By Ruben(nerd) Schade, a UTS university student and IT guy in Sydney and Singapore. c.2004
While the iPhone 4S is intriguing, I was most excited to get my hands on the newly announced iPod nano 1.2 firmware which includes fourteen more watch faces, for a total of sixteen. Clearly enough people are using their nanos as watches as I am!
In typical Apple style, all the new font faces are absolutely gorgeous. I feel like it's my birthday all over again!
Apple has released new stuff, so because Slashdot and the like dub me an Apple fanboi it's my civic responsibility to discuss them... from my iTelephone. We still don't have home internet, you see :(.
Don't get me wrong, I adore Apple products because they're the only consumer electronics company that can design things (and yes that includes B&O!) but only Apple could remove buttons from something, make an advertising campaign out of it, then put the same buttons back and advertise it as a feature ;).
A very interesting change having a touch screen, but I wonder what impact it will have on usability, especially when you're walking around with your hand in your pocket. The ClickWheel was such a boon because you could operate it without looking, and you could memorise the order of the menus.
It also lost the ability to play video (which they heavily advertised in previous versions) and it no longer has a built in camera. In many ways its like the transition from the iPod Mini to the nano, they're two completely different devices. It's basically a slightly larger iPod shuffle with a screen.
There are lots of people who can't justify buying an iPhone 4 and an expensive new phone plan, and I know if I was one of them I'd be really considering getting one of these now that it has the "retina display" too. I mean I look at the screen on my iTelephone and look at every single other phone on the market and I feel like someone has rubbed grit into my eyes, or my glasses are really dirty!
It has an A4 chip which I think we were all expecting. They were able to keep the interface true to the original though. Unfortunately, I must be one of the few people in the universe who doesn't like black or think its cool, so the new colour is a bit of a shame. Oh well, I'm weird.
For a brief moment in Leopard, iTunes looked like a Mac native application with a consistent interface. Now it looks different again, and I strongly doubt they've made it a Cocoa application either. Honestly, iTunes is the easiest application to use to organise lots of music (as the name suggests!) but it's also the most unstable, unreliable application Apple ships. People were asking about 64 bit, but that won't happen until it's rewritten in Cocoa owing to Carbon's 32 bit limitation.
I suppose they don't want to do an Objective-C rewrite because they have so much invested in the current codebase, and they still want to make it reasonably portable for Windows users. Bummer.
The new iTunes music social network thing. As someone who's worked as a network administrator, I shudder a bit at their choice of name. Oh well, if people use it and like it. I prefer the Whole Wheat Radio model, personally.
Some interesting changes, and its good to see Apple can still deliver stuff. I won't be getting any of it though. I mean, my iTelephone 4 has an iPod in it ;).
I don't know how I ended up at this review site, but I was less surprised by the fact the unit they were discussing was so shamelessly ripping off the iPod (right down to the headphones), but rather the reviewer actually liked it. Were they wearing those beer glasses Bart Simpson tried on?
The T-Pod neo is the mix of iPod nano and MPio HD400, but it may be better than both of them. T-Pod neo features a 1.5-inch LCD screen, MP3/WMA Music playback and MTV/AMX Video playback and there are 1GB and 2GB models.
I suppose it goes to show some people can simply be won over with feature lists instead of usability, creativity and industrial design. Come to think of it, that explains a substantial part of the tech industry; for example how could a CNET writer honestly write that this device is reminiscent of the iPhone interface?
As for the specific assertion the T-Pod is better than the iPod: perhaps we're at an unfair advantage with hindsight, but I don't think it surprises any of us that it didn't really get anywhere, even if it does sound vaguely like the A-Team would be blasting tunes from it.
Normally I don't indulge in the writing of posts such as this one, but when I finally got around to reading Paul Thurrott's initial review of the Zune HD I couldn't help but notice something worthy of comment. Thurrott is of course the colourful chap who runs the Windows Supersite, co-hosts Windows Weekly with Leo Laporte and who has made clear his dislike of that company with the bitten Apple for a logo. Fair enough, we all have our grudges.
In the review in question though, the following passage stood out:
Critics may note that 480 x 272 is a "lower" resolution than that offered by the iPod touch and iPhone (480 x 320), but the Zune HD display is of much higher quality and offers a true 16:9 aspect ratio.
Now don't get me wrong Mr Thurrott, the HD video output capabilities are just as impressive as the move towards using OLED display technology, but I believe your use of inverted commas around the word "lower" with regard to resolution is misleading, and you made two mathematical errors.
As an addendum for my readers here to be interpreted as you wish, the phrase "iPod touch" is used six times in Mr Thurrott's review.
Of all the fun new features introduced in the iTelephone 3.0 software, I have to say making the landscape keyboard available in more than just the email client has been the biggest boon. Even though I'm just using my thumbs, As I type this post in the Notes application I'm noticing just how quickly and accurately I'm able to enter text. It's no full size keyboard I can hammer on with all my fingers at once, but it's good. Very good.
I noticed when Leo Laporte was reviewing the Palm Pre (another smart phone I'm very interested in) he noted that while he made far less errors on the Pre's physical keyboard compared to the iTelephone's touch screen, he was still able to type faster on the iTelephone because the on-the-fly error correction is so well executed. I have a Centro and used to had a Nokia e61i and I can also attest to this.
With this landscape keyboard though, I get the speed from merely touching a flat surface and the smart error correction, but because the keys are wider I'm making less mistakes and am able to type even faster.
While I like Apple products I'm not a fanboy and readily admit that the iTelephone's touch screen keyboard might not be everybody's cup of tea. I encourage you though if you've been holding out for precisely that reason to go down to an Apple shop or reseller and have a play around with the landscape keyboard on either the iTelephone or the iPodlington Touch. You might be surprised.
In the meantime, I just noticed the time in the screenshot there was 23:45. How very trippy.
The freak Aussie weather and iPhone 2.2 episode!
Freak weather in Australia (torrential storms in Brisbane, fluctuating temperatures in Adelaide, snow in Victoria a week before summer!); my cheesy slogan from primary school; my dad's plant designs in Pinkenba; the iPhone and iPod Touch 2.2 update (still no copy/paste, the amazing street view feature, the new weird MobileSafari layout); Toronto, Adelaide and Dublin; the IntoYourHead show; and utopian science fiction writers!
UPDATE: I referred to the CEO of Microsoft as Steve Jobs not Steve Ballmer! The blasphemy! Please forgive me!
Download MP3 to listen ↓ 21:05 9.7MiB
You can also stream this episode and view its Internet Archive page.
The fact is the "iPod Classic" is still technically the best iPod, but it has the outdated interface. The "Touch" is a glorified Nano.
- My post on Twitter just before I went to bed at 03:25
Just finished watching the live text and photo feeds from Tom Krazit on News.com, Ars Technica and MacDailyNews of Wednesday's Apple music player product launch.
From the features I typed up in my last post that I did and didn't want to see, it was really a mixed bag. It's great that Apple released the iPod Touch
with the same interface and features as the iPhone; including the WiFi connectivity of which Singapore has a bountiful public supply; but my worst fear that they decided to use flash memory came to pass!
What was that image of Saber using an iPod I used in my previous post? Let's make it FULL SIZE:
As they did with iLife 2008 by bundling the older version of iMovie because they knew the newer version wasn't that crash hot (you can hear my rant on Rubenerd Show 225), Apple have kept the iPod Classic
line going with hard disks despite the launch of a newer flash-based iPod Touch
. I can't help but wonder if the iPod Classic
is really just to give the excuse that they're still providing decent storage without actually having to provide it at the high end.
Despite the attractive WiFi functionality in the new iPod Touch
which as I said above would work fantastically in Singapore, I think I'll have to side with Frank Nora and keep my iPod Video and Nokia e61i for the time being.
I can't help but see though, the price for the 16GB iPod Touch is the same as the 8GB iPhone. It makes you wonder if they're really just using the Touch as a stepping stone to convince people to move over to their phone, and with it their data plans with their approved carriers that they receive commissions from. Why buy just an iPod when the iPhone is the same price?
Okay, okay it's almost 03:00 here in Asia, I'm off to bed.
Everywhere is abuzz as to what Apple will be releasing in San Francisco today... actually it's already yesterday for us on the other side of the world in a positive time zone, but you get the idea.
The last thing the internet needs is another Mac or iPod user babbling on about what they predict will be introduced, so instead I'm going to just make a brief list of features I'd love to see in a new iPod. I never saw the point in the iPod Mini, Nano or Shuffle so I'll stick the "classic" form factor.
Wow, I'm more of a pessimist that I thought!
This has already has had its time on Digg and has appeared on at least three podcasts I listen to, but I still get a kick out of it and most people here in Singapore haven't seen it (I'm sure Felix has!) so I have to mention it here for fun: The Hide-a-pod!
You love your iPod. It's a great product. You take it everywhere and you use it every day. But owning a device so desirable and fashionable as an iPod comes with one major drawback . . . the iPod has become a target for theft. So how can you take your iPod out of your home without fear?
The way the case protects your iPod or iPhone is by disguising it as a brown Microsoft Zune, something nobody would want :).
The best coverage I heard of it was of course on Cranky Geeks 073 where they discussed one possible flaw: nobody actually carries a Zune, so the incidence of theft may increase as criminals think of Zunes as merely cases that contain something more valuable! One of my favourite episodes, even though it didn't have Sebastian Rupley or spiffy segues ;).
In a way I feel sorry for Microsoft, they obviously at least tried to come up with their own "tragically hip" media player experience but it fell on it's portable electronic arse. I wonder if this will be lumped together in the same Microsoft product graveyard years from now along with Windows Me, Microsoft Bob and Clippy?
Anyway you can purchase a DRM-free Hide-a-pod at their totally legit ordering page.
