some observations…
I’m surprised that they aren’t selling the remote and Front Row software as part of iLife. The eMac has disappeared. The iMac is really being pushed at the high school/college/graduated-but-living-in-a-studio-apartment set. I was surprised that they didn’t add a TV-in to the iMac as well. I think some of the fake video iPod designs are more interesting than the actual one. Steve shouldn’t have made a big deal about the video in the iPod because he is right that not many people will be using it. The cool thing about the new iPod to me is that it is thinner and that the battery lasts longer. I don’t really need that 2.5″ video viewing experience and if I wanted it, I would use my PSP for that since it has a wide screen. Also, if this is the year of HD for Apple, why is the new iPod still firmly stuck in the 4:3 world? Selling videos and TV shows in iTunes, great, long overdue. $1.99 is a great price for a TV show, but videos shouldn’t be any more expensive than songs. Also, it sucks because a lot of record companies used to post their videos on their websites so that you could download them for free. Guess that is over. Soon we will be able to rip our DVDs to big disks just like we do for our CDs (I know a lot of people are already, but for me either the compression or the disk space needs to improve enough that you still get decent quality when you project it).
I think that the biggest disappointment for me was that there were no new Powerbooks or Powermacs introduced. I (and many people I know) are waiting for the last rev of the G4/G5 high-end machines to buy before the MacTel switch. I know that Apple’s inventory is getting low… C’mon Steve, help us out over here!