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Decisions, decisions. Apple revamped their entire line of iPods yesterday and introduced a new model, the iPod Touch. The iTouch, as I call it, is the iPhone, without the phone. To me that translates to “everything I wanted in the iPhone without losing my Blackberry and switching carriers”. And speaking of the iPhone, they officially discontinued the 4GB model in favor of the 8GB model, then lowered the price by $200. iPhone now costs $399 which is very attractive but also at the $399 price point is the new 16GB iPod Touch.

iPod Touch:
I haven’t been this excited for a product in awhile. In a previous post I stated I would pass on the iPhone. My dependance on my Blackberry and switching to AT&T were really my only reasons not to purchase one. Otherwise I thought the iPhone was amazing. Now Apple has all the amazing without any of my worries. Without a doubt, I’ll be picking up the iPod Touch the day its released. I went as far as to pre-order it from Apple.com last night but when I seen they charged me sales tax, I said screw it and I’ll just pick one up at an Apple store when they are available. I’m all about instant gratification. Its just my luck that the only product that wasn’t in stores already was the iPod Touch. Apple’s site says it ships by Sept. 28th. That’s along time to wait when you want something today. That’s around the same time the T-Mobile Blackberry Curve is rumored to be released so I should have some new toys to play with at the end of this month.

iPod Nano:
The Nano’s got a major overhaul with a new design, interface and video support. Unfortunately it seems the Nano is the sleeper product of the day being overshadowed by the Touch and the iPhone price drop. If the Touch wasn’t released, I would have ran to the store to pick up a new Nano without a second thought. $199 gets you a 8GB Nano that plays video. That’s epic.

Afterthoughts:
The 2-3 week wait for the iPod Touch is actually good for me. It will give me time to sell off my G1 Nano and my AppleTV to make room for the new iPod. My decision to sell my AppleTV stems more from my currently living situation than the new iPods. My HDTV has died and only have access to an SDTV so the AppleTV will do nothing more than collect dust for the next few months. With the Xbox 360’s support for SDTV, h264 and the help of Connect360 for my Mac, I don’t lose much from not having my AppleTV. Don’t worry little AppleTV, we may one day meet again.apple

Last Friday I received my Income Tax return and felt the need to buy myself something nice. I just got done watching Geekbrief TV where Cali reviewed the Apple TV and I was sold. I’ve been on a strict budget for the past few months so I felt a little guilty dropping $300 on an Apple TV. So I made myself an internal compromise. I said if I sell my Xbox 360 HD DVD drive, I’ll buy myself an Apple TV, which would pay for at least half of it. I immediately call up the local Apple Store to make sure they had some Apple TV’s in stock. They did and off I went.

Well its been a full week and I have to say I love the box. Previously I used Front Row on my Macbook hooked up via DVI. While it did the job, it wasn’t an elegant solution. The Apple TV setup was a breeze which if you used any Apple product, thats a given. The interface is what really sold it for me. Since I don’t have cable, I get my TV shows from iTunes, download podcasts and subscribe to Netflix for my media fix. Only thing I would have liked is a DVD player inside but I understand the decision not to include it. My Xbox 360 does have a DVD player and it works. Thats good enough for me.

While my new Apple TV is awesome, I’m going to have to give credit where its due here. I wouldn’t be able to enjoy my Apple TV as much as I am if it wasn’t for Visualhub who has helped me convert all my existing media over to h264. The program is simply awesome for converting to different video formats and its amazingly fast. I did run into one small problem when trying to convert previously ripped h264 files from Mediafork but it was easily fixed by changing a setting. The latest version 1.23 even supports outputting to Apple TV. If you need to convert some media to Apple TV, I cannot say enough good things about Visualhub. Worth every penny of the $23.

The 40G hard drive is tiny in comparison to my iTunes library which last I checked was around 140 gigs. Hacking the Apple TV’s hard drive is definitely in my future but I’d really like to go to a 250 gig drive which they don’t make yet. So in the meantime, I’m just keeping unwatched media synced which its actually pretty nice. I know what new podcasts are out and new TV shows and don’t have to worry about wading through everything. For the rest I just stream from my Macbook. I have the Apple TV hookup via wired ethernet so syncing and streaming is fast.

Keynote
I didn’t go to the keynote this year. $200 and standing in line for 5 hours didn’t really appeal to me too much so I did what everyone else did, followed everything online. I followed mostly everything from Macrumors and Engadget with a few refreshes of a couple other sites.

What did I think?

Apple TV
I’ve been waiting for this. I like what they did and will probably pick one up but its definitely not the perfect device. I don’t want to move all my movies into iTunes. I keep everything on a separate drive and you cannot stream from a folder.

The interface is slick and it can sync with iTunes just like a iPod so you don’t have to keep your computer running. I’m probably going to pick one up anyways since I get all my TV Shows from iTunes and its convenient but I’ll probably find another device down the road to replace it.

iPhone
This thing is amazing. I’ve said it before that when Apple drops there phone I would be be first in line to buy one. After all is said and done, I’m probably not going to get one.

Reasons:
1) Cingular. I’m a T-mobile customer.
2) Price. $599 is kinda steep tho I do think its worth every cent.
3) I’ve fallen in love with my Blackberry’s push email from work and I’m not sure if the iPhone can do that.
4) Doubt its going to work with the Nike+iPod kit.

June is along time away, half a year. As more details get announced, I’ll weigh in on my choice.

In other news, if Apple released a 120G touch widescreen iPod, that I will buy.

Apple AirPort Extreme
Nice, real nice. I want one but kinda pricy and my Macbook doesn’t have N in it.

Disappointed
After dropping a bombshell like the iPhone I still felt a little disappointed with the keynote. Why?

No new iPod, no Leopard and no iLife ‘07.

I was actually looking forward to new Leopard details, maybe even a release date and what’s new in iLife ‘07. I’m really hoping they overhaul iPhoto.

My guess is all that stuff will be announced soon and wasn’t at Macworld do to the iPhone stealing everyones thunder.