Apple squeezes video camera into iPod nano Apple — in the person of CEO Steve Jobs — has announced a revamp of its iPod line, an upgrade to its iTunes Store, and a new version of the iTunes application for both Mac and Windows. Jobs took the stage this morning at an event in San Francisco, California, and according to live blogs from Macworld and AppleInsider, the …
...when one can buy a Nokia 5530, an exceptionally versatile music centric touch screen phone - and because it is a phone, you can upload your video to your blog or YouTube without needing to go home and sync with iTunes first!
I just don't get why Apple don't exploit the lovely form factor of the Nano and build in a phone - the young peeps who cannot afford an iPhone will love it. The scroll wheel is an intuive way to select contacts and then all you do is hit the middle button to place that call!
Logical, capi-tain. No?
I own a PSP and there are a little more than 600 games available for it. it comes with a built in PS1 emulator and if you use CFW you can use your own PS1 games on the system which means the PSP has the entire library of PS1 games too. That's not even getting into the emulation scene where you can put a Megadrive/Snes/etc emulator on the PSP and have access to that library aswell.
Question is though, how many of those 21,000 app's have the quality of some PSP games? Gran Turismo is out soon (and looking good), Tekken, Harvest Moon Life etc.. It's not quantity of games, its quality, having 21,000 games which are most likely pick up and play for 5 minutes whilst you're on the train can't compare with quality games that are designed to be played for a few hours a day over several days (or as you can play FF7 on the PSP, several hours a day over several weeks!)
I've played with a few other media players but none come close to the featureset of the Touch which, most importantly, passes the wife/parent test of being instantly usable by someone for whom the Windows start button can pose problems.
The newly sixtyfourgigabytised Touch looks like outstanding value for money as an alternative to a netbook PC.
I'm sure this board will at some point descend into the Apple vs Windows vs the world camp, but having tried a few alternatives, I reckon the Apple iPod Nano/Touch combined with iTunes on an inexpensive Windows machine is hard to beat for all round everyday usability.
Well, it's exactly that sort of attitude that pisses me off. Sorry PR types, but its JUST TECHNOLOGY. If I want a religion I'll join the Scientology Church - they are at least upfront about not being quite in touch with reality. If you want to be Stalinistic, that's fine - just don't expect me to buy anything.
It almost makes Microsoft look normal. But then I remembered "developers, developers, developers" - I so wish I could erase that memory..
Just to make it clear, I have about 3 iPods of some description lying around, and I was planning on an iPhone, and later in the year I aimed at looking for a Mac. However, with that cranial invasion of the rectal cavity of the PR people it is unlikely I bother - the e-mag I rely on can't give me their view. Well, then I'm not interested. Simple.
the iPods, etc, still cannot play FLAC or Ogg files natively, therefore they are still shit.
What is it about Jobsientology when it comes to supporting the patent free FLAC and Ogg codecs? Look how they had a meltdown over the fact that the patent free Ogg codec was suggested for the HTML 5 video tag, claiming the "uncertainty" about pattents on the Ogg codecs, while pushing another codec which as heavily patented. Why would I not be surprised to see Jobsientology had a chunk of cash in the company that owns the patents for the codec they were pushing.
Typical Jobsientology. Form over function.
"A new iTunes 9 was also announced, which includes such nifties as improved app management:"
Has the Windows version also finally received a complete reworking to remove every last line of code responsible for its utterly shameful levels of UI responsiveness on so many different PCs? If not, then I think I'll just continue managing my iPod via Winamp, thanks all the same.
"The iPod classic lives on at the same price of $249, but its capacity has been increased from 120GB to 160GB."
Hmm, is that why they reduced the capacity to 120GB, so they could then bump it back up to 160GB once enough people had forgotten that it originally had 160GB, and make it sound like they're giving us something better? Still, it's good news in that if my original 160GB Classic decides to die on me, I can now replace it without having to work out how to get 155GB of material onto a 120GB device...
"Schiller even compared the number of games available on the App Store — over 21,000 — to just over 600 for the PSP and in the mid-3,000s for the DS."
I wonder how those figures compare to the number of games available for WinMobile... The number of games available for a system doesn't necessarily reflect on its ability as a gaming system, rather it reflects on the ease with which people can create and publish software for that system. I do enjoy the odd casual gaming session on both WinMo and the iPhone, but if I were still routinely making the sort of road/rail/air journeys which in previous years prompted me to buy a GBA (and later a GBA SP), then I suspect I'd now be the owner of a PSP - the Touch/iPhone might be a worthy alternative for the casual mobile gamer, but I can't see it dethroning any of the dedicated handhelds when it comes to serious gamers.
So let's see...
The iPhone/Pod has a secret sensor that can take skin samples, and silently send the data back to Apple. This reads your DNA.
Steve Jobs is ill, and desperately needs a liver transplant....
So, a 20 year-old, with a nice healthy liver, and iPhone/Pod is driving along, when BLAMMO! the iPodule/Phonoid explodes, causing a crash into a tree. Not before sending an emergency signal to Steve "oi, come get yer liver!" I'm sure there was no-one else on the waiting list for a low-mileage liver.... I didn't think they did transplants for oldies as there are usually younger people who... oh, sorry, he's very wealthy, so you can just skip the queue. Sorry, my bad.
Plausible?
You be the judge, and wear gloves when using your phone....
Usual apple "new" products. Nothing but recylced junk with the smallest of improvements that force users to upgrade from there already woking iJunk to keep up with the Jobsian cool. Even WMP has been able to LAN stream for how long now?
I used to use mac hardware but i got fed up with the tiny improvments that cost an arm and a leg for very little gain. So now i run mac os by VMWare or dual boot seamlessly on most hardware.
Overall this has been an iFail.
Being a Spotify user for almost a year now and I just use the application more and more the Spotify Mobile was something I had been longing for ever since I heard about it. Once installed one of the first things I noticed were that it wasnt able to run in the background. This is a major flaw but I believe we have Apple to blame.
There is one way around this but it requires a jailbroken iPhone. To see how it works take a look at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdUHeRBF-GY
"instantly usable by someone for whom the Windows start button can pose problems."
"I'm sure this board will at some point descend into the Apple vs Windows vs the world camp, but having tried a few alternatives, I reckon the Apple iPod Nano/Touch combined with iTunes on an inexpensive Windows machine is hard to beat for all round everyday usability."
Please consider the rest of us poor readers that have to wade through a stagnant pool of infantile exclamations that reek of the playground and arguments that used to start 'My dads better than your dad...'
Some people like Apple products and some like Microsoft and others, shock horror, like Linux - intelligent people will also admit that even though they disagree with someones choices it doesn't mean the other person is a complete idiot. Unfortunately the fanbois of whatever flavour have an almost religious belief they need to convert the heathens...
You like a product, thats nice for you - i'm not interested!
The shills and trolls are out today! Keep it up children. You are all entertaining as ever. One day you (and the hacks at el Reg) will realise the only people that whip up a frenzy about these 'events' are yourselves...
@Mark 65. Played them all then? Or just read the descriptions and looked at the screenshots?
@Nordrick Framelhammer. I defy you to find an average punter that knows what OGG or FLAC are! Besides, FLAC is totally inappropriate for a _*portable music player*_ at approximately 30MB for a single track - and everything sounds shit on a PMP! As for video in HTML5 (waaaaay off topic btw!!!), Apple have expressed, reasonably, why they are against the inclusion of OGG Theora. Have the FSF or anyone else involved with OGG come forward to allay those fears? No, because as per usual, it's all done half-cocked. Google are as skeptical as Apple about Theora. This is over both lack of hardware support AND Theora's quality next to H.264. Apple have given their reasons and AFAIK _*no-one*_ has presented any evidence to the contrary. You want OGG Theora? Prove that there are absolutely no 'submarine' patents. It really is THAT simple. Better the devil you know...
As for the first post, shame on you el Reg. Like him or loathe him, Jobs has had a major surgery for a serious, life threatening disease. By all means attack the cult of Jobs, even his personality, but mocking an ill man's appearance after major surgery is just wrong and out of order.
I don#'t understand all the rage on the Internets regarding the lack of camera on the Touch. When it was first rumoured, everyone just commented on how pointless another crappy camera in another device was. Now that it doesn't have one (but the Nano does -- one borrowed from mobile phones circa 2001), everyone's up in arms.
Make up your minds guys.
Personally I think the camera on the Nano is pointless, and just smacks of a feature upgrade for the sake of something new. How many people will have a Nano or Touch and not have a mobile phone capable of video and stills. And chances are of a much higher quality.
The thing that makes the iPod great is not the hardware of the device itself (though that's pretty good in comparison to most), but the integration with iTunes, the iTunes Music (and Apps) Store, and countless hardware add-ons. However fancy the (camera-less) Zune HD is, it won't integrate fully with my car (thanks Audi AMI), nor will it work with my portable speakers.
I think Apple's problem right now is that the webs get so full of excitement prior to announcements with fanbois building up what's going to be new (it'll have OLED, a camera, mind control, a rocketship, etc.), that it can only lead to disappointment when Apple do (yet another) small incremental upgrade. Despite popular opinion, Apple are not about revolutionary new products. They are about taking existing products and refining them until they work very very well. iPods, Macs, etc. have only ever been incrementally upgraded. Yet, every time, the fanbois work themselves up into a lather over the huge number of features they'd like to see.
Frankly, it's pathetic.
OK, Apple can't afford to lose Steve. FACT.
Therefore their board should be willing to do pretty much everything to keep him alive.
They're a technology* company.
I foresee the rise of the machines happening right there in Cupertino
*OK, they're a design company and the technology is just something to put in their pretty boxes.
"if you're not nice to someone, you shouldn't expect that person to invite you, let alone, asking for an invitation. You can't insult the horse and then ask to ride it. that's commonsense"
No that's journalism! You can't expect every single person in the world to agree that you've got nice shiny products. What you do is take on board feedback and try to improve your products based on that.
Or, if you're Apple, you ignore the bad, nasty people who disagree, take on board the feedback and whack a compass on it.
So, the Nano sprouts a FM radio? It's only taken several years for you to catch up with iRiver, Cowon, Creative, Sony, Philips, anonymous Chinese manufacturers. Heck, even Alba put FM radios in their music players!
iPod has always been a bit of a one-trick pony.
All you need now is Ogg support and iTunes on Linux, and you'll be on my list of "useful gadget manufacturers".
Not impressed. My 60GB iPod is close to full with music alone, and I would have quite happily replaced it with an iPod Touch, except they've only increased them to 64GB, which I'd probably fill within six months of purchase.
So I still won' t be buying the iPod Touch any time soon.
A few years back when the 160GB iPod "Classic" appeared, I snapped one up as you can never have too much disk space, and my music collection had outgrown my old 3rd gen 40GB. I was a bit surprised when a year or so later they dumped the 160GB drive for a 120GB, as most companies usually increase the storage in products not decrease. Plus there were mumblings of ditching the Classic alltogether.
So now I read this morning that thew Classic is still around and is now 160GB again. WTF is that all about? Obviously someone somewhere is still banging the drum for mucho storage, and I shudder to think how much a 128GB iPod Touch would be!
The Touch and the Nano are mostly differentiated by interface? I would have thought size and price were the two main factors, with interface running a distant third.
I can't see why anyone would be tempted to buy one of each, but then I'm surrounded here by people with two or three different mobile phones, all of which feature music players, yet they still find the need to buy a standalone MP3 device.
Also: if the iPod Touch can get a 64Gb SSD, how come netbooks seem to be saddled with 16Gb at best? Admittedly that kind of capacity would push the price point out of the usual netbook territory, but it would be worth it to have a decent capacity drive that I wasn't constantly worried about breaking.
Apple will sometimes do this, giving a new feature to a lower-tier part of the lineup. Generally this means that: A) the lower-tier part of the lineup is facing direct competition from a competitor and needs the differentiator; B) they've got something bigger in mind for the higher-end item; C) they still haven't worked all the kinks out, just 99.99%; D) they hate you; E) some of the above.
"Also: if the iPod Touch can get a 64Gb SSD, how come netbooks seem to be saddled with 16Gb at best? Admittedly that kind of capacity would push the price point out of the usual netbook territory, but it would be worth it to have a decent capacity drive that I wasn't constantly worried about breaking."
Difference being that Touch's don't need very responsive IO performance. At a guess from experience it writes at around 3-5MB/s, and only needs to read at the rate it takes to play the music. I'm guessing it's probably not the same sort of SSD that you'd see in a hard drive.
A couple of people have commented about the weirdness of shrinking the max hard drive, then increasing it again. It gets a lot less confusing when you look at the form factors involved. The original 160gb ipod classic was about a centimeter in depth. With the next generation, it suddenly shrank to about half that. My guess would be that they wanted to make the case smaller, and that 120gb was the largest hard drive they could buy (at least without raising unit prices too much) to fit in it. Since then, hardware has come along, and they can now get 160gb drives to put in them again.
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