Apple always seems to have one or two things its sleeve that the rumors aren’t able to pick up on beforehand, in this case, the iPod Classic, and the WiFi iTunes store.

Even with these pleasant surprises, I feel oddly underwhelmed by the announcements; possibly due to the fact that Apple has a keynote like this about every 2 months, and everyone goes gaga over the announced products for a couple days, then gets on with their lives, more often than not without the “revolutionary” new or upgraded device. Don’t get me wrong, Apple is one of, if not my favorite company ever, I just didn’t feel the “rush” that Apple presentations usually give me. Here are my opinions on each announcement, in chronological order.

iPhone ring tones from the iTunes music store for $0.99 more than the price of the song you’re using? Absurd. It isn’t like Apple to charge extra for something your computer could probably do by itself, and I really hope they don’t make many more decisions like this–it just seems greedy. A myriad of methods for using custom ring tones on the iPhone have popped up recently, and not one of them costs a cent. Wise-up, Apple!

New iPod Shuffle colors? They’re nice, but Apple’s colors are typically bold and hot, and these new ones are more dull and blah; it was definitely a mistake to toss out the original colors on both the Shuffle and the Nano. I would have been more impressed if the iPod Shuffle got a storage bump, with separate 2 and 4GB versions.

As far as I’m concerned, the iPod Nano (which I shall affectionally refer to as the phatty) is the most significant update in the keynote. Smaller than its predecessor, the phatty is not only still able to play audio for 24 hours on a single battery charge, but Apple managed to squeeze their best non-touch screen onto it, allowing for quite possibly the most portable video-player ever! As for the games, if you do use the bus or subway often, they could be great, but otherwise, there is little to no point. Apple completely re-worked the user interface, making the phatty just as beautiful on the inside as out, including the long-rumored Cover Flow addition. The new iPod user interface has separated the iPod from the typical, bare-bones, dull user interface of typical portable audio players.

The “new” iPod Classic is not that notable, except for the 160GB storage bump, which will definitely please a few people with lots of spare away-from-home time and large DVD collections.

As revolutionary as the iPod Touch seems, it really takes the iPod a step in the wrong direction as far as “portable audio player” goes. Sure, it is thin and easy to transport, but imagine hearing a song you aren’t in the mood for and wanting to change it: take iPod out of pocket, turn iPod screen on, unlock iPod, change song, turn screen off, put back in pocket. A little hard to do, isn’t it? As for the WiFi, Apple hasn’t really fleshed out that feature to its full potential. If someone is out in public (where the WiFi would presumably come in handy), wouldn’t they have a cell phone with them? If they are technologically advanced to have a use for a web browser wherever they go, they probably have a smart phone, or, a popular recent choice, the iPhone! But wait–does that mean that Apple is overlapping their products? YES. Just get a freaking iPhone! On a side note, the storage of the iPod touch: just 8GB and 16GB? Pshaw, the new iPod Classic has 10 times that! Granted, it does use a hard drive, but I’m not planning on throwing my iPod at a wall, so it isn’t really an issue.

iTunes mobile is a brilliant, yet greedy idea on Apple’s part. When Apple says, “now you can get new music wherever you go,” Apple means, “now you can pay us for new music wherever you go!” I totally wouldn’t mind this if Apple’s library was 100% DRM-free, but alas, it is not.

Starbucks integration? Not worth the effort! Who actually CARES what’s playing in a place like that, when you most likely can’t hear it over the noise of the place itself! A more useful feature would have been for Apple to integrate some of that new “listening” technology that is all the rage in Asia these days, where the phone listens to the song, sends the information to a database, and tells you what that song is. Apple would have just added a”buy now” link to that returned information, and the service would not have to be limited to Starbucks.

iPhone price drop? Genius. I may actually get one, and I expect to be seeing a few of them around school soon.

All in all, I was disappointed with the keynote. Apple is going somewhere that I don’t want to be, and I’m not looking forward to it.

This post is a work in progress, and will be revised. If you see a grammatical error, instead of making fun of me, please point it out politely, and I will correct it shortly.

Information obtained from Engadget’s liveblog of the event, and Apple’s site.