I’ve been away for the last couple of weeks and only picking up on tech news a bit on the side, but as I start catching up on all the editorials and such, I’m starting to realize that Apple’s 9-9-09 “It’s Only Rock and Roll But I Like It” event turned out to be underwhelming, to say the least.
Expectations were as follows:
- New iPod Touch with a camera
- Beatles music on iTunes
- Apple’s new “Cocktail” album format
- *MAYBE* an “iTablet”
Apple had already been talking down a tablet, presumably so they could then “re-invent” the market, but with the upcoming “Crunchpad” and Asus’s just announced tablet, it’s going to be hard for Apple to re-invent something as innovation keeps coming. Both the Crunchpad and the so-called eee-Reader are supposed to be ebook readers meant to compete with Amazon’s Kindle, but both offer color and web access, putting them much closer to the tablets coming out with Windows 7. Regardless, Apple’s tablet had little chance of making it to the stage at this event. There’s still an outside chance Apple will release it before Christmas, but don’t hold your breath. So, where are we on the other predictions?
Beatles music on iTunes was the most likely prediction to come true. Given the date, and the simultaneous release of the remastered Beatles catalog on CD and Beatles: Rock Band, it was a no-brainer for this to finally be the time to announce Beatles music on iTunes. No such luck.
Then what about adding a camera to the iPod Touch? It seemed inevitable. This was the next step in the iPod Touch’s evolution. But no camera was announced. Instead, in a post show interview with David Pogue of the New York Times, Steve Jobs claimed that Apple was positioning the iPod Touch as “a game machine these days.” Pogue swallowed this hook, line, and sinker, or rather knew better than to challenge Jobs and quickly moved on. I suspect the key words in the Jobs quote is “these days”. Rumblings are that the truth behind the missing camera is faulty sensors that prevented inclusion of the device in time for this event. Pogue’s interview of Jobs, in fact, was so complimentary that in resulted in the highly regarded Leo Laporte and the rest of his This Week in Tech panel taking not only Pogue, but the entire New York Times organization to task for their reporting.
So, Cocktail, then? This, we got, under the name of iTunes LP, a part of the new iTunes 9. It looks impressive, but I’m not sure how appealing this will be to mass markets. I’m not even interested enough to explore and explain the details.
What else did we got? The biggest news, by far, was an appearance by Steve Jobs. Looking gaunt – but presumably on his way to mending – Jobs discussed briefly his liver transplant.
We also got an iPod Nano with a camera. This was totally out of the blue. The screen is a bit bigger, yet the Nano remains as slim as ever, with a camera on the back side (inconveniently positioned where you’d prefer to put your finger). Unfortunately, it’s a VGA camera and it can’t take still shots.
So what does all this mean? Well, a good portion of the presentation was spent slamming competitors. Apple couldn’t help but make fun of Microsoft and it’s Zune (much of what was done to the iPod Touch, including a price drop, was directly in response to the forthcoming and highly regarded Zune HD). Apple also tackled Nintendo and Sony for their DS and PSP, trying to convince us that the iPod Touch is a competitor to these devices. Finally, Apple knocked Flip and it’s Mino pocket camera, taking aim at it with the new iPod Nano with camera. What matters here is that in terms of a camera, the Nano is clearly inferior to the Mino. In terms of a gaming device, the iPod Touch may be king for casual gaming, but for real gamers, the DS is master of the domain, and even the PSP beats the Touch. And then there’s the Zune HD, which does a number of things as well or better than the iPod Touch. The App Store still trumps the Zune HD’s app offerings by a country mile, but in terms of video quality and audio playback, and just overall whiz-bang visuals, Microsoft finally has a competitor.
Apple has become a success in recent years by becoming an innovator, a trend setter, and an outright creator of new markets. This event boiled down to just a few minor tweaks and upgrades to existing products. Apple runs the risk of becoming stagnant. Certainly, propping itself up by knocking the other guys is very un-Apple-like.