‘Let’s Rock’ Paints Picture of iPod Family as Afterthought

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In the week since Apple announced its “Let’s Rock” event, the organization’s spokespeople have assured all observers that this would be a really critical launch, with bigger news than just a refresh of the iPod product family.

Well, apparently Apple and I have very different definitions of “big news.” Because all the organization delivered was more of the same:

  • An iPod touch that looks more like the iPhone 3G, but loses the black aluminum border that gave the device its own distinctive personality. But hey, price cuts and built-in Nike+ support! (no word on iPhone support, however)
  • An iPod nano that looks more like the nano 2G than its predecessor, adds a few new colors and awkwardly tries to implement the UI from the touch and iPhone. Oh, and you can shake it to shuffle.
  • An iPod classic that literally makes no changes other than bumping the hard drive capacity and cutting the high-end model. It now costs exactly the same as the high-end Zune, and has the same hard drive capacity.
  • A new revision of iTunes with smarter automatic playlist generation, HD TV show downloads, and the return of NBC/Universal programs
  • Bug fixes for the iPhone.
  • And two lame songs from Jack Johnson. That’s it.

The business sense side of me is saying that Apple has another winner. The designer side of my brain really likes the subtle changes that Apple’s design team has brought to the the product line (except for the ugly iPod classic — hate the use of aluminum there). But the Apple fanatic in me can’t help but me incredibly disappointed by this morning’s activity.

Just how perfunctory was this round of updates? Consider this: The event has been done for 30 minutes, all the new models are available for purchase on the Apple Store, and Apple still hasn’t updated its own website to announce the product launches (EDIT: It went up as I finished typing. STILL). Apple has never gone this long without getting its main site up-to-date.

Now, none of us should be surprised by any of this; after the launch of iPhone 3G, AppStore, and the fiasco called MobileMe, it’s little surprise that Apple hasn’t been able to devote many resources to doing more than making slightly curvier cases for the iPod line. But Apple has trained us to expect the best, particularly when they say it’s really time to pay attention. Today, it completely missed the mark. I can’t recall an Apple launch event this underwhelming since the launch of the iPod HiFi and iPod socks. It’s this year’s model, and nothing more. It’s the entire iPod product line as afterthought to the iPhone.

And that’s not good. The iPod family is Apple’s highest-revenue business, and any indication that the company is bored with the media player business or unable to innovate beyond bringing iPhone features to iPods is going to mean a rough time in the market. It’s certainly not impossible to do so, Apple’s just in an unfortunate liminal space between the launch of a new business and the adaptation of another. The new nanos, in particular, felt oddly anacronistic. Why go to all that trouble to design such a wildly different case for this revision and then still use the same old clickwheel? Why, in the name of all that is holy, would you copy the horizontal interface on the right, screen on the left interaction found on the flash-based Zune? Why launch nine, count them, nine new colors in a single day when this is a clear incremental upgrade while the company works on a touchscreen nano for the near future?

Honestly, the biggest news today is that the iPod touch has dropped in price by $70 and has external volume controls.  It’s the future of the product line, and Apple needs to drive its adoption rapidly while the pre-2007 iPod outlook gradually ramps down.

In the mean time, I sincerely hope that we’ll see new Mac announcements on a not-too-distant Tuesday. The entire product line is just begging for processor upgrades, and they’ve been suffering while Apple has put so much attention on the iPhone this year. Not to mention which, it’s high time that Apple brought out a true Home Theater Mac for the living room — AppleTV and Mac mini aren’t cutting it.

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20 responses to “‘Let’s Rock’ Paints Picture of iPod Family as Afterthought”

  1. charli says:

    seems to me that most of the ‘big event’, ‘don’t miss’ hype came from the boards, not from Apple. so if folks are disappointed perhaps it’s because you worked yourself into a frenzy without considering that truly major releases always happen at macworld or wwdc. not some random tuesday morning press conference

  2. Pete Mortensen says:

    Yeah, that doesn’t really work. The original iPod was introduced at a random Tuesday morning press conference…

  3. Andrew DK says:

    My guess is that they had originally planned to have a combined iPod/Mac update but the Mac part got delayed due to Intel pushing back it’s schedule and they didn’t want to wait around to unveil the new iPods.

    I see new Macs within the month. It’ll be weird bringing people back to another event so soon after this yawner, though.

  4. Matt Gayetsky says:

    Given the lackluster nature of Apple’s events today, and the comparatively more exciting features that come out of the Zune 3G (e.g. finally taking advantage of its Wi-Fi and FM tuner), what are people’s expectations of it finally making an impact on iPod sales (massive, but a dramatic shift to the tune of perhaps an additional 5%).

    And wouldn’t that be a good thing? Competition drives innovation. Windows got stale because of the lack of a competitive OS, but now they are making the effort to actually find out what their consumers want. Similarly, the iPod is a mature product which needs something truly innovative to happen to it. Think the Zune is up for the challenge?

  5. MacBore says:

    At least the iPod Hifi and socks were brand new products. Apple really need to bring out a MacBook nano.
    It’s sad that the one thing that made me think “mmm, might get one of those” was the new headphones.

  6. clicknathan says:

    This was quite the boring keynote, but I would agree with the first commenter – who are these spokespeople who claimed this would be huge?

    It seems more like you guys got us all psyched up with your analysis of the the size of the poster out front and the number of seats than anything else.

  7. Vivek Prabhakar says:

    Completely agree Pete on the “Just how perfunctory was this round of updates? Consider this: The event has been done for 30 minutes, all the new models are available for purchase on the Apple Store, and Apple still hasn’t updated its own website to announce the product launches (EDIT: It went up as I finished typing. STILL). Apple has never gone this long without getting its main site up-to-date.”

    Its almost 24 hours since the announcement .. the inside pages on apple.com still show the links as iTunes 7…. this isn’t the Apple we know..

    BUT..

    its only September.. :)

  8. Jacob says:

    What happened to GPS?

    $5 GPS module would have added so much value to the iPod Touch.

    This $5 module would have made them the must have car accessory.

  9. Hypersky says:

    “An iPod classic that literally makes no changes other than bumping the hard drive capacity and cutting the high-end model. It now costs exactly the same as the high-end Zune, and has the same hard drive capacity.”

    Actually, Apple has REDUCED it’s hardware capacity. It used to be 80 or 160, is now only 120… is this the first time a new iPod generation has LESS storage than the previous generation?

  10. expatCanuck says:

    Well, my not quite 10,000 songs use about 48GB on my 80GB Classic.

    So my next iPod needs 64GB (or more) of solid state storage.

    When that happens, Apple can have some more of my $$$. ;7)