ipod

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A few weeks ago Apple hired Mark Papermaster to be its new head of development over the iPod and iPhone lines. All well and good… except that Papermaster was also previously the vice-president of the microprocessor and chip technology at IBM, and there was a “no-compete” clause in his contract with his former employer. Papermaster has countered that he’s going to be involved in entertainment devices: something that IBM has never pursued and thus, the clause is invalid in his case. It’s now wound up in the courts, where IBM is suing to keep Papermaster from working at Apple.

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 ...

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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 ...

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Mac Rumors has found a story about a very cool technical innovation that Apple is researching. It involves wireless streaming of the iTunes on your home computer to your iPhone or iPod Touch, wherever you happen to be! So, say you’re driving through Colorado and your home is in Atlanta, and you want to dial up a song (maybe even a video) on your Apple appliance that you don’t happen to have on the device itself. So long as you’re in a Wi-Fi or cellular hotspot, you’ll be able to tell the iPhone or iPod Touch to “phone home” and stream the song or other file to wherever you are.

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, ...

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Ever since this past holiday season I’ve been the proud owner of an 80 gigabyte iPod classic. It’s gone with me just about everywhere: why just tell people about things like Forcery and my famous school board campaign commercial when I can show it to them, too! In addition to those and thousands of songs I’ve also put a ton of movies (the entire Star Wars saga, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Batman Begins, Sweeney Todd, Transformers, UHF just to name a few), not to mention every episode of Lost, along with several clips from Sesame Street and individual Garfield and Friends cartoons. And hundreds of photos, too.

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 ...

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A few weeks ago while visiting a church this crazy idea struck: put the Bible on an iPod! I’m not talking about MP3s of spoken passages from the scriptures. You can find those all over the place. What I wanted to know is: was there any software that puts the text of the Bible itself on an iPod, that can be taken with you and read anywhere?

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 ...

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Late last night I succeeded in finally putting every episode of Lost on my new iPod. And I didn’t buy them through iTunes and load ’em on the iPod either: instead I chose to rip them straight from my DVD sets.

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 ...

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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 ...

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I might have to get an iPod now after all.

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 ...

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State reps in Michigan want to give each child in that state a free iPod, courtesy of the taxpayers of that state.

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 ...

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