Apple had a special event today, announcing a new iPod Touch, a new iteration of the iPod Nano with 9 colors and an accelerometer, and the release of iTunes 8. NBC is back on iTunes with HD content, and Apple's selling "premium" headphones, though if you want to burn $80 on headphones I'd break out another $20 and get a Shure E3c. Then again, you can't record with an E3c like these new headphones apparently allow you to do. Also, the iPod Shuffle gets colors and the iPod Classic now has the same styling as the 3rd gen iPod Nanos.

 

Genius will be amazing in and of itself if it lives up to the billing. No one's made a truly reliable recommendation service yet, not even Last.fm.

I'm looking forward to this Friday's release of iPhone firmware 2.1.

 

Yeah, it improves as more people activate it and all the data goes into the cloud. Eventually it'll become a service that recommends based on what other people with similar libraries did, which is the best way to offer recommendations IMO.

Give it a month and the results will look very different than what we're getting now.

 

As long as those other files aren't DRMed and are present in your library, it really shouldn't have been an issue.