News: Apple Announces New iPods & iTunes 9

Apple has just announced the refreshed iPod range along with a new version of iTunes, iTunes 9. Techhuman did some digging around, upgraded to iTunes 9, and tried to see what it would mean for all of us.

The iPods:

The new iPod Nano now rocks a camera, the case is polished and shiny, it has a slightly larger screen and finally an FM radio. The camera, to be blunt, is neither here nor there, in our humble opinion, it is the FM radio with Live Pause and iTunes Tagging that got us excited. Live Pause enables you to pause the radio and rewind back up to 15 minutes. iTunes Tagging, saves the title of a selected song that is playing on the radio, and allows you to check it out on iTunes later, and download it legally, of course. No, sorry we mean download it through iTunes, if you live in the USA or UK, or lots of other places except South Africa. What were we thinking? It is still a really cool feature.

Two other noticeable upgrades are that Nike + is now built in, and you can now use the chipped headphones, (optional of course) like the ones on the iPod shuffle. With these headphones, the iPod Nano has Voiceovers. Voiceover is basically, a voice on the iPod that pops up over the lowered music and tells you the artist and song name.

There are now only two models available an 8GB (1750 songs) & a 16GB (3500 songs)

No word yet on the South African retail price. This will be announced on Thursday 17th September at the South African launch. If the American pricing is anything to go buy expect a slight price drop. (In the USA it dropped to $149)

The new iPod Touch is now significantly faster. It sports the same processor as the iPhone 3GS, and that means apps are going to launch a lot faster, but most importantly, it is going to be a great mobile gaming device. Well at least where the iTunes Store is available. For us poor sods in South Africa, well just sorry for us!

The iPod Touch is now available in a 8GB (1750 songs), 32GB (7000 songs) & 64GB (14000 songs) Also a slight drop in price is expected.

The iPod Shuffle now come in a range of colours, like the iPod Nano, and the iPod Classic, which is still the only “old” iPod left, gets a storage bump to 160GB (40 000 songs)

iTunes 9:

There are two big differences with iTunes 9, in comparison to iTunes 8.

First is the improved syncing between iTunes, iPods and iPhones. Syncing is now significantly faster, and a very cool feature we used from the get-go is the ability to visually manage iPhone applications screens directly in iTunes.

Second is the major upgrade to the iTunes Store. The iTunes Store now comes with something called iTunes LP.

This would be great if the South African iTunes Store was up to scratch with the US or UK stores. But it’s not. Basically iTunes LP allows you to view (on selected albums) the animated lyrics and liner notes, watch performance videos, band photos and commentary. But since the South African iTunes store doesn’t actually sell music, this is a useless feature for us.

It also has a pretty nifty feature that allows you to link up to five authorised computers and be able to transfer music between any of their libraries, which is pretty cool.

So if you live in any country where the iTunes store is available then iTunes 9 will be a really significant upgrade. If you don’t, well then you’ll benefit from faster syncing and well that’s about it really.

As soon as the new iPods are launched in South Africa on Thursday 17th September we will bring you live updates on Twitter and a full review shortly thereafter. For the meanwhile enjoy the images in the gallery above.

Brendon Ambrose
Editor

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