Hot Comments
- About time! (5 points, Informative) by sackvillian on Tuesday February 09, @09:50AM attached to Call For Scientific Research Code To Be Released
- Re:Be careful using the P2V tool. (5 points, Informative) by klocwerk on Tuesday February 09, @03:41PM attached to The Hidden Treasures of Sysinternals
- W.A.G. (5 points, Insightful) by ipb on Tuesday February 09, @01:17PM attached to How Do You Accurately Estimate Programming Time?
- Re:Surprise (5 points, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09, @04:38PM attached to Microsoft Says Windows 7 Not Killing Batteries
- No problem (5 points, Insightful) by rastoboy29 on Wednesday February 10, @05:27AM attached to Appeals Court Rules On Internet Obscenity Standards
5846071
story
Comments: 521 +- Apple: Apple Announces iTunes 9, "LPs," Video Camera For the iPod Nano on Wednesday September 09, @01:20PM
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicannouncements.gif); width:67px; height:51px;
announcement
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicmediaall.gif); width:73px; height:59px;
media
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicmusic.gif); width:60px; height:49px;
music
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicapple.gif); width:52px; height:64px;
apple
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicgames.gif); width:68px; height:77px;
games
Apple just finished their latest press event, and they revealed a number of new services and features for their products. They kicked things off by saying that iPhone OS 3.1 is now available. It will add the Genius recommendation technology to the App store, giving users suggestions on which apps they might find useful based on what others with similar needs use. They're also adding 30,000 ringtones that users can purchase. Next, they announced iTunes 9, which will use Genius to make mixes by analyzing songs in your library to see which go well together. iTunes is also seeing UI improvements for things like app management, and syncing utilities. You'll be able to easily transfer apps, music, and videos from one of your local devices to another, and there is integrated support for Twitter and Facebook if you want to send music as a gift. Another big new feature: iTunes LPs. These LPs will be a digital album with cover art, lyrics, videos, and other customized content created by the artists themselves. Moving on, they showed off a few new games: an Assassin's Creed sequel, an FPS called Nova that had impressive graphics and multiplayer capability, Riddim Ribbon, a futuristic driving/music game that lets you remix your songs by how you navigate the course, and Madden NFL 2010. Next, Apple announced a price cut for the 8GB iPod Touch and a doubling of available storage for the other models. It's also getting OpenGL 2.0. The iPod Classic is getting a storage upgrade from 120GB to 160GB. In addition, there are headphones that have a controller for the Shuffle. Finally, Jobs got down to his "one more thing": Apple will now be building a video camera into the back of every iPod Nano. Apparently it will be a simple matter to sync videos to your computer or put them up on YouTube, and they're building in an FM radio as well. A detailed liveblog of the event with a ton of screenshots is available at Engadget.
Related Stories
: by
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
rearranging their prejudices.
-- William James
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2010 Geeknet, Inc.
What an innovative price cut! (Score:5, Funny)
It seems that Apple has made a well-timed and completely innovative and ground-breaking price-cut on their products, plus a brand new low-end iPod. Perhaps they are trying to throw a wrench into the machinations of the massive unstoppable juggernaut that is the Zune.
The iPod Touch is a solid product, but its hardware is a bit lackluster. I wish Creative Labs would just productize the Zii Egg already.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I just can't legitimize spending that sort of money on something like that with the Zii Egg and the Zune HD around the corner. They're a lot more powerful... and for some reason I can't get past the hardware of handheld devices.
This may sound silly on slashdot, but I am actually comparing it to the Zune HD.
Re:What an innovative price cut! (Score:4, Insightful)
I just can't legitimize spending that sort of money on something like that with [vaporware] around the corner.
Fixed for brevity
Parent
Re:What an innovative price cut! (Score:5, Funny)
You work in marketing, don't you?
Parent
Re:What an innovative price cut! (Score:5, Insightful)
What are you honestly going to use the extra "power" for? Wouldn't you rather just have something that does its thing really well? And has a gazillion apps available? If you're going to go purely on features for the dollar instead of "brand", you're probably going to buy a SanDisk anyway. Microsoft is in the worst of both worlds here-- they can't compete with Apple in apps, games, usability, or utility, and they can't compete with the smaller Asian manufactures on pure feature checklist length. Unless you put a LOT of extra value in the "Microsoft" label why buy a Zune? (Which is probably why market share goes roughly 74% Apple, 18% "Other", 7% SanDisk, 1% Microsoft.)
Parent
Re:What an innovative price cut! (Score:4, Informative)
I doubt it. For the Zune to be a turn-around product will need to be one of the following.
1. A LOT better then Apples products (not a little bit better) and about the same price as apples products.
2. A LOT cheaper then Apples Products (not a little bit cheaper) and the same quality as the apple products.
Right now the Zune is relegated to Ripoff iPod Wannabe status. Any advantages is replaced by Apple larger market share advantages (more apps, more music).
Apple as far as product quality hasn't done much to waver most people trust. Microsoft record is much more shaky.
Parent
Re:What an innovative price cut! (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, it's got a pretty hardcore Nvidia Tegra APX, which really slaps the iPod's solution sideways... plus it does have a pretty nice .NET development environment. I develop games... so I do care about this sort of thing.
Aside from that, it does 720p video out... but I don't have an HDTV so I don't care.
I am not going to bother defending this device. It's quite speculative since I don't know how Microsoft will position their App market on it. If the device can be App-centric, it has great potential. If it remains media-centric, then it will likely just be a flashy alternative to lower end iPods.
Parent
Goodbye Flip? (Score:5, Interesting)
FAIL ! (Score:3, Informative)
You should check the specs before shooting from the hip. The new iPod Nano vid camera has a 640x480 resolution @ 30fps with 8GB memory and costs $149. The Flip Ultra also has a 640x480 resolution @ 30fps but only 4GB memory and also costs $149. The Flip HD versions cost $199.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
To be fair, for the price of the iPod Nano, which captures in VGA resolution, you can get a Flip with better optics and bigger sensor that records in 720p HD. Not to say that it's not nice to have video on the Nano, only that it's not going to impact the market that much.
I think it will. More people are going to have an iPod than a video camera, and if the iPod comes with a video camera built-in, there's much less incentive to buy a Flip. Especially when the iPod is 1/10th the volume.
Disappointed... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, the nano with a camera is cool and all but, if I'm going to buy a new iPod, it'll be a newer, better Touch, not something "less." Ah well...
What day is it? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What day is it? (Score:4, Insightful)
You use the "grounding" or "common" conductor in the headphone lead. That's plenty long enough.
Parent
Re:What day is it? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I don't understand how a nano can pick up FM radio. According to my research [google.com], FM band radio in the US can have a wavelength of 3.4 meters. How do you pick that up on a device that's less than 10 centimeters long?
Between Fractal Antennas [wikipedia.org] and using the headphone cable as the antenna there are several possibilities for how they get FM into that small package.
LPs eh? (Score:5, Funny)
Now if only they would make the ipod out of vinyl, then it would sound warmer and more natural.
LPs (Score:4, Insightful)
Another big new feature: iTunes LPs. These LPs will be a digital album with cover art, lyrics, videos, and other customized content created by the artists themselves
I read that as "we're giving into the RIAA, who wants people to buy 12 songs at a time, only 2 of which are worth a listen, and which you will be sick of already from being played endlessly on Top 40 radio in between 10 minute commercial breaks and 5 minutes of the DJ talking about their dog."
Re:LPs (Score:5, Insightful)
You know that they've been selling music by the album for quite some time, right?
Some albums have a pdf "booklet". LP is probably just a way of getting all the extras packaged together so that the devices (and not just a computer) can handle them.
Parent
camera in the Nano but not the Touch? huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
iPod touch with camera (Score:5, Informative)
30k Ringtones (Score:5, Interesting)
$1.29 Ringtones! It still boggles my mind that people accept this.
$1.29 for a 30 second sound clip compared to $.99 for the full 2-3 minute song. Insane. You know what would've been nice to have in the 3.1 OS update? The ability to choose a song on your phone and then making it your ringtone.
Re:30k Ringtones (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:30k Ringtones (Score:5, Informative)
To add to your comment, you can customize to any point in the songs by right clicking them in itunes, selecting get info, going to the options tab, and setting the start and stop time to whatever you want. Once you have the section of the song you wish to have as your ringtone, hit ok to save the changes, right click the song and select convert to AAC this time. Doing so will make a new .m4a of the section you defined with the start and stop times, and then you can just right click the new song in itunes, select show in finder (show in explorer on windows?), and change the file extension to .m4r instead of .m4a, and double click to open the new m4r file. It will add the new file to itunes under the ringtones section and sync up with your iphone automatically then (and don't forget to uncheck the start and stop times in the original file then).
If you have a razr or any other phone with bluetooth and bluetooth on your computer, you can do the same thing to make ringtones for those also, you just have to use whatever bluetooth sync program your phone uses (and you probably have to convert to mp3 instead of AAC, which is changeable in itunes preferences, and skip the m4a -> m4r section).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:30k Ringtones (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
What I found most annoying with my iPhone when I got it was the number of steps it took to get just a normal, modern (ie- not the old-school-rotary) sounding telephone ring.
They didn't even have anything like that available to buy, as ridiculous as the notion was to me. Nope, I had to go get an MP3 of a phone ringing, get it in iTunes and then do some tom-foolery with file name extensions or some such and then get it put on the phone.
am I the only one in the world that doesn't want "Ridin' dirty" or some C
Double standard (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I'm not new here, I'm just dense.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yet another device I can't bring to work (Score:4, Insightful)
Do they have to put a camera in everything? And will I be able to get a nano without a camera? When almost all cell phones have cameras, does my mp3 player need one, too?
This is a problem only because I work someplace that I can't bring any sort of camera into for security reasons. It's already almost impossible to find a decent cell phone that doesn't have a camera. Now, they're going to make it so I can't get a good music player, also.
Ticked off (Score:3, Interesting)
I need a camera, and I need a mike and I don't want to pay AT&T fees. I also need them soon. I thought I would get that in the new touches. Instead, Apple is giving the tiny Nano more features but not the iPod touch. Why? With that tiny 2.2-inch Nano screen you can't see much of what you've taken and the equally tiny battery isn't likely to last long in video mode.
What's going on? If Apple has production problems with camera-equipped touches, they should say so, give us the details of new touch, and a release date. This cult of secrecy is such a pain. You'd think they were the Kremlin circa 1935. Both have a cult-like obsession with not admitting mistakes.
Still worse is the possibility that Apple wants to build high walls between its products, doling out features in odd ways to fit a marketing straight-jacket. The iPhone would be for work and business for those with the money. The touch is for games but not recreation, hence the lack of a camera and the boring length of game promotion today. Color touch users fat and flabby couch potatoes. The Nano is for mostly outdoor recreation (camera and Nike added), but has nothing that lets you get work done. If so, it's stupid move.
To add insult to injury, I just checked the specs on the new touches. The 8 gig model ships with the old-style earphones not the remote earphones and without a plastic dock adapter. Total saving for Apple? Probably about 25 to 50 cents. Cost to customers who don't want to pull their touch out of their pocket every time they pause music: $30 That stinks. Heck, even the cheap little $59 Shuttle ships with remote earphones. While Jobs was gone, the niggling little bean counters seem to have been running Apple. This is the unfortunate result.
I hate companies that treat their customers as if they were stupid, and that's precisely how I feel Apple is treating its customers now.
Screenshots? (Score:5, Informative)
You know, you don't really take "screenshots" of real life. Most people just call them "photos".
FM radio flexibility. (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, the FM radio is "pausable", which means the data goes into storage. And there's automatic song identification for stations sending that info on a subcarrier.
Now, what is Apple forbidding you from doing? Can you load songs from the FM radio into your song library? Automatically? Can you fast forward through commercials? If not, will Apple complain when third party applications add those features? Apple wouldn't like "Turn it on, and watch it fill up with the latest music. For free.".
That's legal, by the way, under the Audio Home Recording Act, [wikipedia.org] as long as you don't redistribute the files.
Re:An idea... (Score:5, Funny)
This duplicates the iTunes syncing functionality. Sorry. Just removing a wire does not justify duplicating functionality in the Experience(TM).
Oh well, yes I have karma to burn.
Parent
Re:App Store Games (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not sure about FIFA, but Madden '10 is now for sale for the iPhone, so I suspect it will work just fine for that sort of game. Also available is Civilization Revolution, SimCity 3K, and other major titles. Assassin's Creed was demoed at today's event and the Command and Conquer franchise is coming over, as well as NBA Live. The myth that all the games for the iPhone are homebrew, low-budget Flash-like one-offs is long gone.
With over 50M devices sold to date that can play iPhone games (iPhone + iPod Touch
Re:App Store Games (Score:4, Interesting)
One word/acronym: "USB".
Not that I would buy any iToys just for gaming, but as a (reasonably fair) comparison, my netbook sucks for gaming input as well. One $15 USB gamepad later, though, and I have the entire library of emulated SNES games at my fingertips for some serious wasting of time, without making my shoulders and neck feel like I spent the last week sleeping in a bookcase.
It actually surprises me that Nintendo and Sony haven't already take the approach of separate display and input devices for portable gaming... Although a little more awkward to carry, most people don't find it comfortable to put their hands together, at arms' length, and stare at that same spot for hours on end.
Parent
Re:ipod touch (Score:5, Funny)
Look it up.
Hmm.... "lowest form of wit"... thank you.
Parent
Re:ipod touch (Score:5, Interesting)
Sarcasm aside, I'd buy an iPod touch with a data only 3G connection. I don't want voice service, but I'd love to get on the web from anywhere on my iPod.
Parent
Re:ipod touch (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't decide what you want. Apple decides what you want.
Parent
Re:Small print (Score:5, Informative)
Nice try at trolling. This was debunked [eff.org] shortly after the March 2009 story you're pimping.
Epic Fail!
Parent
Re:Small print (Score:5, Funny)
Jeebus! If you're using a Shuffle (A SHUFFLE!!) as an audio source for your home stereo, the utter lameness of that fact fills me with both pity AND revulsion.
You are, essentially, plugging in a device that has LESS selectability than an 8-track tape deck.
Really, such lame trolling is beneath the high standards expected here at Slashdot World Domination Headquarters, and this WILL be reflected in you semi-annual performance evaluation.
And as for your lack of cover sheets on your TPS reports...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:and THAT is why... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why YOU would want it? I don't know. I don't know you.
The average end user wants iPod + iTunes becasue it is easy to use, and designed to work together from the onset. You can buy an app or a track, download it and load it to your media player all through the same application. Its Apple's "walled garden" approach. You can't do everything (not by a long shot) but what it does is easy for the end user to understand.
Apple isn't after the average /.er, they are after the millions of people who use a computer because they HAVE to, not so much because they want to.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you don't treat end users like mushrooms, that's not such a big deal.
Before the market settled down. When many of these devices were using pre-USB
interfaces. Before there was standarization, there was a certain point to Apple's
walled garden.
If you do anything besides buy from iTunes, it all comes crashing down. This is
especially true for video. A more flexible, less picky more standards driven
device is actually less trouble to manage if you decide to buy your videos cheaper
at Amazon.
Amazon has much bette
Re:and THAT is why... (Score:4, Insightful)
I have an iPod because I like to listen to my music at work and in my car. I ripped my CDs to iTunes long before I had an iPod, so that I could listen to them using a SLIMP3 on my living room stereo. I like using my Mac to rip and store my music because its my preferred home computer and it works.
Now that my life has become complicated enough to warrant keeping a personal calendar (two kids in elementary school and with extra-curricular activities that need to be coordinated between my wife and myself, my work/activity schedule, my wife's work/activity schedule) and an Address Book (school and business phone numbers) I have found myself using my (older) iPod for its calendar and contacts information as well as for music (I used it for carrying around photos, too, but thats not a significant use for me).
I'm VERY interested in the higher-capacity iPod Touch so that I can a) still carry around all my music on a flash-based music device, b) access my calendar and contacts information in a more friendly fashion, and c) make use of the WiFi-based Internet access; all from a single device that integrates nicely with the home computer that my wife and I use to organize ourselves.
A reference to iTunes and its inflated prices or reduced selection is a non-sequitur; one need not purchase anything through iTunes in order to use iTunes or the iPod. I have over 4,000 songs (all legally purchased) in my library, and I've only ever purchased one song over iTunes - it was a song my daughter needed for a dance rehersal, and I didn't want to buy a whole album for just the one song for a limited time period.
I spend enough time hacking around with computers at work. When I get home, I want my home computer and associated peripheral devices to just work, with no hassles. Apple provides that experience quite well, and has (relative to other choices) done so for me since 1987 when I purchased a Macintosh Plus for school.
If I were younger and had more free time, I would probably really enjoy creating the same type of environment using free and open source software. I'm busy by choice doing too many other things, however, so I buy consumer products that take care of those things for me.
Parent
Re:and THIS is why... (Score:4, Informative)
Maemo is not another platform. It's a lightweight Debian.
Yeah [maemo.org].
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
For the love of all that is holy, Apple does NOT sell drm'd music.
Re:Can't wait for the uproar... (Score:5, Interesting)
'If you have jury duty, you would be listening to the case being discussed, not your iPod.'
Well, usually:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/jul/10/claredyer.uknews4 [guardian.co.uk]
"Last Wednesday a defence lawyer thought she caught a glimpse of a wire under the woman's head covering. On several occasions the judge had thought he could hear the faintest "tinny music", but dismissed it as his imagination. Finally, a woman juror sent him a note, claiming her colleague had been listening to her MP3 player during the defendant's evidence."
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKL1689542720070816 [reuters.com]
"Attorney General Baroness Patricia Scotland had "carefully" considered the case and decided not to press criminal charges, saying it would be too difficult to prove if the woman was guilty, a spokeswoman for her office said...The Crown Prosecution Service said there had been contempt cases where people had taken pictures using mobile phones in court, but it was believed to be the first of its kind involving a juror suspected of listening to music."
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)