#FF00AA

What a weird opening to a very bland keynote. I know Apple’s a little bit past not acknowledging the rumors about Steve’s health now, but that’s… I don’t know, it’s just weird. Do we get this slide because, no matter what he announced, he knew Apple’s stock would drop once again after the keynote because he looked thin?

iTunes 8: the “Genius” (dear god…) automatic playlist creation and iTunes Store recommendation engine is long overdue (I’m talking on principle — I’d be very surprised if I didn’t disable it after ten seconds); it looks like Grid View might finally bring the long-awaited possibility to start playing albums with a single click and have playback stop when the album’s done. You know, like when you play a record. Because you want to listen to that record and not just listen to a neverending stream of music that happens to be below it in alphabetical order.

iPod classic: I still think the Classic should become a hard-drive-based iPod touch (with a big label warning against trying to shake the accelerometer too much, I guess). I don’t quite get how they replace the 80GB and 160GB models with a single 120GB — you know, that’s… less. Were there really technical (or economical) problems, or did customers complain that the capacity of their iPods was too daunting?

iPod nano: The most interesting thing about it is that the rumors were 100% right, quite a bit of time before the keynote. Well, that and Apple is able to realize when a new design is crap, and step back. I don’t think it looks great, though, and really wonder by what magical properties the curved glass doesn’t distort the image.

And I can’t fucking believe the “shake to shuffle” rumor was real. Steve has spent too much time approving crappy iPhone apps for the Store.

iPod touch: the curvy, shiny aluminum back looks weird to me but, hey, look — volume control! Speaking of which…

In-ear headphones, possibly of the “good” variety: “The remote and mic are supported only by iPod nano (4th generation), iPod classic (120GB), and iPod touch (2nd generation).” I care more about volume control on the remote than the two drivers, and I’m not sure I actually want in-ear headphones anyway, but — what the fuck? It doesn’t look like a typo, since they’re compatible with the new iPod touch and not the original; how moronic is it that they’re releasing new headphones with mic that don’t work with the iPhone?

(There’s a tiny chance that the page could be updated in a few days to include iPhones and iTouches updated to firmware 2.1, but you could imagine that a hard-wired technical limitation would prevent it, and they wouldn’t have figured at original design time that they might want to add buttons on the remote later. As bone-headed as it would be.)

iPhone 2.1 : Is there going to be no new functionality at all? I’m not counting the Genius playlists, because I don’t care a bit about it in the first place, and it doesn’t make much sense to me that you’d want to use Genius playlist creation on your mobile device instead of iTunes (by the way, you have to wonder how powerful it can really be if it’s going to be included the iPod nano’s firmware). I just want something new to play with.