pseudorandom

Before the Apple announcements, I made the following predictions:

• Movie viewing service: near-certainty
• TV video viewing device: near-certainty
• iPod nano capacity increase: highly probable
• iPod shuffle replacement: probable
• Widescreen iPod: possible
• iPhone: unlikely

So how did I do?

• Movie viewing service: yes, so correct
• TV video viewing device: yes, so correct
• iPod nano capacity increase: yes, so correct
• iPod shuffle replacement: yes, so correct
• Widescreen iPod: no, and though I only listed this as "possible", not "probable", I'm nonetheless going to count it as incorrect
• iPhone: no, so correct

Five out of six? Not bad. That said, I was surprised by a number of aspects of the announcements. Launching with only one movie studio? Showing iTV as a preview instead of as a finished device? Not adding a display to the iPod shuffle? Increasing iPod storage by only 20GB? And though I listed a widescreen iPod as merely "possible", in my heart, I didn't think that Apple would launch a movie service without a good movie-capable iPod -- and the 5G iPod isn't it. Its screen makes it okay for short subjects, especially cartoons, but it's too small for a two-hour movie watching session. So no reason for me personally to upgrade.

One other surprise was the retro design of the new iPod nano. I know lots of people will like it, but it's essentially equivalent to Apple saying, "we got the first generation iPod nano wrong". Not very Apple-like.