The Big iPhone Zapruder #3: Music, Cover Flow, Video and more
And the exhaustive analysis of Apple's iPhone Guided Tour continues, this time with the third installment and photo gallery covering some of the interesting new features we found in the iPod app. This is of course one of the iPhone's key components, and Apple has really made some great improvements to the UI and experience. While we have already seen most of them demonstrated by Jobs and in the commercials, there were a few handy new tidbits revealed in this tour.
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Cover Flow track selection: We've seen the wonders of Cover Flow, but I don't remember seeing that you can actually select an album and chose a track while still in the Cover Flow view. Previously, I thought the demos showed that you had to select the album and switch back to a full track list view; but not so here.
Theatrical Aspect vs Full Screen video: Looks like the iPhone doesn't default to playing widescreen movies in what Apple calls 'theatrical aspect' so you can see the whole thing; they're zoomed in to a full screen view. Double tap for full widescreen, double tap again to get out.
On screen movie controls: I think we've seen them before, but I couldn't find a screenshot, and even the Calamari ad has the user hit the Home button to get out of the movie; he doesn't actually interact with it.
Customizable iPod buttons: Here's one of the slick ways Apple has really improved on customizability, allowing users to specify which five buttons line the bottom of the iPod app. Listen to a lot of podcasts? Want a genre button instead of artists? You can swap out all the buttons for easy access to the parts of your library you use most. Brilliant.
Headset controls: I also don't remember much being said about the headset that comes with the iPhone. At first glance it looks like a simple, standard set of iPod headphones with a new microphone slapped on, but the mic has a surprisingly functional button. Of course, you can use it to answer and end calls, but when listening to music, you can double-click the button to advance tracks.
That's about all the new goodies we picked up in the iPod section of the video. Stay tuned for more in-depth analysis soon.
