iPhone Hill

What didn’t we get from Apple during their 2010 special music event? The iPod touch line got an extremely decent refresh, as well as the Nano.   iPhone is getting iOS 4.1 next week with some newly added features and some much needed bug fixes. The iPad will be getting iOS 4.2 – in November, but I’m sure some of us would have liked to see it sooner. And we got an overhauled iTunes. I personally wasn’t expecting a whole new iTunes, so that was the surprise of the day for me. AppleTV was pretty underwhelming in my book (as well as Rene’s).  Click through to see what us here at TiPb would have liked to see and let us know in the comments what you would have liked that just didn’t make the cut this time.

iPhone

iPhone will be getting iOS 4.1 next week. Along with general bug fixes (proximity issues anyone?), you’ll get Game Center and some welcome additions to the camera. I know I wasn’t the only staff member excited by the edition of HDR to the camera, but I would have liked to see maybe some contrast and saturation settings added. I’ve especially noticed it on the iPhone 4, but sometimes pictures in low light settings come out a little too warm (yellow-ish) in my opinion. It would be nice to be able to tweak some settings. Game Center is a welcome addition, but I’m not crazy about the whole carnival-esque layout. I much preferred the original layout from the original 4.0 betas.  I wasn’t expecting too much in the way of iPhone.  There were rumors flying around of a new iPhone, but I think we all know better than that around these parts.  Apple is predictable.  As long as their current business model works, I don’t see them changing that pattern.

iPad

The iPad will have to wait for November for iOS 4.2 – next week would have been nice. Why the hold up? El Jobso really didn’t have a lot to say about the iPad at the event. He seemed a bit rushed. Deep down, I was really hoping to hear about a potential iPad refresh, but I figured that wouldn’t happen until January or so. Did you guys expect anything iPad wise that you didn’t get?

iPods

As far as iPods go, I really have nothing to complain about. I think the shuffle combines the best of both previous generations now. The Nano now has a touchscreen! It contains everything the previous generations had, but aligns better with its sibling product lines. Chad noticed the absence of video on the Nano. I don’t really know if that would both me personally, as I wouldn’t want to watch movies or video on that tiny little screen. To me, this is simply Apple positioning themselves in the market. If you want an iPod with video, you’ll have to step up to the iPod touch now. Makes good business sense to me. Only peeve I have with the new iPod line at the current moment is the back material on the Touch. For the love of everything Jobs, PLEASE pick a better finish that doesn’t scratch when you set it on a pillow? That chrome is just screaming “Scratch me!” How about a frosted material next time guys?

iTunes

iTunes 10! This was the one thing I was somewhat excited about today. I don’t get too excited about iPods since I have an iPhone, so I really have no need for one. Ping sounds like a good concept, but we’ll see if it will catch on. I also like the idea of top 10 lists created by your friends, but you’ll also have to be selective about what friends you have on there. I have friends who listen to death metal, and I don’t want that in my top 10 suggestions lists. To me, that doesn’t sound very intuitive. Some people would have liked to see cloud-based syncing or some version of iTunes in the cloud. We previously speculated that this was why Apple acquired LaLa. Maybe not?  I would have liked to see some more intuitive ways to organize content.  I love coverflow and sometimes even if you group albums the same, you see duplicates in different views.  More than anything, I wanted to see more fine tuned controls.  If anyone sees anything new in iTunes 10 as far as organization I haven’t found yet, let us know in the comments.

Apple TV

I pretty much have the same feeling’s Rene does on this one, so we’ll let him take it from there. But if you’d like to rant or tell us your thoughts, let us know in the comments. Needless to say, I’ll probably be getting one. That may sound odd, but I didn’t have the first generation, or any generation AppleTV. At $99, I can stream all my movies from my iMac to the TV and stop fiddling with burning DVDs or hooking up an output device. And iTunes rentals are cheaper than rentals from Comcast. I’ve been waiting to pull the trigger on a new media device for our living room as we’ve been putting it off forever. I’d still have liked to see a LOT more features than what we got. Anyone else picking one up?

I also would have liked to see an update to MobileMe or something along the lines of adding new features.  Streaming would have been nice or the ability to store books or music wirelessly to your MobileMe iDisk.  Other than that, I didn’t expect that many “One more things”.

That about wraps it up, let us know all your thoughts in the comments!

Apple special music event – what we didn’t get is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb – The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Tomorrow at their annual special music event, Apple might announce a new version of iTunes (iTunes X?) — maybe with $0.99 TV rentals or streaming cloud music — and thinking about that made me realize I hardly if ever sync my iPhone with iTunes anymore.

Just before iPhone 4 came out the Apple Store swapped out my 3GS due to cracks along the dock that had been preventing me from syncing. Because I couldn’t sync, I’d been downloading apps directly onto my iPhone, streaming podcasts via the iTunes app (iOS 4 made that rock solid), and otherwise existing pretty much entirely from the cloud.

When I got my replacement iPhone 3GS, I just stuck in my MobileMe, Exchange, and Google logins and all my personal and work data started syncing over the air (OTA). I re-downloaded the few apps I use regularly — Twitter, RSS, online file storage, password management, etc. and I was fully operational before I left the store. (Though, yes, they did have to tether it to iTunes in the Apple Store to activate it, and if not I would have had to do so when I got home.)

When I got my iPhone 4, same thing.

Now I do sync my iPad to iTunes a lot and I have way more apps — especially games — on my iPad than I do on my iPhone. The introduction of iPad and iOS 4 for iPhone, however, let me change my habits enough that my iPhone is now pretty much iTunes free. I can’t remember the last time I synced (probably for iOS 4.0.2 and it annoyed me when iTunes pulled off apps I’d re-downloaded because they weren’t checked off on the desktop side — can’t we do a sync for most recent changes on that?)

How about you, do you still regularly sync your iPhone with iTunes? As much as you used to? Why or why not?

Do you still regularly sync your iPhone with iTunes? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb – The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

If Apple announces that much rumored, all new, all iOS AppleTV/iTV this Wednesday at their annual special music event, what kind of apps would you want on it?

When Apple introduced iPad, they let it run pretty much every iOS app made for iPhone and iPod touch (absent camera and phone apps, of course) by boxing them or pixel doubling them. Depending on the exact nature of the app, however, the experience at 1024×768 and 9.7-inches varied from fine to dismal. Luckily there were 5000 or so iPad specific apps available at launch and that number has continued to grow.

Now iPhone 4 — and likely soon iPod touch 4 — have 960×640 displays but still only 3.5-inches. If iPad was a step up, iTV will be a leap. There’s an outside chance of 1960×1080 or the current 1280×720, both of which are probably workable just like they were for iPad… except TV screens won’t be multitouch and they won’t be in our hands or on our laps.

What made the 2007 iPhone a breakaway hit, what let it change the industry was its multitouch user interface. It disintermediated physical keyboards and styluses and let us touch and directly manipulate the UI.

Sitting 10 feet away, far removed from 30 to 70-inch screens, acting through some type of remote, wand, scroller, trackpad, or iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, what kind of apps make the most sense?

I can see a few categories.

• TV/Movie apps. Whether or not Apple offers subscription or rental TV, the existing big name TV and Movie apps need to be there. Netflix, Hulu plus, ABC. HBO. All of them.
• Game apps. Straight ports might not work, and games that depend on an iOS device as controller or secondary screen (like Scrabble for iPhone and iPad) might raise the cost of adaption, but big screen iOS gaming will almost certainly be front and center. And Game Center.
• Interactive book apps. Not iBooks but apps like the Dr. Seuss or Toy Story books for kids, especially if taken to the next level, would be wonderful educational resources.
• Reporting apps. The ability to display aggregated data about everything from the weather to all your and your friend’s location check-ins to looking through Facebook albums to route planning for your iPhone navigation app would really take advantage of the big screen and family view.
• Web apps. I want Safari on my TV. If you can tether a BT keyboard, or use an iPhone or iPad as a keyboard, even email, twitter, etc. wouldn’t have to be read-only.

While iPad is often labeled a consumption device, iTV would be even more consumption oriented. You probably wouldn’t want to even try to knock out large docs or use complex productivity apps. It would be a grosser, more distant experience. But absorbing media and entertainment, information and analytics could be fantastic. Those are the types of apps I want to see.

How about you?

What kind of apps would you want on an iOS AppleTV/iTV? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb – The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog