While investigating whether Apple’s pro video market was already shrinking prior to Final Cut Pro X’s release or whether it is solely in response to that release, Jacqui uncovered some resentment towards Apple’s hardware releases. Evidentially video pros look at the huge successes Apple is having with the iPhone and iPad and feel neglected. Some of them evidentially think that Apple is putting all of their energy into releasing consumer products and they’re suffering as a result. They cited how long in the tooth the Mac Pro is getting as evidence of Apple’s inattention.

With the current iteration of the Mac Pro about to turn 18 months old—and even at the time of that update, the previous version was nearly two years old—these users are becoming increasingly jaded about Apple’s commitment to the pro market. And because Apple’s Final Cut products only work on the Mac, the Mac Pro is a big part of the equation when it comes to production houses choosing which software to use.

They’re worried that 18 months between Mac Pro revisions mean that Apple is neglecting the pro market. They feel that Apple wouldn’t let that sort of thing happen to their prized iPhone or iPad. Except Apple has. The iPhone 4 was on the market for 16 months before being replaced by the iPhone 4S.

Maybe video professionals need to reset their expectations. Set aside feelings of not being important enough. Just concentrate on who provides the best video production software for you today and who will provide the best in the future. It might be Apple.

Via Matt Gemmell.

Apple started this long, slow march with a letter from Steve Jobs titled Thoughts on Music. They updated us on the status of their efforts at Macworld in January and began accelerating their conversion to iTunes Plus then as well.

Learn more about upgrading to iTunes Plus, including what benefits may make it worth it for you.

None of the top 100 songs are priced at the lower 69¢ price. Catalog items like Creedence Clearwater Revival‘s Greatest Hits do not reflect this new budget pricing tier. That album even contains a few premium tracks like “Bad Moon Rising” and “Down on the Corner.”  However, the full album is priced at a very reasonable $6.99. Finding a 69¢ song on the iTunes Store is like hunting for Easter eggs. I finally found some by looking at Kraftwerk. “Numbers” is priced at 69¢ along with six other songs. Still, this change isn’t as bad as one could have imagined. At the time of this writing only 33% of the top 100 songs are priced at an elevated level and one could have easily assumed the entire 100 songs would be $1.29.

I will continue to watch the pricing levels and will report on any large scale trends that differ from what we see today.

Smaller packages take fewer raw materials to construct. This means less energy needs to go into harvesting those materials and producing the packaging. It also means less material needs to be recycled and less material will undoubtedly end up in landfills.

Reduced packaging also means that more units can be transported or stored in the same amount of space. Fewer plane or train miles are required to transport the computers and other devices from the manufacturing plant to the point of sale. Retail stores can stock more Macs and iPhones in the same square-footage (or less) store which puts fewer demands on real estate acreage and requires less energy for lighting, cooling, or heating.

Author and developer Jeff LaMarche just got a 17″ MacBook Pro and offers some photographic evidence of the progression of smaller and smaller packages from Apple.

“Imagine your music player talking to you, telling you your song titles, artists and playlist names,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of iPod and iPhone™ Product Marketing. “The amazingly small new iPod shuffle takes a revolutionary approach to how you listen to your music by talking to you, also making it the first iPod shuffle with playlists.”

iPod shuffle is based on Apple’s incredibly popular shuffle feature, which randomly selects songs from your music library. And now, when you can’t remember the name of a song or an artist playing, with the press of a button iPod shuffle tells you the name of the song and artist. iPod shuffle can even tell you status information, such as battery life. With the ability to hold up to 1,000 songs and the VoiceOver feature, you can now easily switch between multiple playlists on your iPod shuffle. iPod shuffle can speak 14 languages including English, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

The new iPod shuffle comes in silver or black and features a sleek and ultra-wearable design with a built-in stainless steel clip. iPod shuffle is the smallest music player in the world and is incredibly easy to clip to almost anything and take with you everywhere you go. iPod shuffle features up to 10 hours of battery life.*

Pricing & Availability 
The third generation 4GB iPod shuffle is now shipping and comes in silver or black for a suggested price of $79 (US) through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers. iPod shuffle comes with the Apple Earphones with Remote and the iPod shuffle USB cable. iPod shuffle requires a Mac® with a USB 2.0 port, Mac OS® X v10.4.11 or later and iTunes® 8.1 or later; or a Windows PC with a USB 2.0 port and Windows Vista, Windows XP Home or Professional (Service Pack 3) or later and iTunes 8.1.

*Battery life and number of charge cycles vary by use and settings. See www.apple.com/batteries for more information. Song capacity is based on four minutes per song and 128-Kbps AAC encoding; in 256-Kbps AAC format, song capacity is up to 500 songs; actual capacity varies by encoding method and bit rate.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

Apple sold 2.5 million Macintosh computers during the quarter, representing 9% unit growth over the year-ago quarter. This bucks the industry trend. According to IDC, the overall market for personal computers shrunk in the December quarter. During their Q1 2009 quarterly earnings call, Apple indicated that they felt customer response to their MacBook announcement in October was very strong. Portables accounted for 71% of all Macs sold in the quarter. Apple believes that customer excitement over the announcement led to the strong Macintosh performance this quarter and also shows an industry trend towards portable computers. In addition, almost half of all Mac sales through retail Apple Stores were to customers that had never had a Mac before.

 The iPod division booked a record 22.7 million iPods during the quarter, representing 3% unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple’s US  market share for portable music players is over 70% according to the NPD group. And the iPod continues to gain market share world-wide. The iTunes Store also had its best quarter ever along with its biggest sales ever during the week of Christmas and on Christmas day.

Quarterly iPhone units sold were 4.4 million, representing 88% unit growth over the year-ago quarter. This great quarter for the iPhone means that Apple totaled 13.7 million sales for 2008 – ahead of the 10 million unit goal set by Steve Jobs when the iPhone was first announced. A side note that Apple announced prior to this earnings report is that the iTunes Store has over 15,000 application available and customers have downloaded these over half a billion times since early July of 2008.

Apple will continue to invest in the Apple TV because they see a profitable future for them in that space. Apple representatives stated that movie rentals through the iTunes Store  have resulted in improved sales of the Apple TV.

Apparently, as a part of this bargain, Apple was able to convince three of the four major labels (Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group) to join EMI and indie labels in offering their music without copy protection (DRM) and with higher sound quality – otherwise known as iTunes Plus. Starting today, 8 million songs will be available in the iTunes Plus format. By the end of this quarter, Apple expects to have all 10 million songs available in iTunes Plus. Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Music finally bears all of its fruit.

Another benefit for the customer that Apple was able to negotiate is that you can now buy music on the iPhone over cellular networks. You used to have to find a Wi-Fi network to connect to if you felt the need to buy songs from your iPhone, but not now!