ON YET ANOTHER "BIG DAY" FROM APPLE

WHERE'S THE PONY?

The best things in life are free, especially when it comes to Apple's long-hyped and anticipated announcements today by it's salesman extraordinaire, Steve Jobs.  Sifting through the announcements, the product that intrigues me the most, is the one that costs nothing to buy.  More on that in a minute.

The one really "new" product that will require a purchase , is a gizmo code-named iTV for now, that will wirelessly connect a Mac or a PC to the big TV in the living room and run off an Apple remote, using Apple's iTunes software.  Jobs showed off a working prototype, but it'd not due for sale until early next year.

There's a long list of posts up on Techmeme on the announcements today if want to get a sense of the brouhaha.

Paul Kedrosky does a pretty good job cutting through the Jobs' "Reality Distortion Field" and summarizes what was really announced today:

"As expected, Apple has announced a laundry list of varyingly interesting products and services. It's being treated like the reinvention of the web, of course, but cut through the Jobs-accorded reality distortion field and you get a wireless set-top box for streaming video, a movie download addition to iTunes, and some storage upgrades on existing iPods."

And then he cuts it down to size:

• "Apple won't have full availability until after Christmas selling season
• The iTunes movies are limited to 640x480 -- no HD, which is a big constraint
• The initial movie catalog is tiny, something like 70 movies, all of which are from Disney"

But I do think he gives shorter shrift Apple releasing a free, update to its popular iTunes software and store, bundled into the new iTunes 7.0. 

TUAW.com has a detailed post with pictures outlining the salient features of this release versus version 6.0.  What I like about it best is the service is totally redesigned not just for music, but for all the new video and audio content on iTunes.  As TUAW puts it:

"iTunes 7, a major update that brought changes on nearly every front. Organizing, shopping, syncing - everything got a lot of attention from Apple's software engineers..."

"...there has been a simple change to the iTunes Music Store's name; that's right, 'Music' has been dropped from the name."

I've just upgraded to the new iTunes on both a Mac and a PC, and it's night and day.  Haven't gone through everything yet, but it makes a very good first impression.  Recommended.