New iPod nano and touch: Lightning strikes again It must be tough to be an iPod engineer and have to wait though an hour of iPhone love before your creations are even mentioned at an Apple product-rollout event. But maybe you can console yourself with the old adage of "saving the best for last" – and the two new iPods, if not the best kit that Apple has to offer, are …
Oh come on. Tit for tat. If Nokia ever dares to press a lawsuit, they'd sink and disappear. There's some influences there but the curved screen isn't there, the screen doesn't bulge out and there's a nice circular button at the bottom. Still looks more like an iPod mini that's gone on a diet.
@toadwarrior. What people? If they squint and have a leap of faith and contriteness only a fanboi can have? Utter bollocks!
Given the Lumia has been out some time now? Nokia should sue crApple. Given the shite they spouted about the Samsung tablet Nokia have a case. What's good for the goose...
Evil, evil, evil
Thank goodness; using the 6G Nano (I had to get when I lost my trusty 2G Nano) is a real pain.
Why only a 16GB though? I'd have thought that there'd be demand for a 32GB from thos who want all their music portable; I have about 6000 songs on iTunes using Apple Lossless, but even using the feature to compress down to 128kbps AAC still takes over 20GB.
Shirley not many on here have an iTouch as a primary device. No? I thought so.
So it's a secondary/kids/music thingy then.
Soooo, you then likely have a bunch of docks/cars/stuff that mate (oooh) with the old iStuff. But now - no truck. No mating without a prophylactic, sorry, adaptor. And as any fule know, it spoils the experience.
I get that they need to move on to a smaller connector. However, the revenue implications, for apple, are wide.
1) less rev share on docks
2) hello spotify, godbye iTunes (though spotify was already cross-platform)
3) old kit people (like me), now pissed off and moving on
It's ironic that Apple, who stuck to a standard, are now contributing to the "free for all". Branch/Sawing/Sitting/On.
less rev share? what about all the adapters that they are going to sell? what about all the new usb cables that everyone is going to buy because adapters will be annoying.
actually, i dunno that the adapter will be that much of a problem. The old 30-pin connector generally has quite a good connection to the iDevice. I suspect it'll prove to be a tougher connection than the new Lightening connector provides, and so the adapter will remain connected to your lead or peripheral device and so you're experience of just plugging in the device will remain the same.
and lastly - you may or may not be right about how few El Reg readers have an iTouch/iPod/iPhone as a primary device, but also, El Reg readers (and techy types) are not the core demographic of Apple's customers by a very long way. If we all /ragequit over this, i doubt Apple will even not the fluctuation in their monthly sales charts
I've had every Touch except the 1st Gen. Use them all the time.
In car entertainment...nothing quite like have a song bank of 4000 on those long trans european journeys. Very useful for Skype chats around the house. Sorta OK for email and browsing, but still prefer the laptop. Plays some of my favourite games just fine.
So I think it's off to Ebay to list my old models and order the new one.
Once again I was hoping for a 128GB iPod Touch to replace my 'Classic' (though technically it's a 5th gen iPod 160GB from before they named them Classic). 64GB isn't quite enough to hold all my music and apps, which I would like to have with me at all times in case I have a burning need to listen to obscure remixes of Pacific State, 3am Eternal or A Huge And Ever Growing...
I'm surprised that the Classic is still on sale, as it doesn't quite fit in with all things fondle. I'd like like to think that if they drop it , then they'd beef up the Touch to compensate.
Though I'm sure there are some deep in Apple who live in some utopian futurist fantasy world where there's always wfif/4G/etc and everyone loves to use iCloud, iTunes match and the like and so therefore no-one will ever need more than 64GB storage.
Or does it look like they have designed the extra colours with only females and flamboyant or extroverted males in mind. Baby Blue and red/salmon/dog's dick pink..... whatever the fuck colour it is, I mean FFS. At least give us Ferrari red, Navy blue or Xbox green to choose from.
There's a frickin' 3.5mm stereo jack for analogue audio out - albeit not line level output.
The lightning connector is all digital, but nothing is really known beyond that.
My guess is two pins for digital SPDIF, two pins for configuration (i2c or similar) and 4 pins for high speeds dual-channel serial data communications (could be USB, could be custom). You require a lightning chip in your peripheral or cable to translate to your desired protocol.
If there is no analog line out, then that is a shame :-(
I'm not so sure Apple would use a traditional S/PDIF (hence some additional importance of the analog line out).
With the current iPods, there is a serial interface that needs to perform certificate-based authentication with third party hardware, before the digital output can be used. That authentication usually occurs with a small chip which for some peripherals is embedded in the connector (the video cables also have this chip in the connector, to prevent third party cables from functioning unless they pay Apple a fee for the chip and certificate).
For most of the music encodings I have, I'm not so sure that an external DAC cost will really improve my listening experience (I think it would just be diminishing returns), however the analog line out is a good compromise, especially in a car. The headphone out isn't good for connecting to an amplifier, it normally has higher noise and distortion than the analog line out.
Instead of waiting for ever bigger flash storage to hold the entirety of your ever bigger collection of music, consider buying a small capacity phone/iPod and stream music to it from home, especially if you usually have access to Wifi. Your own private Spotify. It also means that you can avoid lossy compression formats for best sound quality.
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