Of course, Apple announced some stuff beyond iTunes 9 and a new iPhone firmware update, like a major upgrade to the iPod nano, and new iPod touch models and pricing. There was no huge, drop-everything-and-run-down-to-the-Apple-Store announcement, but overall a decent day of releases.

(A side note: On the bus one day, I heard a group of inner city teens talk about going to the “iPod Store” downtown, referring to the San Francisco Apple Store location. That’s what Apple is to them – the iPod company. Take that to mean what you will.)

Now that I’ve had time to use this stuff and let the other announcements sink in, here are some thoughts.

The New iPod nano

This is a pretty good upgrade for an aging, some would say out-of-date product. It’s disappointing that the camera doesn’t shoot stills (even just VGA stills), and the resolution is limited compared to those cheap HD video devices out there, but who cares? It’s basically a “gimme.” The best addition is the one Apple cribbed from Zune, the FM radio. I know a lot of people say “who the hell wants to use FM radio anymore?” I’m feel that way, too. The Zune folks have excellent data on this (based on anonymous opt-in data collection from the Zune software) that something like half of Zune owners use the FM radio at least once a week. I guess this makes sense. Places like gyms will often broadcast the audio from TV sets on FM stations so you can listen while you sweat, and there are tons of people who love their talk radio. Plus the ability to see RDS data and tag a song for future download, also cribbed from Zune, is a nice little music discovery feature.

Apple even one-upped the Zune team by letting you pause radio for up to 15 minutes. That’s a good “bathroom break” buffer, and the inability to save that buffer probably steers Apple clear of any legal troubles.

iPhone 3.1 Update

A minor update if ever there was one. You can now buy ringtones from a giant ringtone store for the “breakthrough price” of $1.29. That’s right, you can now buy a lower-quality short snippet of a song to annoy everyone around you with for only 30% more than the full song! Ringtone prices are a total ripoff across the whole industry, and it sucks to see Apple encourage this bullshit with a whole ringtone store. I don’t even think this is available yet. I can’t find it on my phone nor iTunes.

3.1 also introduces Genius recommendations for Apps in the App Store. Nifty. But why is it only on the phone, and not in iTunes? I do most of my App shopping through iTunes.

iPod touch

The price drops seem to be clearly a reaction to the announced prices of the Zune HD. Apple’s dropping the 16GB model, interestingly, and selling a new 8GB model for $20 less than the 16GB Zune HD, hitting that magic $199 price point. The 32GB version drops to $299 ($10 more than the 32GB Zune HD), and a new 64GB version sits on top at $399. Yes, Microsoft, that is your cue to announce a $379 64GB Zune HD, if you were wondering.

The 32GB and 64GB models are getting the same CPU/GPU as the iPhone 3GS, which represents a nice speed bump, but it would appear that the 8GB model at that price point Apple emphasized as being so magical still uses the old platform. Lame. Also lame is that they gave the units a speaker (good for games without headphones) but no mic (bad for app developers that want to do nifty mic stuff). And they didn’t add a camera. So overall, sort of disappointing.

iPod Classic

Oh come on, Apple. You used to sell a 160GB iPod Classic, then you got rid of it. Don’t bring it back and pretend you’re giving people a capacity bump.

Next page, iTunes 9…