Are The New Apple Products Worth Buying?

The dirty-sounding finance blog “Make Your Nut” works through the pros and cons of the latest Apple products, so that you can “make sure you enter into your purchases with eyes wide open.” Up first is the revamped AppleTV, which has a few limitations that weren’t mentioned in yesterday’s announcement.

For one thing, high definition movies, for now, are not being made available on iTunes and can only be rented through the AppleTV. Rented HD movies cannot be synced back to iTunes or otherwise exported to your iPod or iPhone. So, if you think your $5 rental cost is going to get you a high definition movie that you can take with you as well as a copy that you can view at home, think again.

High definition content on the Apple TV will only be available in 720p resolution, if those things matter to you. Surround sound will be on some, but not all, HD movies. This situation will probably improve over time. At present, none of the television content is offered in high definition.

About the iPod Touch: if you pay $20 for the new software (current Touch owners only), and buy non-included accessories like a dock and a power adaptor, then congrats! You’ve basically paid for an iPhone that doesn’t have any phone capabilities!

It’s harder to reason out what the Air is worth, but Make Your Nut points out that for $200 more you can buy a not-much-larger MacBook Pro with lots more features. (Or buy a tiny and light Eee for $400 and save yourself a lot of money and room in your laptop bag—I’m just sayin’.)

“Your Personal Finance Guide to the Macworld Product Reveals” [Make Your Nut]
(Gold in photo: Getty)

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