New iPods

[phatduckk]

Last week my iPod (named iP Diddy) died ... so im way stoked that i didnt buy a new one right away b/c they announced new ones today (they can play videos now)

swee!!! i just ordered a black one, 30GB

 

[muggsy]

Yeah, the new ones look cool, especially the black. I'm on my second iPod, I had a black and white 40G, then after that one had problems and they stopped making the 40G I was able to trade it in under warranty for a color 60G. That's the nature of the beast, though, there will always be something newer and cooler out there.

If you get a chance, post a review after you get it. I'm curious how the video looks.

 

[phatduckk]

i will ...

i dunno if ill bother w/ video but i might jsut cuz you asked.

i ahd to cancel my original order tho. I picked the option to engrave it from the website and i guess that slows down the order and the "ships in 24 hours" text is a lie. So i cancelled that and reordered w/o the engraving so hopfully it actually does ship by tomorrow

 

[muggsy]

i will ...

i dunno if ill bother w/ video but i might jsut cuz you asked.

i ahd to cancel my original order tho. I picked the option to engrave it from the website and i guess that slows down the order and the "ships in 24 hours" text is a lie. So i cancelled that and reordered w/o the engraving so hopfully it actually does ship by tomorrow

Probably a good move. Like all new iPods, those will be very scarce very soon. I'd like to have mine engraved too but I never did because I didn't want to wait for it.

 

[phatduckk]

Probably a good move.

I dunno how much of a diff. it really makes though. my coworker ordered a Nano on day 2 w/ engraving and he got his in about 3 days or so.

We'll see

 

[drewbixcubed]

I ordered my engraved nano on the day they came out (wed.) and it was at my door on monday. As far as i am concerned, Apple is on the right on track with solid state memory and video interface. All they need now is wifi and playback/export interface.

Oh yeah....and when will the rest of the market start manufacturing wireless audio video devices? This way you can send your images/movies/music to your computer/tv/stereo from these portable devices w/o cords?!?!?!

(can you tell I have been thinking about this too much?)

 

[phatduckk]

I ordered my engraved nano on the day they came out (wed.) and it was at my door on monday. As far as i am concerned, Apple is on the right on track with solid state memory and video interface. All they need now is wifi and playback/export interface.

Oh yeah....and when will the rest of the market start manufacturing wireless audio video devices? This way you can send your images/movies/music to your computer/tv/stereo from these portable devices w/o cords?!?!?!

(can you tell I have been thinking about this too much?)

drew ... you sound about as nerdy as me now LoL

Thing is that the new video iPods arent solid state like the nano's. kindof a bummer but you trade off stability and ttl for capacity. I think flash's lifetime is based on number of writes and HDs more or less die whenever they feel like it LOL

Ive read a bit that wifi (more like non-networking-wireless stuff) stuff is on "hold" due to wireless USB looking like a near future possibility now; havent really looked into it but it seems like the goal is to be able to have 100+Mb xfers at 10M & 480ish Mb at 2M. the little ive read speculates that we should see stuff early next year.

Wireless USB range sounds a little bunk ... but there is the possibility of airport express being able to deal with video soon as well and that could be cool. it would again localize you to your house (but better range). sounds like something apple would do ... one new product prompting an upgrade to the other ... Theyre all about sweet integration of their software & hardware.

Then they'll probably come out w/ their own Tivo ish thing too (or probably just buy Tivo and upgrade the product line ... hmmm, time to buy stock?) ... then you could compress & export stuff off it to you iPod w/ some DRM in it. I think they're pretty much gonna take over home media

 

[todd4ta]

I'm an engineer at FedEx Express, and I support the international import sort at our Indianapolis hub. A huge percentage of our sort every night is Apple products coming in from Asia. I get a daily update of how much we are getting, and then I plan the sort start and end times, and make sure that the outbound flights have enough space to move everything that night. We're talking thousands of iPods every night. I'm right in the middle of it, but I'm still amazed by the way it works. The ordering/delivery process is so dynamic that the volumes can double or triple day to day.

As a long time Apple user & supporter, I'm really happy to see them doing so well. And it's pretty good for our business as well.....

 

[Zon]

My son got his nano today. Took about a week and a half with engraving. 4 gig in a package that is smaller than a box of Chiclets. Sweet.

Steve Jobs’ decision to go with flash and the general trend toward affordable flash in large volumes is both exciting and alarming

I am a tool and die maker with a company that makes the suspension arms that hold the read write chip above the disc in hard drives. The one shown in the attachment is for Toshiba, but we make suspensions for the 30 gig iPods as well. Our recent market push has been toward hand held devices from cell phones to these personal entertainment units.

I am still waiting for a mass storage revolution that will put both hard drives and flash out in the cold. Even though that is a double-edged sword for me, its gonna happen.



http://www.ernieball.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=1779

 

[phatduckk]

so i just bought a TV show off iTunes. I figured i should ahve some video thing to watch when my iPod gets here (he's currently in Alaska). ya so anyways ... ive never seen Lost and have heard its good so I downloaded the first episode of season 1 ($1.99).

This is pretty cool. you can get the whole season for $34 ... price is pretty much right in the middle of buying the dvd and renting the whole season from a store.

This Jobs fella is pretty smart (or at least smart enought to hire soem smart ass people ... either way he's smart)

 

[Zon]

Smart indeed. A top-notch guy who is wise enough to surround himself with the same.

And obvious a whole lot smarter than me. I have noticed for some time now that my link only works from my computer and not others. I tried uploading through the forum attachment manager but apparently I screwed the pooch.

Not that is really a must see, but I'd like to get it right. Arin, you are a self-proclaimed web expert. Can you help me out? What is the best way to post an attachment on the site?

 

[Sacha]

Why are people still buying iPods? Am I the only one who is insulted by a)the excess that you pay for the name, b)the awful battery and c)the awful battery. I name the battery point twice because it's such an important point.

I take my hat off to Apple for a)the design, b)the marketing, c)getting record companies to release so much back catalogue, d)starting to do the same for videos and e)....er.....that's it. However, in reality who wants to watch videos on an iPod? It's a superb feature but surely iPods (and general music players) should just be about music? The argument about video players in 'walkmans', phones, PSPs, etc, will rage on for ages but it's my opinion that if you can be bothered to hold up an iPod to be able to see it then you make as well hold up something bigger (ie a PSP or one of the MP4 players by Creative or such) that have bigger screen, thus making it more worthwhile.

Colour screens on MP3 players? What's the point? The damn thing is meant to be just stuck in your pocket anyway. The emphasis is on THE MUSIC, not how the screen looks! Why haven't Apple just got their arse in gear and released an iPod with a good battery? I have the Sony NW-HD5. The software is rubbish but when the music's on the player it's all good. The reason I went for that over the iPods at the time even though they had colour screens and all sorts? The battery. Not only are the Sony batteries for their players absolutely incredibly long life but they're changeable too so when they finally do start having a crap life, you just change them....something Apple exploit by just releasing a new model every year to which people run and buy.

Phew. Got that off my chest. I should probably do some work now...

 

[muggsy]

The battery life issues on the iPod have been mostly rectified for a couple of years now. The past two generations provide 15-20 hours of battery life on a charge. I have a 4th generation 60G and I'm very happy with the battery life. I do wish Apple made the batteries user-replaceable, but there are many third party companies out there who fill that void -- they'll replace the battery for you or send you a DIY kit, and they're cheap.

I'm also interested in the iPod for music, not video, but there's a huge market out there that wants video, so I can't fault Apple for responding. I'll keep my current iPod until it dies, because I don't care about video. Still, I think the iPod is the best music player out there by a wide margin. People say it's all marketing hype, but you hear that about any product that has a lot of success, and it's usually crap. The iPod is easy to use from the minute you take it out of the box, it sounds great with upgraded headphones, and iTunes is also easy to use with a boatload of available content, and more coming every week. It's one of those rare products that once I got one (a little over 3 years ago), I wondered how I ever got along without it.

 

[Sacha]

I won't lie, the iPod is a very good product. iTunes is a modern marvel as far as software goes, the menus and everything on the iPod are simple and easy to use and the quality of the music (can) be superb as well (bitrate forbidding, blah blah blah). And I agree, the video market is huge so hats off to them for getting off the mark in regards to licensing shows and stuff.

However if you look at some of the totally unnecessary parts, it annoys me. The colour screen is the first. Why? Especially in the players without video? Someone will reply back with "for the pictures." What are pictures doing on a music player?! Who sits on the bus/tube/train/whatever on the way into work looking through all their pictures?!?! Is it me or was that Steve Jobs saying at his board meeting "Ok...it's been 10 months since we last released an iPod. We need ideas. Ideas....ideas....hmmm....what's cheap technology that we can stick in there? Pictures! Pictures! Yes, let's do that! Nothing to do with bloody music but let's chuck it in anyway". That man would have thrown in a built in fire-extinguisher if he thought it would shift more units. And it's all good and well telling the public "you can have you album artwork!"...and then fail to tell them that having the pictures on there a)takes up memory that could be used for more music and b)is a further drain on the battery.

I actually have no idea why I'm so annoyed about the iPod. I think I'm just a bit of a conversative in regards to 'sense' and 'electronics'. A music player should be a music player. There are hundreds of (better) portable video players than the iPod - for Apple to not take a chance to make their music player side even better just annoys me because they'd rather jump on the bandwagon with videos.

Right, I think I need to have a lay down for a while before I burst another blood vessel.

 

[Roubster]

hahahhaha, I can see someone else gets worked up over things like this as well. I am with you on this one Sacha. I see it as very pointless and waste of time and also space and battery life on a MUSIC player. As was said by Sacha, I think it is rediculous that you need to be playing videos on that thing instead of listening to music. It's basically the same thing with cell phones. I just see this as people are really forgetting what to do with themselves. Instead of riding the train or whatnot listening to you music and thinking about things, people are watching some videos on little screens and playing stupid games on their cell phones. I refuse to buy an iPod just because everyone else is being ignorant and being branded and pulled into these gimiks. No offense to anybody that has one, I mean my friend has the new video one in black that looks pretty cool, but screw it. All I need is a music player that will hold all my CD collections, so that I dont have to go trhough the trouble of deciding which damn album to listen to in one day on my CD player. All that I need from this technology is to store all the music without carrying CDs around. I will be buying the Creative Zen Touch player in 40G which has better battery life than the iPod and I believe it costs considerably less. Anyway, that's my take on this branding thingie. I would rather be branded by another company that you dont see EVERY single person in NYC walking around with in their hand.

 

[muggsy]

I agree that the current iPods have features I don't want or need, but it's hard to argue with Apple's success. Every time they've introduced a new model, it's been huge. Mine won't play video but it has a color screen, and I like having the album art on there. I know it takes up extra space, but I've still got over 10,000 songs on my 60G at a pretty high bitrate. That's amazing to me. I still remember my first cassette Walkman, which was back when they first came out. It was about four times the size of my iPod and played 90 minutes of music.

 

[muggsy]

hahahhaha, I can see someone else gets worked up over things like this as well. I am with you on this one Sacha. I see it as very pointless and waste of time and also space and battery life on a MUSIC player. As was said by Sacha, I think it is rediculous that you need to be playing videos on that thing instead of listening to music. It's basically the same thing with cell phones. I just see this as people are really forgetting what to do with themselves. Instead of riding the train or whatnot listening to you music and thinking about things, people are watching some videos on little screens and playing stupid games on their cell phones. I refuse to buy an iPod just because everyone else is being ignorant and being branded and pulled into these gimiks. No offense to anybody that has one, I mean my friend has the new video one in black that looks pretty cool, but screw it. All I need is a music player that will hold all my CD collections, so that I dont have to go trhough the trouble of deciding which damn album to listen to in one day on my CD player. All that I need from this technology is to store all the music without carrying CDs around. I will be buying the Creative Zen Touch player in 40G which has better battery life than the iPod and I believe it costs considerably less. Anyway, that's my take on this branding thingie. I would rather be branded by another company that you dont see EVERY single person in NYC walking around with in their hand.

I see your point, but I don't give a crap whether everybody else has one or not. It's not a status symbol to me, it's a music player, and a damn good one. To say that everyone who has one is being ignorant and essentially sucked into the hype is more than a little ridiculous. Frankly, it sounds like you're more concerned with buying something different to stand out from the iPod owning masses, which is just as superficial as those who buy the iPod to look cool. If somebody sees me with an iPod and thinks more or less of me as a result, that's their problem.

 

[phatduckk]

ya ... the video is cool but impractical. but the color screen is sweet.

My initial reaction to the color screen was "bla, just wastes more batteries" but now that i have one with a color screen i love it. its just better. things are more visible. now the album art is also pretty cool. theyre both those "youll know what youve been missing till you have it" features.

the iPod is good ... but you gotta remember its a part of a puzzle. iTunes + the music store + the iPod is a genioud endeavor in integration.

they look cool, are super small and they work (yup i know all about the battery issue 2 generations ago - my old one was faulty). my friend has a zen and its a brick compared to the iPod.

im a fan

 

[phatduckk]

Arin, you are a self-proclaimed web expert. Can you help me out? What is the best way to post an attachment on the site?

The best thing for posting pix would be to sign up for one of the free photo hosts out there and use the "isert image" icon thinggy when posting.

if you wanna post non-images lemme know

 

[Sacha]

I think Apple's success with the iPod is a big point to use here too. Like I've said before I absolutely take my hat off to Apple for making this, fairly (in computer terms anyway), recent 3 pronged attack on the computing/music world. The Macs over the last 5 or 6 years have been getting increasingly attractive, iTunes has easily taken over as the best digital music manager and the iPod is the biggest selling MP3 player. However, just best because it's the biggest selling doesn't necessarily mean that it's the best and worthy of endless adoration.

Dunno how many of you know much about EA and their sports range of computer games. For me, they're the Apple of computer games. Every year they release pretty much the same old thing (Madden 2004, Madden 2005, Madden 2006, etc.) and all they do is tweak the game slightly enough for computer game magazines to not TOTALLY slate it in their reviews. EA have the market in the palm of their hands and intend to stay in their position without huge advances in innovation. Besides the Mini and the Nano (which is more down to the design of the actual hardware, rather than the software) what have Apple done? Their first 3 generations were effectively the same (though they got prettier). Then wait! 4th Generation! CLICK WHEEL!!! Hey wait, 5th generation....colour screen with you able to stick in photos as well! And finally 6th generation, they whack in videos.

You wanna know what was the best iPod made? The iPod Mini. It's small, sturdier than the Nano and it's no frills. The only annoying point was that the biggest one was 6gb. Apple could easily make an iPod with 20gb+ in a mini's shell. Whether they will or won't is obviously down to them.

I think the problem here is that for Apple stick extra on the price tag of their iPods and try and tell the public that the inclusion of pictures, videos and games is worth it. Here's a little test for you...

Listening to your music on the train and fancy looking at pictures, what would you rather do?
a) Get your iPod out of your pocket and look at the pictures on the little screen?
b) Keep a bigger HD sized cheaper iPod Mini in your pocket and look at pictures on a bigger sized screen in the form of a portable video player like the ones Creative do?

Listening to your music on the train and fancy looking at videos, what would you rather do?
a) Get your iPod out of your pocket and look at the videos on the little screen?
b) Keep a bigger HD sized cheaper iPod Mini in your pocket and look at the videos on a bigger sized screen in the form of a portable video player like the ones Creative do?

Listening to your music on the train and fancy playing some games, what would you rather do?
a) Get your iPod out of your pocket and play the rubbish games with the wheel?
b) Keep a bigger HD sized cheaper iPod Mini in your pocket and play the games on your Game Boy, Nintendo DS or PSP?

In fact, you could do all the other scenarios with the PSP.

Apple need to realise that they make very good music players. If they just stick to that rather than give us unnecessary frills they could drive the price down. Instead we're getting suckered in to paying for extras that underperform in relation to other products.

All this has made me hungry. I'm gonna have lunch.