Video on Demand, Upgraded iPods, Nano, Shuffle, but no 6G ! Cool New and Key Stuff Ahead However

Some pretty cool anouncements, though one (little) disapointment !

As widely anticipated, Apple yesterday evening introduced Video on Demand on its iTunes Store (no more "music" store) with movies from Disney, Pixar, Miramax and Touchstone. Only available in the US so far and catalog is minimal with 75 movies, but will expand overtime.

While the news in itself was rather a "no news", movie pricing was the topic which interested me most. As forecasted, new movies will be priced at $14,99 and library ones at $9,99. But Apple also introduced a little commercial gimmick : in the 1st week of release, or when pre-ordered, new movies will be at $12,99 ! This is very shrewd ! Not only it serves as an elasticity test to show where the bulk of the market is (I'm convinced it is not at $14,99), but it will also accelerate throughput of new movies.

By the way, "Cars", the most recent Pixar movie, is now already available in pre-order !

I also said last saturday I was dubious about a new iPod 6G with a supposedly 16/9 screen, and indeed it didn't show up, that's the only little disapointment ! But as a kind of compensation Steve presented upgraded 5Gs (60% brighter screen with higher resolution, better autonomy, 80Go), upgraded Nanos (thiner, several colors, a 8Go model) and introduced a brand new form factor 1 Go Shuffle (pretty cute). The whole iPod product range has thereforee been refreshed.

The big surprise (to me at least), and what I consider a big piece, came from the announcement of a future new device, dubbed iTV, which should be introduced sometimes early 2007 at a price tag of $299 ! iTV is a wireless box to send movies from the computer to the TV set ! Pretty cool, that's the missing sync to bridge the gap between the living room TV and the computer where movies are downloaded. And it's only when movies can be seen on the big screen that market can really expand.

Jobs also announced downloadable video games such as "Tetris" or "Bejeweled", that have been designed specifically for the latest video-iPod models. Kind of competing against Mathieu and Boonty ?

Last, little nicety of iTunes 7, the content of an iPod may be transfered to 2 different computers (without any hacking !).

Just for the fun of it, the big surprise is that Steve Jobs was wearing a brown shirt !

Comments

[Hubert]

Very strange to see steve wearing a shirt, maybe to hide his anormal weight ? He ssems pretty tired these days. Hope everything is fine with him.

[Michel de Guilhermier]

Steve indeed looks skiny with 10 years more (he's just 52). His pancreas cancer must have hurt him more than what Apple said.

[Fabien]

Steve looks like a young grand dad...

[mathieu]

I think that Apple will eventually grow the casual game business. Quite frankly I would be honored to be considered a competitor to Apple !