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Apple May Introduce New iPod on Wednesday
UnHolier than ever writes "Apple may be planning to announce a 'revamp' of the iPod on Wednesday. Reporters from across Europe have been asked to view a broadcast presentation by Steve Jobs at the BBC headquarters. Theorized features for this new iPod include a full or wide-screen with touch controls, ala the ever-popular iPhone. '[An analyst with Goldman Sachs] believes that a new line of iPods will boost demand for the gadget from Goldman's present forecast of about 19.8 million units for Apple's key first quarter - the reporting period that covers Christmas. However, that still suggests that demand for iPods will be flat, at best, compared with the same period last year, when Apple sold about 21 million devices.'"
If there really is a wi-fi-touch-screen-OSX based iPod coming out that may or may not be based on the iPhone, they better make sure there is no mic. This could make a fantastic Skype handset. And damage the iPhone business model. Not that unlocking hasn't done that already though...
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Reading this and the original article is like day and night.
Reading your posts is practically orgasmic for me. So much work, so barely comprehensible, and really, your points would almost be reasonable if not for the veneer of insanity you seem to try so hard to add.
You, sir, rock.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Speculation for Nerds. News that may matter.
Let's wait wednesday and see if we have at least something to talk about, mmmkay?
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
With 6 billion or so people on the planet, sooner or later the market will reach saturation, and ipod sale are going to become flat. I'm not really sure why flattening of iPod sales is big news.
That said, I have a 3rd gen iPod, and it's getting close to the time to replace it, I have hopes for a widescreen color iPod in the 100 gb range, So if it's avaiable soon, I may very well bee the 19 million and first sale this year.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
If you'd bought a Sony PSP you'd have had well-creamed pants years ago!
If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
I just bought a 8 GB Nano today. And in less than a week, it's going to be vintage. Yes!
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
Ok, so it's an iPhone without the phone?
Engadget has a helpful rumor roundup - just to keep the /. discussion lively with speculation. Aside from the next-gen touchscreen iPod, there's the Beatles' catalogue on iTMS, direct-to-iPhone (iPod) music store downloads, and increased capacity in the Nano. "Analysis" (i.e., educated speculation and wishful thinking) available from CNet, ArsTechnica, and AppleInsider (1, 2, 3).
Ha! Lets not err on the side of caution here, I thought it was a dead cert. Especially since those new iPod photos appeared which Apple promptly issued a take-down for.
Is there something wrong with wanting more than one pair of creamed pants?
Why hasnt apple put AM/FM/XM/whatever radio capabilities in the iPods.
I still listen to radio ocasionally when I want to listen to something different.
It's like it was written in English by some insane paranoid in some bare-lightbulb, single-room apartment....then translated into Chinese....then French....then back into English.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
I'm in store for a new iPod, so I can't wait for the new release. Not because I can't wait for some panty-knot feature, but simply because if I can get a better product for the same price... well, go figure.
;-)
That said, at this point all I can hope is that the new product won't suck. As a lot of iPod users will likely agree, from the very beginning the iPod was a great product. All you wanted, and just a tad bit more. (No WiFi, less storage, lame... yada yada yada, sure...) With every new model, I sort of cringed, expecting to see a product with some stupid feature that would make the iPod less usable. Something that Sony might pull off. But that has never happened, and I'm hoping that it won't. With that in mind, I somehow find it hard to imagine an iPhone minus the phone. That would sort of be lame, and actually stop me from buying it.
But then again, I've been an on-and-off Mac user for over 20 years now. I probably have followed the Apple product life cycle to a certain extent in the past.
http://www.misterbg.org/AppleProductCycle/
So, we know Apple are calling in journalists from all over Europe, we know that in the iPhone launch presentation Steve Jobs said Europe would get the iPhone in Q3 2007, and we know there are only another 27 days of Q3 2007 left. So why are people jumping to the conclusion that this is a iPod launch?
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Could this post be related to this? The link to the bogus google video especially ...
it probably still won't be as good as an iPod with Rockbox installed on it...
Summation 2
There is a rumour that instead of wi-fi, the new iPod will use this technology:
r .html
http://lunchat.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/01/klee
thus it may not have any skype/wireless capabilities.
The article is all conjecture. Why not post "Apply may not release a new IPOD on Tuesday?
I may introduce an iPod Killer on Wednesday.
On the other hand, I may not.
Great news, huh?
Why go to BBC headquarters and ask European reporters to this presentation just to announce a new model of an existing product? Perhaps instead Steve will be announcing that the iPhone will soon be on sale in Europe. Unlocked, of course. AT&T's deal is only for the US, right?
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats
My 2nd Gen 20GB iPod is still kicking around. And that sucker was expensive. 500 large in 2002. Fortunately I didn't buy it but it's proved its worth everytime.
WTF are you yapping on about?
I have never heard that comment about the miss rate. Ever. You would think after the years and tens of millions of iPods delivered that this would be well known. Further, you would expect that persons such as myself that primarily use a separate charger would have noticed. I think your friend is passing on some bad data.
Yeah, I smell bullshit. Besides, the iPods buffer the music so even if there was a read error there is plenty of time to re-read the data before it gets played....
Can you provide some non-anecdotal evidence to back this up? I can boot any number of machines off an OS installed on my iPod (handy to have one for diagnostic purposes), and it runs just as reliably as it does off an internal drive. With a 1 in 100 miss rate, that sure as hell would not be the case.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
That's a load of rubbish. Because of the compression (MP3 or AAC) the bits being wrong lead very quickly to extremely noticeable defects (clicking and popping noises) in the tracks. MP3 is quite robust and remains playable, but AVI files tend to get completely unplayable with a few bits changed in the wrong places. I've never had this problem or any data-loss problems on my iPod - I've had it once when burning a backup CD on a rewritable disc which must have been used too many times.
If you've got those problems with your iPod it's a defective unit. I can believe that iPod units may have a failure rate of 1 in 100 (which is actually very low compared to most modern gadgets), but on a properly functioning iPod, this memory miss rate isn't true.
That's complete bullshit. I regularly copy gigs upon gigs of data on and off my 80 gig ipod and I've /never/ had it corrupt anything. Ever. In fact, I just md5summed a DVD ISO that I shoved on there a few months ago and it's exactly the same as the one on my drive. With a "1 in 100" miss rate, there's no way that'd be possible.
s.clementmonkey@sympatico.ca, remove the 'monkey'.
I'll never understand the obsession with using a portable device as a VOIP phone. Don't you have enough regular minutes? Is it really worth the hassle of switching back and forth between the two services? Don't you just have a cell phone that works fine?
The contracts Apple signed in Europe give Apple 10% of the revenue the wireless provider gets from activating the phone.
If you unlock your iPhone and don't use it on the contracted provider, then Apple loses that money.
So yeah, the unlocking has likely hurt Apple's business model.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
That's because nerds like to use technology just for the sake of technology - it doesn't matter if it makes your life easier or not, it's all about using it because "you can".
At a previous job, I was full time and was working with several contractors. I asked one of the contractors to e-mail me a document that I needed and he said "no, I'll setup an FTP server on my machine and you can login and download it" and he then spent the next two hours fiddle-farting around with trying to setup and run an FTP server on a secure corporate network on PCs on which you couldn't really install much as you weren't allowed Admin privileges. Did I mention that I sat less than 20 feet away from him?
After allowing him to waste two hours of time, I told him that in the future when someone asks you to do something, it doesn't matter if there is a "cooler" or "more nerdy" way of doing it, you do it in the fastest and most convenient way possible. Needless to say, when it came time to start cutting contractors loose, he was one of the first ones to go.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
Assuming you think news should only be about provable facts....well, it is certainly a fact that some people think that Apple may introduce a new iPod on wednesday. Whether that is is important or not* is a matter of debate, but it is certainly a real fact, and therefore news.
*it does have very tangible effects, in the form of moving markets.
Touchscreen seems nice at first, but after a bit of thought, it adds flashiness, but takes away from usability. I like the physical controls that allow me to use my ipod without having to look at it. The edges of the scroll-circle-thing guide my fingers where they need to be without ever having to take it out of my pocket. Having this on a screen, while nice looking, would really screw with my aim.
Wireless. More space than a Nomad. Still lame.
Someone please mod this flamebait down and then fire the moderator who called it "insightful."
you must be new here.
"I realise this is not a very popular opinion but it's the truth, and there for needs to be said" -Bill Hicks
When whatever component in a computer encounters a "miss" it goes to the layer below that and asks for the data again. You still get your data when a miss occurs, but it takes much longer. When a processor needs some data it goes to cache, if CPU cache doesn't have it, its a miss and it looks at RAM, if RAM doesn't have it its a miss and it goes to the hard drive. Within the hard drive there is a cache, if it isn't in there thats another miss, and then the hard drive spins up and goes to where that piece of data is. 1 in 100 is not that an unreasonable number for any of these steps, but the other number stated by the OP is, so odds are he completely misunderstood what his friend was saying and is not remembering the discussion correctly. Each time there is a miss, your data takes longer to be read by the processor, but the data is not degraded in any way.
You can look it up on wikipedia if you want.
(yes, this post is something of a simplification of what really happens, and IANAEE... not yet anyways)
Describing a cache miss to explain what the grandfather describes goes beyond generous and well into misleading. He talked about detection in the human ear, which has nothing to do with the cache. His friend presumably doesn't have anything to do with the engineering side of working for a hard drive manufacturer.
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
The stuff about the human ear was what the OP concluded from his friend's statements, not what his friend said, at least thats what I got out of the post. He ran with something somewhat correct to an entirely incorrect end.
;)
At least, thats what I think his friend said. Think of it this way: I'm being nice to his friend, and very mean to the OP.
they might not!!! ;)
...about the demand for iPods? I have a feeling that they have always underestimated the demand.
Go Timecube! Show those oppressors!
Is FLAC support. I know, I could use rockbox and all of that shit..but i'd rather not.
I was so used to my 3G iPod, and when I got the current one, I was shocked at how the centre "ok" button isnt touch sensitive! Its an actual button! ARRRGH! It feels horrible clicking buttons when you're used to touch sensitive devices! Its a little like how Im quite a fast typer on a computer, but barely have the strength to type at all on a typewriter keyboard!
---
I'm pretty confident they will release a second gen iPhone in the US, which will also be the first gen iPhone for Europe. I'm expecting 3G support, GPS, and I expect memory capacity to remain the same. They will probably add a few new features, as well as tweaks to the UI. The biggest change, I think, will be the price. I expect the price of the second gen iPhone to drop to about $400 and $500, about $100 cheaper than they are now. If they plan to sell 10 million iPhones by next June, they're definitely going to have to lower the price. This will also give people enough time to start putting together their wish lists for Christmas. If they don't release a second gen iPhone on Wednesday, expect it in October with the Leopard release. A nano iPhone would not be the biggest surprise either.
It claims it will have some specs that the iPhone had (the touch screen), but does this mean the price is also going to be compared to the iPhone also? New iPod... at least $400 - $500... Might as well pick up the iPhone for another $100 and ditch the old cell phone anyways! What makes me worry the most is the price... right around the Christmas season they are speculating. Which is only going to drive the price even higher. Can you imagine what would have happened if the iPhone was released around the holidays... it's like the Cabbage Patch Kids/Tickle Me Elmo/Ferby all over again, too. Really, what the question here is if I will risk my life to get one of these... Very unlikely at the moment. Sorry Apple.
Isn't this the launch of the reshaped 'Fat Nano?' Link
And if it is...quit crying if you don't like it. Form factor isn't everything and i'd damn sure rather have a wider screen, especially if the HDD space is larger than 8GB. Look at the pictures, the screen is like 2x bigger. It's not like the entire nano is ALL BIGGER, its shorter lengthwise.
Oh, 2.3 inches is just so wide... (sarcasm)
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
Why? Do you think iPods don't have built-in obsolescence?
I'm certain that Apple deliberately do stuff like sealing batteries in precisely because they want people to upgrade every few years. People who can replace batteries for themselves might be more inclined to buy a new battery than a new iPod when it starts to fail. And it will fail after a couple of years. So use Apple's service you might say, except it is deliberately designed to put people off from using it, being expensive, requiring you to send your iPod off, and to accept some other iPod (new, refurbished or used) in its place.
There would be absolutely nothing at all preventing Apple from producing an iPod with a removable battery. Virtually every phone in existence (except Apple's of course) manages this feat. Many rival MP3 players have removable batteries. It's strange how Apple's iPhone also seals in the battery isn't it? Almost as if they expect people to buy a new iPhone after the battery dies in the present one.
It's not flamebait to call out a company for what it is clearly doing. It's just too bad that someone such as the EU can't haul them over the coals for it.
My money is on an iPhone type/size unit without the phone bits. I makes sense from a production and user point of view.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
I dont think anyone really wants creamed pants......
Ah, numbers from the PDOOMA methodology.
What? You've not heard of PDOOMA? It's sweeping the Internet, the TV and the newspapers of the world! It's the latest in business analysis and information.
PDOOMA = Pulled Directly Out Of My Arse.
Just like the 1/100 memory miss rate. Nice work. You may have a career in punditry waiting for you somewhere.
I'm not the OP, but I'd love to have such a device myself. In my case, I had a cell phone, which cost me over $50 CAD per month, and which I'd use for about 15 minutes per month because:
As such, the two places I spend over 90% of my time in, the phone simply wouldn't work. Switching providers in my case wouldn't help (for unknown reasons, nobody gets cell reception in my office building unless you stand next to a specific set of windows in a corridor, or go outside).
Now, both locations do have excellent WiFi coverage, and my Vonage time is dirt cheap compared to what a cell would cost (in fact, as I already subscribe to the softphone service, the added airtime cost to me would be zero). Sure, it may not work in every location I go -- but then again, I'm one of those (apparently rare) human beings who doesn't want to use their phone in restaurants, movie theatres, or while driving the car.
I like being free of the oppressive shackles that are the Canadian cell phone industry. A good VoIP phone would be, to me, the best of both worlds (and to me "good" means that it should have a mobile browser, PIM that can sync to my Mac, and Bluetooth to support my wireless headset, without it costing me an arm, leg, and my firstborn).
Yaz.
The AAC is engineered by the same people who created mp3 compression. It has nothing to do with Apple, and in fact it is less patent/royalty encumbered than the mp3. And of course AAC does not stand for apple audio codec, but you already knew that was coming.
There happens to be a new website on the internet called google. You can visit it at www.google.com and search for amazing information. You should actually try it sometime when you get a free moment.
So the real question is, can they invent enough new features to encourage people with aging 2/3G's (like myself) to buy the new one, or will it just be a "New iPod" (tm). I think I'll be in line for a Video if a new one doesn't change enough.
And I just bought a refurb'd 20gb HP iPod for $100 from Woot! Oh, the horror, the horr.... eh, maybe not.
NP: the tapping of my feet as I wait for my iPod.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Seems to me that we're behaving ourselves, actually. The weeks approaching the launch of the iPhone had about 4 - 5 "news" articles per week.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Yesterday my father wanted to get a Video IPOD after seeing how well I used mine. So me, my family, and my father trucked through a Best Buy, Target, Walmart, Circuit City and lo and behold ... NO Ipods to be found. An employee informed me that they could not order anymore until the "new" version comes out.
So in the meantime, they lost a sale.
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
My current PC has a huge LCD, keyboard, mouse etc...
A mac-mini is too low range, and the power mac is too big. An iMac would be fine, but it comes with LCD.
Dear Apple, please build a simple "Mac", not a power-, mini- or i-Mac, just a Mac. The cube was cool btw.
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
The BBC rakes in TONNES of cash with sales of their programmes worldwide and I'm getting sick and tired of being taxed twice to watch television. They seem to be actively fighting a decent distribution scheme in an effort to prop up Microsoft's DRM-take-over-the-world-mania.
Well as the iPlayer downloads are free (OK, with the MS DRM baggage), selling them on iTunes would be annoying.http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/
It's on the internets. Stop arguing.
does the iPod Touch wi-fi support WPA2 security?