Well, the speculation’s over, Steve Jobs has given the keynote, and we finally know what the new products are. There are certainly a lot of them, with all the announcements concerning digital media and the iPod line, and it hasn’t really gone entirely as expected. The online Apple stores are also back up, so you can check the prices for your region there. This is a really long post, so the details are after the jump!
New iPod Nano

The second generation of iPod nanos have been announced, available today. They have double the capacity of the old nano for the same price, and come in coloured brushed aluminium, similar to the iPod mini. I liked the colours of the iPod mini, and thought it was a shame they weren’t carried through to the nano. The aluminium also has the advantage that it is harder to scratch.

Updated 5G iPod

The rumoured Video iPod hasn’t been released, and instead the 5G ipod has been refreshed. The screen is now 60% brighter, battery life is longer, proper games (ie Pacman) etc are available from iTunes for $4.99 and the 60GB version has been replaced by 80GB. The good news is that the prices have come down, with the 30GB option costing $249 (although it costs £189 in the UK, which is more expensive than what Amazon is currently charging for the old version).

New Shuffle

We now have a 2G iPod shuffle. The new model looks much cooler than the old version, and is also covered in aluminium. However, it still lacks a screen, but according to Apple it is the smallest audio player in the world. It’s £55 for the 1GB version, and I see no mention of a 512mb version.

iTunes update

iTunes has been given an update to version 7 with some fancy new views and a separation of podcast, music and video libraries. You can also now sync your iPod via any of your authorised computers rather than just one, as before. A download manager has been added which allows you to start watching a TV show or movie after 1 minute of buffering time on an ‘average connection’.

iTunes movie downloads

Well, we got this one right at least. They’re launching with 70+ movies from Disney (and other studios that it owns), which is no surprise since Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, is on the board of Disney. The rights are the same as for downloaded TV shows, ie you can share them between authorised computers and iPods, but you can’t burn them to DVD. Movies will cost $9.99, after the first week of release during which they will cost $12.99 . The really bad news is that this won’t be available internationally until 2007.

iTV - Media extender

Jobs also gave a ’sneak peak’ of a product being launched in the first quarter of 2007 codenamed iTV. It allows access to downloaded iTunes content, as well as other digital media on your network.

It provides wireless networking, Ethernet, USB, HDMI (for HDTVs) and composite out. It also features a FrontRow style interface, It looks like quite a nice product, but it does probably mean that we won’t be seeing a Mac Mini with a TV tuner. It’s probably a sensible approach for Apple to take, given that computers really aren’t silent enough for the living room just yet. The US price point will be $299 .

That’s enough for one post. There are some interesting themes I think we can draw out from this, and I’ll cover them in a post sometime today or tomorrow.

[via Macworld, Engadget, Gizmodo]