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Media (Apple) Media

New Apple iPod with Photo Capabilities 776

Posted by michael from the money-burning-hole-in-your-pocket dept.
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.
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New Apple iPod with Photo Capabilities More

New Apple iPod with Photo Capabilities

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  • A LOT more new stuff... (Score:5, Informative)

    by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) * on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:36PM (#10633950)
    In addition to the iPod Photo [apple.com], which comes in 40GB and new 60GB flavors for $499 and $599 respectively, there's also:

    - 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...

    • Re:A LOT more new stuff... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by natron 2.0 ( 615149 ) <ndpeters79@gmail ... minus physicist> on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:41PM (#10634049) Homepage Journal
      The only thing that bothers me about the U2 iPod is the fact that it is a sweet jet black color, but still uses the white ear buds...

      • black earbuds (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Giant Killer ( 33130 ) <dave@d[ ]gandy.com ['ave' in gap]> on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:54PM (#10634228) Homepage
        trust me, you don't want the apple earbuds anyways, whatever color they are.

        sony makes some very nice earbuds that come in black. surprisingly good sound quality, and they don't hurt your ears one bit. i've had them on for hours at a time with no discomfort. sony has a lot of similar ones, but the mdr-ex71's [sonystyle.com] are great.

        it helps to break them in a bit first. crank up the audio from the ipod to full for 5 or 6 minutes, and you're all set.

        • Re:black earbuds (Score:4, Informative)

          by ericdano ( 113424 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @03:21PM (#10634613) Homepage
          No no no. You want to get either the Shure e3cs [shure.com] or the Shure e5cs [shure.com]. Both are great. I use the e3cs on my iPod. Can't afford the e5cs at the moment.

          • Re:black earbuds (Score:3, Informative)

            by rworne ( 538610 )
            The e5cs headphones cost as much as a high-end iPod!

            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?

          • Re:black earbuds (Score:4, Interesting)

            by catch23 ( 97972 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @04:46PM (#10635574)
            No you don't want the Sure e5cs unless you like bass music a lot. They're overpriced and basically crap. Just take a look at the frequency response for the e5cs [headphone.com] for yourself. The low frequency is way high and there's a lot missing for the high frequencies. I've tried them out and it's not that great... not much better than the iPod earbuds at least. The iPod earbuds aren't that bad (as far as frequency response is concerned), but if you want good isolation, you should get the Etymotic ER-4P [headphone.com] headphones instead. I've got a pair of ER-4S and I can't see headphones getting much better than that.

      • Re:A LOT more new stuff... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Syriloth ( 525273 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:56PM (#10634255)
        The white earbuds aren't all that great anyway. The only reason to keep 'em is so that you can show off to the world the fact that you have an iPod. The best low-profile headphones around (in terms of bang for the buck) are the Sony Fontopia MDX-EX71SL in-ears, in my opinion. If you can get used to wearing headphones that are essentially silicone earplugs (no problem for me, I worked landscaping last summer and wore them all the time) then you'll probably be really pleased by the amount of detail they can put out, and the fact that they have pretty good noise-isolation characteristics is a nice bonus since you can listen to music over the ambient noise without having to crank the volume up to distortion levels. And they're black. Just make sure to get the SL version, there's an LP that looks the same but is lower in quality. And I guess that there's a WX series now, that's just like the SLs except in white, for the iPod Elite. Hunt around and you can probably find them online for $35 or so.

    • Re:A LOT more new stuff... (Score:5, Informative)

      by SilentChris ( 452960 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:53PM (#10634207) Homepage
      To be honest, I'm extremely disppointed in the iPod Photo offering. Before I get marked down as a troll, I have many legitimate reasons:

      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.
      • Actually a better bet is the recently mentioned iRiver PMP-1X0 [slashdot.org] series which runs a linux kernel. They have a ton more options for video playback and look a little cooler than the GMini imo. Which bringing this back OT is the only thing the iPod has going for it anymore (style). And being the first out of the gate. But now, the iPod-killer label has drifted out of use slightly since it doesnt need to be killed. Its slowly becoming a competitor working hard to keep its market share. This because enthusi [dapreview.com]

      • Re:A LOT more new stuff... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Dominic_Mazzoni ( 125164 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @03:48PM (#10634969) Homepage
        The gMini400 is very cool, no question. To be fair, though, the list price of the gMini400 is $399, only $100 less than the iPod (yes, you can find iPods for less than list price, too), and the iPod actually has longer battery life (15 hours compared to 10), besides having twice the disk space. The gMini400 may be right for you, but the iPod is hardly a bad deal.

      • Re:A LOT more new stuff... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Kenshin ( 43036 ) <`ac.skrowranul' `ta' `nihsnek'> on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @04:18PM (#10635306) Homepage
        My problem with alot of these alternative devices is their use of buttons to access your music library.

        It's simply way too slow and clunky of a method for scrolling through long lists. That's why a wheel or something of the sort is absolutely necessary.

    • Re:A LOT more new stuff... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) * <jhummel&johnhummel,net> on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @03:10PM (#10634454) Homepage
      The second reason why Mr. Jobs isn't offering "video on the iPod" is for legal liability.

      Yes, the Archos lets you watch xvid/divx movies on it, but I'm willing to bet they don't include a DVD ripper. So this is a niche product where they assume the buyers know how to get xvid movies (or rip them themselves instead of sucking them via P2P).

      So if Mr. Jobs were to offer an iPod with video capability, he'd have to have the infrastructure in place to support it. iTunes offered out of the box MP3/AIFF ripping for the iPod.

      Odds are, once he can convince the MPAA the way he convinced the RIAA that having digital movies available for download is not the equivalent to the "Boston Strangler", then we'll see an iPod Video as well as an iPod Photo. (Though, I am rather curious to see how an iPod video would handle battery life - a moot point at this stage.)

    • Re:A LOT more new stuff... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ostiguy ( 63618 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @03:29PM (#10634716)
      Am I the only one who wants to be able to plug a camera directly into a mp3 player and transfer photos without needed a 3rd party (belkin) widget?

      I don't really see the appeal of the ipod photo otherwise - I think my blackberry pager/phone has higher resolution

      ostiguy
      • It's also unclear to me if you can view photos that you've loaded via the Belkin adapter or if you have to wait until you're home at your computer and transfer from the iPod to iPhoto (or iTunes?) and then back to the iPod.

        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:A LOT more new stuff... (Score:4, Funny)

      by prell ( 584580 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @04:16PM (#10635284) Homepage
      How do you ruin a black iPod?

      Answer: Make it look like a cat walking away.

  • More info (Score:4, Informative)

    by gtpilot ( 821547 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:36PM (#10633954) Journal
    A little more info:
    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 .75 in compared to .57 and .69 in for the 20GB and 40GB previous model. The weight about the same however, 6.4 ounces compared to 5.6 and 6.2.

    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 ... it doesnt. Not to mention $600 (and $500 for that matter) is really reaching, considering we are just talking about music and pictures

    In other apple news Apple Launches 9 Euro iTunes Music Stores [gizmodo.com]

    • Re:More info (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fracai ( 796392 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:40PM (#10634024)
      Overkill for some, not all. I'm using almost 30 GB right now and while I don't listen to all of that every week, it's incredibly nice having all my music in one place. If the 60 had been available when I bought my 40 GB just 3 months ago, I'd have bought it.

    • Overkill? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) * on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:41PM (#10634045)
      Does anyone else think that this a bit overkill. 60Gb is a LOT when you are just talking about music and pictures.

      Think movies.

      See the last paragraph here [slashdot.org].

    • Re:More info (Score:5, Funny)

      by Lev13than ( 581686 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:48PM (#10634139) Homepage
      Advertised 15 hour battery life
      65k-color screen
      220 x 176 pixel resolution
      Same click wheel as previous generation

      Still only a single click wheel? What a joke - they'll never be able to compete with Windows until they add a second one.

    • Re:More info (Score:5, Informative)

      by Maskirovka ( 255712 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:49PM (#10634155)
      Does anyone else think that this a bit overkill. 60Gb is a LOT when you are just talking about music and pictures.

      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:More info (Score:5, Informative)

        by kzinti ( 9651 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @03:19PM (#10634577) Homepage Journal
        I could fill this up on a backpacking expedition or vacation.

        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.

    • Re:More info (Score:5, Interesting)

      by commodoresloat ( 172735 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:51PM (#10634190)
      Advertised 15 hour battery life

      That's only if you don't use the photo feature that you presumably paid an extra $100 to have. Battery life drops to 5 hours if you're watching slide shows while you listen to music. And they're warning customers now about the battery: "Rechargeable batteries have a limited number of charge cycles and may eventually need to be replaced. Battery life and the number of charge cycles vary by use and settings. See www.apple.com/batteries for more information."

      Does anyone else think that this a bit overkill. 60Gb is a LOT when you are just talking about music and pictures.

      So you're saying 40 gb ought to be enough for anybody? ;^) Seriously, I agree, this is overkill, but not for the same reason. I'm happy to see bigger drives on these things, but I don't really understand the need to make this into a photo device too. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, and I could see how it could be useful (esp. coupled with a tool to transfer digital photos from card media directly to the ipod without the computer, so you could keep re-using the card during a long photo shoot), but the screen size on an ipod is way too small to actually make it a useful photo viewer. Hell, the LCD on my digital camera (Sony T1) is bigger than the ipod screen. I'm not sure it's worth the loss in battery life -- I think I'd prefer a 60G ipod without a color screen for $100-200 less.

      Then again, like I said, this could be really useful for photographers, especially given the ability to easily connect the ipod to a TV or monitor to show the photos. Again, crucial here would be the ability to easily talk directly to the ipod without having to go to your mac to transfer anything.

      • Re:More info (Score:3, Informative)

        by numark ( 577503 )
        The batteries notice has been around for quite a while now. I think it's just a disclaimer to shield them from anyone coming back and saying that Apple never told them that a rechargeable battery can only be charged a finite number of times. No rechargeable battery will last forever, and if you charge your iPod every night, those charge cycles add up a lot quicker than your standard NiMH batteries that you only charge every few weeks.

    • Re:More info (Score:3, Funny)

      by cbelt3 ( 741637 )
      Will you also have to store receipts from the CD that you bought and ripped into your iPod ? Remember, Ballmer sez that iPod users are all thieves... [theregister.co.uk] Or I think it will be a good place to store those Ballmer inspired monkeyboy vid clips. This one is the best of the bunch: bPod [macboy.com]

    • 60 aint overkill (Score:5, Informative)

      by Randy Rathbun ( 18851 ) <slashdot.20.randyrathbun@spamgourmet.com> on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:56PM (#10634253) Homepage
      Especially when you are using the device as temporary storage for a photo shoot. My Canon 10D files are an average of 6MB. Give me a few hours at a weding or a sports event and I will be filling that drive up pretty fast.

      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.

    • Overkill? I think not (Score:5, Insightful)

      by n0mad6 ( 668307 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:57PM (#10634271)
      I've owned a Canon Digital Rebel (EOS 300D) [dpreview.com] for a little over 3 months now and have acquired approximately 7GB of photos in that time (not counting RAW images). This is purely a hobby. I'm sure other amateur photographers will agree with me that 60GB isn't really overkill, even just for photos, let alone for both photos and music.

    • Re:More info (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Kethinov ( 636034 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @03:01PM (#10634324) Homepage Journal
      Does anyone else think that this a bit overkill. 60Gb is a LOT when you are just talking about music and pictures.
      No way. I've been holding off on buying an ipod for two reasons. 1 price and 2. insufficient storage. When I buy an iPod, I want it to be able to hold my ENTIRE music collection (40gb+) and have room to spare for expansion of my collection, installing osx on the ipod, or general purpose storage.

      I will consider getting the 60gb model, but I may just wait until 80gb models come out.
    • Not to mention $600 (and $500 for that matter) is really reaching, considering we are just talking about music and pictures.

      Sheesh!

      We've been complaining about Apple not having a sub-grand machine, and now it's too much? Come on! It's got Firewire and USB 2.0, a generous 220x176 built-in display (with AV-out if a 2" screen is too small for you whiners), and comes with real games (my Ti PB can't touch this)! Plus, it's portable! Plug in a keyboard, mouse, and your 37" TV and you've got one mean machine.

      N

    • Re:More info (Score:3, Insightful)

      by superdan2k ( 135614 )
      "Not to mention $600 (and $500 for that matter) is really reaching, considering we are just talking about music and pictures"

      Based on that statement, I'd guess that you probably don't own an iPod. I bought one two years ago -- a 20-gigabyte 2nd-generation model -- and it's as much a part of my life as my wallet and keyring. It's that simple. This thing has done for music what TiVo has done for TV. If I can carry my entire porn^H^H^hoto library with me, along with my entire music collection, that's wor

  • You read it here first! (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:36PM (#10633956) Homepage Journal

    An iPod with picture capabilties: I dub thee The iPorn

  • Too expensive/not useful (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lothar97 ( 768215 ) * <owen.smigelski@org> on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:37PM (#10633968) Homepage Journal
    I imagine this is just a little trick to get new people to buy an iPod. Who's going to spend $500-600 to store photos? I don't see current iPod users "upgrading," and I imagine there are some iPod hacks out there to store photos now (albeit without a color screen)

    You can get cheaper products [dpreview.com] for $50 which will allow you to do more creative slideshows, effects, etc.

    I think Apple missed the boat here. The killer function they should add to the iPod is a camera- which goes along nicely with the photo storage features. Nothing flashy or expensive, but for another $50 they could add a lens that's better than the cell phone cams.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:43PM (#10634073)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Very true: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by itistoday ( 602304 )
        Slashdotters are, as usual, not what this iPod's aimed at. Think more in terms of proud family members - mothers and aunts especially.

        How true, before all you cynics open your mouths remember when the iPod was first introduced; all the comments on /. were predicting doom and failure ("the prices! OH THE PRICES!!!"). I don't think I need to point out how things turned out...

        Now that Apple finally found a way to sink its teeth into the market, I think they're going to be careful about the moves they make

    • Re:Too expensive/not useful (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Slack3r78 ( 596506 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:47PM (#10634123) Homepage
      The first thing that popped into my head seeing this is whether or not it supports PictBridge. If so, they may be able to push it to professional photographers who are having to lug around a notebook as things stand right now. As much photostorage as a notebook but fits in your pocket while still providing a way to check what you've got stored? I could see how that would be appealing to someone with a DSLR camera.

    • Re:Too expensive/not useful (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jdreed1024 ( 443938 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:54PM (#10634220)
      I think Apple missed the boat here. The killer function they should add to the iPod is a camera- which goes along nicely with the photo storage features. Nothing flashy or expensive, but for another $50 they could add a lens that's better than the cell phone cams

      I don't think that would have worked. There's no market for a low-quality digital camera add-on, I think. You can get a "real" no-frills digital camera (ie: the equivalent of a 35mm point-n-shoot) for just about $100 at BestBuy, and probably for a lot cheaper with rebate. Or you can sometimes get one for free with a new computer or printer. That pretty much covers the price range of the cell phone cams.

      The iPod appeals to people who already have a lot of gadgets. It's like a Sharper Image/Brookstone version of the walkman (yes, oversimplification, I know). That audience probably either has a real digital camera or a cell phone camera, and addding $50 for a decent camera lens on the iPod isn't going to help.

      What I think they're doing here is offering a neat little feature that will be a plus when comparing models. It also plays up the "more than just a music player" aspect of the iPod (I've been using mine to backup my HD for a while now, but the average person probably doesn't).

      If they're clever, they had a little chat with Belkin when coming up with the idea for this, since the photo feature evokes thoughts of the CameraLink [belkin.com]. Currently, all it does is provide a USB port to hook up a camera and function as a mass storage device. Assuming Apple and Belkin were smart, the new version of the CameraLink will copy the images to the iPod along with the relevant metadata to have them displayed by the Photo feature. Now *that* would be pretty darn cool. Except that my digital camera speaks serial, not USB :-(

    • Re:Too expensive/not useful (Score:5, Informative)

      by chia_monkey ( 593501 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:54PM (#10634222) Journal
      Out of curiousity, what was your take when the iPod Mini came out? I'll admit, I thought it was overpriced. What's the big deal? It's a bit tinier, has colors, and basically cost the same amount as the regular iPod. Yet millions of trendy people bought the iPod Mini anyway. The iPodPhoto will be the same way. It has the "iPod" name and everyone trendy and geeky will want one. Another coup for the team in Cupertino.

      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.

    • Missing the boat (Score:4, Informative)

      by commodoresloat ( 172735 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @03:20PM (#10634585)
      I would say it is SanDisk that misses the boat in the above link -- the device there is cool, but it doesn't offer the crucial element that the ipod offers -- storage space. The benefit of something like the ipod is being able to shoot gigs upon gigs of raw format photos, store them, and keep shooting. The screen is nice just to flip through them and see what you have, or show your friends, but any real viewing will take place on a monitor or TV set.

      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.

  • You mean... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Chris Pimlott ( 16212 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:37PM (#10633973)
    Photo *display* capabilities. When I think of photo capabilities, I think of something take can _take_ photos.

    • Re:You mean... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by switcha ( 551514 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:54PM (#10634219)
      When I think of photo capabilities, I think of something take can _take_ photos.

      Yes, because what the world is waiting for is a device that can store tens of thousands of shitty photos. Leave the image capture to the proper equipment. The portability is what's cool for sharing the pics, not taking them.

  • iTunes improvements too! (Score:5, Informative)

    by fracai ( 796392 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:38PM (#10633982)
    included with the announcement is news that 9 additional countries (Austria, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain) in Europe now have access to the iTunes Music Store and that the much awaited Canadian store will be available in November.
    • Testing from Belgium, I can confirm it works now, but the music catalogue is vastly inferior to the US version : Gene Ammons for instance has ONE CD on the belgian iTMS, while the US version has some 15 CD's or so...


      Very frustrating. I hope they sync the catalogues fast...

  • I like the Album Art option (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Hawthorne01 ( 575586 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:38PM (#10633991)
    One of those little extra touches that always puts Apple products ahead of their competitors.

  • New Audio-Related Features? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:40PM (#10634010)
    .

    Photos and contacts and solitaire sounds like fun stuff, but what about any new audio related features--you know, since it's an audio portable and all.

    Something tells me they managed to overlook Gapless Playback and OGG/FLAC support again.

  • Santa? Are you listening? (Score:3, Funny)

    by YetAnotherName ( 168064 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:40PM (#10634012) Homepage
    If so, please visit http://store.apple.com/ ... please?

  • I've always found... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by soulctcher ( 581951 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:40PM (#10634013)
    that photo capability as a secondary feature is just about worthless. Pretty soon, I'll have a phone that surfs the web, plays games, takes photos, cooks dinner, plays mp3s, wavs, oggs, avis, mpegs, and can predict the weather. None of which I'll be using since my ipod will do that anyways.
    • Pretty soon, I'll have a phone that surfs the web, plays games, takes photos, cooks dinner, plays mp3s, wavs, oggs, avis, mpegs, and can predict the weather.
      Yet it'll be barely adequate for making phone calls. At least that's what I'm finding as I show around for a new mobile phone.

  • Happens again.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by marcosc ( 801468 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:42PM (#10634056)
    Here we go again, people saying this iPod won't be a hit. They said the same thing on the original iPod and the iPod Mini. Those were both huge hits, and this one will be too.

  • so close (Score:3, Insightful)

    by joelhouse ( 457100 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:42PM (#10634059) Homepage
    They just added Album Art, but I want to see the entire Album insert, lyrics, artist facts and news. How hard would that be to add for songs purchased from Itunes. Think of the Value-add. It would be nice to have a FM transmitter was well.

  • To borrow a phrase from television (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Delphix ( 571159 ) * on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:44PM (#10634075)
    The iPod just jumped the shark. There's a point in the life of a product where you try to integrate too much functionality. The iPod does music, and it does it very well.

    Granted some people like these new integrated all in one cellphone, photoholder, music player, portable video players, but I'm going to have to go with "more is less" in this case.

    I think certain devices (like the GameBoy Advance and the iPod) do well because they do one thing and they do it well. As long as they don't cripple or obfuscate the basic functionality, the iPod will still do fine. But once a company loses sight of what the product was made for and start trying to make it a swiss army knife, things tend to go downhill (N-Gage?).

    I still like the iPod and I don't think it's going away. But I think Apple's starting to toe the line on the border swiss army knife land...

    • Same thing was said... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) * on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:55PM (#10634241)
      ...about the original iPod, and iPod mini.

      And they're runaway successes, to put it mildly.

      On one hand, we had analysts and pundits of all types saying Apple will fail if it *didn't* include photo/video functionality in a handheld, and now we've got a luminary here predicting it will fail because it *did*.

      Well, I think I'll trust Apple's judgment on this one, considering it seems to know what it's doing, thank you.

  • Huh. (Score:5, Informative)

    by captnitro ( 160231 ) * on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:44PM (#10634076)
    I'm on a few different sides of this. (It goes without saying, first, that it looks pretty cool.)

    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.

  • Screw photos (Score:3, Insightful)

    by digital bath ( 650895 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:44PM (#10634080) Homepage
    With 40gb/60gb, you could store quite a few compressed dvds on there. I want an iMovie!

  • Presentations... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jdunlevy ( 187745 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:45PM (#10634089) Homepage
    No need to take your laptop to do a presentation; just load those "slides" onto the iPod Photo.

    http://www.apple.com/ipodphoto/ [apple.com]: "Use the included AV cable to connect iPod Photo to a projector or TV."

  • No thanks... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jemenake ( 595948 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:55PM (#10634236)
    Maybe I'm a luddite, but I just don't care for photos on my iPod.

    Part of what makes my iPod so nice is that its interface is really simple. I think that this is due, in part, to the fact that it doesn't do a large variety of things. All it does is play music based on playlist, artist, or album.

    I've seen similar cluttering on my TiVo. It used to be just about 4 or 5 menu items on the main screen. Now, it's packed from the top of the screen to the bottom.

    My old Symbian phone did tons of stuff. Games, calendar, to-do list, camera, web browser... you could even make phone calls with it. :P Problem was, you had to navigate through 3 pages of icons just to get to the app you needed.

    I don't want my iPod to become like my cell phone.

  • Good news for the base models? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Moses Lawn ( 201138 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:56PM (#10634250)
    This sounds like a really cool device, although I don't particularly want or need one (if I was rich, though, hell yeah). What I'm excited about is the idea that this means that the prices for regular iPods *should* come down a little. For $250, I could rationalize a 20G unit. Or will Apple be dropping all the old models?

    On a related note, I like the black model but I really wish it didn't come with all that U2 crap on it. Yes, they had several classic, groundbreaking albums, but they haven't been very relevant since what - the late 80s? How about the Little Feat model iPod, or the Stax/Volt collection model? I'd buy one of those.

  • Managed by... iTunes?! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by keytoe ( 91531 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @02:56PM (#10634254) Homepage
    Does it strike anybody else as odd that you manage your photos on this thing using iTunes instead of iPhoto where you are presumably managing your photos? I realize that iTunes already has all the iPod management code built in and that it would be awkward to have iPhoto and iTunes working to manage the iPod at the same time - but it still feels contrived.

    Maybe we're supposed to just deal with it until Apple gets Tiger out the door and Sync services are built into the OS proper? It just doesn't feel very Mac-Like this way...

    • Re:Managed by... iTunes?! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by saddino ( 183491 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @03:12PM (#10634471)
      iTunes instead of iPhoto

      There is no iPhoto for Windows, hence Apple had to embed photo management into iTunes to support the dual-platform iPod.

      If Apple is indeed developing iPhoto for Windows -- which would take some time -- then it wouldn't make sense for Apple to wait and push the delivery of the new iPod past this Christmas season (esp. if they could simply hack iTunes to handle basic photo management).

  • I know more than Steve Jobs! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dynayellow ( 106690 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @03:03PM (#10634344)
    Looks like it's time for this link again. [mac.com]

    No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame. -You know who...

  • 15 hour battery life (Score:3)

    by dowobeha ( 581813 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @03:14PM (#10634510)
    Before too many people start complaining and moaning that the new color screen does nothing but suck down battery life, take note:

    The new iPod has a longer battery life than the old one did.

    15 hrs is the new estimate for music use, and that's with the color screen. 5 hours if you do continuous slideshows.

  • I refuse to support this... (Score:3, Funny)

    by hai.uchida ( 814492 ) <hai.uchida@gmail.com> on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @03:28PM (#10634703)
    ... Until I find out if it will play my photos in Ogg Vorbis. Whatever that is.

  • Here's what i want... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NRP128 ( 710672 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @03:38PM (#10634858) Homepage Journal
    I bit the bullet and purchased a 40GB 4G in July/August to upgrade/replace a 128MB RCA Lyra that started my addiction of having music with me at all times. In the 3 months of heavy use of my iPod, here's the list of what i would like to see:

    integrated SD-memory reading (my dig camera uses SD cards, they're smaller than CF, and while not as flexible as far as legacy use and capacity, almost every portable device i've looked into purchasing uses SD or xD memory over CF.

    REMOVEABLE BATTERY - for the love of christ would they get this one right. it would really ease my mind significantly if they'd make it interchangable at home, maybe on the fly, where i can keep a spare battery handy as i do for my cell phone and dig camera, (2 spares in teh case of the camera) and when one goes dead, i do a swap. the thought of having to send my 4G off in a year or two at the cost of an ADDITIONAL $100 because they found it more convienent to design an integrated battery on an otherwise superior product gives me shivers.

    iCal and Address Book for Windows, or at the very least an iTunes extention that lets you manage these two precious entities. Oh, and a smart playlist parameter for whether or not a song is checked!

    Adjustable click wheel sensitivity and a dedicated reset button. My wheel has the most annoying tendancy to NOT want to move ONE click. no matter how softly i caress it or how little i bump it i usually move 2 or 3. maybe it's because i have larger than normal fingers or something. idk. also, if the thing has the remote possibility of choking on a bad mp3 and crashing, i'd love to have a manual reset button that doesn't go through software. That process sounds like something M$ came up with. many times mine will crash and run itself dead because the reset method doesn't work. even docked.

    If they're going to integrate a color screen onto the ipod they shouldn't have went the LCD route, but used emerging tech like full color organic Electro-Luminescent displays (think Pioneer's high end car stereos) Sony just released a PDA in japan based on this screen design, which is far superior to LCD for the parameters of a portable device. It requires no battery-hungry and heat generating back light. It has better viewability (word?) in direct sunlight than LCDs. It may not have the color detail, but the resolutions are comparable. It would be suitable for a small display like the iPod Photo's. This would ahve allowed them to retain at least somehwat more of the battery life.

    Are you listening Mr Jobs? Some of these things are not that damned difficult to implement, and others would just take a bit of time and effort.

  • iPod Socks (Score:5, Informative)

    by djtripp ( 468558 ) <djtripp@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @04:06PM (#10635163) Homepage Journal
    And the most bizarre introduction:
    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

  • Thank God Slashdot members don't run Apple (Score:5, Insightful)

    by calstraycat ( 320736 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @04:42PM (#10635526)
    As an Apple shareholder and happy owner of some Apple products, all I can say is: Thank God Slashdot members don't run Apple.

    Every time Apple introduces a new product, there is an endless series of posts about why it sucks, why it won't sell, what features were left out, why the new features are worthless, why it's too expensive, lists of poorly selling products that are "superior" and have more features and on and on and on.

    Apple's revenues are up, their profits are up, they have a slew of successful products and they have a lot of happy customers.

    Give it a rest guys. Let the market decide if the latest offering sucks. Based on history, when Slashdotters say an Apple product won't sell, it ends up being a phenomenal success.

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