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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
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.
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!
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
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
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.