Apple's "The Beat Goes On" event news roundup

Apple came out swinging today, with three entirely new iPod models, a color refresh of the shuffle, the launch of the iTunes WiFi Music Store, iPhone ringtones and a price cut, and a partnership with Starbucks -- if you blinked and missed something, here's a brief recap of what went down at Moscone West:

Live Coverage / Hands-on

• Steve Jobs live -- Apple's "The beat goes on" special event
• iPod touch first hands-on
• iPod nano 3G first hands-on
• iPod classic first hands-on
• iTunes WiFi Music Store first hands-on

iPod / iTunes

• Meet the new iPod family
• Apple announces (PRODUCT) RED iPod shuffle, new colors
• Apple announces new 3rd gen iPod nano
• Apple's new iPod classic
• Apple's iPod touch gets official
• Apple announces iTunes WiFi Music Store
• Apple and Starbucks join up for iTunes WiFi purchase

iPhone

• Apple adds iPhone ringtones to iTunes
• iPhone to get iTunes WiFi Music Store, too
• Apple cuts 8GB iPhone price to $399
• Apple killing 4GB iPhone, $299 while supplies last
• Where the hell is the 3G iPhone for Europe? We might know.

[Rick @ Sep 5th 2007 7:48PM]

Where are all the haters? Probably counting their money and reminding themselves just how far away from Ipod Touch ownership ther really are..... depressing isn't it Timmy!

[JohnTitor @ Sep 5th 2007 7:49PM]

and why would I want an iPod Touch?

[john @ Sep 5th 2007 11:53PM]

I want one to hack!

[Simon @ Sep 5th 2007 7:49PM]

But don't buy yet, another company MAY produce something better soon!

[Generic @ Sep 6th 2007 5:00AM]

are holding back for the Chinese side of the globe to catch on

[Generic @ Sep 6th 2007 5:05AM]

spelling mistake:

are you holding back for the Chinese side of the globe to catch on?

[Simon @ Sep 6th 2007 5:26AM]

i apologise, i forgot to add /sarcasm

[Kris S. @ Sep 5th 2007 7:49PM]

Apple iPods still suck.

Cowon ftw.

[LiQuiD_FuSioN @ Sep 5th 2007 9:43PM]

Does anyone know if the new iPods will support gapless playback? Please, reply here.

[john @ Sep 5th 2007 11:54PM]

Seeing as all the last-gen iPods did it, it's safe to assume these new ones will as well.

[Ike Turner @ Sep 5th 2007 7:50PM]

Ice Cube-No Vaseline.mp3

[jilie @ Sep 5th 2007 7:55PM]

ipod touch because the classic and the nano can be operated without touching them?

[humpty @ Sep 5th 2007 7:56PM]

iPOS Touch has too many comprises...
- not enough memory for a video player...
- too freakin big for an mp3 player (not to mention you need two hands to use it)...
- sorry ass gimped communications to protect iPhone sales

It doesnt do anything well at all.. it can be beat by any other ipod in the line up in at least one or more categories.

[John M @ Sep 5th 2007 7:57PM]

pretty obvious apple is just pushing out the iPhones cheap so ppl go ga ga over them and after Xmas will drop the ball on a 3g high capacity super iPhone with qwerty keyboard...i just want to know wha happend to the iphone nano?...sure im mad apple dropped the price this early as i have a launch phone...but, with everyone copying apple and releasing fake iphones it makes sense they drop thier prices and release an even better iphone...i just didnt think it would be this soon...ipod touch is too small capacity to be a ipod classic replacement...they need a 100gb ipod touch...anyway, us non hackers finally have ringtones...all in all a pretty upsetting day for apple fans and current iphone users...wheres the cut and paste steve?

[MB @ Sep 5th 2007 7:59PM]

Apple is trying to move thos iPhones to make room for a 3G/16GB model at a higher price point. They'll probably pay the license fee direct to Broadcom to assure that their phone will work on 3G.

[AlexNC @ Sep 5th 2007 8:01PM]

I have been waiting for a 16GB device for over a year now; my hard drive 40GB MP3 player died last year. Depending on what the iPod line announced today, I was planning on getting the 16GB ZEN with the SD slot. I really love the SD slot feature on the ZEN, but the built in Browser, YouTube, 3.5 inch screen, and Wifi for the iTouch pretty much sealed the deal for me today. The free $200 Amazon.com gift certificates I have accumulated over the past year help persuade me too =)

[Foolio Slim @ Sep 5th 2007 8:46PM]

iTouch? And so begins its new name!!

[Bmaples @ Sep 5th 2007 8:03PM]

What drags me down is the thought that the incredible ipod touchscreen only holds 16gb. I know all about the constraints of technology, but for someone like me who has 30+ gig of music, the whole point of an iPod is to be able to listen to anything from my collection at any time any where. I'd love to have it, but can't justify spending the cash on something that only half @$$ does the job I need it to. Increase the capacity!!!

[JohnTitor @ Sep 5th 2007 8:08PM]

160GB 605Wifi FTW!

[El_Pachuco @ Sep 5th 2007 8:11PM]

I completely agree with you, I would LOVE to get an iPod touch, but 16gbs is a real bummer.

[Maestro @ Sep 5th 2007 9:04PM]

I know everyone is all in a lather over the touch but I am really let down. And let me say this is the first iPod to let me down in a while. For each of the previous models I was all in. I never said, "Yeah...it's nice but...". Now I am. 16gb is way to small for that device. I have a 60gb iPod and I am supposed to "upgrade" it to this? I don't think so.

[Dae @ Sep 5th 2007 9:17PM]

i just said that. i have the 60GB 5 gen and im running into storage limitations now. i would kick myself in the head if i purchased a 16GB anything these days.

[John @ Sep 5th 2007 10:01PM]

The problem is that it's flash based - and to make it higher capacity would require A) switching to a hard drive, dropping the battery life and increasing the thickness, or B) adding more flash memory, and that would be a huge price jump.

[kcar @ Sep 5th 2007 10:41PM]

I imagine that a hard drive and Wi-Fi connectivity in one machine would have sucked battery life away like a vampire.

We'll see how un/popular the Touch is. A lot of people were drooling over the iPhone for all its non-phone features back in June and July.

It *is* odd to see the $399 Touch sharing the same price point as the full-fledged iPhone. I would have kept the iPhone about $50 higher than the 16GB Touch. It's also strange to see the 160 GB Classic at $349. Apple is sending confusing signals about the values of extra storage and additional features.

It all work out--In Steve We Trust.

[Ellianth @ Sep 6th 2007 12:11AM]

what technology constraints? They were just lazy.

[Alex De Leon @ Sep 5th 2007 8:07PM]

The iPod Touch! ? I am very confuse , its seam a iPhone :O Well

I want two devices :D

[ed @ Sep 5th 2007 8:11PM]

is internet browsing free or do you have to pay At&t a fee?

[Simon @ Sep 5th 2007 8:14PM]

its free, it uses a Wifi connection.

[Vincent @ Sep 5th 2007 8:20PM]

The touch looks almost perfect to me. I don't really need 160GB of storage on the go, and WiFi would totally rock. The only think I wish they could have added to it was a mail.app. That would have made it completely perfect. True, I can just use the web interface, but a dedicated app would be better.

[AlexNC @ Sep 5th 2007 9:26PM]

Not only Mail, but I would also like to have a Google Maps app too. I agree with you about the 16GB being plenty. I am a music collector, so I have close to 200 gigs of music. But I only listen to about 10GB at most at a time. Having over 16GB is really overkill for most people, unless you have an obsessive compulsive disorder. I used to have a 40GB iPod and I found myself constantly clicking through songs that I didn't want to listen to. I would rather have 16GB of the music I am currently liking on my iPod, not all 200GB. And why would someone need 20GB of videos? This is not a server, it's a portable device. I only use video for business trips and vacations. 6GB of videos is a shit ton of videos. Plety to keep me occupied for a week before I can get back home. All the capacity haters need to wake up to reality and see the iPod for what it really is, aportable media device, not a portable storage server.

[John @ Sep 5th 2007 10:07PM]

I agree to a certain extent with the memory capacity arguement. I like my music at 192kbps (I'm a low-end audiophile, rockin out with my UE Super.Fi 5 Pros :) ), and with 16 gigs I could have a WEEK of music on there. But, the device is also really set up to play video, with that nice big screen, and I really would want to store some movies on it too, and I hate picking and choosing. But what am I going to do about it? I'm going to not buy one, not whine about how a huge corporation didn't devote itself to my wishes. I don't see the point of the iPod touch, but maybe it'll be a fun toy for someone else. Just because I don't enjoy something doesn't mean no one else should get to.

[Source @ Sep 5th 2007 8:30PM]

I don´t see the notes app in the iPod touch, that app really can work for me in this thing.

How do you think the new iPod models are going to handle the scratchy problem?

[Jeff @ Sep 5th 2007 8:30PM]

Guys, 16GB is more than enough. You'll never be able to fit all of your music, video, photos, etc on an iPod. I have well over 300GB of media, but I only have maybe 10GB of media on my iPod at any given time. There's no point in storing all of it on you iPod. Just sync what you want when you want it. I'm re-syncing new music and movies all the time.

[El_Pachuco @ Sep 5th 2007 8:53PM]

Well, I'm very fickle, I don't decide what I'm going to listen to ahead of time, most of the time I just get the feeling to listen to a song for no specific reason and I don't want to have to constantely worry about if I synced it or not.

[Foolio Slim @ Sep 5th 2007 8:54PM]

Yup, same situation here... Until they offer hundreds upon hundreds of gigs w/ flash, I've learned to live with it. Hell, I still use my 4GB iPod Mini from time to time and it doesn't kill me. Still better than pockets full of cassette tapes.

And I can't help but laugh that we're all bitching about 16GB on a wafer-thin touch-screen device from the future. C'mon! Remember when we were kids? I was stoked just to get my hands on a friggin' 100mb zip drive, let alone multi-touch, wifi, cover flow-sportin' madness. One question I have is if it'll let you stream from an iTunes instance a la Apple TV. Now THAT would be cool...


Oh, and get off my lawn!!! =)

[Eric @ Sep 5th 2007 11:08PM]

Thank you for telling me how I should use my iPod.

I use my iPod for music. I very rarely watch video on it. I am able to carry about my entire music collection, and that is something I have gotten very used to. I don't want to have to constantly think about what music I'm going to sync to my iPod.

[Justin Williams @ Sep 5th 2007 8:31PM]

A few thoughts from today:

I was thinking about the 200 dollar price drop, and in a way, that is a good incentive for someone switching over to ATT. Before you had to pay 600 and roughly 150 dollar cancellation fee (if you were under contract), now its kinda like a cancellation fee rebate. Now if your not moving over from another provider, then its still an added bonus. Just so it be known, i purchased my iphone at launch at at no time have i been the least bit upset about the price drop. I knew they would eventually drop the price, so what does it matter to me if it is 2, 6 or 12 months later. At some point they were going to. I can totally see how some people would be upset, I'm just not one of em.

At this point, i would assume that apple has recouped a lot of the R&D for the iphone, so a price drop at this point isnt as bad as it would seem. It could be that they needed to boost sales, but if it boosts sales enough, wouldn't that be subject to a bigger profit, than if they left the price as is and didn't sell as many iphones.

Alot of people are screaming about the 99 cents for the ringtone, but how much of that do you think is apple, and how much do you think is from the labels. Remember, apple may sell alot of songs, but they really dont profit off of them as much as they do their hardware. I thought i had read somewhere that labels get almost the same amount of royalties from ring tones as the actual song, thats why companies like verizon charge so much for their ringtones. So I dont think thats so bad.

The only thing Im not really sure that I think is a good idea is the touch. I would have rather seen them drop the 8g iphone to 399 and then intro a 16g iphone at 499 and not even worried about the itouch unless it was with a 80 or 160 GB version. Apple has been pretty good about keeping things simple and now i think there are to many products.

These are just a couple of my thoughts, right or wrong, they are mine.

[endurion @ Sep 5th 2007 8:33PM]

What I want to know is if/when this will support UPnP or "other" media server streaming over WiFi. That would be SO sweet. 16GB, 8GB... none of it would matter. I'd just pump out the tunes/videos from my own personal 1TB media server anyplace I had a wifi connection.

[Rick @ Sep 5th 2007 9:44PM]

I would think that if you can view You Tube videos that you will probably be able to hear them as well. If this is true then a clever person such as yourself could fron-end your media with a web app and stream your media to yourself.

The only question is if the Touch's browser supports stereo or not. My guess is it will not support stereo for just this reason.

[Matt @ Sep 5th 2007 8:41PM]

And this is clear evidence of Apple fanboyism at Engadget. I doubt there has ever been, or will be, more coverage of a corporations one day event, such as this hour press conference, and it's followings.

While I like what Apple is doing with more diversity in the iPods, prices are still high though, I don't like all of this phucking with the homepage, of Engadget or any other site that should not have a huge bias. I'm all for the news being reported, but this is too much.

[r @ Sep 5th 2007 8:48PM]

Any downloadable video (not streaming) of the event yet?

[Haricot vert @ Sep 5th 2007 9:02PM]

IMHO the touch needs a mic and a speaker, Skype, and an email client... Then it would have an appropriate blend of values to make it worth of my $$$. Oh yeah and an IM client or two...

[Yaw Dapaah @ Sep 5th 2007 9:24PM]

So true. My first thought about the iTouch was whether i could use Skype/IM on it.

[thetinguy @ Sep 5th 2007 9:53PM]

It runs the same exact software as the iphone. Third party IM is a definite. Skype is a maybe. If the iphone headphones with the mic work with the new ipod, then you have a microphone.

[Justin Williams @ Sep 5th 2007 10:01PM]

Dont know for sure, but its hard to imagine that it would work with a headset that has a mic on it. It would have to have the third connection for it and I would assume it doesn't, then again i wouldnt be surprised if i was wrong

[rcl @ Sep 5th 2007 9:21PM]

Does anyone know (or at least think) that Apple will do a software update to make the iPhone's dock look as good as the iPod touch's dock? I hope so!

[Dae @ Sep 5th 2007 9:23PM]

how is java and flash handled on the ipod touch and iphone?

[Dae @ Sep 5th 2007 9:26PM]

does video streams work on the ipod touch. will i be able to view my .mac crap on my ipod touch. Im sooooooooooooooo tired of you tube.

[thetinguy @ Sep 5th 2007 9:46PM]

The touch ships on the 28th. WTF??? What happened to the apple that didn't announce products until they were ready to release. Fucking iphone killed that.

[Justin Williams @ Sep 5th 2007 9:50PM]

Im not sure, but perhaps it has something to do with FCC final approva due to the wifil. I dont know if it can use the same one as the iphone or if it has to be re-approved.