Apple just held this event (covered at Engadget). As someone who doesn’t drink Apple’s Kool-Aid, here’s my take.
Genius this and Genius that. Genius is a recommendation engine. Which makes it more of a marketing tool than Apple might admit. Genius mixes are like Pandora, last.fm or Slacker, except it only plays the music you own instead of introducing new stuff.- OMG Ringtones!!1 Wait, $1.29 is revolutionary? I’ve been making my own ringtones for free for half a decade. And with the Blackberry I have now, I can just drop whatever MP3 I want on it and then tell it to play that as the ringtone.
- Home Sharing: Sounds a lot like Windows 7′s HomeGroup feature.
- LP Content: Cool, I guess. Not particularly useful, though; more of a gimmick.
- Boasting how great the iPhone is for games. Ironic considering you wouldn’t exactly see that sort of boast for Apple’s computer lineup…but it doesn’t matter in that context, right?
Conclusion: Free and Open technologies have offered most of these things for years. I’m unimpressed.
