iPod Generation 4 Released

I_am_Rambi writes "According to MSNBC "The considerably tweaked fourth-generation iPod will roll out this week, and Newsweek got an advance peek. It looks a bit different, operates more efficiently, has a few more features and costs less. Here are the highlights...." Improved battery life, upto 12 hours, a click wheel, more efficient menus, multiple on the go play list, and probably one of the best changes is a lower price. $399 (down from $499) for a 40 gig, $299 (down from $399) for a 20 gig, and there are no 15 gig versions." And you can read Apple's iPod site for the full details.

Comments

15gb

[rbolkey]

I guess they had to get rid of it. With $100 drop across the table, they would have been cheaper than the minis. Unfortunately, my price point would have been the 15gb with the $100 drop.

Firmware update

[Saven Marek]

is their a firmware update to bring the new features to my older ipod??? battery life is down allot and its only 2 years old. It still works but not as well as it used to and an update to get 50% more battery life would bring mine back to a new state, if it is by working differently instead of new battery technology, which I doubt.

anyone?????

The Nets Biggest Adult Anime Gallery's

european price markup - why?

[davids-world.com]

the European version sells for 284 (370) Euros excluding sales tax (which is usually another 15-20 percent!). That is USD 353 plus tax. Why the markup?
Are there higher import taxes for electronics from Taiwan?

Or is the Eurpean market just considered not so competitive?

(Btw: Canon is doing that as well with their digital cameras. Really annoying!)

Re:european price markup - why?

[Oddly_Drac]

"For example, in the UK at least, you can return anything you buy within 10 days of buying it, for full refund, even if you simply decide you don't like it anymore."

14 days. It's a standard contractual 'cooling off' period where you can suddenly decide you don't want it. However, collecting on that clause in the Sale of Goods Act is _extremely_ hard unless you have something heavy to bludgeon the store with. Woolworths, for example, decided that they didn't want to play in terms of computer games, DVDs and CDs. I tend to go around pointing out that signs taped to the cash desk don't actually invalidate statutory rights...

One little known clause is 'fitness of purpose'; anything you buy has to be fit for the purpose for which it was bought.

Of course, my favourite is the implied and statutory 12 month warranty. I've had many an argument over a limited time warranty before now.

However, this is all normally policed by Trading Standards, and they _really_ have their hands full dealing with internet purchases/scams.

BTW, the major cost increase in the UK compared with anywhere else is importation duties and the recognition of the UK market as a cash cow...

OGG Vorbis, what does it take to get the support?

[coe]

Taken directly from apple's spec sheet for the new ipod:

--
Audio formats supported: AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 (32 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible, AIFF, Apple Lossless and WAV
--

I mean what does it take for us to get the OGG support into iPod? For 3 generations of this machine, one major target audiance of "switch" campaing has been unix users. We, the guys who support and now have started to love the new apple have begged for this support into iPod.

4th generation. And still no support. Lots of feedback sent, even on the official apple forums and nothing. Not even an official explanation why not.

How many generations this will take?

For example, I have over 110GB of music and other audio recorded in OGG format, rendering iPod totally useless for me. I did a quick "hey, whats your status" in my local university and situation was the same. iPod feels, looks and sounds too good to be true, everyone of us wants one. Expect for one big but.. where in the hell is the inhouse OGG support.

I know the problems with ARM processor inside iPod and lack of integer based OGG coded, but now that there is one (tremor) (http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/) and it's even in BSD license, I cant belive apple choose yet again to leave OGG support out of iPod.

Could someone please take a club and bash the ingorant iPod tech division to little pieces, since I and many like me, would pay huge sums for this support.

It could even be "silent" "no warranty" "not supported" type of deal, just could someone please answer why cant this one of the most advanced piece of modern consumer technology lack the most important feature..

OGG VORBIS - Support.

Apple are upgrading existing orders

[gataylor]

My fiance ordered a 20GB iPod for me on Friday (through Apple's online UK store). Apple just sent her an email saying:

Today Apple announced an exciting new generation of iPods!
We have automatically upgraded your 20GB iPod to the new 40GB iPod, at no additional cost and added the iPod Carrying Case, Wired Remote and Earphones (which are no longer included with the new 40GB iPod) free of charge.

Kudos to Apple for doing this!

Geoff

Re:Apple are upgrading existing orders

[archen]

Apple is well known for doing this. Not so long ago people who bought a Mac with OSX 10.2 got an upgrade to 10.3 if they had purchaced one within 3 months of the new OS upgrade. My iBook had a defect with the logic board and Apple just replaced it for free - 10 months after the warrenty expired. They payed for all shipping and handling and expenses. They also offered to upgrade my CD/DVD drive but I already had the newer version. Try getting THAT kind of service from Dell.

SO WHAT?!

[SPYvSPY]

I have found both the dock and the carrying case to be nearly useless. Also, the dock probably costs Apple about two cents to make (assuming they've recovered the cost for their plastic mold), and the carrying case probably costs them about thirty cents (a little cardboard, some fabric and some elastic). I doubt this is where Apple is getting its cost savings. Anyway, your better off buying aftermarket items that are just plain better.

Re:SO WHAT?!

[Monkelectric]

Its not about cost savings. That is a time honored tradition with electronics. It's all psychology. Say you buy a PDA and it doesn't come with a cradle and screen protectors and a protective case. Said PDA is also very cheap, say, 300$.

The PDA company then sells the cradle, protectors and case at far above their "value", knowing that a large percentage of customers will just grab them when they buy the PDA. That way they get to advertise their 300$ price ont he low profit item (the PDA), and make quite a bit more on high profit items like stylses and screen protectors and what not.

Re:Oh, the POOR ogg people.

[raygundan]

I believe AAC uses vector quantization similar to VQF, and is "where the technology went" after that debacle. I will reiterate my recommendation for everybody again, because I don't think I was very clear:

Keep all your music encoded LOSSLESSLY, with somethig like FLAC. Convert to the lossy-format-du-jour as necessary, whether that's mp3, ogg, vqf, aac, wma, or whatever. It's much, much easier than going back to the source, and you can do it programatically. Even CDs have to be fed in, and if you have any LPs/tapes/etc..., you're screwed on reencoding. (realtime only, plus editing for length, noise cleanup, and manual tagging)

It Does Not Matter what tech looks like the "next big thing." You will guess wrong at some point, so pick a plan that saves your source quality (FLAC), and uses an open codec that can't disappear. Then if you're wrong, you have a backup plan that doesn't take forever.