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Apple @ MacWorld Tokyo
rschroeder writes "Apple updated several products at MacWorld Tokyo tonight (or tomorrow morning). A $499 10-gig iPod, with, get this, custom laser engraving on the back, ($49 extra) and vCard support. They also announced a $49 USB bluetooth module, shipping in April, with beta drivers availble today. Among other tricks, Jobs synced a Clie with a mac via bluetooth. Also a new 23" (1920x1200 )Cinema Display. Jobs also said they're raising the price of the iMac due to LCD and RAM cost increases. All this courtesy MacMinute.com's live coverage." Maccentral has several stories about Jobs' keynote at the convention.
I was waiting for someone to outdo the 22" Cinema Display, funny it was Apple that ended up doing it themselves.
Contacts: The way this works is that when you upgrade to 1.1, you get a top-level folder on the iPod named "Contacts". Drop .vcf files in there, and you're off. Cute, but since I have my Palm all the time, it's less useful to me.
Equalizer: Can't comment since I haven't set it for any songs.
Now Playing: Pressing the center button when playing a song no longer switches between elapsed time and time remaining. The normal display now shows both. If you press the button, you get the diamond-in-the-rectangle of iTunes, and you can use the dial to shuttle backwards and forwards. Trés cool.
Shuffle: You can now choose between shuffling between songs or between albums. I'm not quite sure what that means.
Bugs fixed: The bug where pausing and then unpausing would land you somewhere totally else appears to be fixed. Another bug where the iPod would cut songs off at the end is also fixed. Alas, the one that prevents "Dvorak" (with the accent over the r) from displaying properly is still present.
Easter Egg: It's still there, in the Legal section off the Settings main item.
And of course, more languages that I don't understand.
Avi
iTunes 2.04 was also (quietly) released, nothing new here except better stability.
Also, the Bluetooth update won't be avaliable for download till April (this from Apple's site).
-- Your local friendly mad scientist-in-training
Also, The Mac Observer has a nice blow by blow of Steve's keynote.
Otherwise, cool stuff!
Say hello to zMac.
uh, the old hard drive (the LITTLE BITTY ONE) was about the old list price of the ipod. these hard drives are not your run of the mill maxtors! of course its gong to be more expensive! :)
plus you get the mp3 player too
A little tidbit for those college students/those with parents/friends in the education industry. Try going to the Education Apple Store, things are cheaper for 'ya.
Example: 5 GB iPod: $369 (Normally $399)
10 GB iPod: $469. (Normally $499)
Hey, $30 off isn't too bad. Just trying to get the word out.
The Macworld Conference and Expo/Tokyo 2002 website is here with information on the event and the exhibits.
There is also a thread at Macrumors on the event.
Those wanting to watch the keynote are out of luck because there are no plans to broadcast it this year, like they have done in the past.
--Metrollica
Maclegion.org has a few good articles about this stuff. Their best is on the new disply and is worth checking out.
While I agree that the high end computers are more fun and interesting (from a marketing/sales perspective). The lower cost machines are what is going to make money.
Not sure I agree with you. While I may be wrong, the G4 towers probably make more money for Apple (per unit) than anything. I doubt if they make much of anything on the iMac. It's probably just more of a maintaining market share thing, keeping it a viable platform so software gets released for Macs.
I could be totally wrong, I haven't looked at any numbers, but my gut tells me that the $3500 dual processor G4 tower and the Cinema Display carries a much larger margin for Apple. Not sure how the total sales of these units factors in.
Oh well... I can't afford any of it. I wish I could.
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
There is a beta that has been out since late December, Apple even has a page dedicated to it:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/applications/palm/
The release notes for Palm Desktop for Mac OS X said the Clie was supported, and I can synch my Handspring via USB just fine. There are also a lot of conduits available or in progress on the page.
Hyperbole is the worst thing ever.
the price of memory went up for the iBook's too. it was $300 for the 512MB upgrade, it is now $400, well that's what it was when it went up nearly 2 weeks ago. the salesperson actually told me to not waste my money on "Apple memory" and do what she did, buy it online! (course i saved myself even more...)
http://seminars.apple.com/tradeshows/index.html
Actually, the margin on the iMac is 20%, and the margin on the high-end Tower is 30%. They all have to sell pretty well for Apple to make its profit targets.
I think these price increases was so they could maintain the 20% margin. Otherwise their shareholders get pretty upset.
I'm not sure what the margin on the new Cinema Display is, but the only people who will buy it are seriously rich hobbyists and seriously professional graphic artists and motion graphics/video editing people. That's a rich audience, but the whole market for that thing is a few thousand people.
At least they undercut Sun, who is charging $4,500 (versus $3,500) for what looks like almost the same thing.
Sun beat them to market, though.
D
5GB iPod (refurbished) for $339 from store.apple.com (Click on "Special Deals"). Comes with the same 90 day warranty as a new iPod.
--
The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
No lossless compression, but you can still store several 600MB CDs of audio.
iPod specs
-pmb
To reply to my own original post:
I did some research, and it turns out Apple implimented the contact feature much better than anyone else has previously. The other poster was correct to say that it now runs off of vCards. Very cool.
Also, to reply to what someone else said. The new iPods (and all the old ones updated by the new iPod firmware) can indeed support Ogg Vorbis. Very cool!
You can use VCF files to make todo lists/display random text data.
.vcf file\n3) Copy to contacts folder on iPod
And it's a heck of a lot easier and more elegant than setting up mp3 tags.
begin:vcard
version:3.0
fn:To Do List
title:1) Write Perl Script\n2) Write
end:vcard
Voila.
Check the back of your iPod. Under the edched logo you'll find your iPod's serial number etched in as well, and it matches the serila # you'll find in 'settings'.
Kinda cool, kinda unnoticed.
Kevin Fox
I think that's a 2.5" drive wrapped in a simple case. The iPod uses a PC Card sized HD which costs significantly more.
The transition was completed at MacWorld in January when all Macs started shipping with Mac OS X as default. What else is needed to complete the transition?
Somewhere in the heavens... they are waiting.
Corrections:
They were profitable in the 1st qtr (a good achievement given the circumstances), 2nd qtr may be a different issue.
Also they have > $4 billion in the bank.
1. It can correctly display some previous undisplayable Chinese characters now, which is a great saving: a very common character that is used in Chinese names can now been seen. It was such an eye-sore!
2. There used to be a track in my iPod that would freeze up the machine. Now the problem is gone.
Good job, Apple!
This is the funniest signature I could ever think of.
I've just finished playing with loads of Bluetooth gadgets - a CompactFlash Card for my PocketPC, a module for my cell phone, a PCMCIA card for my laptop, and a Bluetooth printer. All performed flawlessly, beyond my expectations.
:)
Any effect on my 802.11b? Nope, nodda. Why? Because I'm one guy, and I'd need to push myself to use both networks to their limits at the same time. Perhaps the Bluetooth-802.11b interaction makes a difference at an office, but really... if it's that big o' thing, tell the Bluetooth guy to go stand in the corner (out of range)
WhatEVA
The PIII, Duron, and G4 are not equivalent performers clock-for-clock if you are running actual software on them. Put the systems side-by-side and run applications (especially graphical applications) and see for yourself. You just look like a fool when you grab onto flamebait like spec benchmarks and try to teach something to people who actually use the systems. It's dumb. The benchmarks were done on a Mac with one of its CPU's disabled, and the code did not use Altivec at all. It's not real-world in any way. In the real world, both CPU's are utilized, all Mac software that needs it uses Altivec, and the design efficiencies throughout the system enable better performance from graphical apps and the interface makes the user more productive.
... we're not at the South Pole with Macs congratulating each other on 1GHz clock speeds. P4's at 2.2GHz running Windows simply are not better machines than G4's at 2x1GHz running Mac OS X. Sorry, they're not. The more graphics and DSP you do (video, audio, graphics) then that stacks things even more in the Mac's favor, with Altivec and the PPC's graphics-optimized functions, as well as Mac OS X being designed for modern tasks like these.
We Mac users have all SEEN PC's
Technically, when you say "it", you are assumed to be referring to the last noun. In this case, "it" refers to "solid-state memory cache". They are trying to explain that "solid-state" means "no moving parts". The whole point of the cache is to contain the actual data you're hearing now and 20 minutes into the future, so you don't ever play directly from the hard drive. This avoids skips and the hard drive can sleep while the music plays out of the cache.
Apple's marketing speak is no worse than anyone else in the industry. I've never been disappointed with an Apple product, and I've found that if you want to know the specs on something, you can find them on apple.com. With the iPod, there is a ton of info at apple.com/ipod.