Apple’s September 9 Event

Apple iPhone 3G Yesterday’s Apple event didn’t hold too many surprises (many had been leaked ahead of time by various rumor sites), but it provided fairly solid updates to Apple’s iPod lineup, as well some interesting information.

In the humor department, Jobs jokes that “reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” (complete with a slide saying that)

– iTunes now offers HD TV shows
– A “Genius” capability was added to iTunes which creates playlists from your existing library as well as recommendations from the iTunes store
– iTunes 8.0 made available
– iPod Classic drops 160GB model, upgrades 80GB to 120GB
– iPod Nano redesigned – thinner, accelerometer
– iPod Touch slightly redesigned – thinner, stainless steel, controls added, Nike+ iPod receiver built in.

The thing I was interested in was the iPhone 2.1 firmware / upgrade. It’ll be available this week, and among the fixes/updates:

Better battery life
– Fewer dropped calls
– Bug fixes, including problems with App crashing
– Faster iTunes backups

Another thing that interested me was the Appe Store for the iPhone/Touch:
– 100 million Apps downloaded in 60 days
– 3,000 Apps available
– Over 600 free Apps
– Only a small number (10% or so) are $10 or over

Those App numbers are pretty amazing and show that Apple is getting the whole smartphone thing down.