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New iPod Design Pictures Leak
Brian Hoyt writes "Apple's new iPod design will be announced Monday. A cover picture depicting the new design from Newsweek has been discovered early. MacRumors broke the story - MacRumors and more specifically the cover itself - NewsWeek"
It's not a big stretch from the iPod Mini to the design shown in the picture. I'm pleased with the new design... kind of back to it's roots.
My biggest problem with the previous design is the unapparent secondary button function. When the buttons are arranged around the wheel, the special combinations (Menu & Play/Pause to reset) make a fair sight more sense. Holding Menu for the backlight is especially obscure. I discovered this intuitively on my Original iPod - all of the buttons on the Original had an important Continuous Press function before the first several updates that gave us a new time search for the songs. My friend didn't know about the Menu Backlight - he used the automatic backlight - until I told him with his 30g. He's not stupid by any means, there just wasn't any reason that the second button over would also be a special Backlight control.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Asside from the new exterior, what's changed on the interior? 60GB? Any new features, let the Rumor mill take hold.
Hopefully the sale of a new iPod will make the price of the older versions drop considerably. I really want one, but I think they currently are ridiculously overpriced. Especially here in the Old World. Is a 15Gb iPod for 100 euros too much to ask?
For starts you could sync small amounts of information with the iPod, contacts, address and such and plus it could drive bluetooth into more homes because it rides on the back of a more successful product. I already understand it doesn't have the bandwidth to transfer the mp3's fast enough, and its only the small information I would want it to transfer
A better battery might be nice.
Its also nice they havn't added colour or appeared to make it into some video ipod. The market is still young and the waters need testing more, glad to see Apple have kept things simple and as they alreayd are
I'll be buying one as well if what i hope for holds true.
Jonathanjk.com
The reason for that is, slashdot is about technology, the iPod happens to be an example of technology that has become a growing cultural icon.
When the three headlines for a huge publication are "9/11", "Iraq", and "iPod", with the "iPod" leading. It's almost surprising that slashdot doesn't have _more_ articles about it.
Despite the lack of significance (it is, after all, simply a music player), there are many surrounding wider effects that have come from it, and this is where the publicity is deserved.
When you see people using their iPods, the behaviour is that the interface lets them choose music quickly, with little/or no need to look at the screen after this.
A colour screen would be nothing more than an eyecandy waste.
Reality is most of an iPod's life is to live in someone's pocket. Apple realise this, moving the buttons back to a previous arrangement where a user does not need to look at the iPod to press each button, which was a common UI issue with the former generation iPod.
I am so confused as to what you are talking about. Are you saying the story isn't true? Are you implying that someone hacked into Newsweek's site and posted 6 fake pages with pictures about the new iPod? Jackass.
I agree with your first two arguments.
I got myself an iRiver H140 this week.
It addresses your two arguments:
- Normal USB harddisk that has actual MP3 files on it so you can easily hack up your own tools under any OS. You can also copy the tracks off it.
- mp3, ogg, wma, asf support
My main gripe is that it's interface just isn't very good. I can't stand the idea of someone putting up a millions-of-dollars production line to create excellent hardware and then put ill thought out software on it.
If they'd hire me I'd make it two times better at the very least.
Biggest problem: The shuffle option always shuffles in the same way. What idiot thought of that gem?
IMHO 5000+ songs are just begging for a good shuffle!
That and their marketing which sucks compared to Apple. If they get their act together on that as well as on the software front they could really start competing.
And competition is good...
In the scope of all things, is it of any real importance that Apple has yet again changed the buttons on the iPod? I own several Macs and an iPod 3G and I couldn't care less.
What does that say about our society when a fairly simple re-design of a product garners such attention? Is it really important? Does it make your life better somehow?
Just get over yourselves.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - BF
don't get me wrong- I think the iPod is great. That having been said, this is just a minor revision to the existing product. Does that really warrent steve jobs being on the cover of newsweek?
--- Don't ever trust a woman until she's dead- B.B. King
Mostly because the iPod didn't have a whole lotta butotns in the FIRST place. How many devices do you have with buttons EVERYWHERE? (Digital Cameras come to mind...with cellphones a close second.)
The fact the ipod's hitting it's 4th (5th if you count the mini) generation without a major overhaul of the ui shows how well designed it was in the first place.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Macobserver has a <a href="http://www.macobserver.com/article/2004/07/<nobr>1<wbr></wbr></nobr> 8.1.shtml"> few technical specs</a> of the new model. Apple claim that batterly life is improved by 50%, but I will believe that when I see it. The 20Gb model has been moved to the $299 price point, and the 40Gb model has been moved to the $399 price point, with the 15Gb model being phased out. My guess is that we will see a 60Gb model at the $499 price point when Apple is able to source a good number of the 60Gb 1.8" drives from Toshiba, but that's just a guess in my part.
Looking closely at the picture and the size of the lenses, I'll bet that Steve has a fake pair of those just for photos. There appears to be little or no refraction at the edges and, even with 1.7 super high index of refraction material, you would see something.
sig,
(-6.5, -8.25)
My gut tells me this is Jobs's way of getting back at Time. Newsweek is their major competitor anyway. And I don't know of any talks he's giving anytime soon; both Apple world wide developer's con and Macworld Boston both just finished.
Anm
And with that you just explained why most people buy iPods. Not to flame you, but most people don't care about support for anything beyond MP3 and "whatever iTMS uses". Most people also don't care about how the files are stored on the disk. Just the fact that an iPod can be used as a FW/USB external disk is good enough, although most people probably don't care about this either.
So, yes, once again it comes down to the interface. You can easily use it with one hand while driving, walking, whatever, and it's just fairly intuitive.
Apparently you haven't been reading Nvidia's, ATI's or Intel's press releases :)
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Apple's marketing department is the best. Not many vendors can get their products announced to the target audience before they officially exist, but Apple keep making front page news on slashdot.
I wonder how much it has to do with marketing in certain cases and instead with the shear enthusiasim of the the customers? For example are there AppleInsider.com or macrumors.com equivalents for other stuff such as Microsoft, Dell, HP, etc?
Few companies in the IT world provide a line of products where people are willing to cut off their arm to find out what's coming next. Its like people expect Christmas from Apple.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Memorie devices do have longer battery lives as the moving HD sucks a lot of juice but for the fast majority of people that is not a problem. Use it a couple of hours a day, plug it into the recharger when home and you never run out. People have already been trained to empty their pockets and recharge with phones and pda's.
Although I got to admit that I am currently looking for a cheap memory device since my current Nomad Zen battery life of about 8 hours means it often cuts out during work. Not good if you work in a factory and you have to spend the last hour of the night shift without music to keep you going.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Another, probably most important, drawback to a color screen is that it is very difficult to read in daylight. Since many people use iPods outside, it would probably be very frustrating.
You want scrolled lyrics? It's a portable music player, not a karaoke machine! It's meant to sit in your pocket or backpack, be controlled via the remote on the wire, and listened to. Why can some people simply not grok this?
And as for album art, I believe that is already embedded into the track metadata, so if you've got album art in your songs in iTunes it's already in the copies of those files on the iPod. Embedded album art appeared to me to increase the size of the song file by quite a bit, so I don't use it-- I would rather use that space to store more songs.
And a color screen would cut the battery life as well as increase the price-- there already enough people whining about the iPod's price and/or battery life, I don't want to have to hear more of them.
That should be moderated as "insensitive" considering that bandwidth isn't free. Thank you for making us web developer's lives more difficult.
indeed it may very well have been. the depth of field does seem a bit wonky and the ipod itself should have some light gradation considering the light source on Mr. Jobs. If nothing else I'm fairly sure that the ipod screen has been enchanced using photoshop, as is the style of the time.
And the 3G iPod makes your 2G iPod inferior, how? It still solves the problem you bought it to solve.
This is the computer industry. Get used to seeing betterfastercheaper weeks after you make a purchase. As it was in the beginning, it now and ever shall be.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
There's no radio because Apple wants to sell the same box internationally.
Personally, I don't listen to radio, so it's not a big loss to me.
Imagine a world where not every country used the same frequencies for the radio, scary isn't it?