The iPhone 4s's new camera rocks though. That will be niiiiice on the next iteration of iPad.
Other than that - and the new Siri feature - it wasn't that big a deal, in my opinion. Oh well, maybe next September...
The app is $2.99 and is well worth the price, whether you want it for your children or for that kid in each of us :-)
Alright, so... who wants to be the first person to walk around the neighborhood with an iPod covering up their eyes?
Listening to rap and reggae on a borrowed iPod every day has helped Everett Dixon, a 28-year-old stroke victim at Beth Abraham Health Services in Bronx, N.Y., learn to walk and use his hands again.The Wall Street Journal has plenty more about this fascinating new use for personal media devices.Trevor Gibbons, 52, who fell out of a fourth-floor construction site and suffered a crushed larynx, has become so entranced with music that he's written 400 songs and cut four CDs.
Ann Povodator, an 85-year-old Alzheimer's patient in Boynton Beach, Fla., listens to her beloved opera and Yiddish songs every day on an iPod with her home health aide or her daughter when she comes to visit. "We listen for at least a half-hour, and we talk afterwards," says her daughter, Marilyn Povodator. "It seems to touch something deep within her."
Caregivers have observed for decades that Alzheimer's patients can still remember and sing songs long after they've stopped recognizing names and faces. Many hospitals and nursing homes use music as recreation, since it brings patients pleasure. But beyond the entertainment value, there's growing evidence that listening to music can also help stimulate seemingly lost memories and even help restore some cognitive function.
"What I believe is happening is that by engaging very basic mechanisms of emotions and listening, music is stimulating dormant areas of the brain that haven't been accessible due to degenerative disease," says Concetta Tomaino, executive director of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function, a nonprofit organization founded at Beth Abraham in 1995.
Dr. Tomaino, who has studied the therapeutic effects of music for more than 30 years, is spearheading a new program to provide iPods loaded with customized playlists to help spread the benefits of music therapy to Alzheimer's patients even at home. "If someone loved opera or classical or jazz or religious music, or if they sang and danced when the family got together, we can recreate that music and help them relive those experiences," she says.
Catch me anywhere out and about, and chances are I've got my iPod classic hanging on my belt. It's the first iPod I've ever owned, the model that came out two years ago with the 80 gigabyte hard drive. And yesterday was the annual press event where Apple rolls out the newest iPod models. I was expecting to not update to anything new until sometime next year, when I figured that flash storage will finally catch up to the capacity I demand that's currently only on hard drive. And that might happen then, since the latest iPod touch now maxes out at 64 gigs of flash memory (I'd way love to see at least that much on an iPod classic design).Then I saw the 5th generation of iPod nano.
And I am now lusting for one terribly.
FM radio (with Live Pause - sorta like audio DVR - and iTunes Tagging). Built-in voice recording capability. And... a video camera with 376 x 240 resolution.
I could literally not run out of neat ideas to try with this gimmick. All of them legal, of course!
(I can see it now: some pervert using an iPod nano to discreetly "look up" the skirts of unsuspecting ladies. Or even more likely: a certain cult that this blog has been monitoring and chronicling for awhile now that is already ambushing and hurting innocent people with hidden video cameras.)
The 16 GB iPod nano is going for only $179. Not a bad deal at all! So I'll probably be heading to that new Apple Store in Greensboro sometime soon: second visit ever, but first with a purchase in mind.
Darn you Steve Jobs!! I was going to wait until next year to get a new iPod! And you had to make go and make it too better already! :-)
Prosecutors say he took advantage of a warranty program by guessing the serial numbers of iPods still under warranty and claiming they were broken.Actually rather clever. I have to admire him for coming up with such a plan, even though it was obviously the wrong direction to direct such creativity toward.The company sent him 9,000 new ones over a year and a half.
Investigators say he turned around and sold those on the Internet.
Before writing anything else, two things need to be said: I have no idea what model of iPod the driver was using. And I'll be the first to admit that I also use my iPod while driving. I might as well come clean on that much because otherwise I wouldn't be able to share these thoughts to begin with...
Normally, I don't think it's much of a problem to talk on a cellphone or work an iPod while driving. It's not much different an effort than messing around with the radio trying to find a good station (and it's pretty darned rare to hear of any crash being caused by touching that dial). Just for safety's sake though, I don't usually do things like that unless I'm securely on the road (i.e. not about to make any turns) and not otherwise distracted by anything else. 'Cuz hey: at that moment the velocity of the car is gonna be my top priority.
But I also don't believe that a driver should be text messaging while going down the road. That's a lot of focus and attention getting demanded from a device as opposed to passive use just by talking into it, or using simple movements with your thumb.
And that's one of the reasons why I ain't been keen on getting an iPod Touch, either.
I've tried the iPod Touch before, either at an Apple Store or one of those that some of my friends own. Personally, I found the model to be much harder to passively use than the original design of the iPod Classic. Even a simple task like changing the volume requires considerable visual contact with the device. And to use the iPod Touch (and the iPhone for that matter) most efficiently, one more often than not has to use both hands.
None of these things have ever been an issue with the iPod Classic and its simple, yet extremely functional click wheel. A driver can very easily adjust volume and skip tracks in an album with only the gesture of a thumb... and without having to take the eyes off the road. If need be, a bare minimum of visual confirmation (again, not more than to glance at the car's stereo system) is all that's needed to change album or artist or podcast.
Is the same ease of use of the iPod Classic to be found on the iPod Touch? If it's there, I haven't experienced it. There's definitely not enough to want to trust myself with working an iPod Touch while on the road. I can and do however have plenty of confidence that I can work my iPod Classic while in my car... just as I do every day. But that's not something I could see doing with the iPod Touch at all.
Some are reporting that Apple might be preparing to drop the iPod Classic model entirely, and compel its users to adopt the iPod Touch instead. I can't think of a worse thing that Apple could do with its popular multimedia device (yeah, even worse than not giving us the option to easily replace the battery) than to abandon the iPod Classic. And I say that as one who is absolutely eager to eventually get an iPod Touch: I'm just waiting for the flash storage capacity to catch up with what I'm used to from the hard drive of the iPod Classic (though I still wouldn't wanna drive with it). There is not only room for both models but a substantial need for consumers to be able to choose between the two. And for those of us who have operating a motor vehicle as an integral part of our daily lives, the iPod Classic is obviously the more safety-conscious alternative.
Ideally, I would love for Apple to not only retain the iPod Classic, but to continue advancing it along with the latest technology (an iPod Classic with more than 80 gigs of flash storage would be nice, hint-hint).
I just hope that Apple isn't considering letting the iPod Classic go just because the company wants to push sales from its App Store for the iPod Touch and iPhone. Doing so would certainly neglect a substantial portion of its users who appreciate the iPod Classic for its proven reliability, its iconic look, and its quality of being safe to operate in most any circumstance.
It was thirty years ago this week that the Sony Walkman - the gadget that gave birth to portable music - made its debut. To commemorate the occasion, BBC Magazine asked 13-year old Scott Campbell (above) to yield his iPod for seven days in favor of a classic Walkman. And young master Scott wrote about the experience...
When I wore it walking down the street or going into shops, I got strange looks, a mixture of surprise and curiosity, that made me a little embarrassed.It's quite a fun read! Click here for more from Scott Campbell about his time with the Sony Walkman.As I boarded the school bus, where I live in Aberdeenshire, I was greeted with laughter. One boy said: "No-one uses them any more." Another said: "Groovy." Yet another one quipped: "That would be hard to lose."
My friends couldn't imagine their parents using this monstrous box, but there was interest in what the thing was and how it worked.
In some classes in school they let me listen to music and one teacher recognised it and got nostalgic.
It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.
A little over a year ago I posted the how-to tutorial on putting video content from a DVD onto an iPod. The workhorse program that I found perfect for my needs was HandBrake. When it came time to convert Lost Season 4 for my iPod classic ('cuz I like having all the Lost episodes hanging on my belt... along with my own movies, the Star Wars saga, etc.) I found that HandBrake had upgraded to version 0.9.3.So if you haven't checked it out yet, I heartily recommend giving HandBrake a looksee, because it has become significantly more powerful since the last time I used it en masse. HandBrake 0.9.3 introduces universal video input: it can now convert practically any format of video into MPEG-4, including DivX AVI files (very nice for putting those bootlegged Doctor Who episodes on an iPod or iPhone or any other portable video device). The video quality has been greatly improved, with many more presets and options available. Syncing of video and audio is said to be fixed, but I never saw any problems with that to begin with. I have however found that HandBrake 0.9.3 is far more stable in Windows Vista: previously, I had to re-install the program every time I wanted to convert a new DVD. Version 0.9.3 has fixed that bug: I've "fired it at the walls" (my own terminology for probing software for its limits) quite a bit over the past several days, and it keeps coming back and asking for more.
If you are using a Windows machine, you will likely have to purchase and install SlySoft AnyDVD, which does the actual work of decryption of a DVD. But HandBrake itself is free and open-source, and is available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.
The BulletFlight application software, available through the iTunes store, turns the iPod touch into a full-blown ballistics computer that helps hunters in the field plot their firing solution. Users can tap in the ammunition type, wind speed and conditions, and distance to target. Profiles for three weapons come loaded with BulletFlight, although more can also be added.
Maybe Apple should look into this concept further. I mean, wouldn't it be nifty if we could own an iGun? :-P
Now we know why IBM is really interested in locking Papermaster out of the Jobs Mob...
IBM has been developing something called "racetrack" memory and it's afraid that the technology it developed will wind up in the iPod and iPhone. And it's easy to see why Apple could conceivably be interested in implementing it in their own products:
- Racetrack memory could store 500,000 songs, compared to 40,000 in the current 160 gigabyte iPod classic. That is also equivalent to 3,500 full-length movies.Sounds kewl, eh? The only real obstacle is that IBM still deems racetrack memory to be in the experimental stage, and that we won't be seeing it in products for another decade.- Racetrack memory uses much less power. A single battery charge would last for weeks (though using the screen in video mode on an iPod with such storage would still drain some juice).
- Racetrack memory would last for decades, and not be subject to wear like hard drives or flash memory.
- Racetrack memory will be much cheaper to produce.
Here's a suggestion: Steve Jobs should direct Apple to buy out IBM. That way his company will have Papermaster's contract lock stock and barrel, and Apple can hustle like nobody's business to get racetrack memory in its toys by no later than 2010 or 2011.
A half-million songs on a single iPod. That would be like the last iPod that I would ever need :-)
Gizmodo has the full rundown of what went on at Apple's "Let's Rock" keynote address by Steve Jobs in San Francisco today. In what has become an annual event - and perhaps the most-watched PowerPoint presentation in history - Jobs unveiled the coming year's new iPod models and whatever features that die-hard Appleholics should be lusting after.So what new ubercoolness has the Jobs Mob for us this time? Frankly: not much. Jobs officially unveiled the new iPod nano, but if you've been paying attention to the rumors over the past few weeks this wasn't unexpected at all. The new iPod nano goes back to the "tall" design that existed before the "fat" one last year, and displaying a widescreen movie means watching it with the iPod nano sideways. It also features an accelerometer, which among other things lets you violently shake the iPod nano and it automatically goes into shuffle mode. And it'll be coming in a psychodelic array of new colors.
But that seems to have been it for any innovation that Apple followers might have been hoping for this year. Jobs also showed off the second generation of the iPod touch: basically the same but with the same tapered re-design as the nano, bigger storage (now all the way up to 32 gigs of flash memory) and an accelerometer (oh yeah and Niki+ built-in). The 80 gigabyte iPod classic (which is what I'm a proud owner of) is getting an "update" to 120 gigs and the 160GB model is being discontinued. iTunes 8 is coming out today (and is probably available even now) that has a new "Genius" feature which somehow figures out the kind of music that you like to listen to. NBC is making its shows available on iTunes and for $2.99 you can buy television episodes in high definition.
Not really all that much to get excited about, if you ask me. I still don't understand why Apple can't or won't engineer user-replaceable batteries into at least the classic and touch iPod (and the iPhone for that matter): they would make a huge amount of money from people who would gladly pay to have a spare battery or two in their pocket or purse or backpack for their iPod. I can think of at least two or three ways that Apple could engineer their appliances for replaceable batteries without sacrificing the products' aesthetic. So why isn't Jobs and crew taking up that challenge? It's the only real innovation left to pursue for the iPod/iPhone (in addition to beefier flash storage, and that's coming in the next few years anyway). There wasn't anything during today's product reveal that would compel me to upgrade to a newer iPod from the one I already own.
But I probably will be getting Lisa one of those new iPod nanos, if she can decide which color she wants :-)
Now, that is some seriously sweet innovation. I'm beginning to see why Apple devotees are so loyal to the House of Jobs :-)
In related news, there's been considerable buzz about a possible "iPhone nano" coming out later this year, said to be a "pay as you go" iPhone. Personally, I think an iPhone shuffle would be more fun: no display, and it dials random numbers whenever you use it :-P
So yeah, my iPod classic has become an indispensable part of my mobile persona. And I haven't had to face the problem yet, but the eventual lessening of my iPod's battery charge has been on my mind, 'cuz I'm the kind of guy who likes to be able to keep using the things he invests in for a long time. Unfortunately like every other iPod ever produced, Apple has not allowed individual users to easily replace the batteries. Steve Jobs thinks it would ruin the look of the iPod (yeah well what about all the millions of dollars that his company could make from selling spare batteries?!). So in the past few years a cottage industry has arisen of companies that provide spare batteries and tools for owners to open the iPod and swap the battery out. One that is widely considered among the most reputable is Milliamp LTD's ipodjuice.com, and I've written about them before. Although I've yet to use their services, I know lots of iPod owners who swear by them.
All well and good... except that when it came time to roll out the iPod classic, Apple made it much harder to remove the case and replace the battery without severely damaging the iPod! Previous iPods could be easily opened with ipodjuice.com's iOpener tool. But the iPod classic's harsh internal locks chew up and spit out the plastic iOpener when its use is attempted.
It took them several months, but ipodjuice.com now has a way to safely replace the iPod classic's battery.
You can't do it yourself like previous iPod models, but you can send your iPod classic to ipodjuice.com. They will replace the battery and usually be able to quickly ship it back to you on the same day. Some folks have told me that turnaround time to either side of the country from the company's location in San Antonio, Texas is less than a week.
Like I said, I haven't used ipodjuice.com yet, and I don't own any stake in the company (and the only time I've been to San Antonio was when I drove down from Austin during my trip this past December). But since this is something that a lot of iPod classic owners have been frustrated with, I thought I'd do my part and spread the word that there is now some help out there if they ever need it :-)
It took awhile but last night I found podBible, a neat (and free!) application created by a fellow named Brendan Ross. Using the Notes feature of the iPod, podBible puts the entire New Testament of the English Standard Version along with Psalms and Proverbs from the Old Testament on the iPod with an easy-to-navigate interface. Here you see podBible running on my own 80-gig iPod classic, displaying 1st Corinthians chapter 1 starting with verse 26 (however that is not Corinthian leather on my snazzy new iPod case...).
The one thing that I wish could have been better with podBible is if the complete Bible were possible. Apart from Psalms and Proverbs the rest of the Old Testament is not included, but that's only because of a firmware limitation within the iPod itself: the iPod allows for about a thousand notes and podBible takes up 450 of them according to the software's website. Brendan suggests that future iPods will overcome that obstacle.
In the meantime, if you're a casual to serious student of the Bible and want to have at least one testament for on the go, give podBible a looksee. I for one am glad to have it on my iPod: it's a rather good counter-balance to all those Elvis songs, Lost episodes, Beastie Boys music videos, Warner Brothers cartoons and Star Wars movies that hog up the rest of the thing :-P
I'll post more if anything further develops.
This took a lot of work. And when I was starting it off with Season 3, I wound up encoding most of those episodes, then found a much better way to do it and so I started the whole process all over again. But in the end, they were all done (and I might buy the Season 4 episodes over iTunes to add them to my iPod's inventory starting next month when Lost returns).
So how'd I do it, on a computer running Windows Vista? The first thing I did was use HandBrake, which is a free program for most platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux) that converts DVDs into iPod-portable MP4 files. You install HandBrake, load a DVD into it, and from there you can pick which individual episodes (or a single movie) you want to encode. If there are multiple episodes on a single DVD, you can batch encode each episode in a single session. I used the "iPod Low-Rez" preset, with Auto Crop and 2-Pass Encoding unchecked in the Video Settings menu, and the Lost episodes came out looking great!
HandBrake does have its problems though, and maybe it's just the fact that I'm doing this on my new Vista machine: every time I want to encode a new DVD, I have to actually re-install HandBrake. Otherwise it just keeps using the profile of the previous DVD for the new one (meaning you'll probably miss stuff getting encoded). But if you don't mind this minor hassle and want a free iPod video encoder that does a fantastic job, HandBrake is the way to go.
(But you'll also want to install AnyDVD - at least if you're using a Windows system - and have it running in the background. This is a codec that decrypts the DVD on the fly. Otherwise, HandBrake won't be able to do anything on most DVDs.)
After the episodes are ripped from the DVD and converted to MP4 files, you need to edit the metadata so that you can have them nicely organized on your iPod. There are many programs for Mac that do this admirably (Lostify seems to be among the best that I found) but if you're using Windows, there is an amazing dearth of metadata-editing utilities. The best one for Windows that I've found (so far) is Tagger. It lets you change just about everything on the metadata for your video files, including importing artwork. But if you use Tagger (and probably any other metadata software) to organize your episodic TV series, make sure that the Release Date field is in yyyy-mm-dd format, especially if these are files destined for loading on a newer iPod. Otherwise your episodes will probably be in reverse order or in no order at all (the Lost episodes from Season 3 were reversed when I first put them on my iPod, and unfortunately you can't edit the Release Date from iTunes: you need to use an external meta editor to fix this manually).
After doing all of this, it's just a matter of adding the episodes to your iTunes library, and then sending them to your iPod. So now I can watch Lost wherever I happen to be. Pretty cool, eh? :-)
A few days before Christmas, Lisa and I were at Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh and we wound up going into the Apple Store there. That was the first time that I ever beheld the video capability of the iPod. The first thing that I thought about was that this would be a neat way to carry around my video work to show to people. It was enough to make me forget about my initial reluctance to get an iPod (which has mostly been based on how they don't have user-replaceable batteries).So last week, on our way back from Georgia, we stopped at a Best Buy and I used a gift card that was a Christmas present from Mom, and got me an 80 gigabyte iPod classic. And I have to admit: this is a very addictive little gadget to have! I'm finally starting to understand why so many people are loyal iPod owners. As you can see from the photo, I've already got a few episodes of Monday Night Live put on it (now you know that this is my own iPod, 'cuz who else would put Monday Night Live on their iPod?) in addition to my school board commercials, Forcery (I did a whole new encoding of it and it looks amazing on an iPod), The Baritones, and it'll soon have Schrodinger's Bedroom on it as soon as I finish the edit with the longer end credits. It's also got Lost season 3 (and I'm working on getting the first two put on it also), all six episodes of Police Squad!, most of "Weird Al" Yankovic's music videos, a bunch of Looney Tunes cartoons, all six Star Wars movies, The Lord of the Rings and Matrix trilogies, Transformers, 300, King Kong (the 1933 original), Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Thing, O Brother Where Art Thou?, hundreds of songs making up dozens of albums, and a few podcasts including TheForce.net and Charles Stanley's sermons from First Baptist of Atlanta.
Those are just a few of the things that I've loaded on my iPod in the past week... and it's still got tons of room left! It hasn't even got half-full yet. I'm also going to put some of my favorite episodes of The Simpsons on it, maybe the entire Godfather saga, and probably Blade Runner (I got the 5-disc mega-ultimate DVD set for Christmas, so now I just have to figure out which version of the movie to put on the iPod :-).
By the way, this is the very first Apple product that I've ever bought. Time will tell if I wind up like most other Apple aficionados that I know, who stick with the product line throughout all its iterations. No doubt the Steve Jobs Mob is already working to roll out a better iPod: one with flash memory (this might be one of the last iPods with a hard-drive) but as good as I take care of stuff, I'm expecting this lil' gimmick to last me a plenty long time. Maybe I'll upgrade to a better model... in 2010 or so.
Okay so to all of y'all who already have iPods: what else should I put on this thing?
Numerous times on this blog, I've written about how the biggest thing keeping me from getting an iPod is that they don't have user-replaceable batteries. Which is "bass-ackwards" 'cuz Apple could be making a fortune by selling spare batteries. Because especially with a power-guzzling thing like an iPod (especially in video mode) it makes sense that consumers should be able to slap in a freshly-charged battery during a long plane ride or elsewhere that a power socket isn't readily available. But Apple still seems loathe to take this simple, yet potentially very profitable, measure. Oh sure, Apple does have a battery-replacement program... but it charges around $70 and then they don't even guarantee that you'll get your original iPod back!
Then I happened to find this news story about a company called iPodjuice.com. For $29 you send in your iPod, and the company replaces the worn-out battery. Not only that but you get your original iPod back, along with its contents (that you may or may not have paid for) intact! And supposedly the batteries that iPodjuice.com put in last much longer than the ones that Apple installs. They also service iPhones, and boast of being able to replace the battery and ship the iPhone back on the same day that it was received. iPodjuice.com is so confident of their batteries and service, that they have a ten-year guarantee from the date of purchase.
I won't commit to buying an iPod yet... but knowing that there is a company out there doing what Apple is consciously neglecting to do for its own product, does tantalize me toward possibly purchasing one in the near future. If only Apple wasn't so stubborn about this point: they would no doubt be selling more iPods than they already are.
That has to be one of the worst and most stupid proposed abuses of government power that I've ever heard of. The Detroit News expresses blunt outrage in an editorial about the proposal, that says it better than I can here.
You know, if this goes through, these Michigan politicians are going to be encouraging crime. Think about this for a minute: free iPods for people who might ordinarily not be able to afford an iPod. Well, is the government of Michigan going to be getting iTunes for all of those people to go along with their new iPods? Probably not. These kids will have an MP3 player but no MP3s. And the music for those iPods has to come from somewhere...
So if this goes through, the state of Michigan will in effect be encouraging illegal music downloading among its people. It would be like handing out free bongs but not supplying the marijuana: of course people would be looking for weed to use it with!
I'll bet the RIAA is already salivating at the legal prospects that would be coming with this, if this proposal passes (which hopefully it won't).
