Video iPod Oct 12? 471
Petey_Alchemist writes "Apple Insider is reporting that Apple will release a video iPod on October 12th, possibly in conjunction with the announcement of Apple's fourth quarter results.
From the article 'Although details are scarce, sources who claim to have seen the new iPod describe it as being similar to Apple's 60GB iPod photo player, but several millimeters thinner.
The device reportedly sports a smaller click-wheel akin to that of the iPod nano's, making way for a larger, higher-resolution color display that extends further down the face of the device.' "
it's all just rumor... (Score:4, Informative)
in a week we'll all know!
Re:This has to have some sort of VIDEO OUT (Score:3, Informative)
Widescreen iBooks (Score:2, Informative)
Re:it's all just rumor... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:it's all just rumor... (Score:3, Informative)
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=AAPL [yahoo.com]
Fiscal Year Ends: 25-Sep
Re:it's all just rumor... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The screen! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Bound to happen. (Score:1, Informative)
H.264 is not an implementation, it's a different codec entirely (Apple, amongst others, has an implementation of it). It's also known as MPEG4 part 10, a.k.a "MPEG4 AVC" (advanced video codec, I think). It's very different from ASP.
They're not at all similar in terms of quality and efficiency. H.264 is much, much more complex, and gets non-trivial gains from it.
Re:Those numbers are extremely over-inflated (Score:2, Informative)
Re:am I the only one who does not get it? (Score:3, Informative)
What format would that be? What they call "AAC" is just mpeg-4...
Oh, you mean proprietary encryption format! Who the hell cares what encryption format they use? Only very trusting people keep their music in a DRM-hobbled format.
There are tons of other media players out there that accept open standards (at least more open).
As far as I can tell, pretty much no media players accept more than a couple of open formats. Most of them actually discourage you from using open formats, forcing you to use Microsoft's or Sony's proprietary formats if you want decent compression and quality... I hope you're not referring to WMA or something like that as "open", are you?
actually the quarterly report is the day before (Score:3, Informative)
Re:am I the only one who does not get it? (Score:3, Informative)
It has always bugged the hell out of me why you can only listen to their proprietary format with the IPod.
You're misinformed. It also plays Mpeg1-audio3 (mp3), FLAAC, WAV, mpeg4-audio1 (mp4), etc. as well as DRMed mp4.
Also, you are tied to ITunes as well....correct?
Nope. It is just a hard drive that indexes content oddly (with some advantages). Plenty of other software supports it.
In addition, the consumer is not forced to use a particular retailer.
The only way the ipod restricts your choice of retailer is in that it does not support .wmv or .ogg (and a few other oddballs). So long as you buy from a retailer that offers a format it supports it treats the music as a first class citizen. Also, before being available for Windows, I had Windows using friends come over and borrow my mac and iTunes to rip their CD collections since doing it on their PCs was too hard. Most music played on iPods I'd guess is from ripped CDs (I might mention iTunes does not add DRM to your rips by default like WMP does).
Please someone explain this apparent cult mentality.
This is not quite right, it is not a cult thing, more of a social status thing. A lot of geeks like iPods because they work really well. Go down to an electronics retailer and try playing with some of their demo models. Try simulating real use by operating them one handed while not looking at the screen. The iPod is way easier to use. As for non-geeks, iPods are "cool" and if you don't have one you'll never be part of the popular crowd, or something. Also they are really easy to learn to use, have easy to use software that comes with them and beats most other music jukebox software by a mile, and has an easy to use built in store. For geeks, again, the DRM music from that store has easy, legal ways to remove it and a pretty good selection compared to other stores. There is no mystery, the combination of the iPod, iTunes, and the iTMS is something a lot of different people like and enjoy using one or more components of.
Re:DivX is a pile of shit (Score:5, Informative)
If the iPod is to play h.264, the CPU is gonna be very fast, and it is going to be an expensive unit!
Re:am I the only one who does not get it? (Score:5, Informative)
There is, however, a conversion when loading mp3 to an iPod?
Nope, not really. iPods play mp3 files with the built in hardware, but the filesystem on the iPod gives it a weird hash for a name and organizes it in a weird file structure. Perhaps you were recalling something about the Sony music players that spent several hours converting mp3's to their proprietary format when it loaded them onto the player.
It concerned me that their end game is to tie you to their retail service much the same way that MS has done by slightly altering their implementations of standards.
My opinion given the prices/profits they have posted for the iTMS is that their goal is twofold, first they sell music as an incentive for people to buy their devices. Second, they sell music to prevent MS from dominating the space with their proprietary format and making macs second class citizens for music, which would hurt their core market.
Thanks for the reply.
You're quite welcome.
Re:Where's the market? (Score:3, Informative)
Apple Insider Weighs In (Score:2, Informative)
Re:am I the only one who does not get it? (Score:2, Informative)
FLAAC is not a codec. it is an application that converts FLAC (not supported on the iPod) to AAC (the iPod's proprietary format)
Re:The screen! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Bound to happen. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well... (Score:2, Informative)