Apples iPod Mp3 player

[pigmode]

Quote:

Originally posted by MacDEF OK, here is a cool tidbit (one that will make PC users jealous ). Besides all of the other great features the iPod has... You can BOOT your Mac from it.

Holy Cow, a tiny mp3 player that functions as a harddrive? Awesome! I miss my Macs, I'll tell ya.

Hopefully it'll import mp3s and support vbr as well, because at this point I think there are higher quality rippers/encoder on Windows.

P.S. the name pigmode is partly inspired by one of my favorite Mac apps: ResEdit. Wanna hear your Mac oink? No, really. It's easy.

 

[chych]

Hmm am I the only one wondering about the earbuds of the iPod?

I mean, high amplifiaction and ****ty earbuds? Doesn't sound right... I wonder if they are at least comparable to the MX500... though, most likely they are subcontracted earbuds from like sony or aiwa or somewhere...

 

[MacDEF]

Quote:

I mean, high amplifiaction and ****ty earbuds? Doesn't sound right... I wonder if they are at least comparable to the MX500... though, most likely they are subcontracted earbuds from like sony or aiwa or somewhere...

They sure *look* nice, but I'm wondering myself who makes them...

 

[utdeep]

I think apple went all out and got the earbuds from....
LABTEC

And they use a proprietary mac only earbud jack, so audiophiles are screwed!!!

And everytime you want to play an mp3, you have to use the controls to drag it into the trashbin icon on the ipod!!!

 

[AdamP88]

Quote:

Originally posted by utdeep I think apple went all out and got the earbuds from.... LABTEC And they use a proprietary mac only earbud jack, so audiophiles are screwed!!! And everytime you want to play an mp3, you have to use the controls to drag it into the trashbin icon on the ipod!!!

Um, what? All this info is completely false....

 

[MacDEF]

Quote:

Um, what? All this info is completely false....

He's being facetious

 

[leon]

Chych, Apple says the earbuds have 18mm drivers and 32 ohm impedance IIRC.

Given those two specs, it doesn't sound like Sony or Panasonic, unless Apple got them to specifically create NEW drivers. Could it be Sennheiser, or some connection they got from Harmon Kardon? (the B&O A8 has 19ohm impedance)

About the quality, neodymium drivers are everywhere.

It would also seem that people will have trouble fitting them into their ears - we're already not doing very well with the 888's 16mm and the thin rim around it.

 

[Xevion]

The iPod is quite the nice little toy, as a portable I think it would be excellent.


Quote:

i was waiting for a decent MP3 player to go along with my 2 macs, and my mom wants one too for her mac. I have a G4 Cube( 500MHz, 40GB HD, 640MB RAM, RADEON, DVD drive, with 17 inch flat panel) and an iBook (graphite special edition, 466MHz, 10GB HD, 320MB RAM, DVD) running OS X 10.1 of course (no i´m not bragging )

Lets not get into that. PIII 800, win2k, 512MB ram, GF2, Matrox Millenium I, ~50GB hard disk space, 2 monitors (19" sony and crappy 15"), Celestion/Polk speaker setup, Yamaha HTR-5440 reciever, most audio people would pick it over most any other computer because of its vastly superior audio capabilites. It is also fairly quiet for a PC with so much stuff in it (Albeit if I closed the case it would be more quiet, and I have been thinking of trying to slow down my PSU fan

). Now, how the hell do you use a Mac with 64MB of RAM? I always had MASSIVE performance problems on the G3 notebook I had from work (400Mhz, 64MB ram) and numerous application/OS crashes. Of course having a dozen copies of IE open isn't the best idea either, so I was probably just overowrking the poor thing. The G4 400 desktop I had at work with 128MB was better, more on par with a midrange celeron (600 or so) running some form of 9x with 128MB of ram, but I had 2 monitors on it (A fairly nice Apple 17" and an old sony 15" and really put it through hell.

Macs are elegant, but I love having 50 cables hanging off my PC. Besides, I prefer an OS that actually responds when I click, has keyboard commmands for everything, and I do some rather heavy multitasking for a single CPU machine (Next upgrade is dually board + extra PIII 800). Sure, my CPU isn't the fastest, but the A/V capabilites of my box far exceed most. I have used Macs before and just don't like the way they feel and perform.

Damn man, just add another 256MB of ram to the Cube, it would only be about $35 and will perform a _lot_ better.

 

[MacDEF]

Quote:

Now, how the hell do you use a Mac with 64MB of RAM?

He has 640MB

Quote:

The G4 400 desktop I had at work with 128MB was better, more on par with a midrange celeron (600 or so) running some form of 9x with 128MB of ram

There was something wrong with your G4 400 if it only felt like a Celeron 600. Wow.


Quote:

Besides, I prefer an OS that actually responds when I click, has keyboard commmands for everything, and I do some rather heavy multitasking for a single CPU machine

Funny, one of the machines I use is a two-year-old single-processor G4/400 -- it does all of the above quite nicely, doesn't crash, and runs most things comparably to my friends 833 PII... and gets great frame rates on UT

And I'm not even running OS X yet. All goes to show you what I've said for years -- Macs and PCs and all other computer are all about setup.

Let's not get into another idiotic Mac vs. Windows debate here.

 

[Neruda]

why are you guys worried about the earbuds? Sony doesn't even make their cheap phones, nor does any other major comany. they all get no-name chinese or korean manufacturers to make them. In fact, apparently it's the same company supplying Sony and Panasonic with cheap phones. Probably the same deal with apple. I doubt they really worried too much about high fidelity; I would imagine that those earbuds are pretty crappy. but who cares?

Also, about the battery life. Apparently the lower the mp3's bitrate is, the longer batteries last (which makes sense). I wonder if that reviewer was listening to really low-bitrate mp3's or something...

 

[chadbang]

QUOTE:
"Let's not get into another idiotic Mac vs. Windows debate here. "

I second the notion, McDef. There's only about 90,000 of those squabbles to be found on every corner of the net.

PC Good. Mac Good. Everybody happy. The End



Those picture that were posted above are strange. Is the iPod painted white, but the sides left bare steel? How is that aesthetically...? Weird.
I didn't pick up that detailing aspect from from Apple's website. Couldn't tell, actually, if it was all steel or all white! Love to see more of those alternative photos. Damn thing probably won't reach Thailand for three months. (and then it will be copied in a week! jes, kiddin)

 

[MacDEF]

Quote:

I doubt they really worried too much about high fidelity; I would imagine that those earbuds are pretty crappy. but who cares?

I would actually think otherwise; Apple has always made a decent attempt at good sound quality (heck, one of their laptops even had a ported sub built into the lid

). Remember, this was the company that put high-quality stereo sound on their motherboards in 1983, and was the first company to put CD-ROM drives and stereo speakers on a consumer computer. Their recent machines have all had very good sound for computers, and they have really been aiming for the B&0/Harman-Kardon market in the last few years. So I suspect they won't be "high-end" but they'll be much better than what we've come to expect from "stock" earbuds.

Quote:

Also, about the battery life. Apparently the lower the mp3's bitrate is, the longer batteries last (which makes sense). I wonder if that reviewer was listening to really low-bitrate mp3's or something...

The lower the bitrate, the more MP3s can be stored in the onboard RAM, so the less the hard drive has to spin up.

As for the 13-hour life, the reviewer was using 160k MP3s. As I recall, the battery life on the Nomad (6 hours is the claim I saw) is based on 128k MP3s.


Quote:

Those picture that were posted above are strange. Is the iPod painted white, but the sides left bare steel? How is that aesthetically...? Weird.

The back and sides are polished metal. The front is the same white plastic/polycarbonate found on the iBook 2001.

 

[Neruda]

macdef, you might be right about the earbuds. Apple does seem to be striving for quality; I guess time will tell, no?

As for the HD thing, i understand how it works, so you didn't need to explain it to me

. That's good though about the battery life.

What i can't wait to see is whether or not other companies will start taking HD players more seriously after this. Who knows, maybe us PC users won't have to get a mac to use this player if another company comes out with one that's just as good.

 

[lextek]

Just saw the iPod at the new Apple store in CT. Beautiful and cool. The store had one for demo only. The back is stainless still is clear over white.

 

[chych]

Ahh the Apple store in CT is open? I have to go there one day....

And I'm pretty sure Jobs is an audiophile so it would reflect on the products...