September 5, 2007

Another day, another revolution

MacRumors.com has rounded up about a dozen links to sites covering today’s Apple press conference.

New iPods? iPhone nano? We shall see.

Update: Yup, new stuff. No Beatles in the iTunes Store yet. The iPhone and the new iPod touch will be able to buy songs directly from the iTunes Music Store (and from Starbucks, oddly) and sync those songs to iTunes on your computer.

As usual, Engadget has my favorite writeup:

Engadget also has hands-on photo galleries for the new iPod nano, iPod classic, iPod touch, and the iTunes WiFi Music Store.

Here’s a quick summary of the new iPod/iPhone lineup; see Apple’s iPod and iPhone pages for all the details.

storage/price features size (in) weight battery life
iPod shuffle 1 GB: $79 five new colors 1.62 x 1.07 x 0.41 0.55 oz 12 hrs music
iPod nano 4 GB: $149
8 GB: $199
2″ 320 x 240 screen, wafer-sized:
a true full-featured iPod
2.75 x 2.06 x 0.26 1.74 oz 24 hrs music,
5 hrs video
iPod classic 80 GB: $249
160 GB: $349
2.5″ 320 x 240 screen,
full metal case, Cover Flow
4.1 x 2.4 x 0.41
4.1 x 2.4 x 0.53
4.9 oz
5.7 oz
30 hrs / 5 hrs
40 hrs / 7 hrs
iPod touch 8 GB: $299
16 GB: $399
3.5″ 480 x 320 touch screen, WiFi:
an iPhone without the phone (or email)
4.3 x 2.4 x 0.31 4.2 oz 22 hrs music,
5 hrs video
iPhone 8 GB: $399 $200 cheaper than before, no 4 GB 4.5 x 2.4 x 0.46 4.8 oz 24 hrs / 7 hrs

Further update: Apple has posted a video stream of the keynote.

Addendum, 6 September: Got a couple of good comments so far.

  • Rob Usdin: Surprised Apple did not go with a hard drive for the iPod Touch. 16 GB is just not enough for me. Will wait until it hits 32 GB (my 30 GB iPod is at 24 GB right now).

  • Perry: An iPhone or iPod Touch with a hard drive would be quite cool. Equally cool would be an iPod Touch with a speaker + microphone and skype via wifi. :)

“Quite cool” is, how you say, an understatement. “Irresistible,” that is the word.

Yeah, a hard drive. Or at least 32 GB of flash.

And Skype, jeez, yes. Forget adding a speaker and mic to the iPod; I wouldn’t mind (in fact, I would prefer) plugging in a headset. Both the iPhone and the iPod touch have a dock connector, and hacking them is a burgeoning industry (have you seen iToner? It’s not even a friggin’ hack! Awesome!), so it’s got to be just a matter of time.

Even before someone Skypes the iPod touch, I want Mail on it. Word on the street is that the app binaries are the same as the iPhone’s, so that’s gotta be the first hack to hit it, if not to simply be added by Apple in a software update. (The Macworld Podcast panel muses that Apple could offer Mail as a paid iPod download from the iTunes Store, which sounds realistic to me—not preferable, but realistic.)

5 comments:

  1. Surprised Apple did not go with a hard drive for the iPod Touch. 16 GB is just not enough for me. Will wait until it hits 32 GB (my 30 GB iPod is at 24 GB right now).

    —*Rob

  2. An iPhone or iPod Touch with a hard drive would be quite cool.

    Equally cool would be an iPod Touch with a speaker + microphone and skype via wifi. :)

  3. Good points. I’ve responded in an addendum.

    BTW, the example phrase for “irresistible” in the Mac OS X built-in thesaurus is “irresistible snakeskin stilettos.” Just…say that, man. That’s awesome.

  4. Even more – rumors abound that it has bluetooth, other rumors say nay. If is has bluetooth, no reason bluetooth headset/mic combo couldn’t be hacked onto it with a hacked app to do VOIP.

    Dave Winer wrote about how if they had allowed that, or done the iPhone that way leaving it as an open device (but limited to Wifi) that would have made it quite the killer gadget indeed.

    —*Rob

  5. Killer, but not market-killer. Apple set out to make a phone; to most of the world, a phone is something you can pick up wherever it is and call someone—without having to concern yourself with finding a WiFi network or, worse, signing in. Dave Winer probably wouldn’t mind all that overhead, but he’s a geek.

    And there’s no Bluetooth in the official specs.

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