Apple announced yesterday that readers have downloaded more than 35 million e-books through its iTunes site, reports eBookNewser. The news came during a press conference that saw the unveiling of a new iPod and a new iPod Nano, both of which will use touch screen technology to encourage more e-book downloads in the future.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs also introduced a new approach to the way it sells products that’s incorporated into iTunes 10. “Ping,” the site’s new social networking tool, will allow users to post song, album, movie and e-book recommendations to a feed.
But there’s an aesthetic redesign detail that could prove irksome. The iconic logo, with musical notation set against a silver CD—well, it’s gone. Jobs explains that, after ten years, it’s time to ditch the nod to that erstwhile format, a relic from the age of physical music. It’s as good a time as ever to switch it up: “iTunes is about to bypass CDs in sales,” Jobs said.
And it must have been an amicable separation. It was taken for granted, that silver disc, but logically it has nothing to do with iTunes, especially now that it’s expanded beyond selling just music. As integral the the CD was to the logo, it is, at this point, a complete anachronism. If this year’s youth can’t write in cursive, next year’s batch will have never seen a real CD.
