Apple Event Roundup

Today's event

Because the Apple event this morning was live there was no need for us to live-blog it, but how about a round up…. Continue reading to see all the best bits from today’s video.

Firstly, iOS 4.1 available next week, and iOS 4.2 for iPad will be available in November.

iOS 4.1

iOS 4.1

iOS 4.1 is coming next week to an iTunes near you and is going to include a number of bug fixes and some pretty cool additions. The fixes include the proximity sensor issue (where it doesn’t work properly at the moment), Bluetooth, and iPhone 3G performance. The new features include High Dynamic Range (HDR) photos (takes three photos one of normal exposure, one over-exposed and one under-exposed and merges them as one brilliant image), HD video uploads over WiFi (about time), TV show rentals (US only) and, finally, Game Center. Game Center looks pretty awesome and has a number of new capabilities for multiplayer gaming, including the ability to challenge friends, keep track of scores, and new ways to find games As I say it’s available next week to download to your iPhone or iPod touch and is going to be free for everyone.

iOS 4.2

iOS 4.2

Apple also announced iOS 4.2 today, which will be available in November, and has everything iOS 4.1 has, plus some extras, and will finally bring iOS 4 (inc multitasking!) to the iPad. New features include AirPlay, (which is the rebranded name for AirTunes), with the important addition of being able to stream music, video and photos from your iPad to Apple TV.

Wireless Printing

An awesome new feature is wireless printing over Wi-Fi. This is certainly something that has been missing from the iPad and comes with a Print Center app that sits in the dock and lets you manage your print jobs. Apple will be launching iOS 4.2 for iPad in November.

New iPod shuffle, nano and touch

The new line-up

Instead of just refreshing one of the iPods, Apple decided to refresh the whole line-up (well nearly). The update covers the shuffle, nano and touch but excludes the classic which stays as, well a classic iPod with it’s click-wheel.
iPod shuffle

The shuffle

The shuffle has gotten smaller, again, and this time instead of being a ‘bar’ type like the 1st and 3rd gen player it has regained it’s buttons (a-la gen 3) but is now square. Does all the tricks of the Gen 3 Shuffle but now has buttons. It comes in five colours and is priced at $89 for 2GB and is available today.
iPod nano

The nano

The nano has also undergone a complete makeover and has lost it’s buttons, is a square 1.54-inch (diagonal) colour TFT touch screen, is 46 percent smaller & 42 percent lighter and looks to be running a cut down version of iOS. But although it has gained this it has also lost something that was only previously introduced on the latest nano, the camera! WTF Apple, we know it’s so you can run an update to it at a later date but come on you should have left the camera! To me it is now just a ‘Shuffle with a touch screen’, after all it’s about the same sort of size. What about all those people that have a 5th Gen with all their videos?? They can’t even sync them and play them back. It comes in seven colour varieties, including a Product RED option, and is priced at $249 for 8GB or $299 for 16GB and orders are being taken today.
iPod touch

The touch

The iPod touch’s makeover isn’t as dramatic as the others, but if the current iPod touch wasn’t thin enough for you then you will be pleased to hear that the new iPod touch is thinner and lighter than the previous model. It also now includes the Retina Display from the iPhone 4, an Apple A4 core, 3-axis gyroscope, Game Center, and FaceTime support thanks to the addition of the front camera (which as we have previously heard will be activated via email address). The new rear camera is capable of recording HD video and you’ll be able to get iMovie to edit it on the go. It comes in one colour, and in three sizes, 8GB, 32GB and 64GB. It’s available for order now at a cost of $379, $489 and $649 respectively.

All-new Apple TV

The Apple TV

The rumours we’d heard about the Apple TV have pretty much played out to be accurate – in a form-factor akin to the Mac mini and Airport Extreme (but black), it now has an insanely low price of NZ$169, streams your iTunes content at 720p over HDMI but doesn’t have any local storage this time around. It’s an extremely aggressive price-point and clearly Apple are trying to combat Google TV before it gains a foothold. Here in NZ we won’t be able to benefit from the TV rentals or built-in Netflix support, but we will be able to enjoy iTunes movie rentals and we’ll be able to stream any compatible media we already have on our computers to our big screens.

iTunes 10

iTunes

A refreshed iTunes is available, complete with new logo (sans-CD) and built-in social networking via their very own new service dubbed ‘Ping‘. It’s apparently available from today but right now the Apple website is still saying ‘Coming Soon’ and is struggling to keep up with the number of hits it’s no doubt taking. Keep checking back during the day to grab this.

AirPlay for Third Party devices

AirPlay

That AirPlay technology we mentioned for iOS 4.2? Well, it’s more than just an update for the iPad. Apple will be licensing the technology to third parties which means you can expect to see a whole slew of stereos, speaker docks, alarm clocks and what-not that are all capable of streaming your iTunes music library wirelessly without the need for you to plug in your iPod or iPhone. This is pretty exciting and it will only help secure Apple’s dominance of the music industry (which is fine by us!).

Well that about sums it up. So what are you getting? Did you order already? Share with the class!