Apple Suprises and Underwhelms at the Same Time

Apple announced a bunch of much-desired features today, including downloadable movies through iTunes, Gapless Playback (a BIG pet peeve of mine), transfer of iTunes purchases via your iPod (another issue I've had to deal with), and new iPod models across the whole line.

What they didn't announce was a new widescreen Video iPod.  And I just don't get why.

They upgraded the video quality through iTunes to 640x480, which is still a standard-def video format.  (No word on whether the new iPods have 640x480 screens.)  But every time they said (640x480), I kept thinking ... this is the only non-widescreen product in their product line, computers included.  Apple understands how important widescreen is when it comes to field of view, but they just keep dropping the ball on the iPod.

I was hoping to get a new one of these for my graduation from the UW, and while the new 80GB model is compelling, I have to think that they're just perfecting the technology.  So why wouldn't I wait?  Sure, my current iPod is absolutely full, but that's not a big enough determiner for me.

The big surprise?  The rumored set-top box, codenamed iTV.  Thinner than the Mac Mini (less than half as thick, it seems), built-in wireless, an designed to bring movie content to your HDTV.  Again, what's the point when iTunes is limited to 640x480?  Even 720x480 would have been a start, but that probably would have made the lack of a widescreen iPod even more apparent.

I'll download the new iTunes when I get home from work and see if the old 4G iPods will support the Gapless playback.  Jobs made it sound during the keynote that it was some sort of secret sauce in iTunes7 that makes it work.  We'll see.