on 11 September 2008, 08:27
by Joel Dreyfuss

Well, Steve Jobs proved this week that even he can't perform miracles on deadline. Mr. Jobs introduced a freshened-up line of music and video players that offered few real innovations. But there definitely wasn't any of that ground-breaking technology that has characterized his appearances before adoring Apple fans.
In his Tuesday show in San Francisco, Mr. Jobs revealed an upgraded series of iPod touch devices, essentially iPhones without the phone part, and a revived nano iPod line that referred to the earlier, elongated line of the original nanos. The new nanos are curved slightly and come in nine colors. Whoopee.
Apple had tried to dampen expectations about that the products so the introduction hardly caused a ripple. Mr. Jobs has already sold 160 million iPods and transformed the music business with his iTunes site.
One reason for the ho-hum show is that Apple is now in the consumer electronics business. Unfortunately for Apple fans, that business moves far more slowly and embraces innovation far more reluctantly than the computer industry that has been Apple's forte.
While computer users expect new models each year and constant upgades in software, consumer electronics is an incremental business that hesitates to make change. Of course, this opens possibilities for Mr. Jobs, who has an uncanny talent for redefining categories and designing products that ordinary humans can use easily.
My hope is that Mr. Jobs will tackle the set-top box market in his next iteration of Apple TV, which has stumbled so far. As television moves to digital and viewers are swamped by a plethora of channels, surfing through on-screen cable guides that haven't changed much in a decade has become frustrating and slow. Channel guides cry for an iPod-like interface that lets users click and spin through menus, categories of programs and alternate show times.
Making it easy to schedule digital recordings and to remind viewers when important shows are about to start would be an added bonus of a well-designed set-top box. Apple can also more easily tie Web surfing and TV viewing, which in most cases today requires two separate devices.
Another fertile area that Apple could apply itself to is managing music and video in the home. A number of companies have created media centers, including Microsoft, but they are still clunky and most won't work with the copy protected files that iTunes stores on your PC. An Apple media center that found and organized all your content, from video and music to photographs, that listed important Internet radio stations and video outlets and pumped the right content to the right home appliance with the elegance of an iPod would surely find an audience.
So Apple had a boring show this time. We're making our bet that Mr. Jobs won't disappoint twice.