Those of you who don’t know, apple announced a few new toys a couple of days ago.  my lackluster post is due mostly to the underwhelming release.  Mostly announcing features that have been obviously lacking since the iPhone first hit the scene over 3 years ago.

Among their offerings is Apple TV: a cheaper apple tv with a smaller footprint and no storage.  Designed to promote more rentals from the apple store, most of the exciting features are “Coming Soon” undoubtedly to coincide with iOS 4.1 or 4.2.  New iPod Touch with everything you’ll find on iPhone 4 except for GPS, (because that might actually be useful).  Cool to see FaceTime on the iPods though.  New Shuffle combines the inovations of the last model with the usability of earlier ones.  The Nano was a mixed bag.  joining the iOS family with this version they remove it’s camera and video playback capability.  It is unclear if it will ever get the benefits of iOS such as apps.  Touch screens are cool, but if there aren’t apps, i’d rather have buttons and play videos.   Lastly, iTunes 10.  As if iTunes wasn’t a bloated POS already, now it is it’s own social network: Ping.  Caught between wanting to be blip.fm and last.fm, Ping offers me nothing but more iTunes Store Spam.  At least i hear they’ve finally added some threading.  My biggest complaint about previous iTunes is that it does so much and often gets a little shall we say “Pinwheely.”  It’s usually when i’m importing new tracks or syncing/restoring an iDevice.  Of all it’s many features, the ONE thing i EXPECT itunes to do is control my music!  at that, it often fails.  Let’s see if this new version will improve their already abysmal record.

Jailbreakers or Unlockers Note:  iTunes is safe, but you will want to hold off on the inevitable iOS updates.  if you saved your blob you can always go back, but not with your baseband, so unlockers should especially be careful.