Roundup of Apple announcements
As expected, Tuesday was all about the iPod.
A rainbow of new iPod Nanos announced Tuesday.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET)At Apple's fourth straight September music event, Steve Jobs took the stage to update Apple's iPod lineup and iTunes features. CNET's Tom Krazit will have more in-depth analysis for you, while Donald Bell will review the devices and give us his expert reviewer's opinion soon.
Until then, here's a quick summary of the newsworthy announcements from this morning's event.
iTunes 8 is out. The new Genius feature is a music discovery service, the first for Apple.
NBC content is back on the iTunes Store, so we can all get back to downloading The Office after a year-long hiatus.
The iPod Classic gets trimmed down in size: a new 120GB iPod for $249. Yes, Microsoft just announced a Zune with those exact specs. Also, the 160GB iPod Classic was discontinued.
Oh, and those iPod Nano spy shots we saw? Yeah, they were right on target. New Nanos are longer, slimmer, with curved edges. They come with an accelerometer now and start at $149 for 8GB.
New device means new accessories: new, "more sophisticated" in-ear headphones will sell for $79.
New iPod Touch: it's slimmer, has iPhone's multitouch technology, and now starts at $229 for 8GB.
iPhone and iPod Touch users rejoice: Jobs says the updated OS X 2.1 software will fix a lot of bugs related to dropped calls, battery life problems, and crashing applications.
Make sure to check back here throughout the day as our experts weigh in.
Erica Ogg is a CNET News reporter who covers Apple, HP, Dell, and other PC makers, as well as the consumer electronics industry. She's also one of the hosts of CNET News' Daily Podcast. In her non-work life, she's a history geek, a loyal Dodgers fan, and a mac-and-cheese connoisseur. E-mail Erica. 
I was hoping for increased storage space on the iPod Touch to go along with the price slash but what are ya gonna do.
After seeing the new lineup of Nanos I'm craving some Skittles.
http://kreuzer33.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/apple-introduces-new-ipod-shaken-not-stirred/
Lots of new colors ! Bwahahahaha Apple is getting long in the tooth.
Games on iPod have been around for years but it takes hacks to get them on a Zune...if it sucks out of the box, why buy it?
iPod Touch has a full web browser so you can enter passwords and log on to any WiFi hotspot. Zune can only access open WiFi which is hard to find. Unless you do the standard Microsoft lack-of-security process and open up your home WiFi--but then if you're at home you could just use your computer to get your music!
FWIW T-Mobile has a VERY limited 3G roll out and it's on the uncommon frequencies of 1700/2100 Mhz so you can't roam, AND phones are going to take longer to get to T-Mobile because the manufacturers are going to have to make custom models just for them. Oh, and 3G doesn't benefit voice much, it's mainly for faster data.
I tried the Touch when my Zen died and I could not deal with the fact that it took over an hour to convert all of my music through iTunes. I decided to go with the Cowon D2 which gave me 16 gigs, FLAC, OGG, drag and drop to the player and drag and drop movie conversion with Divx support. It also comes with a expansion port that allows SD card expansion. And yes, the D2 has touch screen. All for under $300.
I am not anti anti Apple. I just feel that they need to step up their game and give their customers what they really want instead of giving them crap.
- by LunaticSX September 12, 2008 5:59 PM PDT
- @beachfront24
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(19 Comments)"Until Apple decides to lose the requirement that iTunes be used to put music on their players, decides to support for formats such as OGG and Flac they are going to continue to lose ground."
LOSE ground? Uh, in case you missed it, Apple's media player marketshare has only grown since the iPod was introduced. Their marketshare is only starting to flatten out now that the market is saturated. But wait, here comes the iPhone and another huge market that Apple is targeting, starting with a goal of only 1% by the end of this year. Plenty of room to grow, there, and all growth in that direction only serves to reinforce Apple's media player ecosystem.
Apple has no need to support niche formats like Ogg Vorbis (Ogg is only the container, BTW, Vorbis is the audio codec) and FLAC that only hardcore geeks care about. Supporters of Vorbis and FLAC may be vocal, but they're only a tiny sliver of the real market--practically a rounding error.
There's also the Rockbox firmware for older iPods that give them support for Vorbis and FLAC, if you must have them, plus more.
As an alternative to FLAC, people can also use Apple Lossless format, which generates files that are similar in size, and have no DRM. The open source library libavcodec now incorporates both a decoder and an encoder for Apple Lossless format, so it's actually well supported, and you don't need to worry about it being tied to Apple. Considering the marketshare of the iPod, Apple Lossless is actually supported on many times more players out in the world than FLAC.
For drag & drop video conversion for iPods/iPhones/Apple TV, etc. try iSquint. If you're willing to pay a little money for a lot of speed in conversion, get the Turbo264 from El Gato (I have one, it's nice).
"I am not anti anti Apple. I just feel that they need to step up their game and give their customers what they really want instead of giving them crap."
The marketplace seems to think that Apple IS giving them what they want and not "crap." It may be too bad that Apple's offerings don't suit you, personally, but the reality is that your requirements are far from the majority's. Revel in your uniqueness. :)