Today was the first day of the Apple Expo in Europe, Paris to be exact. I was hop­ing that Steve Jobs would be announc­ing the new “Core 2 Duo”-based Mac­books. But alas, that spec­u­la­tion was­n’t even close.

His announce­ment weighed more heav­i­ly in the release of prod­ucts from the iPod fam­i­ly, then the release of iTunes 7. Here’s the break­down of the new fea­tures per iPod fam­i­ly mem­ber:

iPod:

• 60% brighter dis­play
• 75% longer video bat­tery life
• Gap­less play­back
• Excit­ing new games
• Search and Quick Scrolling
• New head­phones
• $249 for 30GB
• $349 for 80GB

iPod Nano, 2nd Gen­er­a­tion:

• Made of thin­ner alu­minum
• Col­ors of blue, pink, green, sil­ver and black
• 40% brighter dis­play
• 24 hour bat­tery life
• Gap­less play­back
• Search and Quick Scrolling
• New head­phones
• $149 for 2GB (sil­ver), $199 for 4GB (blue, pink, green and sil­ver) and $249 for 8GB (black)

iPod Shuf­fle, 2nd Gen­er­a­tion:

• World’s small­est MP3 play­er
• Alu­minum case with clip
• 1GB — up to 240 songs
• 12 hour bat­tery life
• USB 2.0
• Dock & ear­buds includ­ed
• $79

I’m eye­ing that Shuf­fle for $79. Seems rea­son­able and func­tion­al if you play sports; espe­cial­ly when you run a lot.

Any­ways, besides Mr. Jobs announce­ment, a cou­ple of the MA folks and I will be attend­ing Car­son Work­shop’s Sum­mit: The Future of Web Apps tomor­row and Thurs­day. Should be some inter­est­ing and excit­ing time. It’s just too bad I don’t have a Mac­book (yet) so I can look as cool as those tech­f­reaks attend­ing. Oh well, I hope this Dell Lat­i­tude loan­er can do the job of writ­ing notes and check­ing email.