It's Showtime

It's time for a new Apple announcement, and this is going to be a big one. So I'll be live-blogging along. Let's get it on:

1:05pm - Almost half a million Nike iPod kits have been sold. Finally, my shoes play music. Awesome.

1:08pm - Nice! iPods updated to be 60% brighter, battery life increased to 6.5 hours for the bigger iPods. This may dig into the popular flashlight market.

1:10pm - News for Geoff: games now available on iPod store, re-designed for the click-wheel; $4.99 each, including pac-man, tetris, and more. News for Stefan: they also have texas hold-em.


Via Gizmodo

1:15pm - Nanos get the Mini upgrade, now available in brushed aluminum colors, including: Green, Silver, Black, Blue, Pink. Oh, and it has a 24 hour battery life. And double the storage capacity (2GB for $149).

1:20pm - iPod Shuffle is now the same size as the Apple Remote. Meaning that, essentially speaking, it probably is the Apple Remote. Awesome. Also, only available in brushed metal, for $79. It's almost like I have no reason NOT to buy one.

1:24pm - iTunes 7 is out today. Hmmm... I wonder what could be in that update?

1:26pm - Oh, free cover art, if you're missing it. That's probably the big update.

1:28pm - New ways to browse, by list, or by album cover art. Yup, that's the big update right there.

1:31pm - TV Shows now at four times the resolution, which is pretty awesome. They use the h264 codec, which means it should be the same or shorter download time for video that almost fills your entire screen. That will be great for watching TV shows, I think. Nothing else though.

1:35pm - Jesus Christ, come on! ANNOUNCE THE F***ING MOVIE STORE ALREADY! AHHHH!!!

1:37pm - Ahhh. Thank you.

1:40pm - Walt Disney, Pixar, Touchstone, Miramax starting today. Those are all Disney, FYI, which was also the first company to sign up for TV through iTunes. 75 films to start; 9.99 for most movies; 12.99 for pre-order (?) new releases, 14.99 after that. I assume then going back down to 9.99?

1:44pm - Near DVD quality (same as TV shows); will take approx. 30 minutes to download. Oh, and Dolby Surround Sound built in, if you're some sort of rich person and can afford surround sound speakers for your computer. Also, will be released the same day as the DVDs. Good call, movie studios! Way to not be stupid.

1:52pm - Turns out, you can download a movie in 30 minutes, but you can also start watching it after the first minute. So unless it's a 29 minute movie, you basically have an internet ready, DVD quality movie store with on-demand capablities. Kick-ass.

1:53pm - Oh, one more thing...

2:00pm - Ummm... Wow. Next year, Apple is releasing essentially an Airport Express for your TV. Meaning, you can wirelessly stream video from your computer to your television seamlessly, and browse through it using the Front Row interface (which is a really great app made specifically for a television). Pretty cool, esp. for someone who downloads most of their television and spends time hooking their laptop up to the television every night [read: me].

So that's about it. Updated iPods, updated iTunes, big news is movies. My prediction? HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are dead. The future is in digital media, not physical media. And Apple has enough muscle in the market to make downloadable movies work. They're not the first company there, but they are the "best." In under a year, the movie business will be going through a radical change.

Or maybe people will give up movies, and discover the joys of hiking.

Yeah, right! Am I right? I'm right.

2:12pm - Oh, one more thing, again. Really? There's more?

2:15pm - It's just a John Legend concert. Feh. BORING.