Apple iPod Event

OK, so I didn't cross the pond for the event. Which, on reflection, was probably a good things since there wasn't anything announced that hadn't been leaked earlier. Is the iPod end of Apple becoming more sieve-like or what? Anyway, whilst there were some interesting products to think about for Christmas presents (i.e. the new Nano) and the iTunes 8 update has a rather useful new Genius feature there wasn't any one thing that really floated my boat.

I downloaded the new 2.1 software for my (now first generation) iPod Touch and the iTunes 8 upgrade pretty much as soon as possible. You do have to look hard for some of the UI improvements (particularly on the Touch) but they're there. I'm not sure about the bug fixing for the Touch in this upgrade as recently mine has been pretty reliable. iTunes 8 has a new grid view for album art, which works well for podcasts as it shows you the number of episodes you haven't watched in a circle at the top left of each icon (like the mail notification on the Touch) and it also has Genius. It's this last feature in one guise which I will probably use most as I'm basically lazy and can't be bothered to make my own playlists, in its other guise (purchase recommendations) I can see it getting rather expensive so I may not pay much attention to that one. As to playlists (and this feature also exists in the Touch 2.1 software), Genius creates a new playlist from a specified track using other "connected" tracks from your existing library (or the sub-set on the Touch). I don't know how the algorithum works (and the iTunes implementation supposedly learns from data send up by each user) but it seems pretty decent to me. I've already started listening to stuff I'd forgotten I had.

All in all, not an earth shattering event but some nice polish to some already decent products.