Apple iPod(s), Apple iTunes 7, Apple iTV

Ok, well, Steve got up on stage yesterday and spent an hour woo’ing journalists and bloggers for the second time in about two months. Every other major tech blog and tech news site has covered the presentation with pictures so I’m not going to regurgitate the same old news. Instead, I’ll regurgitate my opinions on what’s the reason for the fanfare around yesterday’s event.

1. Every one saw the movie downloads via iTunes coming so no big deal here. Personally, I’d be a bit more excited if these downloads were DVD quality. However, that would make the downloads too big for most people to really purchase. I’ll probably purchase a movie jsut to see what it looks like on my MacBook and Mac Mini.
2. Rumors that the Nano was going to be updated with iPod Mini-like colors have been circulating for quite some time. No big deal here.
3. We were all expecting a major update to the iPod. Coming out with a 80GB iPod, replacing the 60GB one, and making it brighter is a bit of a snoozer. An event when the infamous iPhone or “true” video iPod actually make it out the door will actually suffer from the “Boy who cried wolf”-syndrome. Apple’s had too many of these special announcement events without really wowing journalists, bloggers, users, and Wall Street.
4. Games on my phone. Games on my iPod. Games will be a big money maker but I think Apple has them priced a bit too high relative to where most cell phone games are priced.
5. iTV – This is pretty cool but I really don’t want another device to deal with. Apple can live up to their reputation of being an innovator if the iTV was combined into a digital living room version of the Mac Mini. Now, I can have my computer and digital entertainment device together with hardware and software support from Apple. I can have PiP (Picture in Picture) support of digital mobile movies (DVD and downloaded), digital tv shows (DVD and downloaded), broadcast/cable/satellite tv, and my computer. Build in the Miglia TV Mini HD into this device and I now have a built in HDTV support. This is a device I’d pick up really fast.

I’m a bit bored of the news coming out of Apple recently. I still think Apple is a great company and I expect it to do really well but Apple has set the bar really high and the expectations people have of Apple’s ability to innovate seem to be disconnected with the reality of what Apple is able to deliver in a short time frame. No question about Steve Jobs’ ability to market Apple’s products but Apple is becoming a victim of their own marketing success.

We want more and we want it faster than ever from Apple. Can Apple deliver?