks on the sidewalk indicating that a hobo could knock on the door and have an excellent chance at swapping a few hours of honest labor for a hot meal and a bed for the night.
The bad news is that individual stores will have to receive some non-trivial hardware and software upgrades to make all of this happen. So the first cities to receive these new outposts will be those most likely to see pedestrians walking down the street with a $9 coffee in one hand and a $800 phone in the other. Apple says that if they announce that the service is now available in Boston (for example), then that means that every company-owned Starbucks in the Boston metro area (Dedham? Readville? Damn, I didn’t even ask) is ready to rock and roll.
You won’t have to go from store store to store, hoping to get lucky. Unless you’re hoping to make it with a cute barista. There are some projects that Apple is either unwilling or unwilling to help you with. Chin up: maybe Steve was just saving something for the Macworld Expo keynote.
Oh, yeah…the price drop on the iPhone. I didn’t bother to ask about that, though I’m pleased to learn that they’re now offering $100 in Apple Store credit to anyone early iPhone buyers who feel minused by that.
Me, I was nearing the day when I’d have to send this iPhone loaner back to Apple. I was watching the announcements via various liveblogs and Twitter and as soon as I heard about the price drop and confirmed via phone that the new price applied to all existing stock in every store, I was high-tailing it down to the mall as fast as four slightly-bald Bridgestone tires could take me. And there was already a small line there; the gent just in front of me bought four 4 gig models. I suspect that this Store was sold out by the time most folks got out of work and heard the news.
So that was my Thursday. The usual caveats apply: all of this is coming just 24 hours after getting the news from the media event, after just about seven hours’ experience with the new iPod Nano and a 40-minute conversation with Apple. I’m sure when the time comes to review this new hardware in a few weeks (when I expect to have the rest of the new iPods in hand) I’ll have loaded a fresh set of lantern cells into my Nitpick-o-tron and found fault with just about everything.
But for now, I’m pretty pleased. The announcements included two entirely different solutions for some of the people who spent their summer moaning "the iPhone is so cool, but I can’t possibly pay that much"; a freshening of the iPod line that went far deeper than just slimmer bodies and cooler colors; and a potentially terrific motivation for Random Q. AppleUser to join the legions of self-affected lardbutts who park themselves in a Starbucks all day using up valuable oxygen while contributing absolutely nothing to the economy.
All in all, a pretty good day.
digs the Mac, and has been writing about the Mac for longer than most of us could tell the difference between a bite of Apple Sauce from a byte of Apple code. You can read his monthly column at Macworld magazine, and his blog at the Colossal Waste of Bandwidth.
Andy’s latest book is The Mac OS X Tiger Book (US$16.49 – Amazon).
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