Apple Expands the Digital Hub - iPod Games, iTv, Movie Downloads

Today's "Showtime" event from Apple brings many of the speculated products into reality. One less-common rumor, the iPod games rumor, has come true! 5th-gen iPods can play Texas Hold'em, Tetris, Bejeweled,Pac Man and other classics. The games cannot be played in the iTunes client software, but should make iPodding more enjoyable.

The iTunes movie downloads have come into being as well. A quick glance at the iTunes movie store looks promising, with Apple saying they have over 75 movies to start with. Studios include Disney, Pixar, Touchstone and Miramax Films.

iPod Shuffle has been redesigned into a clothespin/clip form factor. Very clever; it will be interesting to see if this takes off, or if the hinge will have breakage problems due to its being a moving part.

Regular iPod now comes in an 80 gig variety, and the Nanos have dramatically expanded battery life (sounds like Apple has addressed at least some of the common complaints with this round of releases).

The iTV (shame the name is so similar to EyeTV... one of my favorite Mac peripherals) has been predicted by many for quite some time. It's a small box, comparable to a Mac Mini, which has a whole slew of video outputs (including HDMI support), Ethernet, WiFi, a USB port, etc. It is controlled by the Apple remote and allows your Mac to become a media server while you view content from your living room. It will retail for $299, according to MacNN.

So finally we have the video equivalent to the Airport Express with Airtunes... but perhaps more media-centric. I wonder if it will have printer capabilities.

With last week bringing us a revamped iMac line entirely based on the Intel Core 2 Duo processors, we now see why they want such aggressive increases in computing power, which IBM could not have (did not want to) provided through the PowerPC platform.