Live from Apple’s iPod media conference
Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled a new line of iPods Wednesday, saying the company has sold 275 million iPods in its history.
Every iPod is being redesigned and will be available next week. Pre-orders will be taken today.
The new iPod Touch is now the most popular iPod, Jobs said. “A lot of people call it an iPhone without the phone,” Jobs said.
The new iPod Touch is even thinner than the old version, has the Retina Display in the new iPhone 4 and runs the Apple A4 chip, just like the iPhone 4. It has 3-axis Gyro plus a front facing camera with FaceTime over WiFi. A rear camera has also been added with HD video recording.
The new touch will have 40 hours of music playback. It’s $229 for 8 gigs, $299 for 32 gigs and $399 for the 64 gig version.
More than 1.5 billion games and entertainment titles have been downloaded to the Touch.
The new iPod Shuffle is smaller than last year and has buttons, voiceover and playlists. It’s smaller than the size of the palm of your hand. It’ll speak through your playlists, Genius mixes and the Voice over will tell you song and artist and even when the battery needs charging. The shuffle is good for 15 hours per charge, Jobs, and comes in five colors. Price is $49.
The new iPod Nano is 46 percent smaller and 42 percent lighter and loses its click wheel. It’s touch based and square shaped instead of rectangular. It uses the same multi-touch as iPhone. It’s very small and has a clip on it to tap onto your clothes. It’s got FM radio, the Nike pedometer and 24 hour audio battery life. This comes in six colors. Price is $149 for 8 gigs $179 for gigs.
Notes:
– Apple released its new operating system, iOS 4.1 that fixes promixity sensor bugs, bluetooth issues and a problem where the old 3G iPhone slowed down with the new operating system. Users will be able to upload HD video over WiFI, rent TV shows and Apple’s Game Center will debut. The new system debuts next week and is a free download via iTunes for iPod Touch and iPhone.
A new feature is High Dynamic Range Photos. Users tap a button and the camera takes three photos in rapid succession. One will be shot in normal exposure plus one that is underdeveloped and one over exposed. It then combines the three to produce an “HDR” photo. The normal and HDR photos are both kept in the camera roll.
GameCenter is used for multi-player games and allows you to challenge friends or auto-match you with players. Gamers can compare scores and see popular games.
– Jobs offered a sneak peek at iOS 4.2 for iPad that will come out November, as a free update for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. “It’s bringing everything to iPad,” Jobs said including folders, GameCenter, HDR photos and wireless printing, a much requested app.
A new feature, AirPlay, will also debut. It’ll allow users to stream audio, video and photo to other devices.
– Apple has shipped 120 million iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch products in four years, Jobs said. He said Apple is activating about 230,000 new iOS devices every day. That figure doesn’t include upgrades.
– There are 200 apps per second are being downloaded from Apple’s App Store, and more than six billion total in its history. There are more than 250,000 apps currently in the store, 25,000 are iPad exclusive.
– Jobs said Apple Stores draw more than one million visitors several days per month. He said more than half the people buying Mac computers are new users.
Link: Apple set to introduce new hardware Wednesday
