SAN FRANCISCO — Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Wednesday made his first media appearance since returning from medical leave earlier this year, taking the stage at Apple’s annual music event to announce a few new iPods, as well as an update to iTunes. Apple’s small, rectangular iPod, the Nano, received the beefiest upgrade with the addition of a video camera, which could pose a threat to budget cameras such as Flip.
In addition to a standard-definition, 640×480-pixel video camera, the iPod Nano now has a built-in FM radio, a pedometer for tracking steps with Nike+, a microphone for voice recording and a bigger, 2.2-inch display (up from 2 inches). The device also features a speaker for music and video playback. Available in nine colors, the 8GB Nano costs $150 and the 16GB model costs $180 and is available today.
When introducing the new Nano, Jobs showed a slide of a Flip Mino camcorder, making it clear that the low-end video industry is Apple’s primary target.
“Flip’s about to feel a little bit of a world of hurt,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst and technology strategist at Interpet. “I think we’re going to hear a lot about video from Apple in the months to come.”
Apple has traditionally hosted music events every September since 2001, and the focus has always been on iTunes and iPods. This year’s event kept analysts and journalists wondering what Apple would do with its iPod family since the MP3 player market is shrinking considerably. In a recent earnings call, Apple said the iPod (not including the iPod Touch) accounted for 18 percent of Apple’s overall revenue, compared to 55.5 percent in 2006. Who’s to blame? Explosive growth in sales of the more versatile iPhone and iPod Touch, of course.
However, Apple is persisting in the music player market with its Wednesday releases. With 73.8 percent of the mobile music player market (according to Apple’s numbers), however, Apple didn’t need major new releases to stay on top: It just needed a few incremental upgrades to maintain its overwhelming momentum, and that’s exactly what the Cupertino company delivered.
iPod Upgrades
Targeting hardcore music junkies with gigantic iTunes libraries, the iPod Classic received a minor upgrade, increasing the storage to 160GB (up from 120GB) while sustaining a $250 price tag. The iPod Shuffle, which comes with 2GB for $60 or 4GB for $80, looks identical to the previous generation; the only difference is it now includes an adapter to work with other headphones.
Most mysterious was Apple’s upgrade for the iPod Touch. Many observers believed, prior to the press conference, that this device would gain a camera, bringing it closer in line with the iPhone. However, the iPod Touch only received a processor upgrade and support for Open GL ES version 2.0, the platform graphics API — which the iPhone 3GS also features. Apple dropped the 16GB model of the iPod Touch and now offers 8GB, 32GB and 64GB models priced at $200, $300 and $400, respectively.
Apple likely left a camera out of the iPod Touch to give consumers incentive to purchase a Nano as a companion device, Gartenberg said.
“I think they’re keeping them segmented to create an aspiration, where I don’t just want one of the products; I want them all,” Gartenberg said. “Now you’ve got a reason to buy a Nano and ann iPod Touch.”
However, Forrester analyst Julie Ask believes the inclusion of a camera in the iPod Touch is imminent, and it’s just a matter of time till Apple delivers one.
“You have to imagine it’s in the works and whether it’s the question of price point today or timing,” she said. “This is what they could have done in time for the Christmas season, and that’s what they did.”
Prior to the event, there were rumors that new iPods with cameras were experiencing technical issues and could see a delay. A camera-embedded iPod Touch might be the device experiencing the delay, as the iPod Nano goes on sale today.
New iTunes
On the software end of the spectrum, Apple released a new version of its media player, iTunes 9. With this new version of iTunes, Apple is now selling music albums in a new format called iTunes LP, which packages albums with various pieces of multimedia, including sleeve notes, song lyrics and art. Clearly, this is Apple’s move to boost digital album sales in its iTunes Store.
“I think it’s really cool, but iTunes LP isn’t going to sell albums,” Gartenberg said. “Good music will sell albums. Still, it’s nice we’re getting back some of the stuff we lost with the CD.”
Additionally, the iTunes Store received an overall makeover. Each page has been revised with a cleaner, more modern design to make navigation more easy.
Also new to iTunes 9 is a feature to easily organize apps on iPhones and iPod Touch devices. Under the “Applications” tab, iTunes users can see a preview of each page of their iPhone Home screen and move applications around with their mouse. (In the past, this could be done on the iPhone itself, but it was a time-consuming process that involved dragging applications around one by one with your finger.)
Apple also added a utility to iTunes called Home Sharing to easily share songs, movies and TV shows between up to five authorized computers on a network. Networked users can both stream and copy each other’s media with this feature.
iPhone OS 3.1 and the Beatles
Apple today also released an update for the iPhone OS: iPhone 3.1, which carries a new “Genius” feature that analyzes a user’s iPhone app library to automatically find recommendations for other apps they may enjoy. This partly addresses the challenge of finding apps in the App Store, which is becoming increasingly crowded with 75,000 apps and counting.
An anticipated announcement that did not become a reality at the event was The Beatles’ albums for sale in the iTunes Store. Apple and The Beatles in the past had a trademark feud, because the popular band’s record label is named Apple Corps. Ultimately, the computer company won the rights to the trademark.
The lack of Beatles news comes as somewhat of a surprise because yesterday Yoko Ono reportedly told Sky News to expect the band’s music to become available via iTunes today. The publication later deleted this report without explanation.
It’s worth noting, however, The Beatles: Rock Band and The Beatles’ remastered CDs were released today. Chicago Sun-Times tech journalist Andy Inhatko theorized that an iTunes release today would cannibalize sales of the remastered CDs.
“There’s no upside to putting these tracks on iTunes on the 9th,” he wrote in a blog post. “All you’re doing is giving consumers the option of buying only the “White Album” tracks they like, instead of making them spring for the whole uneven pile.”
Late Tuesday, EMI told Financial Times that Apple and The Beatles had not yet secured a deal, and no such announcement would be made at today’s press conference. However, EMI suggested The Beatles and iTunes would come together eventually.
“Conversations between Apple and EMI are ongoing and we look forward to the day when we can make the music available digitally,” Ernesto Schmitt, EMI’s global catalog president told Financial Times. “But it’s not tomorrow.”
See a full transcript of Wired.com’s liveblog coverage below the jump.
Photos: Jonathan Snyder / Wired.com
We’re in the auditorium, rocking out to the sounds of Aerosmith, Green Day and The Who. It’s a sizeable crowd — probably 200 or 300 people here.
They’re playing the Stones’ “It’s Only Rock and Roll” now. I’d say Apple is taking dead aim at the Baby Boomer demographic.
Lights are dimming and Steve Jobs is on stage!
10:01AM The crowd is standing up to applaud.
Same old Steve with the black turtle neck and blue jeans.
Steve is looking thin but well, and his voice is quieter and weaker than before. He’s also clean shaven.
He got a standing ovation from the front half of the crowd here. The back half appears to be liveblogging.
“I’m very happy to be here today with you all. As some of you may know about five months ago I had a liver transplant, so I now have the liver of a mid-20s person who died in a car crash and was generous enough to donate their organs. And I wouldn’t be here without such generosity so I hope all of us can be as generous and elect to become organ donors.”
“I’d like to take a moment and thank everybody in the Apple community for the heartfelt support.”
“It really meant a lot and I’d especially like to thank Tim Cook and the entire executive team at Apple. They really rose to the occasion and ran the company in that very difficult period. So thank you guys.”
10:04am: “I’m getting to work with our very talented teams to come up with some great new products in the future. It’s wonderful, thank you.”
He’s starting off with talking about music.
But first Steve wants to talk about the iPhone.
“In a little over 2 years we’ve sold 30 million iPhones.”
He says the reason for that has been the App Store. It’s a little over a year old and we now have a little over 75,000 apps in the App Store.
Users have downloaded 1.8 billion apps, not including updates.
For iPhone and iPod Touch owners, they’re introducing iPhone 3.1
Upgrade for the iPhone 3.0 operating system.
first new feature is Genius technologies to apps in the App Store.
It automatically makes recommendations in the App Store based on the applications you own.
The Genius bar will appear next to the “What’s Hot” button in the App Store.
The second thing is ringtones to the iTunes Store. 30,000 ringtones from 4 major labels. $1.29 for ringtones.
You can just buy ringtones just like you can other music and they show up right on your iPhone.
(Buy ringtones through the iTunes app in the iPhone)
iTunes is the #1 music retailer in the world now.
There are 100,000,000 iTunes accounts with credit cards.
Now he’s moving on to iTunes 9
Cleaned it up a bit and made it much easier to navigate around
10:09am: new features: Genius Mixes
54 billion songs have been submitted and analyzed to Genius database. It’s gotten smarter and smarter and smarter.
The recommendations have gotten better and better, Steve says. We’re applying that same technology in that same database now to something new called Genius mixes. Imagine a genius DJ that plays endless mixes of songs from your iTunes library that go great together.
Next feature: improved syncing.
54 billion songs have been submitted and analyzed to Genius database. It’s gotten smarter and smarter and smarter.
The recommendations have gotten better and better, Steve says. We’re applying that same technology in that same database now to something new called Genius mixes.
Imagine a genius DJ that plays endless mixes of songs from your iTunes library that go great together.
Next feature: improved syncing.
Syncing to iPods and iPhone is better now.
Next feature is Home Sharing.
You can copy songs, movies and TV shows among up to 5 authorized networked computers in your house.
Syncing to iPods and iPhone is better now.
The sync feature now breaks into categories. If you just want music by Bob Dylan, for example, you can checkmark Bob Dylan.
With syncing photos you can sync events, too.
And with apps you can now manage applications for the iPhone.
Now you can arrange them however you want really fast.
You get a preview of your Home screen and you can move the icons around.
You can copy songs, movies and TV shows among up to 5 authorized networked computers in your house.
You turn Home Sharing on by typing in your name and password. You can click on others’ content and you can stream it or copy it.
Next up, redesigned iTunes Store.
Much better navigation to get anywhere instantly. Just a makeover for each of the pages.
Next feature, iTunes LP.
It’s buying albums in crazy LP-like packages. You buy a great album in the past you can get that content with iTunes LP. For American Beauty, it’s got videos, liner notes, all sorts of stuff, lyrics.
(This is the rumored project codenamed named Cocktail)
10:19am: Now they’re just demoing the new features.
Going back to Applications management, you get a full preview of each page of your home screen laid out in iTunes. You can shuffle apps around, move them to different screens.
You can also move an entire page. Like say your games are on screen 4, you can move the entire page to screen 2.
Now demoing Home Share. A networked computer’s library shows up under “Shared” on the left menu bar in iTunes.
You can access that user’s entire iTunes library. Then you can stream, or you can select the tracks and drag it to your library.
(Hurray for pirates! Easy music sharing!)
Now demoing the new iTunes Store. Cleaner look: all the pages in the store have been redesigned. There’s a new navigation bar.
Navigation bar contains drop-down menus of each category: music, movies, TV shows, App Store, Podcasts, Audiobook, iTunes U.
You can click on each category and get a drop-down menu of the different subcategories (genres).
New social networking feature: Now you can share via Facebook or Twitter a link to any of the content on the store.
So songs you’re interested in, you can slap them in your news feed right on Facebook or Twitter.
Dylan Tweney says: Jobs and Robineaux talk about how much “cleaner” the new iTunes is, and it does look a bit better. But there’s still the same confusing array of options under the Library on the left panel and tabs along the top. I don’t think this redesign goes nearly far enough.
Moving on to iTunes LP.
Really nice visuals. Showing an album by The Doors.
You can navigate through songs and see all their lyrics.
Accompanied with really nice photos
(It’s actually a very attractive package, but we wonder if this will really boost music sales.)
The video feature in iTunes LP — now that’s cool.
They’re showing an interview with Ray Manzarek about the Doors.
Dylan Tweney says: They picked the perfect Ray Manzarek clip to demo the video capabilities of iTunes LP. He is the distillation of 1960s hippy blow-your-mind awesomeness.
Also includes music videos.
Now he’s showing a Dave Matthews Band album (bleh).
The menu for the album kind of looks like a DVD menu.
A song displays a page of lyrics and the play button is at top.
10:27am: Now they’re showing WALL-E. It has a new feature called iTunes Extras, which is just like DVD extras. Menus so you can access supplemental material in addition to the movie.
iTunes 9 is a free download available today on Apple.com.
Now we’re moving on to the iPod.
Phil Schiller, VP of marketing, is coming on stage.
“The iPod has been a big hit. It’s absolutely incredible what’s happened. We’ve now sold 225 million iPods to date.”
Latest market share data: the iPod is now 73.8% market share.
Microsoft has 1.1%
(for MP3 player market share)
The fastest growing of the iPod lines is the iPod Touch.
“To date we have now sold over 20 million iPod Touches.”
So 30 million iPhones, 20 million iPod Touch.
Schiller is going over the new features the iPod Touch has with the new OS. For instance, it now supports the Genius playlists and Twitter/Facebook sharing built into iTunes.
All this and it fits in your pocket — something other people’s computers don’t do, Schiller says, showing a slide of someone trying to cram a Dell into the hip pocket of their blue jeans. That gets a few cheap laughs.
10:34am: He’s emphasizing how the iPod Touch is a gaming platform too, with lots of cheap, easy-to-buy games.
Sony PSP: 607 titles. Nintendo DS: 3,680 titles. iPhone OS: 21,178 gaming titles.
So far, the Schiller segment has largely been a rehash of old news.
They’re rolling a video clip designed to show off the iPhone OS’s 3-D capabilities. It’s impressive. And loud.
Now we’re going to get to see a few new titles.
First up is Ben Mattes from Ubisoft, the makers of Assassin’s Creed. He’s showing a game called Assassin’s Creed II.
Tapulous is coming up, the developer of Tap Tap Revenge
Bart Decrem, Tapulous CEO, is taking stage.
Decrem says Tap Tap Revenge hit 2 million users in 3 weeks.
Today he’s introducing Riddim Ribbon, a new music game for the iPhone and iPod Touch, of course.
Dylan Tweney says: When Decrem says “Riddim Ribbon” with his German (Dutch?) accent, it sounds really bizarre. I want that as a ringtone.
It looks like a weird 3D racing game where you follow a green line. You drive into different obstacles to remix the song.
Looks fun, kind of like Super Monkey Ball on an acid trip.
Next up is Gameloft’s Mark Hickey.
He’s giving a preview of a first-person shooter called Nova.
Pretty intense looking!
Looks kind of like Unreal tournament but slower paced. You can listen to iPod music by tapping on a musical note in the game.
Dylan Tweney says: I really like the ability to play your *own* music as the game’s soundtrack. Every game should offer this option.
10:47am: Electronic Arts is up next. Travis Boatman, in charge of their studios for mobile apps, is coming on stage.
They’re showing a Madden NFL 10.
Yup, 3D football game.
Phil calls iPod touch an “unbelievable game playing device.”
10:51am: The iPod Touch: Apple is slashing the price to $199 for the 8GB iPod Touch
(From $229)
The 32GB is $299 and 64GB is $399
The 32 and 64GB versions of the iPod Touch are getting the speed gain that the iPhone 3GS got.
Phil Schiller says: “$199 is a magic price point”
And the Open GL ES Version 2.0 for graphics.
Now we’re moving on to iPod Classic.
They’re upping the capacity from 120GB to 160GB and keeping it at the $250 price.
The iPod Shuffle now have more headphone choices.
The Shuffle comes with an adapter to plug in different headphones.
New iPod Shuffle talks to you. Weird.
Some examples: “Battery full” and “Workout Mix”
The iPod Shuffle has new colors: black, silver, pink, green and blue.
$59 for 2GB; $79 for 4GB.
There’s also a new special edition iPod Shuffle made of polished stainless steel.
$99 for the 4GB model.
“We do have one more thing. And that is, a video camera,” says Jobs. He shows a picture of the $150, 4GB Flip.
(Dun dun duuuunnnn)
They’re showing a slide of the Flip Mino. 4GB of memory for $149. Really popular, “We want to get in on this.” Says Steve.
“We’re going to start off with 8GB. We’re going to lower the price from $149 to free.”
“We’re going to build a video camera right into the new iPod Nano.”
The camera is integrated on the bottom left corner, back of the iPod Nano.
It also has a speaker
1.1 cu inches thin.
compared to the 10.9 cu in Flip.
11:00am: He’s showing us the video camera on the iPod Nano.
UPDATE: Looks like the video camera on Nano is not HD. H.264 VGA video, 640 x 480 pixels, up to 30 frames per second with AAC audio http://tinyurl.com/kmdfsl
You can just watch recorded video on the Nano, or you can sync it onto your computer.
“iPod Nano is a pretty incredible device. It is the most popular music player in the world. We’ve sold over 100 million iPod Nanos. By far the most popular music player in the world. And it’s a great music player.”
iPod Nano also has an FM radio built in.
And a pedometer to keep up with your steps, sync up with the web for Nike plus.
And a voice recorder app.
They’re composed of polished anodized aluminum.
Nano comes in 2 models.
16GB for $179.
8GB for $149.
That’s it. No camera for the iPod Touch: Surprising.
Norah Jones is performing.
Not Paul or Ringo.
No Beatles announcement. Nothing about the Beatles whatsoever. Yoko Ono is a liar!
Dylan Tweney says: Norah Jones is fantastic! Way better than John Mayer if you ask me.
Looks like we’re wrapping up. Thanks for joining us, folks! Stay tuned for a full news report.
See Also:
Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Those reports about a new scheme to “stimulate sales of CD-length music” were true, and then some: Along with extras for albums and movies, iTunes 9 comes with media sharing (!) and iPhone app management. Updated with walkthrough gallery.
A New Store: As for the storefront itself, all content is now organized in a new layout, which looks a lot more like a software interface, and less like a heavily formatted webpage. For example, you can now quick-view albums, which opens Preview-style windows that let you see what’s behind a given link in the store, and there’s an ever-present menu bar that lives up top, replacing the cumbersome breadcrumb navigation from before.
