Quick rundown:

+ New Shuffle
+ Color nanos (precious)
+ Movies
+ iTV (as it’s code-named) looks sweet
+ Better battery life for iPods in general
+ 80GB? Booyah! And it’s pretty cheap at $349
+ Games on the iPod

- Only 4GB nanos have colors. WTF?!
- Disney movies only so far (will soon add more, hopefully)
- iTV may only support iTunes purchased video (heard from a reliable source inside)
- You have to buy games? Oh rly?
- No turtleneck? What happened, Steve?

+/- Movies at 640×480 (Meh… better than 320×240 I guess)

Ok, and now for my real rant. I was so close to being free for the bonds of Fairplay. I was talking about other Mac-compatible players, planning on burning/ripping all my iTunes tracks to destroy the DRM, maybe even going Media Center in the house. But then they brought out those little color nanos, and the Apple fangirl inside of me gave a little gasp of joy, much like that of a hamster seeing a ferris wheel for the first time and thinking it’s the biggest hamster wheel in the world. Uh… yeah, just like that.

However, those dreams were crushed when I learned that only the 4GB nanos would have the colors. But… but… I wanted a 8GB pink nano, AND I WANT IT NOW!! *ahem* Sorry. I get a little hysterical thinking about it.

The final insult came when I installed iTunes 7.0 on my PC at work. I have iTunes on there so I can check the podcast to make sure it’s loading. After the lengthy downloading and installing process, I went into the program to check things out. I liked the new design, but my podcasts were acting funny. And by funny, I mean not loading. Then Explorer crashed. I tried again. Crash. Again. Crash. You get the picture. I gave up, and went to the BOL forums to get more impressions. Let’s just say that apparently the Windows XP version of iTunes enjoys not only crashing, but taking down the iPod with it. What the hell?

I’m installing iTunes now at home on the G5, so hopefully things will go a little smoother. If you want to hear my hysterics in audio form, check out the Buzz Out Loud and MP3 Insider podcasts for today. And if you’ve gotten this far into the post, let me know what you think about the annoucements.

References: News.com, Engadget (nice work Ryan and Paul!), MacRumors

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Lately, I’ve been missing audio production a little bit. I don’t mean like the podcast variety - more like studio recording. That’s what I went to college for, and that’s what I thought I was going to do with my life. I miss the atmosphere, the music, the feeling when something finally comes together for the first time. Most of all, I miss meeting famous musicians.

Kidding.

Ok, but that was definitely a perk. Another aspect of audio production that I loved was sound art/installation. I was never much of an artist, but sound art gave me the chance to express myself artistically in a way that I didn’t really know I was capable of. This week, I found out that my college professor, Jeff Talman, was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his sound installations across Europe. You can get more info about his work here. Hopefully I can make it to Europe and see it in person this fall…

What this all comes down to is that while I’m very happy with my job, and I’m doing lots of creative video work, I’m a little sad to have left the creative sound work behind me. Podcasts are fun, but they don’t give me a chance to flex my artistic muscles in audio production. Maybe I should start working on something.

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For your viewing pleasure, the video for “Snakes on a Plane (Bring It)” by Cobra Starship.
Thanks, Crew Creative!

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Kato at Witfits posted a link to the Captian Picard song. I listened to it at work and made an obvious nerd of myself by laughing quite loud while my boss was walking by. Yes!

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