iPod - page 9

Apple’s sexily diminutive new iPod Nano, replete with 1.13-inch touchscreen, certainly looks like iOS. It might even — held close enough to the nostrils — smell like iOS. But it’s nothing of the sort.

Backstage at today’s iPod Event, an Apple spokesman confirmed that the new iPod Nano is not running iOS.

That makes sense, given Jobs’ own failure to identify the Nano as a new iOS-driven device, or his failure to brag about a wide range of apps to run on the device. It also makes sense from the engineering perspective of trying to shove a chip powerful enough to run a current version of iOS into a Shuffle-sized footprint.

Rather, what we see in the new Nano is a skin layered most probably over the traditional iPod Nano operating system, with some of iOS multitouch software scraped out and grafted onto it.

The move makes sense for Apple. The new Nano is too small to really avail itself of multitouch, but iOS is Apple’s sexiest operating system, as well as one synonymous with touch. Apple couldn’t well make a touchscreen iPod at this point without making it at least look like iOS.

We wonder, though, if confusion will ultimately set in. If it looks like iOS, but doesn’t run apps, isn’t that going to confuse customers? We imagine that in the brainpan of one Apple Store Genius is throbbing with premonitory headache right now.

Here’s a rumor that has my heart leaping in my chest: later today, Apple intends to offer the option of 3G with their fourth-gen iPod Touches.

According to the rumor, the new iPod Touches would have the option of 3G, similar to the iPad. For users willing to pay a hundred dollars more for their Touch, it would come with a built-in tray for a 3G micro-SIM.

I can’t tell you how onboard with this rumor I am. While I’ve debated whether or not a retina display and FaceTime would be enough to get me to upgrade my third-gen iPod Touch, the addition of 3G to the fourth-gen would be enough for me to dump my iPhone for good. Who needs it when you’ve got 3G, a multitasking operating system like iOS 4 and a SkypeOut account?

We’re only four hours away from knowing the truth. Right now, I’d say that I think 3G is on the iPod Touch roadmap eventually, but perhaps not today. I think a lot will rest on whether or not the next iPod Touch gains any thickness. It looks like Apple already intends on cramming two cameras into the iPod Touch, which is already a miraculous spatial trick: getting a 3G radio in there without increasing the device footprint would be a design miracle.

Flickr user Marc Krenn has posted this amazing mock-up of what we might possibly expect the new, updated iPod Shuffle / Nano with the 1.13-inch touchscreen to look like when Steve Jobs finally unveils it this afternoon. I think he’s probably nailed it except for the colors: Apple’s chromatic preferences of any given season are always unpredictable.

While I’m thinking about it — and this is as good a place as any to muse — there’s been a lot of debate as to whether this new touchscreen iPod is going to be an update to the Nano or the Shuffle. We’ll know in about five hours, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder if Apple doesn’t intend to converge both models into a single device.

After all, both the Nano and the Shuffle are aimed to the same kinds of consumers: the budget conscious, the footprint conscious and the athletically minded. If Apple can add a touchscreen display to the Shuffle, what’s the point of the Nano, and if the Nano gets as small as the last-generation Shuffle… well, what’s the point of the Shuffle at all?

There’s some holes in this theory, I know: the Nano has a widescreen display for watching movies, which this new Nano/Shuffle/whatever would be hopeless for. It also comes with a camera, which is obviously going to be left out of this new design. But if Apple intends on trying to push iPod customers who want a camera and video capabilities up the ladder to the entry-level iPod Touch, and if they can bring a Shuffle/Nano hybrid down to below, say, $100… I wonder if what we’re seeing here is Cupertino’s attempt to simplify the iPod line-up by merging two distinct devices into one.

Thoughts? Hit us up in the comments.

[via 9to5Mac]

July’s leak of a tiny 1.18-inch touchscreen being mass produced for Apple seemed so tiny that it had to be destined for the iPod Shuffle, but now Apple Insider is dropping a doozy of a rumor on us. It’s not for the Shuffle at all. It’s for the Nano.

The more we think about it, the more this makes sense, because it shows that Apple is bringing multitouch down — methodically and progressively — through its iPod line-up. It wouldn’t make sense to give the Shuffle a touchscreen and not the Nano. Apple Insider supports its theory with evidence from overseas manufacturers that the new touchscreen iPod will have a 30 pin dock connector, just like the Nano, making it capable of being easily plugged into existing iPod docks.

This theory might seem contradicted by the iPod Classic, which isn’t pegged to get a touchscreen, but at this point, the Classic’s going to be a ghost the second Apple finally manages to upgrade the Touch to 128GB. It’s sole purpose at this point is to accommodate the niche number of consumers with huge media collections — a constabulary to which I happily subscribe — who want to carry every song and movie they own around with them. If and when the Touch doubles its capacity this generation or the next, you can kiss the Classic goodbye.

Apple is today sending out invitations to a special event to be held on Wednesday, September 1st in San Francisco. The event starts at 10:00 AM PST.

Unless Apple is getting into the guitar business, the image on the invite suggests a music focus. The September event is traditionally when Apple rolls out new iPods for the holiday buying season. This year, Apple is expected to update the iPod touch with a Retina Display and FaceTime. An update to the Apple TV is also rumored, as well as $0.99 TV show rentals.

As Mac fans, we all know that Apple habitually throws an iPod event in September, where the obsolete iPods allowed to grow dusty in our love are whisked off behind the killing sheds, while the shiniest new models are simultaneously heralded. These events usually see an updated iPod Touch and a new version of iTunes, and this year, everyone’s expecting word on the new streaming iTunes features and perhaps a relaunched, iOS-driven AppleTV called the iTV.

Needless to say, excitement is high… but Apple still hasn’t tipped their hat on when we can expect the conference. Well, you might want to pencil September 7th in for following our iPod Event liveblog, because Bloomberg’s sources are now saying that date’s a lock.

Of course, since Apple traditionally doesn’t alert the press to an iPod Event until a week ahead of time, we won’t know if Bloomberg’s sources are right until the end of this month… but Apple certainly can’t put it off much later. If you’re hungry for a new iPod Touch or even an updated AppleTV, earmark some credit for that date.

Women out for a stroll at a busy farmer’s market found themselves starring in one man’s iPod video upskirt movies.

Erik Alvarado, 35, landed in jail after shooting video at least 15 women at Saturday’s downtown farmer’s market in Salt Lake city’s historic Pioneer Park.

A sharp-eyed shopper told a police officer that a man had “a mirror or something” inside his shoe, according to jail documents.

Police discovered that Alvarado was in fact walking around with an iPod Nano strapped to his shoe. Alvarado captured video with the Apple device by placing his foot under victim’s skirts.

Take it from me: Germans love their iPods, and they love their hard-boiled eggs. The eiPott, then, is a cute little example of German kitsch: it’s an egg holder shaped like an abstraction of an iPod.

You’d think it’d be hard to get upset about such an innocuous little piece of dishware, but Apple apparently did, bringing a lawsuit against koizol, the manufacturer… and now a German high court says that koizol needs to redesign and rename the product, citing potential confusion.

This is ridiculous. While we certainly understand Apple needs to protect their trademarks and brands, the eiPott only shares the most abstract similarity in form to the iPod, and — needless to say — none of the iPod’s functionality. They’re not trying to confuse consumers: they’re trying to entertain them with a tongue-in-cheek homage to one of the most popular brands on Earth.

[via TUAW]

Like prison cakes, iOS updates tend to have secret files baked into the firmware, each capable of sawing through the bars of Apple’s own internal clampdown to free details on upcoming products. The latest beta of iOS 4.1 is no exception, offering a tantalizing first glimpse of three upcoming iOS devices.

The first two tipped products aren’t particularly surprising: a reference to an iPod 4,1 is clearly pointing towards next month’s updated iPod Touch, which is likely to boast an A4 CPU, FaceTime support and a Retina Display.

Similarly, once you know that iProd 1,1 was the internal Apple coding reference to the first-gen iPad, iProd 2,1 is easy to peg as a second-gen iPad. What’s curious here, though, is the fact that Apple’s officially programming support for a second generation iPad at all into iOS 4.1. If Apple sticks to a yearly product update for the iPad, we’re eight months away from an update to the tablet; does the reference to iProd 2,1 in an iOS update scheduled for next month indicate a surprising hardware refresh for the iPad line later this year, possibly fixing the begrudged lack of FaceTime support?

The final reference, though, is the most intriguing: an unknown device described as “unknownHardware” tagged with a unique Apple product ID of 20547. Smart money is this being an iOS-driven update to the AppleTV, although we’ve all been surprised by Apple before. Only September’s annual iPod event will give us partial answers.

Ok, here at CoM we know Apple makes must-have technology. We really do get it. But c’mon people: don’t get yourself thrown in jail to prove Apple makes coveted gadgets that people will sometimes maim other people to get.

Case in point: Tyanthony Devon Dunbar, 28, now sits in jail slapped on an attempted murder charge after allegedly shooting his 26-year-old cousin Antonio Maurice Harley following a morning scuffle (no, not shuffle) involving an iPod. The incident took place in Colleton, South Carolina; the report doesn’t mention what kind of iPod it was.

Does anyone ever get into this much trouble over a Zune or a Blackberry?

Via Post and News

Overheating iPods have been consistently making the news in Japan over the last week. First, Apple admitted that their first-generation iPod Nanos can suffer meltdowns, and offered free replacements to any Japanese iPod owners who’ve experienced the problem. On the heels of that comes this story from Reuters, in which an iPod going nuclear knocked a Tokyo rush hour subway train out of commission.

If not for the bad timing, the story’s pretty funny. Around 8:20am, a train in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward was stopped by officials who noticed a strange, burning smell in the train. Staff members quickly investigated, only to be approached by a sheepish and embarrassed commuter with a smoldering, burst-apart iPod in her hands.

It’s not clear at this point what model iPod burst apart yesterday morning, and it’s almost definitely just a fluke, but one thing’s for sure: Apple Japan is going to have a public relations debacle on their hands if iPods don’t stop melting down.

Monday’s rumor that Apple would throw its annual iPod event next week has been flatly contradicted by Cupertino’s failure to send out press invites, but don’t worry: according to AllThingsD, it’s definitely happening this year.

The rub? It’ll be later than usual, not earlier: Kara Swisher’s floating a mid-September date as the most likely bet for the event. As for what we’ll be seeing, a new iPod Touch with a FaceTime-capable camera, an A4 CPU and a Retina Display is probably a given, with a new iOS-driven AppleTV called the iTV also looking possible, and maybe even a new multitouch iPod Shuffle.

Remember the recent iPod Shuffle rumor predicting Apple will shortly launch a new version with a 3-inch multitouch screen?

Well, here’s how it might look.

Our friend Graham Bower from MacPredictions made this mockup. He has some good ideas about how it might work. Graham predicts the device is a bit bigger than the current iPod shuffle. It has two buttons on the bottom: On/Off and Shuffle. The square screen shows nothing but album art.

In shuffle mode, it transitions quickly between multiple album covers, moving in different directions to suggest shuffling.

Swiping your finger from left to right across the screen cues the next track, and in the other direction it goes back to the previous track.

Swiping your finger up and down controls the volume. Tapping on the screen toggles between pause and play. It’s that simple.

Apple’s annual iPod media event is traditionally held in September, but according to Brazilian Mac site Mac Magazine, they might hold it a bit early this year.

According to MacMagazine’s “reliable source within Apple,” Cupertino plans to refresh their iPod line and unveil the next-generation iPod Touch as soon as mid-August, with a date of August 16th or August 17th being cited as the most likely dates.

Mac Rumors points out that if these rumors are true, this iPod event date also aligns with a claimed August 17th release date for iLife ’11, although it’s not entirely clear how that product’s release would fit in with a strongly-focused iPod announcement.

Given that Apple has yet to send out invites for their iPod event, that date might seem suspiciously near, but it’s plausible: Apple has traditionally given only a week’s lead time to the press when throwing their iPod events. Last year, the invite for their “It’s Only Rock and Roll” iPod Event came with just nine days worth of lead time, and in 2008, Apple sent out the invites just seven days before the event. If this rumor is true, then, expect official press invites to start landing in the next day or two.

>Back in 2008, Apple wanted chip design guru Mark Papermaster so much that they actually got into a lawsuit with IBM over him. A mere fifteen months later, though, Papermaster has left his position of Senior VP of Devices Hardware Engineering at Apple… and all signs point to Papermaster having been canned.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Papermaster had a a “falling out” with Steve Jobs over Apple’s corporate culture, and has lost Jobs’ confidence months ago.

As Daring Fireball’s John Gruber points out, that seems to be consistent with external evidence: namely, despite the fact that Papermaster was in charge of the iPhone 4’s hardware, he is nowhere to be seen in Apple’s iPhone 4 promotional videos. Nor was he on stage during Apple’s “Antennagate” press conference.

Rather, in both instances, Papermaster’s ostensible subordinate, Bob Mansfield, took his place to talk in detail about the iPhone 4’s hardware. No surprise, then, that Mansfield has now been promoted into Papermaster’s now vacant position.

Ultimately, this seems to be a case of a square peg not being able to fit into an Apple-shaped hole.

The most interesting detail of this story is the fact that Papermaster was not fired by Jobs over the iPhone 4’s antenna issues. In fact, according to Gruber, the iPhone 4’s antenna issues were ticked as a bug over two years ago, and Steve Jobs himself gave the okay on releasing the handset as designed, believing the “death grip” issue to be comparable to antenna-issues on other smartphones.

If you can buy it before Apple pulls the sale, you could snap up a 3G iPod prototype with camera.

You’ve still got a day to bid the 32GB iPod, at this writing there were 34 bids and a ceiling of $449. However, this isn’t the first time one has cropped up on eBay, the last one for sale in April was pulled shortly after it made news.

The iPod with camera prototype will probably be a museum piece, but you may have trouble using it — the device doesn’t come with the as-yet unreleased camera software. (duh).

“>suing a number of unlicensed third-party accessory makers for products of inferior quality that reflected poorly on Apple’s brands.

Of course, part of the reason why third-party accessories work so poorly is because Apple is sneaky and employ various hardware tricks to make sure that only “Made for iPod” accessories work perfectly.

The hackers over at Minty Boost have gotten to the bottom of one such trick Apple deploys to make sure that unauthorized accessories have a hard time charging your iPod or iPhone.

In essence, Apple uses secret resistors that are placed in the connectors for Apple devices: if these resistors aren’t there, your iPhone or iPod Touch won’t deted the 2.8V and 2V signals, and hence won’t charge, coughing up a “Charging is not supported with this accessory” message instead.

The good news for unauthorized accessory makers (and makers) is that once you know the trick Apple employs to stop iPod charging on non-“Made for iPod” devices, it’s pretty easy to work around. Now that the secret of how Apple gimps unauthorized accessories is out in the wild, though, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple come up with a new way to stick it to those unwilling or unable to pay their “Made for iPod” licensing fees.

For the green-conscious looking for big sound on the go, Logitech has just unveiled it S715i Speaker Dock, a custom-tuned portable speaker dock that comes with an eight-hour rechargeable battery to save on your AA cost.

Although it’s larger than some luggable speaker dock solutions, the S715i offers big sound to boot, thanks to eight custom-designed drivers that separate and enrich specific sound frequencies, with each channel getting a half-inch tweeter, a 3-inch midrange driver and dual 2-inch passive radiators.

The S715i also comes with a wireless remote, allowing you to control your music, turn down the volume or put your playlist on shuffle even across the room.

The S715i works with any device supporting Apple’s Universal Dock Connector, short of the iPad, and will both play and charge from the built-in battery. If for some reason you got made the sucker by buying a non-Apple MP3 player, or just have an older iPod or iPad, you can connect them too, thanks to a standard 3.5mm auxiliary input.

The Logitech S715i goes on sale today, and costs €179. It will ship this month.

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Games maker Blizzard has always had sympathy for Mac gamers: not only do native Mac ports exist for most of Blizzard’s titles, but they have exclusively shipped hybrid Mac/PC installation DVDs of their titles since World of Warcraft.

Their latest blockbuster title, Starcraft II, follows suit with the Mac love… but the game’s content also includes another fond pat on the head for fans in this in-game ad for the iPistol, a space marine spoof of Apple’s famous “dancing silhouette” iPod ad campaign.

Not that anyone’s seen those ads in a while, mind, but cut Blizzard some slack: given Starcraft II’s ten year development cycle, we should count our blessings that they aren’t parodying “Think Different.”

We can describe the idea in one sentence: an iPod patent that switches output to mono when a pair of earbuds are split between two people.

But how, by gum, to describe the pencil-line freaks of the patent illustration, except through wordless screaming? Befreckled, sloe-eyed moppets struckwith lionitis, then decapitated, their horror-induced rictuses still face-frozen? GAH!

Good lord, Apple. If this is the best you can come up with, no wonder you prefer your iPod models to be well silhouetted.

Don’t giggle at professional boxer Floyd Mayweather’s bling: a diamond-encrusted, solid platinum iPod Classic. It cost him $50,000, and if you mock it, he’s liable to hit you so hard your whole family would die.

[via Gizmodo]

Noise-canceling ear buds deliver impressively clear sound, but at the expense of the added bulk of the in-line noise canceling unit. Blackbox’s latest i10 Noise Canceling Earphones get rid of the bulk, though, by getting rid of the usual bulk-adding battery housed in the noise-canceling unit. They’ve accomplished this by also ditching the traditional 3.5mm headphone jack; instead, the i10s use an Apple 30 pin dock connector which allows these earbuds to draw power directly from your iPhone or iPod.

That makes these $125 earbuds something of a gamble, since they’ll only work with Apple’s audio players…and even then, only as long as Apple sticks with its current 30-pin connector format.

Keep it secret! Keep it safe. Given Apple’s once impeccable track record of keeping their future products under wraps up until the very moment that Steve Jobs held them aloft on stage, the product-leaking Smeagol lurking around the underdark of their supply chain is really doing Cupertino a bad turn.

The latest supply-chain leak, spotted by Apple.pro, shows a tiny 1.18″ square, 3cm x 3cm touchscreen, complete with an Apple copyright branded upon the connector cable. The obvious assumption? A touchscreen iPod Shuffle, possibly as early as September.

Concept designs in general tend to be wishful-thinking affairs, but we can’t help but wish that this smart packaging design by Sverre Wiik Øberg uses the iPod’s own packaging as a charger. The box protects the iPod during shipping, then out pop the prongs to juice your iPod in any wall socket once it arrives.

What a snazzy design. Apple’s been increasingly moving towards minimizing its packaging in the interests of green friendliness over the past fe years. The next obvious step seems to be something just like this: discourage customers from throwing away their packaging to begin with by making it legitimately useful.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the long-term future of the iPod line. Long the key driver of Apple’s revenue growth, since the launch of the iPhone, it has slipped into the background. Now, the conventional wisdom goes, Apple is going to run out the life of the scrollwheeled wonder until the entire line goes touch with the introduction of a nano-sized iOS device. The iPhone, in three short years, will have eaten the iPod entirely. For all the talk of Dell or Microsoft or Samsung or Sony developing an iPod-killer, Apple did the job better than anyone else could. 

But here’s the thing: since the release of the iPhone 4, I’m convinced that Apple sees a lot more life in at least part of the iPod line. It’s simple, really. The new iPhone was made of fragile-seeming glass in order that the all-brushed-aluminum iPod line would look that much more durable. Where does this matter? With sports and with kids.