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Ipod

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18:18 / 09.01.07

>>>i can't believe it took apple so long to get their arse in gear,<<<

It's not like they just tossed this off in a week or so. The iPhone has apparently been in development for a couple of years. They've had their arse in gear for a while, they just haven't really been public about it.

I love the look of it, I can't wait to hold one in my hand and play with it.

18:47 / 09.01.07

I.. Just...

Wow.

Mugging rates are set to double this year.

18:50 / 09.01.07

i was expecting them to have had their gearing going for, like, four or five. the concept of an everything-in-one-pocket gadget has been coming for ages, ever since a phone became more than a phone and grew closer to ubiquity as a result.

18:59 / 09.01.07

zeitgeist catching is meant to be apple's thing.
they invented the ipod ages ago, way before the release, and slowly shrinking phones along with the nearing of the ipod's practicality should have set off alarm bells in their development teams office, and i think i would remove their asteroids and space hopper priviliges until they catch the heck up.

they're like cavemen with a seperate stick and sharpened rock in their hands. make a fuckin axe, already!

Lagrange's Nightmare

20:40 / 09.01.07

a wide-screen ipod + phone.

my god imagine the scratches that are going to end up on that thing.....

ONLY NICE THINGS

21:13 / 09.01.07

Gosh. A Newton. Just what I always dreamed of.

22:20 / 09.01.07

Toksik, show me ANYTHING on the market now or for imminent release that even comes close to the iPhone's advancements (Go to the Apple website and watch Steve Job's keynote address for full video demo).

"Catch the heck up" with what???

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:23 / 09.01.07

Well, the multi-touch is impressive, although its utility is still uncertain. The touchscreen is a Palm. The music synching is good, obvs, and the photos look great - if it had a 30GB hard drive, I think I'd be more interested. On t'other hand, $499 on top of a two-year contract is pretty hardcore. For that, I'd expect ground-breaking technology.

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:24 / 09.01.07

On catching up - I think he might mean that it looks very big for a phone - which it is. On the other hand, it's very thin for a smartphone, and it is intended to be used to watch video and photos, browse the web and do other things online - the form factor comparator is possibly a PSP...

23:31 / 09.01.07

Man... the interface, interactivity and connectivity of that thing is ridiculous. Color me impressed. Looks like business-class has a new smartphone.

The opportunities that this device offers are huge for Apple on several fronts:
- getting OSX's quality and performance out there in the mobile market and pulling people towards their other products. RIM and Windows Mobile should be worried.
- the touch-screen capability and interface will find itself in other iPod offerings making their mp3 players even more attractive.
- after establishing ties in the mobile space and the economies of scale get better, they'll be putting iPhone nanos in everyone's hands at a consumer-friendly costs.

All that equals more fun toys for all of us... we just have to wait a bit longer.

Haus: a new Newton indeed. That was quite a machine for it's time and it's ghost has never really left Apple, regardless of what they say.

Keith, like a scientist

03:09 / 10.01.07

It really...surprises me how many people can shrug off what an astounding achievement the iPhone really is. Even without Multi-Touch (which no matter how you boil it down, is far far in advance of Palm technology), the internet browsing alone is unreal. This thing is basically a mini-computer. Nothing on the market comes close to what it means for the industry as a whole. But, setting aside the features, even, look at how it functions. They've completely reinvented how this kind of device works. When they say it's five years ahead of everything else, it's true. Every company is going to be struggling to catch up to the application integration and the sheer genius of the multi-touch interface.

Sure, the features are not new (well, Visual Voicemail is), but the achievement is how Apple solved what is admittedly a tough and, up to this point, hard nut to crack. YOu watch how it works and then you put a Treo or Blackberry up next to it, and it doesn't make any sense any more...they seem so outdated, and it's only been 1 day.

ONLY NICE THINGS

05:20 / 10.01.07

Yes, well. I'd like actually to see one before deciding how well the multi-touch works when it isn't being keynoted by Steve Jobs, and since the UK is apparently not scheduled to get them for nearly a year, the market will have time to catch up.

Don't get me wrong, though: if you're looking for a combination iPod Nano, picture viewer, movie viewer, phone and web browser, this looks like a lovely bit of Star Trek technology.

12:29 / 11.01.07

My Seinheisser CX300's arrived and John-TBFTF was correct they kick serious ass. The noise reduction is intense enough that I have to be careful using them at night jogging and keep the volume down or else I'll get squished while happily grooving to tunage.

Very comfy in the ear though I haven't played around with the other 2 sets of ear pads of various sizes it came with yet. The cord is a decent length for my ishuffle though I have some concern about the strength of the connector. It made that glitchy scrungy noise I associate with headphone fragility of the connector but then I might just be paranoid. So far well worth the cash!

13:52 / 11.01.07

Toksik, show me ANYTHING on the market now or for imminent release that even comes close to the iPhone's advancements (Go to the Apple website and watch Steve Job's keynote address for full video demo).

"Catch the heck up" with what???

i think you miss my point. i'm suggesting they catch up with where they should be by now, not with someone else's product.
i'm sorry i've poured scorn on your favourite technocult, but i really feel apple should have been here by now.
i'm not saying anyone else is.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:08 / 11.01.07

I think multi-touch is just splendid - my doubt is whether it really provides a huge amount of utility on a 3.5-inch screen, especially when it also means no tactile feedback when typing. The New York Times expressed similar reservations - basically suggesting that if you text or e-mail a lot, you might be better off with a Blackberry, but that the rest of the experience was marvellous.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

13:47 / 12.01.07

There's Windows software that can get MP3's off an iPod? Brill!

Sorry for not getting back to this earlier.

Yes, as I suspected, Media Monkey can copy files from the iPod to a Windows HD, though not in an especially elegant way. You can drag or copy, say, an album from the iPod to a folder on your hard drive - but Media Monkey moves it rather than copies the album, so you have to then copy it back to the iPod, which is plain silly. The meaningless titles like f0023.mp3 as used on the iPod are retained too, which is a bit of a pain.

Media Monkey is quite a good programme for managing MP3s and other audio files though, even if the CD ripping stops working after a few weeks in order to encourage you to buy the full version. You can just install LAME if you like, but it's a little bit of a palaver.

Anapod Explorer is an OK tool for managing a Windows-formatted iPod, but is severely limited in the non-free trial version, which won't let you copy files from the iPod to hard disc.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:56 / 12.01.07

Well, the media monkey option just replicates using Explorer...

Here's what I would do in the event of a catastrophic data loss on my PC.

1) Open my iPod in explorer.
2) Change folder options to view hidden files.
3) Navigate to the music folders.
4) Drag and drop the ruddy lot into a folder on your PC.
5) Open iTunes, and import the contents of that folder into iTunes
6) Use the "Get track names" option, which in most cases will find the name of the track from its ID3 tags or t'internet.

It's not 100% precise, but it'll do, usually.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

18:08 / 12.01.07

Right, I see. Though that wouldn't work if you wanted to copy, say, one album or artist or combinations thereof only over to the hard drive, given that the iPod doesn't organise files by artist or album folders.

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:37 / 12.01.07

Alas, no. That's a very crude dump of everything on your iPod onto iTunes, absolutely.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

23:34 / 12.01.07

Using the method with Media Monkey above to copy MP3s from the iPod to Windows... and then back again, just to test this out... seemed to cause a disc error on the device.

Chkdsk fixed it, thankfully, but wiped my playlists along the way. Good thing I only had a few, and never really used them much anyway. There's a moral in there about not messing with things which are generally working OK, especially if they involve Windows.

13:01 / 13.01.07

Has no one actually ever heard of EphPod? When I had an iPod it was the most famous MusicMatch/iTunes replacement and did everything I needed (including allowing me to properly copy tunes both on and off my iPod), does it not work these days or something?

http://www.ephpod.com

And excuse my questioning tone there, I'm just sort of surprised to see people going "There's Windows software for managing tunes on an iPod?!" when such things have been around for years.

13:03 / 13.01.07

Oh, and there's more where that came from as well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_iPod_Managers

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:17 / 13.01.07

I think Ephpod is not compatible with the latest iPod OS, Bamba, which may be why it isn't being recommended - but if you have an oldder iPod, it certainly might be worth a try.

19:07 / 13.01.07

I think Ephpod is not compatible with the latest iPod OS, Bamba, which may be why it isn't being recommended - but if you have an oldder iPod, it certainly might be worth a try.

From what I can find I think you might be right, although my Googling leaves me a bit confused as to whether EphPod either (a) doesn't work at all with newer gen iPods or (b) does work for music handling but just doesn't deal with newer iPod functionality like videos. Which is a shame either way, I genuinely loved EphPod's clean and simple interface and would have specfically chosen it even if I didn't find most of iTunes pointless and irritating. For anyone still using a third gen (or before) iPod I can't recommend EphPod strongly enough, not least because if it ever crashes while you're using it it won't slash and burn your entire music library at the same time. Yes iTunes, I'm looking at you here.

All Acting Regiment

14:43 / 23.01.07

I've got it. It is good. CSS in the park, Jobriath in the bath, etc.

19:54 / 27.01.07

I feel I ought to know this somehow, but... what happens with iTunes if one has two ipods? I have one of the video ones but am thinking of getting a cute little Shuffle as a sort of 'best of'. I'm a little worried that, every single time I plug in the Shuffle I'm going to have to go through my extensive music library ticking and unticking. Is there any way around this?

The Return Of Rothkoid

00:56 / 29.01.07

If you have two iPods (with autosync turned off, natch) then if they're plugged in at the same time, they both show up as separate units.

I imagine this would continue until you run out of spare USB ports.

13:13 / 13.03.07

Right, my hard drive appears to be broked and my warrenty has expired. Would I be mad to attempt to install a new hard drive myself? My research suggests that it's pretty easy and cheap.

semioticrobotic

02:53 / 14.03.07

Boboss-

Just ran across this today, and thought it might help.

15:02 / 14.03.07

Thanks a lot, Bryan. That could be really helpful.

20:47 / 03.07.07

I just bought one of those video iPod's and have a query about uploading video to it. I have a DVD ripper program, but the format of ripped files doesn't seem compatible with iTunes. Is there anyway to upload my DVD collection to my iPod.

If it helps, I'm not very technical, so the simpler, the better.

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:17 / 03.07.07

iPod video is compressed with the H.234 codec - you'll probably have to convert. If you're on Windows, try videora.

20:54 / 04.07.07

Thanks a bunch. Problem sorted.

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