New iPods Announced

[smiller]

Simply not true.

What products other than Apple will play a Fairplay-encoded track (besides one Motorola cellphone)?

[John in VA]

Simply not true.

What products other than Apple will play a Fairplay-encoded track (besides one Motorola cellphone)?

 

Apple itself provides the means to play purchased songs on other players. One click in iTunes will convert songs to AAC or burn them to CD so you can play them on any product you think is better than any player that Apple offers, which makes your assertion, "a track purchased via iTunes can be played only on an Apple product" simply untrue.

[Couchrocket]

I just watched the demo video, and Jobs' roll out speech.

 

I'm buying a 16 gig version as soon as they hit the street. My 5G video iPod is great and my lovely wife wants it. My total music and video audio books, etc. only come to about 8 gigs on my 80 gig version, so I'll be in fine shape w/ the iPod Touch 16 gig.

 

And, with wifi and browser, no need to drag the laptop on bike trips, or car trips for that matter. It will be interesting to see if I can drag uploaded photos into SmugMug somehow.... if so, I could even do ride tales from the road w/ this thing. Since the "Touch" has the standard iPod connector on the bottom I'm assuming / hoping my remote, photo uploader, etc. will work with it just fine.

 

Way cool.

[smiller]

Apple itself provides the means to play purchased songs on other players. One click in iTunes will convert songs to AAC or burn them to CD so you can play them on any product you think is better than any player that Apple offers, which makes your assertion, "a track purchased via iTunes can be played only on an Apple product" simply untrue.

Actually I think you have it backwards. The statement is 'simply' true, albeit incorrect in a purely technical sense.

 

My comments were regarding the situation described in the referenced article, where an iTunes customer was unable to play his iTunes purchases in another brand portable player. You can't do this simply or directly. You can transfer the tracks to CD, re-rip and re-encode again to the format of your choice (taking the audio quality hit associated with re-encoding 128kb compressed files, yuk...), go through whatever effort is necessary to maintain proper tagging through the process, etc. Quite a PITA for a large library (and, given that I am constantly told how Apple users like easy-to-use products, not something that most would be inclined to do.)

 

So no, you can't easily transfer your iTunes library to another brand player.

[Gregori]

... Since the "Touch" has the standard iPod connector on the bottom I'm assuming / hoping my remote, photo uploader, etc. will work with it just fine.

...

I wouldn't count on the goodies working with it just yet. So far, the ONLY thing that works with the iPhone is a charger. I've got a remote control, audio-out adapter, FM transmitter, and card reader - all of which fail to work with my iPhone. I've read that SUPPOSEDLY much of this will be fixed in software updates, but I'm a little disappointed that NOTHING works so far.

 

That said - I still love the iPhone, and would buy another one ASAP if anything were to happen to this one. (And done so even if the price hadn't been slashed.)

This is hands down the BEST phone I've ever had a chance to use, and by far the best 1.0 version of ANY hardware I've ever seen.

 

I tend to be an early adopter, and got mine on the release day. My wife (who is NOT gadget-centric) used it for a few minutes when I got it home, and said that they got it 'right' where everyone else was still in the stone age. She then told me she wanted one of her own. (Which I promptly pulled from my Apple Store bag...)

 

And the iPod/iPhone halo effect is real. After years of being a diehard PC user despite my best effort to bring her to the light, after using the iPhone for a month, she now has a shiny new MacBook.

[Couchrocket]

Gregori,

 

According to Jobs on his "roll out" speech, there is a software upgrade coming for iPhone that will enable the iTunes direct download store on the iPhone. Hopefully they'll fix the other bugs at the same time. I'd check for the upgrade right now, as his speech was a little while ago.

 

Thanks for the feedback.

[velomoto]

If you bought 300 programs for Windows, you're always stuck with Windows, after all.

Not the same thing at all. Most people would not have the expectation that a Windows program would work under another OS, it has never been any other way. Conversely, most people would expect that their purchased music would play on any brand player, it has never been any other way... until the (intentionally unheralded) advent of DRM, that is.

Well actually for quite some time now people have wanted (and made) programs compiled for one OS run on another OS. IMO, the most successful is Parallels which run's on the new Intel based Mac's but Apple has it's own tool and there are more options coming soon. Yes, yes, I know these still require a Windows license - but the point is that Parallels made it possible to run a Windows tool under the Mac OS.

[velomoto]

Apple itself provides the means to play purchased songs on other players.

I'd love to see how this works - the "best" solutions I've found on the market are some non-Apple tools which use iMove to convert the fairplay encoded music into another format (mp3 or unprotected AAC).

[velomoto]

Nope, you haven't been paying close enough attention.

 

Nope, he hasn't. Because the batteries don't die in a year, either. Even if they did, people wouldn't have to go without while getting them replaced.

Ummm, forgive me if I don't believe the Apple marketing people... Based on past experience, if Apple sez the batteries will last a year I'll give 'em 9 months max under heavy use and they'll need replacing 'cuz they won't hold sufficient charge. Perhaps Apple is older and wiser and doesn't want another class action lawsuit for overstating battery life, but the jury is out on this one and we'll have to wait to see if Apple was accurate or not.

 

Now as for battery replacement, the 4GB and 8GB iPhones have he battery SOLDERED to the motherboard. Not exactly user serviceable...

[ghaverkamp]

Based on past experience, if Apple sez the batteries will last a year I'll give 'em 9 months max under heavy use and they'll need replacing 'cuz they won't hold sufficient charge. Perhaps Apple is older and wiser and doesn't want another class action lawsuit for overstating battery life, but the jury is out on this one and we'll have to wait to see if Apple was accurate or not.

 

Apple doesn't say the batteries will last for only a year.

[velomoto]

BTW, there is an iPhone "hack" which allows one to use the iPhone with other cell companies - but seeing that one must sign up for a 2 year Cingular/AT&T plan to get the iPhone I don't see much value in the hack.

Nope, you haven't been paying close enough attention. You buy the iPhone. It's yours. No contract. Nada. End of discussion. HOWEVER, if you by some odd chance want to use ANY of the features (other than "door stop") on said iPhone (that's yours... because you bought it), you then log into iTunes and activate your iPhone. To activate it, you need to pick an AT&T plan and agree to a 2 year contract. Soooo, if you can skip that last step and activate it some other way (read: hack), that would allow you to actually use your iPhone without a contract.

My bad... This isn't the way the AT&T folks explained things. Now if only iPhone had CDMA instead of GSM.

[Husker Red]

[quote So far, the ONLY thing that works with the iPhone is a charger. I've got a remote control, audio-out adapter, FM transmitter, and card reader - all of which fail to work with my iPhone. I've read that SUPPOSEDLY much of this will be fixed in software updates, but I'm a little disappointed that NOTHING works so far.

Hmnmn, I didn't know that. The price drop has me considering an i-phone. My wife has a 30 gig ipod video, so I assumed all her peripheral accessories would work with the phone - but you're saying they won't? That might change my mind.

[ghaverkamp]

My wife has a 30 gig ipod video, so I assumed all her peripheral accessories would work with the phone - but you're saying they won't? That might change my mind.

 

You need to do some googling. There are sites where people have been compiling lists of accessories that work and accessories that don't work.

 

I suspect the key difference is the OS change.

[smiller]

Yes, the accessory must carry this logo in order to be compatible.

[smiller]

I assumed all her peripheral accessories would work with the phone - but you're saying they won't? That might change my mind.

Apparently your physical accessories aren't the only thing that won't work with the new models.

 

Don't like iTunes for some reason? No problem, there are several good alternatives. Ooops... not any more. Hell, why should the consumer have any control not specifically allowed by Apple, anyway..?

 

I'm freaking fed up with this trend...

[russell_bynum]

[ghaverkamp]

That's pretty messed up, though no worse than the vendor who require you to use WMP.

 

There's also no Mail app or ability to add new calendar entries on the touch. How stupid is that?

 

This batch is looking like one to hold off from.

[smiller]

That's pretty messed up, though no worse than the vendor who require you to use WMP.

Yes, when I said trend I meant it to apply to all who employ such tactics. The usability of the Zune is similarly crippled in this way.

 

This batch is looking like one to hold off from.

I only hope that skipping this iteration is of any use and that subsequent generations of these products are not even more locked down.

 

Luckily there are alternatives in some of the Asian brands (Cowon, iRiver, Creative, etc.) that support more open interfaces and a wider range of codecs, as well as better audio quality. These will never be mass market devices on the scale of the iPod but at least they are available.

[UberXY]

I bought my youngest daughter one of the new Nanos - it's very nice, 7 credit cards thick, one credit card wide, 3/4 of a credit card long. She has yet to see the battery run down on it.

 

But I am not going to replace my old pre-video 40 gig ipod just yet. I have my 400 CDs on it plus a lot of itunes purchases. But when the iPhone comes with 50 GB flash, GPS, carries a $300 price tag, and works with better carriers, I am there.

 

And BTW, I have opened up an iPod and replaced the battery, and it's not that big a deal. In fact the guy at the local Apple Store Genius Bar told me to buy a battery on ebay and do it myself, instead of paying Apple to do it.

[ghaverkamp]

Luckily there are alternatives in some of the Asian brands (Cowon, iRiver, Creative, etc.) that support more open interfaces and a wider range of codecs, as well as better audio quality.

 

The iRivers I've looked at (the nano competitors) were some I had in mind as the worst offenders. No mass storage interface; no support for anything bu WMP. I thought some of the Creative flash-based players were the same way (remember, I'm not looking for mass storage; I have a narrow mind with musical requirements to match.)

[smiller]

I dunno... MediaMonkey supports all of those, as do several other media/sync manager programs I think. Any player that uses the MTP protocol (which is just about everything these days except Apple/Zune) is pretty widely supported.

[John Ranalletta]

Click here for a fun little article on why Apple is the new Microsoft.

From latest issue of Forbes:

But the flip side of Apple's success is that Apple has started to seem scary. Jobs' ambitions go way beyond making computers and gadgets. He's the most powerful figure in the music business and is maneuvering toward dominance in the movie and TV business as well. No longer is Apple the plucky underdog out to save the world. Remember its "Big Brother" television commercial from 1984? In those days Big Brother was IBM. Now Apple has morphed into Big Brother, complete with Jobs' face beamed onto giant screens at Apple events.

[velomoto]

Click here for a fun little article on why Apple is the new Microsoft.

From latest issue of Forbes:

But the flip side of Apple's success is that Apple has started to seem scary. Jobs' ambitions go way beyond making computers and gadgets. He's the most powerful figure in the music business and is maneuvering toward dominance in the movie and TV business as well. No longer is Apple the plucky underdog out to save the world. Remember its "Big Brother" television commercial from 1984? In those days Big Brother was IBM. Now Apple has morphed into Big Brother, complete with Jobs' face beamed onto giant screens at Apple events.

The greatest irony which the author left out - Microsoft invested $150M in Apple back in '97 to keep them alive. Many speculated this was necessary to support the notion that MS didn't have a "monopoly" - much like people speculate Intel "needs" AMD. In any case, MS WOULD HAVE made about $18 Billion on that investment if they had kept the shares, but reportedly they were sold in '01 for "only" a modest 7% gain. Bottom line - we can all thank (or curse) MS for helping keep Apple alive!

[bakerzdosen]

Microsoft invested $150M in Apple back in '97 to keep them alive.

I didn't know that Microsoft was in such dire straits that in order to survive, they needed to invest in Apple.

 

Apple certainly didn't need the money to survive. It was a partnership or show of "good faith" more than anything.

 

I love revisionist history/internet lore.

[UberXY]

Microsoft invested $150M in Apple back in '97 to keep them alive.

I didn't know that Microsoft was in such dire straits that in order to survive, they needed to invest in Apple.

 

Apple certainly didn't need the money to survive. It was a partnership or show of "good faith" more than anything.

 

I love revisionist history/internet lore.

 

A $150 million dollar stock investment at Apple in 1997 is now worth a hair under $800 million. Nice return.

[velomoto]

BTW, there is an iPhone "hack" which allows one to use the iPhone with other cell companies - but seeing that one must sign up for a 2 year Cingular/AT&T plan to get the iPhone I don't see much value in the hack.

Nope, you haven't been paying close enough attention. You buy the iPhone. It's yours. No contract. Nada. End of discussion. HOWEVER, if you by some odd chance want to use ANY of the features (other than "door stop") on said iPhone (that's yours... because you bought it), you then log into iTunes and activate your iPhone. To activate it, you need to pick an AT&T plan and agree to a 2 year contract. Soooo, if you can skip that last step and activate it some other way (read: hack), that would allow you to actually use your iPhone without a contract.

 

With that said, today's price drop is suddenly making the iPhone more attractive to me. I simply wish they (AT&T) would allow business contracts instead of individual/consumer contracts/plans with the iPhone.

Here's a good one - Apple's 1.1.1 update will relegated hacked iPhones to "door stop" functionality. It seems the "good will" folk at Apple decided to take action against hacked iPhones and render them into inoperable "bricks". Other features of the 1.1.1 iPhone update: non-iTunes ring tones and 3rd party applications no longer work. If interested, there's more info here: linky