Wed, 05 Sep 2007 15:48:00
New iPods
OK, so here’s what Apple announced today, iPod-wise:
The new Nano is short, fat and ugly. It’s essentially a slightly larger Shuffle with a screen, and it plays video, etc. No likey. iPod Classic...now we’re talking. Still hard-drive based, sorry Flash fans. Flash memory is still a little too expensive for devices with this kind of storage capacity. The new “Classic” has 80GB and - in an announcement that make me drool with lust - 160GB. One hundred and sixty gigabytes of storage. Can we say lossless? I knew we could. $349 for the 160, and I gotta tell you I am insanely tempted even though I just got my 5.5G iPod last year. I won’t buy it, but it’s nice to know it’s there. In case I hit the lottery.
The third one is the Flash-based iPod Touch. Think iPhone, only no phone. It does have Wi-Fi and Safari, so you can browse the web? Cool, I guess, but very limited in storage for now. 8GB and 16GB, $299 and $399 respectively. Obviously this is the future of all larger iPods, as soon as Flash RAM gets down in price to where hard drives are.
The other things announced were new colors for the Shuffle (Jody! Purple!), as well as the elimination of the 4GB iPhone. Also, the 8GB iPhone gets a $200 price drop. Also, a Wi-Fi iTunes Music Store for all the Wi-Fi-enabled iPods. That’s kind of cool. iPhone people can finally use tracks as ringtones, for an extra 99 cents. About a half-million select songs will let you pay 99 extra cents on top of the cost of the track, then make your own ringtone out of it.
Ringtones are a total fucking scam. I can’t believe how much money gets made. I make my own for my Verizon phone running the Brew OS. It’s not that hard. There’s already hacks to do it for the iPhone as well. Learn to roll your own, peoples!
All in all, today seems like kind of a placeholder, get-those-Christmas-dollars kind of thing. Nothing really revolutionary, and one god-awful design change (that new Nano is terrible) but some solid products. If you have an aging iPod or need more space, or really want the touch screen and Coverflow...now’s your chance.
By the way, iTunes for Windows is almost tolerable now. That last update improved performance a bit. Not enough to call it good, but enough that I don’t swear at it every 14 seconds. Since new iPods mean a new iTunes will be (or maybe already is - yup, it is) available...here’s to hoping they don’t screw it up.
Posted by JimK at 03:48 PM on September 05, 2007
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Categories: Technobabble (Technology)
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Technorati: ipod
itunes
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Comments:
#2 Posted by jo-jo 
on 09/05 at 06:33 PM -
fuck man.
i hate my shuffle. so very much. haven’t used it in months. it’s basically a glorified paperclip. i need to be able to see what songs i’m selecting. fortunately, i bought it was a best buy gift card we traded credit card points in for, so it was theoretically free…
but… PURPLE. yeah, i have to hold myself back from buying one just for that reason alone :(
#3 Posted by mgnmfrc1 on 09/05 at 06:51 PM -
Must Listen to Apple Kitteh
#4 Posted by Harley W Daugherty on 09/05 at 11:37 PM -
i got a shuffle and a nano… wife lives the nano, eh shuffles is good for when i go on my walks with my boxers…
#5 Posted by supercore 
on 09/06 at 04:09 PM -
Currently drooling over the 160gb model. My 30gb ipod has been amazing for 2 years now but I hate to leave half my music still on my computer. And what’s the point of an 80gb if I know I’ll just end up filling it within a few months? I think you’ll see a bunch of people upgrading to the 160 that have been sitting on the fence for a few years waiting for that next BIG jump in capacity.
#6 Posted by jo-jo on 09/06 at 04:21 PM -
my ipod is less than a year old. i’m contemplating waiting for the first price drop in the 160gb before partaking… mainly because my next electronic purchase is going to be a damn wm6 phone when verizon decides to join the rest of the providers with up to date phones :P
#7 Posted by JimK on 09/06 at 05:11 PM -
I’m just waiting for the 160gb (or 200 or whatever it isby next year) touch 16:9 one. Then I’ll be on it like stink on a monkey.
#8 Posted by Drumwaster on 09/06 at 06:48 PM -
Learn to roll your own, peoples!
Teach us, O Half-Vast One…
I have to use a pipe. (They’re a bitch to clean, lemmetellya...)
#9 Posted by Buzzion on 09/07 at 02:51 PM -
Jimk, you might enjoy that. I know you’ve taken stabs at the apple fanboys before.
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#1 Posted by working_man
on 09/05 at 06:13 PM -
wouldn’t you be pissed if you had just spent $599 on the iPhone a month ago…