New Apple iPod with Photo Capabilities 776
artlu was the first of many to submit: "I was just watching my Dow Jones streaming news wire, and I saw that Apple is releasing a new iPod that will have photo captabilities. The news stated that the new iPod will be able to hold 25,000 photos as well as your traditional iPod functionality." Apple's got a page up about the iPod Photo and of course a press release.
A LOT more new stuff... (Score:5, Informative)
- iPod U2 Special Edition [apple.com] ($349)
- The Complete U2, a digital box set of every song ever recorded by U2, plus some crazy and rare recordings, available in November for $149 via the iTunes Music Store, with a $50 certificate towards it with the iPod U2 Edition
- iTunes 4.7 [apple.com]
- QuickTime 6.5.2 [apple.com]
- iPod Updater 3.0.4 (2004-10-20) [apple.com]
- iPod-focused Apple Store: iPod Store [apple.com]
- EU iTunes Music Store added to 9 more European nations [apple.com], with over 700,000 songs
- iTunes Music Store is coming to Canada in November
- Press releases [apple.com]
Other cool things: in addition to its dock, the iPod Photo can also even output video via its own headphone jack with a special 1/8" AV cable, and the 220x176 65536-color screen also displays album art while playing, as well as color games, etc! (Don't have much/any album art? Get it! [ambitiouslemon.com])
While Steve Jobs talked at length during the presentation about why Apple isn't doing video on a portable device itself for reasons of battery life, device/screen size, weight, etc, now that this device has video output capabilities, I think it's a clear sign of the direction; that is, future devices - or future firmware - being able to output video content to an external monitor/projector. Imagine this: your iPod dock, already at your entertainment center. The iTunes Movie Store (or, your own iMovie content). H.264/MPEG AVC [apple.com] (Microsoft WMV9/VC-1 has hit some snags [slashdot.org] in its bid for standardization). Download a movie, sync to your iPod. Drop the iPod in its video dock at your TV (or ANY device that has video inputs). Done. And a LOT cleaner and easier than having a whole separate computer that needs to be maintained as a part of your entertainment center. Add 802.11g with things like AirPort Express [apple.com] to the mix, and who knows what might come...
More info (Score:4, Informative)
Advertised 15 hour battery life
65k-color screen
220 x 176 pixel resolution
Same click wheel as previous generation
Not mentioned (at least in my first pass) is that, the dock will connect to tvs [gizmodo.com] and display a slideshow.
Includes AV Cable (supposedly 3-plug RCA) The new ipods are slightly thicker. Each of the new ones is
Does anyone else think that this a bit overkill. 60Gb is a LOT when you are just talking about music and pictures. It would be one thing if this generation included video playback, but
In other apple news Apple Launches 9 Euro iTunes Music Stores [gizmodo.com]
iTunes improvements too! (Score:5, Informative)
Huh. (Score:5, Informative)
The iPod has revolutionized music in the past few years because of its simplicity and style. It does one thing, it does it very well, and it looks damn good while doing it. The iPod Photo kind of blurs those lines. Obviously, the iPod could become the next-gen portable media center: music, video, a Belkin iTV something-or-other. This gives us a glimmer of where they plan to go with this. iCinema Movie Store?
It might not, also, but I'm leaving it up to somebody else to consider thinking of ways the IP could change the way we even think about our personal photography and wallpapers and whatnot -- like the iPod changed the way many people listen to music (albums out, playlists & shuffle in). That is to say, it looks weird as a product now, but somebody's in a room somewhere thinking of ways to make this thing awesome -- maybe. And that's why I question its branding as a separate entity, because it can't just be an iPod with a color screen, no -- it's iPod Photo!
I know that whereas I have a good number of digital pictures, a $500 device with a color screen can't be $499.75 better than a damn CD-R (e.g., most DVD players now will do the same TV sharing thing with a CD-R full of JPEGs). And I own an iPod already, so I can easily see the argument for convenience among others.
I also want to know, where does this leave iPhoto? "Now, you too can organize your pictures.. in iTunes! But you don't. You just download them there. You organize your pictures in iPhoto but you download them with iTunes, but you can also do it in iTunes if you want. Got it?"
Music, and the way that we deal with it, is such a rich site for interaction (music, audiobooks, speeches, recordings, class lectures, whatever) that it's hard to imagine where they could take photos. But then again, I mean, music, yanno, you listen to it. Photos, yanno, you look at them. So who knows.
iTunes Music Store still has some problems... (Score:1, Informative)
I unmounted it and reconnected the cable and this time agreed to let it home to my new music folder. iTunes prompty formatted the iPod and deleted my only copy of the music I'd purchased. WTF.
I currently have a support ticket with Apple on this but they have not responded. I just wanted to warn people how easy it is to DEEP FRY your entire music library when you're reloading your computer. I've seen other forum messages saying that music can only be downloaded once, so I may have lost my stuff permanently. I wonder now if I had downloaded a free song from iTMS and used that to authorize my computer if the iPod then would have been available to play the songs on and sync with.
Re:Too expensive/not useful (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Whewt, yet another! (Score:2, Informative)
You can get one... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:More info (Score:5, Informative)
I could fill this up on a backpacking expedition or vacation.
290pics/gig *60 gigs = 17400 jpg
or 53pics/gig * 60 = 3180 raw photos from my d70.
That's not including the 5 gigs of music I might bring along too. Compare the cost of this (and an ipod CF reader) with other portable photo hardrive options and it should look very attractive.
Re:Missing Feature (Score:3, Informative)
Belkin makes this card reader:
http://macuser.pcpro.co.uk/macuser/reviews/4999
Re:iTunes improvements too! (Score:3, Informative)
Very frustrating. I hope they sync the catalogues fast...
Re:A LOT more new stuff... (Score:5, Informative)
I own an Archos gMini400 [archos.com]. It plays DivX/XviD videos (full movies -- got Lord of the Rings and about a dozen MST3K episodes on this thing right now), views photos on screen and on TV (just like iPod Photo), plays music with album art (just like iPod Photo) and has 10 hours claimed battery life playing music, 5 hours video (although I've had it run closer to 7 hours). I also got mine for $340 by using CNet's pricewatcher feature.
Aside from the bigger hard drive, there's absolutely nothing to sway me to the iPod Photo from my gMini. The price is right, the interface is good (not as great as iPod's but few are) but an interface isn't worth $140 to me. The Archos works on both Mac and PC flawlessly, and even has a built-in CF slot (something photo sites have already frowned the iPod upon).
Unfortunately, I thought Apple's first color would have a lot more revolutionary features. Instead, they're playing catchup to other companies, with an expensive and not-so-worthy introduction into colored screens (I mean come on... they don't even win on battery life anymore). I'm personally very glad I jumped Apple's iPod ship a few months ago.
Re:Too expensive/not useful (Score:5, Informative)
I also applaud the crew in the integration of photos and music in iTunes also. Apple is continuing to make the Mac look like the computer for the people.
Re:Too expensive/not useful (Score:1, Informative)
60 aint overkill (Score:5, Informative)
Last summer I shot over 3000 pictures in two days at a trap shooting competition - that's roughly 18 GB of photos. Everything fit in my camera bag and I got some great pics.
Re:iTunes Music Store still has some problems... (Score:5, Informative)
It IS possible to get your music off of an iPod, though, especially since you're using OS X.
Plug it in, and don't let it sync with iTunes. Leave it plugged in, as it should be mounted as a drive.
I'm not at home right now, so I can't tell you exactly what the mount point is, but it should be something like
Just go browsing through the directories. Copy the music off into a music directory in your home dir, and you've got your music again, minus the metadata.
Not to be preachy, but you should have made a backup of the files. Apple encourages this, and you can even find documentation (official documentation) on how to make iTunes burn discs with data on them so you can back up your files.
Re:iTunes Music Store still has some problems... (Score:3, Informative)
http://hymn-project.org/ [hymn-project.org]
Get it now, before Apple shuts it down with the DMCA...
Re:iTunes Music Store still has some problems... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A LOT more new stuff... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:black earbuds (Score:2, Informative)
The need to "break in" headphones is nothing but a legend.
Re:More info (Score:3, Informative)
Re:More info (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like you're talking about storing photos as you take them, but the original poster was talking about photos stored for playback.
At 290 pics per GB, your photos weigh about 3 MB each. That's big - either you store them at high resolution, uncompressed, or both. For archiving, that makes sense, but you don't need that kind of quality for playing on a tiny color LCD or even on a television. You can shrink the photos down to NTSC 740x480 (slightly higher for PAL), and compress as JPEG at -q 75. On a TV or the iPod's 16-bit color, they'll look just as good. With those parameters, you can get thousands of photos per GB, not just a few hundred.
Missing the boat (Score:4, Informative)
The iPod does miss the boat too, however; at least at the moment it looks like you can only tranfer photos via iTunes (if you want to be able to view them on the screen), which means you need a computer to connect between your camera and the iPod (and also means that they will be stored in whatever format iTunes uses, not in raw format). There is already a tool out that lets you transfer photos to an iPod for storage, but again, you lose any iPod interface to looking at the photos.
Honestly this would be a cool gimmick but I wouldn't see myself buying one. I could see buying a device that was made to store photos that had a bigger screen, smaller clickwheel (or put it on the back), and an easy way to get information from photo media (CF, stick, whatever) into the device in whatever format you want, as well as an easy way to plug the device into a TV to play back. The point would be to eliminate the computer as the intermediary, so you can just carry around your camera and this thing... no need to buy new media every time you fill up the stick, and no need to run home to your computer in the middle of a shoot.
Re:black earbuds (Score:4, Informative)
Re:black earbuds (Score:5, Informative)
I tried to point this out once before, and got moderated down for my trouble.
It's not like the headphones (or speakers) are manufactured and shipped without ever being tested! The drivers are often custom manufactured for speaker & headphone makers by OEMs in Asia (and some in the US). Before the OEM ships the drivers to the manufacturer, the units are tested to make sure the driver meets the custom specs! 99% of the time, this testing will be enough to provide adequate break-in.
If you don't believe me, maybe this will convince you [google.com]. You can find similar statements fron Ken Kantor and John Dunlavy if you look hard enough.
Re:black earbuds (Score:3, Informative)
Is it really necessary to use headphones such as these for an iPod? Shouldn't a $100 pair suffice for a consumer device using lossy codecs?
iPod Socks (Score:5, Informative)
iPod Socks [macobserver.com]
Added with Mini Pocket Warmers [campmor.com] you can go jogging in Faribanks, Alaska, with your iPod, and not fear frost-pod-bite. Probably not a real good idea
Re:The way data is handled. (Score:3, Informative)
If you mount your iPod as a disk the files are visible from the command line. Just open Terminal.app and cd to
USB download (Score:5, Informative)
USB Host support is much more complex than just being a USB device. Plus they would have to deal with multiple protocols and even some device drivers. Just look at the size of the code that makes up libgphoto!
Re:A LOT more new stuff... (Score:3, Informative)
A complaint I heard when the Belkin adapter first came out was that it was unacceptably slow. If this has changed, then I think it would be better than directly plugging in the camera, but whatever. What would work for me might not work for you.
Re:iTunes Music Store still has some problems... (Score:3, Informative)
That is all.
Re:black earbuds (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Happens again.. (Score:3, Informative)
Uh, no.
First of all, the original iPod was only meant to work with Macs, so your attempt to denigrate it by saying that "only diehard Apple fans bought them" is completey asinine-- Mac users were 100% of the target market!
Second, your assertion is also completely wrong. The original iPod was a huge hit, and plenty of Windows users were quickly clamoring for Apple to provide a Windows-compatible model. Some Windows users bought Mac-only iPods and went to work getting them to talk to their PCs. There were quite a few apps written to accomplish this, like EphPod [ephpod.com] and xPod (later renamed xPlay, IIRC). [ipodhacks.com]
~Philly
Re:A LOT more new stuff... (Score:3, Informative)
I never expected Apple to offer a device that would be designed to play mostly illegal content. Remember that, simply stated, ripping DVDs, theater screens and Screeners is illegal, as opposed to ripping non-copyprotected CDs or digitizing old vinyl. Or downloading photos from a digicam.
I might as well underestimate the home movie market in the US, but that would still be a niche. And the iPod is about mass entertainment media. As Jobs implied, there exists not enough legal video content to justify mobile video playback capabilities.
Re:More info (Score:1, Informative)
That isn't bullshit - rechargable batteries DO have a finite life. Serious cell phone users know that - as do people who use a lot of NiMH cells. Perhaps refuelable "fuel cells" will be an eventual solution. But even then, fuel cells have a very well known cycle life too.
It's the cycling and deep discharging that generally kill rechargables.
Car batteries also have a similar life, but auto batteries are not generally bound by weight or size restrictions - unlike portable electronics. MGB owners excluded, of course
So heed Apple's comments - it applies to all rechargables, including your iPod, cell phone, and laptop.
Re: Simplicity (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Photographers used to rip out Ipod hard drives (Score:2, Informative)
Untrue. They may have wanted to do it, but it turns out the IDE mode used for the iPod drive is not suitable for the CF mode used in digital cameras (or vice versa). These microdrives were probably manufacturered specifically for the iPod, unlike the microdrives used in less popular MP3 hard drive based players which were more generic.
However, the Creative MuVo did have a suitable drive, and THAT is the one that photographers bought to cannibalize, as it was cheaper than buying a microdrive by itself, so you may be thinking of that one.