New Apple iPods announced

“It’s really beautiful”. “Just stunning”. “It’s pretty spectacular”. Thus spake Steve Jobs.

Ah, the iPod. The piece of industrial design that (along with the original iMac) is responsible for pulling Apple out of the financial black hole they were facing , and putting the company back into the spotlight where it belongs. Yesterday, Steve Jobs announced new versions of the iPods, along with improvements to iTunes and downloadable movies.

On the hardware side of things, the iPods have only received a few tweaks, there was no revolutionary iPhone or all-screen-touch-driven iPod announced.

Big Pod
The 60GB iPod (the big one that plays back video) has been replaced with an 80GB version. That’s all for the hardware upgrades, but the iPod OS has been overhauled and now has a few new tricks up its sleeve, like search features, better battery performance and a brighter screen. The Nano gets these functions too, but the new iPod Videos can also play games, which cost US$4.99 from the iTunes store. After a firmware upgrade, all 5G iPods will be able to play them. At the moment, development credits are mostly with EA and Pop Cap, but that should change over time. We asked Apple if it was possible to make your own games, but no SDK has been released. Well, Linux wound up on the iPod, so we’re holding our breath.

Mini Nano
The Nano (the tiny iPod with the screen) is now thinner and available in an 8GB version. It’s curvier, looks more like an iPod Mini, and comes in red, blue and green as well as black. In other news, classic iPod white has been phased out of the Nano range and replaced with silver.



The Musical Tie-Clip
The Shuffle (the USB flash-drive and music player that became less desirable when the Nano was launched) is now a music playing tie-clip. The USB connector is gone; instead the shuffle now has to sit in an included docking station before the USB connection is available. That makes it more of a music player, and less of a storage device, but so far people don’t seem to mind.



High-Res
iTunes is up to Version 7, and according to NPD Music Watch, is the 5th largest music retailer in the US. Other than the two extra view modes, Jobs announced that all video purchased from Apple will be encoded in H.264 MPEG4 at 640 x 480 instead of 320 x 240. Content authorisation features have been added so you can watch shows on multiple computers, which made way for Steve Jobs’ closing comments.

Cheap Flicks
In the announcement that has the potential to determine how the on-demand content industry works and anger the French, Disney movies (which also means Pixar, Touchstone and Miramax movies) are now available through iTunes in the US. New Releases are US$14.99 each (US$12.99 if you grab them early) and older titles are US$9.95 each. The rights and management controls are the same as those for TV shows, and it’s expected to go international in 2007. Apple Australia refused to comment further on pricing or wether existing customers could replace their videos with higher quality versions for free.

iTV
A small Mac Mini-esque box, codenamed iTV, was revealed toward the end of Jobs’ speech. It acts as a media receiver for, you guessed it, your TV. It’s powered directly from the mains, and connects to your media through USB2, Ethernet and Wi-Fi. This is speculated to be 802.11n. It outputs HDMI and component video as well as analogue RCA and digital optical audio. The interface is standard Apple fare and will be compatible with the Apple IR remote.

In other portable audio related news, The Atomic Podcast is now available in the podcast section of the iTunes music store. It’s a special store that lets you grab The Atomic Podcast and run out yelling “I’m not paying for this! Viva Atomic Podcasts!” If you’re an RSS kind of person, check out our swanky new feed instead.