Within the last week, Steve Jobs and crowd from Cupertino announced new stuff: an iPod that supports video, and an updated iMac G5.
I finally got a chance to stream the announcement quicktime today, and I’m just flat impressed.
The iPod with video really looks like a nice beast for photo viewing, and of course, to carry video with you. 150 hours of video on the 60gb unit! For me though, the really cool piece is the bigger screen. It’s 2.5″ and looks huge compared to my iPod. And, of course, they made it smaller — probably 10% smaller than my iPod. Verra cool.
The iMac G5 update is cool too, with a built-in iSight (updated, and better than the original), a thinner case, and a remote control. A remote control? Yup. It’s designed to work with a new piece of code called FrontRow, which looks to be a Windows XP Media Center killer. The code looks snazzy, and the interface is very nice — no surprise there, coming from Apple.
The other thing that was announced was the availability of episodes from five first-run ABC and Disney TV programming. That looks to be cool, and I hope that it expands beyond ABC and Disney, and frankly expands to deliver video from other countries. That’s when this idea will become stellar.
No downside, right? Well, not quite. Now my hardware has been passed up by newer versions, and the newer versions are really compelling. For me though, the iPod upgrade isn’t quite enough. I want a bigger harddrive in the thing — 80gb, maybe even 100gb. For the iMac, well… I’d rather upgrade to a PowerMac and 30″ monitor! 🙂