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Apple’s September 9 iPod Event

The new longer iPod Nano seems like it’s definitely going to happen. Kevin Rose also seems to be confident about the new Nano and iTunes 8. There are more rumors that iTunes will get a cooler looking visualizer and a Genius that guesses what kind of music you like, just like last.fm and Pandora. Other iPods seems like they are getting cosmetic changes and/or price cuts. All the rumors sound good and are welcome upgrades, but they all sound underwhelming. It’s trange that Apple wants all the media to be at their event even though it sounds like a snoozer.

It may be that Apple has something up their sleeve that still haven’t been leaked. I’m going to make a prediction now. In conversations when talking about MP3 players and/or car stereos, I’ve always brought up the question “why doesn’t Apple or Creative get together with a car stereo company like Pioneer or Alpine to create an aftermarket head unit with a detachable face that you can also use as an MP3 player?” I’ve even done mockups and advertisements for a graphic design class I had in college in 2000. It seems logical to me. People obviously like MP3 players and aftermarket head units have detachable faces to prevent break-ins and theft.

The aftermarket head unit market is not as large and profitable as the MP3 player or iPod market, so I think it makes sense for an aftermarket head unit company to cut in to this market. If any of them partnered up with Apple, they would see an immediate increase in the sales. It’s possible that it’s not guaranteed that if you partner up with Apple, you will have success i.e. Motorola, but you would see a definite increase in stock value.

I don’t understand why Sony doesn’t do this, they have their Xplod car stereo line and the Walkman MP3 players (which are great BTW). They should’ve been doing this a long time ago. I must be missing something. If anyone know why, please comment below.

Back to the annoucement, so when I saw the new iPod Nano pics, that is what I immediately thought of. It looks like it would be a perfect fit for the single DIN-sized aftermarket head units. I hear it might be touchscreen but it has the clickwheel. It would be perfect to have actual buttons so you can change songs or raise volume by touch alone so you can keep your eyes on the road. Anyway, I know it’s a long shot but I just thought to put it out there. What do you think?

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iYule: Yule Log for Your iPod

iYule

iYule is a video you can download to watch on your iPod, AppleTV, Zune, Creative Zen, Sansa, Xbox 360, etc. The yule log is one of the highest rated shows on Christmas, so it makes sense to sell it on the new mediums. Yes, it costs $5 for a portable player format and $7 for a bigger format for TV’s. The money goes to charity, though. Sample video below.

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Touching my New New iPod

iPod Touch

My initial thought about it is that it’s fun just navigating through the menu. I thought that when you play video, you can play it portrait or landscape mode. It seems to only play in landscape mode. Also, I’ve read before that the iPod Touch has inferior screens compared to the iPhone.

I noticed that right away when watching a dark video (not the kind of dark that includes capes, Big Ben and howling…I’m not sure what I’m referencing). I figured it was just a result of a poor LCD screen. My phone is like that when you’re not looking at it straight-on, the blacks look inverted and seems like it’s brighter than other colors. It seems like early iPod Touches have defective screens. Now Apple has officially announced that there is definitely a problem. Since the iPhone has been out for more than three months, I didn’t consider the Touch as a first-gen device. Well personally, the screen isn’t a big issue. I’ve had no problems with it when doing other things with it, especially web browsing.

Web Browsing With Safari

iPod Touch

When I first saw the announcement of the iPod Touch, the first thing I thought of was browsing the web on Safari while laying down on the couch while watching a Mets game or IMing friends while on the water closet that Thomas Crapper made famous as Patrick Norton puts it.

Playing with Safari was pretty fun but when you get into it and try to browse like you would on a desktop or laptop, you realize it’s really slow. When you zoom in to read text, it looks like Google maps when you zoom in. It looks like it’s loading a jpeg everytime you zoom or scroll. It’s a good thing it doesn’t have flash or pages with flash would come to a halt. This is why I think that Apple didn’t include Flash support in the iPhone and iPod Touch. It would probably crash it. It already freezes when you goto a content-heavy site. It froze on my when I visited my iGoogle page. I have about a dozen widgets and it kept getting hung up. Same problem with Yahoo.

It’s not like that’s why I got this for. I got this for when I think of something, I can Google it without having to get my laptop, startup it, wait for windows to load, log in to my user account, wait for windows to load and then start firefox. So far, it’s been great for that. Although, I missed the Mets game.

Music

Music playback it pretty straightforward. Press the Music button on the home dock, select the way you want to browse your music, find your music, and play. Not much has changed. Coverflow is something that I never really liked. When I listen to music, I don’t listen to one album at a time anymore. I had to when I had CD’s. I don’t need to load each album, one at a time. It feels like going backwards. I just like to play my playlist and shuffle the albums.

I never get an urge to play a specific song. Sometimes when I’m at a party, I want to play a song for everyone, but usually they don’t have a stereo with an iPod dock or a RCA stereo to 1/8″ headphone cable laying around. They’ll have a computer but of course I can’t copy the songs from my iPod to their computer. I could try downloading and installing a program like Senuti but at this point, I’m sober which means I’m knocking over the ice luge and nobody wants that.

YouTube, Other Features

iPod Touch

This is the first thing that came up when I clicked on the YouTube icon, “YouTube Not Available.” Why? I don’t know. I was able to click on the other buttons and they played fine. This is one of my favorite features, actually. The videos look way better than on youtube.com. the H.264 conversion look great. I thought that they converted the compressed videos on youtube but I guess that they converted the original, uploaded videos.

Another feature, I like is Contacts. I don’t use the iContact or whatever it’s called on OSX, but entering contacts was easy and fun on the Touch. I really could’ve used this feature last week. A potential client called me but I had nothing but my cell phone on me. I couldn’t take down the number. I told him my email address but I don’t think he got the right spelling.

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My New iPod Nano

3rd Gen iPod Nano

So this is my new iPod of choice, the 3rd generation iPod Nano. It’s been called the Fat iPod, iPod Fatty or the iFatty. This was caused by early pictures which was taken with a straight-on angle. Steve Jobs even called it the fatty iPod when introducing it. It’s nothing like that when you actually hold it.

I liked my 1st gen Nano when I had it. The only issue was that I listen to a lot of podcasts and more and more video podcasts were coming out. This is why I went out and buy a 5.5 gen iPod with Video. I considered a Zune but the software for it wasn’t great for podcasts. I didn’t like the Sandisk Sansa’s buttons. The Creative Zen seemed old and bulky. I didn’t care about the other features that the iPod doesn’t have like a FM antenna or voice recording.

3rd Gen iPod Nano

What I liked about the 1st gen Nano was not only its small form factor but how quickly it was about to browse through the menu to change songs since it has solid state based storage and its battery life. This new one promises 24 hours for music and 5 for video. Ars Technica reported that the UI (User Interface) was demanding and slowed down the new iPods, but I don’t really see what they were saying. Maybe they meant it for the hard-drive based iPod Classic or I read it wrong.

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New iTrip Auto


iTrip Auto, the newest addition to the iTrip lineup, is the most versatile iTrip to date, accommodating every dock connector iPod, including iPod nano and 5th Generation iPods with video. iTrip Auto combines Griffin’s renowned FM transmitter technology with an integrated charger.

I need to get this.

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Cordless iPod nano Headset

Cordless iPod nano Headset This is a mTune’s Cordless Stereo Headset for iPod® nano. It’s pretty cool, you get to put the nano actually inside the headset and it runs off the iPod’s battery so you don’t need extra battery. What would be cool is if it DID have a place for batteries and powered the nano while it was in there but not necessary.

The controls are easy to use since the clickwheel is exposed. It can also be used as a regular headset. It has a 1 year warranty.

At $49.95, it’s not too bad in comparison to other headsets made for iPods. You can get a Bose headset that will sound as good as sound can sound, but it’s 4-5 times the price.

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