“The Apple rumor mill has been hard at work lately, with plenty of folks prognosticating about what exactly Steve Jobs would announce today in the company’s ‘It’s Showtime’ event. I found the actual announcements mostly underwhelming, with some potential bright spots on the horizon,” Alyce Lomax writes for The Motley Fool.
“First off, there’s a whole slew of new iPods at new price points, with increased storage capacity. For example, the newest high-end iPod will have 80 gigabytes of memory for $349. New iPod-ready video games like Tetris, Pac-Man, and Bejeweled, available through iTunes, are kind of nice, but certainly nothing earth-shattering,” Lomax writes.
Lomax writes, “While Apple did make good on digital movie downloads, it hasn’t gone the whole nine yards. Its first offerings are only from Disney (NYSE: DIS) and subsidiaries Pixar, Touchstone, and Miramax — a no-brainer considering Jobs’ Disney connection. The iTunes offerings also address one of the major hurdles in digital film downloading: price. New releases will sell for $12.99 when preordered or purchased in the week following the release of the digital and DVD versions, and $14.99 thereafter. (Older titles will sell for $9.99.) Those prices seem more reasonable than the fees charged by other nascent digital movie offerings like CinemaNow and Movielink.”
“Jobs previewed iTV, a device that will allow people to wirelessly view movies and TV shows they’ve downloaded to their Macs and PCs on their TVs. That device, expected to retail for $299, is probably the most exciting part of the announcement, but alas, iTV won’t be available until the first quarter of 2007. Meanwhile, one of the longest running Apple iPod rumors of all time — the mythical cell phone/iPod hybrid — remained a no-show,” Lomax writes. “Apple needed to impress today, and I’m not quite sure it did.”
Full article here.
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Apple gives sneak peek of ‘iTV’ set-top box to debut Q1 2007 (with images) – September 12, 2006
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“Apple needed to impress today, and I’m not quite sure it did.”
Yeah–the stock really took a beating.
Freakin’ Apple didn’t even debut the new 90 inch iMac or the 12 inch HDTV iPod, nor did they come out with that printer that prints $100 bills. Damn them, they underwhelmed what I expected.
He is correct! Movies aren’t HD, no subscription service, obscene price. No thanks.
Yeah, for the second or third “Apple special event” in a row, the announcements have really been somewhat underwhelming. New products, but mostly evolutionary rather than revolutionary. If the hype doesn’t end up matching reality, the stock will drop… that’s the nature of Apple… it’s all in the ‘next big thing’ that keeps the stock growing or dropping; not always an enviable place to be however.
“He is correct! Movies aren’t HD, no subscription service, obscene price. No thanks.”
True. And the iPod is overpriced and will never sell. And nobody will ever buy TV shows when you can just record them yourself. Blah blah blah blah.
This happens every time after a keynote.
(The only time that I think it was completely true was after the ipod Hi-Fi and iPod case presentation…I suspect that was due to an unexpected delay from some other offerings they had in mind. )
Moving on…movies, iTv, etc will be HUGE. And the price is quite competitive to DVDs
Underwhelming?
He isn’t going to be singing that same tune once these new Nanos are selling like candy bars.
iTV appears to be the long awaited iPod wide screen. Sorry for all of you who can’t wait to watch $14.95 movies on a 4in screen.
Games available through iTunes, are kind of nice, but certainly nothing earth-shattering,
Ummm, didn’t Apple just open up “games” to third party developers?
Sure, these aren’t state-of-the-art games, but doesn’t this open up the iPod game market?
The annoucement was underwhelming when compared to the hyperbolic speculation before the event. Even with normal expectations, the announcements were all good, but there was nothing revolutionary EXCEPT the iTV.
iPods: all nice evolutions. Yes, evolutions in many respects, but there was no huge leap.
iTunes: again, nice evolution.
iTV: this could be great.
Overall, nice day. The media integration program is marching along. I was very happy with all the announcements and will probably buy an 80GB. Just because there was no home run (waiting for the full iTV before that counts), does not mean it was a bad day. It just was not the blockbuster many were expecting.
So while people may chide the author, she is fairly accurate.
the other mark…..
If you want TV on your iPod just purchase Elgato’s EyeTV – and get software that allows you to output recordings to iPod MP4 files
Has everyone on Earth missed iTunes games? Or am I the only one who thinks this is significant?
It’s still too soon for HD movies. More importantly, the delivery mechanism is in now place, end (iTMS)-to-end (iTV). How hard will it be to start selling them when the time is right? Not very.
Jimbo nailed it.
Snoozer – not worthy of a media event.
Just some incremental upgrades to iPods.
Will it be enough to stop the dropping iPod sales????
Advice to the nay-sayers: Go kick an old tin can instead of bothering honest people with your useless jive talk. Some people just love to criticize. Apple has lowered the price and improved the feature set of a supremely successful product that already had no competition. They have also launched (albeit modestly) yet another killer-industry-to-be in the form of movie downloads. Let’s hear the nay-sayers tell us a year from now what a bad idea this was. They’ll be singing a different tune, I’ll wager!
so does this mean, I can now export video for iPod using 640×480? instead of something less inferior? I have a 5G 60Gb iPod black..
hmmm
While I appreciate the satire of “bond co. stooge”, I think that The Mootley Fool actually got it about right this time. Its not like Apple is screwed or in any serious trouble here, but today’s announcements were pretty – well – underwhelming.
At the very least the world needed to see a truly new iPod device, and Apple simply didn’t deliver. I for one am glad to see that Apple brought back the variant colors for the nano, but design-wise, that’s completely retro. If the nano would have, at the very least, been given the software to play video it would have helped us believe there was something new there.
As for the video capable iPods – Again, nothing really new there. I was most disappointed that we did not see a bigger or wider screen on the iPod product line, especially with the announcement that all video is now going to be 640×480. Oh well, prices look very good, but I’m still not going to buy an iPod till the screen dimension choices are expanded.
Another huge disappointment for me was that Apple was not able to work something out that will allow us to burn DVDs from our iTunes video collection and play it from our component DVD players. Of course this little hole will be plugged by iTV, which I’m very excited about, but…
Apple made a lot of prepress waves, but really delivered the proverbial drop-in-the-bucket. All of the updates and upgrades released today are needed and wanted, but considering the hopes that were raised, I think more careful thought should have been given about going public on this particular day.
I believe Apple is under some pressure to come up with new and expanded iPod products, and well they should be in my estimation, but it all ended up leaving the impression of, much ado about a little.
All that being said, rock on Apple, and next time be sure to make us swoon. Its really Steve’s fault you know, he’s absolutely spoiled us.
unfortunately for all the naysayers Apple’s lead just got bigger. Apple does things one step at a time, even when the iPod came out most people were like “that’s it?”. Then when iTMS came out, people were like “that’s stupid” on these very same forums. Seriously, it’s funny how most people get it all wrong. Apple is dominating. iTunes 7 is HUGE. iTV is going to be great, but it’s gonna take awhile. Nobody can compete with the iPods. Apple WILL have the best solution for the living room, while MS will continue to flounder. Thems the facts.
I loved this. In fact this last week’s Cupertino-based happenings have finally convinced three people I know to buy Macs.
Apple will soon be everywhere you go for digital entertainment – your PC, your TV and your pocket.
The reason Apple will never include a TV-tuner or -recorder option in something like iTV is…
Other products already do it well, if not better. Think how easy it is to use a TV. Having a computer that can crash and get outdated and get viruses just complicates things.
It competes with Apple’s business model of selling shows. If you can set your Mini to record the whole season of Lost that you can keep forever, what’s the point downloading it?
Going international is more difficult due to the different TV standards, providers and rights-issues (though this point is also true for the current Apple model, hence the fact that the US is still the only store with TV shows).
If anyone says the implications of todays announcements are underwhelming, then they are being paid to say so, or they are genuine fools.
Lomax is a Motley Fool!!!
I, for one, am quite impressed with today’s announcement.
Very cool new shuffle
Cool new nanos…my kids will each get one for Christmas
Movie store…SWEET!
iTV…GONNA BE HUGE!
Rock on, Apple!
“Underwhelmed”?!
I’d like to have these “underwhelmed” columnists compare the new iPods and iTunes with other similar devices. How can they be “underwhelmed” when there isn’t ANYTHING else on the market that even comes close?
The best was made better, and all that these lazy-assed armchair quarterbacks can do is criticize Apple because they didn’t produce any of the fictional devices that these same “professional writers” were mindlessly yacking about in their rumor blogs.
When their writing improves from year-to-year as much as the iPod does, THEN they can criticize Apple’s lack of innovation.
What I find really disturbing are all those who are under-whelmed or disappointed by Apple’s offerings today, who act like Apple owes them something! Get over yourself because this is not about you and your feel-good moment.
Any product lacking in some new feature you were hoping for will probably appear in good time, just like the seamless transition between songs; it probably took Apple’s scientists a while to figure that one out. So cut them some slack. Apple did reveal a little more of their business strategy today and in some respects fired a shot across the bow of the SS Microsoft.
If you, like me, who are an Apple shareholder, you have no complaints either, especially if you share Job’s vision for the future, because regardless of how Wall Street reacts to today’s news, it doesn’t change their business strategy, which is to continue polishing the apple while inventing new stuff.
Apple is in the driver’s seat, not the clueless Wall Street anal-cysts.
My stock has good days and bad but I’m not going to dwell on a single day’s earnings, because I’m in it for the long haul and I’m certainly not in it for the money because I couldn’t make a large enough investment in Apple to matter. I am however impressed with Apple’s performance year-over-year.
I am in it for are bragging rights though. I’m waiting for the day when I can look at all the nay-sayers in my circle of friends and family who have bashed Apple for years, called my computers toys, so that I can say to them, welcome to my world and what took you so long.
There has never been any single event or product that evened my conviction that I’m on the side of a winner but a culmination of events, people, and things that have transformed silicon, carbon, metalloids, and steel to into objects of beauty, with style and class that make life a joy.
Todays event was a press briefing to introduce a roadmap of sorts outlining the direction Apple is headed and anyone who was surprised by today’s announcements doesn’t have a finger on the pulse of Apple Computer and to those who are under-whelmed, well I hope you can adjust.
MDN MW: Movement, as in forward.
Please, oh wise ones, can ANYBODY cite ANYTHING released by Microsoft, Dell, Gateway, HP, or any other company of that ilk in the past 10 years that isn’t truly and undeniably UNDERWHELMING?
OK, how about something from these stooges that is OVERWHELMING?
How about something REVOLUTIONARY instead of EVOLUTIONARY?
Nothing? What a shock.
Gawd, but I am sick and tired of the MDN posters that can NEVER be satisfied by anything Apple does. You make Lord Pococurante (Voltaire’s “Candide”) look like an amateur!
“If the nano would have, at the very least, been given the software to play video it would have helped us believe there was something new there.”
Hahahahaha hahahahaha. Good one.
I like Apple’s vision and the big picture is looking brighter and more vivid. I have no doubt that video downloads will eventually become faster and that video content will achieve, if not exceed, current HD-quality in 2007.
All other products delivered better functionlaity and performance, just as I expected, and with significantly lowered prices, which I hadn’t expected. I am very satisfied with Apple.