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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
Microsoft Office AND Appleworks on the same iPod!t ml
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,50688,00.h
The real reason the 5GB iPod is still $400 is that people are still buying it. If Apple was having trouble selling them, the price would have dropped to $350 or $300. They are still hot, and there is still no comparable MP3 player on the market, period. Size, capacity, battery life, and firewire. No other MP3 player matches the iPod in all 4 of those categories. Until one does, Apple can charge what they damn well please. That is the free market at work.
--
The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
This is big. If Apple is on the blue tooth train, then it means that the standard will be back from the dead when M$ put it by not supporting it in XP, and will become successfull (see USB for some background.) Apple is obviously working on new desktop and laptop systems with bluetooth integrated. It's not rumors but very certain that BT is what Apple need for their digital hub strategy. I wonder how they are going to cop with interference between BT and 802.11b. And it will be really funny to see how other vendors are playing catch up with Apple when they realize that bluetooth is a really neat solution to connect devices. In M$ interest not to connect easily with Palm, this is the only reason why the beast of Redmond killed the technology by not releasing drivers last summer. However, all the devices like PDAs (ex: iPaq, Loox, etc...) are released in Japan with BlueTooth in standard. Again, US is lagging big time behind Japan when it comes to wireless (3G, and now BlueTooth.)
PPA, the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
Traditionally 'Alan Smithee' is the moniker taken on by a movie director when he is so ashamed of his work that he will not be associated with it by name.
So it's a little worrying to see who they reference (via graphic) as the iPod project manager on the story link.
:)
Things have changed. Micron (Boise, Idaho) is taking over the industry. They bought Toshiba's DRAM business, they bought TI's business, they bought KMT's business, and are negotiating to buy Hynex, which is in trouble. They and Samsung are in a race for the #1 spot now; if the the Hynex deal goes through, Micron will be far bigger than Samsung in DRAM.
In 2001, there was a huge DRAM glut, which pushed prices down. Micron, instead of cutting back, used its advantage as the lowest-cost producer to squeeze out the weaker players. Here's an overview of the industry.
It looks like that when the dust settles, Micron will have about 40% market share, Samsung (S. Korea) about 22%, Elpdata (Japan) somewhere under 20%, and minor players the rest. The era of brutal competition in DRAM may be ending. The number of players is much smaller now. We may see more "stability" in DRAM pricing.
$2,000 got you the machine you could afford -the one that you could use Office and Quicken on, play most middle-of the road games, and if you were willing to wait a long time, dabble in graphic design and multimedia.
Now the machine you really want still costs $4,000, but the machine you can afford is down to $1,500, and it does far more than even the best home computers did just two or three years ago.
The fact that there are $500 commodity PC boxes available is nice, but does that mean that the $1,500 iMac no longer has value to the person who purchases it?
It seems to me that rather than comparing the prices of PC and Mac CPUs and peripherals, we ought to be comparing overall value to the consumer - i.e., is this machine doing everything I want it to do, for a price that I find worthwhile?
If you love your Mac, but you don't love PCs, there must be more perceived value in the Mac for you. If that's the case, isn't it intrinsically worth more to you than a less expensive PC?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
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
So, with Apple leading the renaissance in wireless networking (it was their introduction of the AirPort that kicked of this current wave of activity) how will they reconcile this with Bluetooth? All of their computers ship with wireless card slots and built-in antennas; they all also ship with USB ports (also popularized by Apple.) Which is to drown out the other? While it's true that they can co-exist it is at the expense of greatly reduced data rates, already an issue for folks used to 100 Mbps or 1,000 Mbps (standard on many Mac models) Ethernet.
My own bet is that before or along-with any USB-BlueTooth product introduction Apple will ship a revised AirPort, or at least a software tweak with a built in Bluetooth-friendly autonegotiation. Or, failing that we'll see the release of an AirPort II featuring 802.11a (at 5 GHz and capable of 54 Mbps) thus safely different from cordless phones, microwave ovens, baby monitors, 802.11b, 802.11g, Bluetooth, HomeRF, and a half dozen other wireless applications.
As to microwave ovens - well 2.4 Ghz is the resonant frequency of water so no change possible there. However it is something to think about as you hold these various new wireless devices up next to your body.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.