ipod

I am still just a little kid at heart - getting excited about new things.

In my youth it was the excitement of a new StarWars film coming out. But now it’s new hardware and software that gives me a mental stiffy.

Yesterday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs did another one of his Keynote speeches and announced a whole new set of iPods, software and hardware. I sat on my sofa and streamed the whole thing! Over 1 hours worth!

• The iPod will get a brighter screen, more battery life, some new search features and better quality video.
• The iPod Nano will get larger memory capacity, an aluminium casing - also available in different colors, and all of the same new features that its larger brother has now got.
• The iPod shuffle has been totally redesigned and is now “the smallest MP3 player in the world!” coming in at a tiny 1.6 inches long! It also has it’s own clip to allow it to be attached to your clothing, belt, nipple etc.
• iTunes gets an upgrade to version 7 and features new album art based browsing features, a slight new design and iPod managability sections. You also get free album art downloaded for any CDs you have ripped - as long as you have an iTunes account.
• iTunes will offer movies for sale (US only at the moment). They will be at 640×480 resolution which is apparently “near DVD quality”.

Steve also demo’ed their new upcoming product which, at the moment, is known as “iTV“.

This small box, similar in design to the MacMini will plug into your TV and will allow streaming of audio, video, photos, podcasts and movie trailers wirelessly direct to your screen. It will work with iTunes on PCs and Macs. Almost like having “Front Row” plugged into your TV.

This iTV device is what impressed me most. I have used iTunes to share music between my PC and Macbook and it works perfectly and without any hassles at all. If the iTV can do this for visual and audio content that can be displayed on the TV - then it will be brilliant! I hope that it will also allow streaming content of movies you have imported into iTunes. DivX is pretty cool - but can be difficult to get working on remote devices due to different compression ratios and codecs being used in the creation process. I assume that converting them to H.264, the compression codec used by Quicktime will allow them to work on the iTV too.

The iTV is coming out early next year and looks freakin cool.

I want one already!

Those iPod luvvies over at iLounge have released their new “Free iPod Book” featuring all things iPod, iTunes, iAccessories and iOtherStuff.

I downloaded the iPod buyers guide from them back in 2004bi (before iPod) and it was really good.  This one looks even better!

On my weekly sabatical to Birmingham yesterday I dragged my colleague to the Apple store at the Bullring to check out the new Macbook. I did look for them at my local John Lewis at the weekend but they were no-where to be found.

I was impressed by them too. Small, light, neat, smart, fast, clever and great at oral sex too!

But after looking at the 20 inch iMacs and also after reading that my matey WhiteBoyBob has just bought one (and not managed to break it), I am wondering if one of those might be a better purchase. I have also been reading some benchmarks on gaming with the 20 inch iMac using XP and Boot Camp. They do seem impressive too. I think I will have to install XP via Boot Camp as the kids use some games on XP still and the wife will probably get all confused over OSX and will not be able to work her Home Accounts Spreadsheet properly without ringing me all the time.

I do use my laptop at home a little. Not lots though - just a little. Sometimes after a hard days internet surfing work I don’t want to be huddled over another PC in the corner of the room. Sitting on the sofa, slowly cooking my legs with the laptop on wifi is quite nice really. I have done more of my “Blogger Template Overhaul” series using the laptop than anything else. My desktop PC setup at home is not perfect for spending lots of time at the screen. Stuck in the corner next to the dinner table, it is quite restrictive to use and the desk it sits on gets piled with paper, toys, mobile phones and recently, my Xbox360, controllers and headset as I now play that via my LCD monitor.

But the 20 inch iMacs are nice and they are faster and have a bigger hard disk too! I do quite a bit of photoshop stuff so maybe that would be a better purchase? But the laptops are nice and “free” and I can take it on holiday and stuff too. Oh… crap…. more decisions.

I have spent all morning a little time trying to research using the iPod to store photographs and quite specifically - what the quality is like when it outputs the photos to a TV.

There seems to be lots of sites that cover viewing the photos on the iPod screen and with the new 5th Gen iPods you also get groovy transitions between each photo. However, they never go into a real detail about the TV display, the speed the images load onto the TV screen or the output quality.

It's actually not research for me. Although I would love to have a video playing/picture displaying iPod to replace my 4th Gen one, it's for my Father. A keen photographer, he recently purchased a Sandisk Digital TV Player to display his digital snaps and scans on the TV. He was less than impressed though as the time it took to display each picture was like going back to downloading porn pics over a 9600bps dial up connection - slow and frustrating. So he took the device back to the retailler within a few days of purchase.

We were then talking about iPods as someone he knows is getting a 30gb 5G model for her leaving present at work and I suggested he get one for displaying his photos on the TV as I knew they had that functionality. He could also get the iPod Camera Connector to upload photos from his camera when on holiday.

But I cannot really find much information about it. Can anyone help? Do you have a 5th Gen iPod and have first hand experience of displaying the photos on a TV?

When I plugged in my iPod to my home PC running iTunes this morning, it quite happily overwrote the database and the tracks from "Northern Exposure - Expeditions" that I added here at work yesterday have all gone.

Shame.

But as Yamipod is so cute and I don't buy from iTunes - there is nothing stopping me using Yamipod as the manager for my iPod.

DamoB blogged about Anapod Explorer as an alternative to using iTunes, but as you have to install it onto a PC to use it - it's not quite what I wanted.

I just found this application via a list of "handy programs" to take around with you on your USB memory stick. YamiPod is a freeware application that allows you to manage your iPod without the need for iTunes.

The most impressive feature is that the application does not need to be installed and can be run from the iPod when it is plugged into the PC and operating in disk mode.

Yamipod allows you to copy music files to and from the iPod, edit, export or create playlists, rate songs, change the ID3 tag details and many more things too.  The application is also available for Mac, x86 and Linux too.

Does anything get any better?
Well… it could do, as after editing and uploading songs and playlists to the iPod using Yamipod at work - as soon as you get home and sync with iTunes - it all gets overwritten with the local iTunes database stored on your PC….

Then again - I have not "fully" tested this "unfortunate feature" yet, so I will report back.
I'm off to find some people on our corporate network who have iTunes installed to leach some tracks for the bike ride home!

When I was in New York, I purchased a XtremeMac Airplay FM transmitter for my iPod and have been using it in my car to and from work each day.

The thing is tiny and the quality is pretty good - although I have doubts as to wether the signal is in stereoscopic sound or not. When I shuffle to some Beatles tracks, that should tell me. There is also some background hum and hiss from interferance which gets worse when its raining. The signal is better when plugged into my nipple. Well… what I mean is - when it's in my shirt pocket and my metal endo-skeleton is acting as a signal conductor. It also makes me look quite "star trek" when changing tracks - but makes me look all "cheap porn nipple caressing" when increasing the volume!

Generally the product is very good and I am impressed with it. I was even more suprised to find that ipod ubersite, iLounge gave it an A marking and said that it was even better that the iTrip, which was the device I had been planning to get. I decided to get the Airplay as I was also purchasing an XBox360 Play-n-charge kit from the same shop and it seemed to be the best option at the time.

The Airplay's frequency can be manually changed in .2 increments between 88 and 109FM so you can quite easily override everyone who is listening to Radio1 on the way to work with some techno from the likes of the Plump DJs. I was even able to broadcast "Dare" by Gorillaz from downstairs in my home, over the top of my sons radio whilst he was listening to Classic FM (100.3FM) at bedtime. Having Shaun Ryder in your dreams is not good for a six year old's mind.

My advice: get it!
Oh.. hold on.. it's illegal in the UK. Sorry Officer…

And yes, DriverChris, you can have that "POS" Belkin back next time I see you.

Technorati Tags: ipod, airplay, fm, apple, nipple, star trek

Well..

It was'nt quite as I predicted the Apple iPod "Boombox" would be like.

But it's not too bad. Quite minimalistic and low tech, but for ?249, I would want it to make my cups of tea for me too!

"iPod Hi-Fi Teasmade" anyone?

EDIT: Someone's already got their hands on one and has posted shots of it being "un-boxed" on their Flickr page. It looks really big!

Technorati Tags: ipod, apple, hi-fi, boombox, steve jobs

As reported in a few places including The Register, a Louisiana man is suing Apple for making the iPod too loud and damaging his hearing.

John Kiel Patterson was unavailable to comment. Presumably because all he could hear when we rang to talk to him was the "Brain Morse Code Bleep-Trance Remix" brought on by his adverse Tinitus.

I have decided to sue Apple too.

For somehow smuggling "SugarBabes" and "Beyonce" into my iTunes and therefore into my iPod and therefore into my brain where they go round and round and round until I can't sleep, I can't work and I can't stand NO MORE!

Gits!