[EddieE]

The solution would be to buy another brand.
 
Why keep buying ipods when they don't give you what you ask for? 

 

[jack95]

Once they have a new touch coming out in 6 months to a year that has 120gbs then i will probably sell my classic and get one of the 64gb touches that will be a ton cheaper when the 120gb version comes out.

 

[yliu]

Quote:

Again, it doesn't mean that iPod with a good SQ would cost "a lot more". In fact, manufacturing costs of iPod with a good SQ could be just couple of bucks higher than now. But Apple doesn't care of their customers, Jobs says that you should not want good SQ and that you should want touchscreen instead, so lemmings are purchasing iPods because Jobs said them to.

Maybe it's only a few bucks more for an ipod, but apple sells millions of ipods tens of millions of ipod yearly, so it would apple would make hundred of millions less every year. And again, for normal, non audiophile peoples, sound quality is not a important factor, and most people probably have never knew that different media player has different SQ.

 

[Bricolage]

I bet if apple marketed these new iPod as having better sound quality you guys would think yourselves into thinking they.

 

[Achmedisdead]

Quote:

The solution would be to buy another brand.
 
Why keep buying ipods when they don't give you what you ask for? 

Wait a minute.....common sense has no place in this debate!

 
You are correct though. I never bought one until I got one that could be rockboxed....and now I have a stellar custom EQ, and flac support, etc., etc........

 

[penartur]

Quote:

Maybe it's only a few bucks more for an ipod, but apple sells millions of ipods tens of millions of ipod yearly, so it would apple would make hundred of millions less every year.

Or just priced new iTouch as $509, not $499.
And you originally said that ipod with a good SQ would cost "a lot more" and that nobody except for 0.1% of audiophiles would purchase such high-priced player. Please, clarify your point.

 

[penartur]

Quote:

The solution would be to buy another brand.
 
Why keep buying ipods when they don't give you what you ask for? 

I'm buying another brand and don't buing ipods.

 

[Maxis]

Quote:

The solution would be to buy another brand.
 
Why keep buying ipods when they don't give you what you ask for? 

This ..
 
I have made the same mistake twice with zune ... never touching the stuff again. Moving to cowon ..

 

[Somnambulist]

Quote:

Somnambulist, that's exactly what I'm trying to build. I plan to pick up the new Apple TV (already have a giftcard for $100), then run an optical connection to the Pass D1 clone and into my rig. I'll use my iPad as a remote control. I've been wanting a Sooloos-type of system for a long time, but now I can have one as soon as I finish ripping everything into lossless.

Same. My plan for my room is:
 
Hackintosh Atom build, basically a quiet, low power, cheap thing in an HTPC case that houses a decent amount of HDDs and a little SSD (like the Fractal Design Array case). OSX on the SSD with iTunes really being the only thing installed, along with several TB of storage (i.e. way cheaper than buying a Mac Mini and adding a bunch of external HDDs)... and while I can run it headless and control via the Remote app on my iPhone, I'll probably get a monitor and run OSX in portrait mode, just because if you want to change where you're streaming the media to, you need to do it via iTunes itself. From there it'll stream to the Apple TV, then out the Optical and into some set up whose components I haven't really decided on yet! I'll connect it to my TV but probably only use the YouTube feature and since I'm in the UK we haven't got much in the way of rentals.
 
They really need to come up with an app that lets you direct the flow of media from iTunes to different devices, like a switchboard, rather than AirPlay just being a way to stream media from iTunes or an iOS device to an Apple TV or third party product, The actual Remote app was done by one guy and hasn't been touched for ages, they need to give it a proper revamp and expand what you can do with it!
 
Their AirPlay page has a few companies on already: http://www.apple.com/itunes/airplay/
 
EDIT -
"Say you have one set of speakers in your bedroom, one in the office, and one in the living room. For the ultimate sonic panorama, you can stream your tunes to more than one room simultaneously, so you’ll never lose the beat, no matter where you are in the house. Just select “Multiple Speakers” from the speaker pulldown menu in iTunes...so you can stream music directly from your home network if you’re near an Ethernet port or connect wirelessly if you’re not."

 

[LevA]

Quote:

Or just priced new iTouch as $509, not $499.
And you originally said that ipod with a good SQ would cost "a lot more" and that nobody except for 0.1% of audiophiles would purchase such high-priced player. Please, clarify your point.

 
although from our point of view a difference in say between $499 and $509 should not make much of a difference, from marketing perspective it is very important. have you noticed that most products are always priced just under a certain price point, say 49.95, $1999, $99.00 etc.???
I don't think anyone believes that their profit margin just happens to add up to those amounts when adding the cost. so if it cost them more to produce, they still would be placed within the same price point, or else they would be over the psychological price point barrier...
 

 

[Somnambulist]

Quote:

Actually I beliefe it is just a Revival of the Airtunes feature. One had the ability to stream music to standalone speakers for quite some time by simply connecting the speaker to the line out socket on the airport express base station. You could already stream different music to different speakers and the apple remote always worked with it too. Also you could already stream to the old apple tv from any itunes library you had so far. Simply put i don't see how this is a new feature. They just decreased the hardware on the new apple tv (no hard disk, slower processor) and hence are able to decrease the price tag. It is now truly worth buying it, because the first apple tv always seemed like a stripped down mac mini with an accordingly high price tag on it. Though with the new mac minis having a hdmi out I'd still rather get that, because that way I could also surf the Internet in my couch, play DVD's and have it as a true streaming server through additional external hard disks as it supports USB.

I don't like the new iPod touch, as they still don't deliver a 128 gb flash drive and the back camera has a very low resolution. I mean I don't care much about cameras on the PMP anyway, but if I'm already paying for it anyway why not add the good one from the iPhone 4?

The new nano seems sleek at first but they completely dropped the video support and I'm sure that's a big no-go for a lot of customers.

Yeah I know AirPlay is just an update of AirTunes and people had music servers using their older Apple TVs, but the new stuff just seems, I dunno, more elegant (probably down to the marketing!). The whole integration with iOS is new though, being able to forward any music or videos from your iPod/Pad/Phone to the ATV. As I've said, you can almost guarantee that they'll make it so that you'll be able to stream games or apps you're playing/using to the TV too, so if you're at home you can carry on trying to get 3 stars on that Angry Birds level, or look at all the stories on Engadget's app without having to use a web-browser on your 50" 
 
iPod Touch is way less than the iPhone 4 (if you just buy the handset on PAYG), they probably decided to skimp in a few places otherwise the price difference would seem very unreasonable.

 

[semisight]

Quote:

The digital music era exploded already in 1999/2000 when mp3 players with enough memory to fit a whole album was released.

Maybe, but the iPod made it accessible by increasing the demand so much as to bring prices down. I mean, would the Fuze (sort of a Nano competitor) be around if not for the iPod nano?

 

[rhythmdevils]

I seriously don't get the Apple-hater crowd.  They are one of many options.  Buy what you want. 
 
But you can't deny Apple's huge effect on the whole computer industry.  They have, time after time, created new markets by taking products that were once unusable/difficult/annoying to the vast majority of people, and making them easy and fun to use.  They did it with personal computers, then they did it with mp3 players, then with phones.  No one can claim that Apple made the first mp3 player, or the first computer, or the first smart phone.  But they were the first to make all of those technologies easy to use.  And for most people, that is what matters most.  Apple haters always make big lists of functions proving that Apple is not the best.  But it's not the list of functions themselves that makes a piece of technology useful, but actually being able to use that list of functions. This is what Apple haters don't get. 
 
And yes, then they add smart marketing that promotes a "lifestyle" on top of these products that humanize technology, and that's why Apple has been so successful. 
 
You can claim that the Zune NOW has better UI, and not only is that debatable, but the Zune would not even exist in it's current form if it weren't for the ipod. Likewise, the Droid would not exist if it weren't for the iphone. 

 

[Somnambulist]

Quote:

I seriously don't get the Apple-hater crowd.  They are one of many options.  Buy what you want. 
 
But you can't deny Apple's huge effect on the whole computer industry.  They have, time after time, created new markets by taking products that were once unusable/difficult/annoying to the vast majority of people, and making them easy and fun to use.  They did it with personal computers, then they did it with mp3 players, then with phones.  No one can claim that Apple made the first mp3 player, or the first computer, or the first smart phone.  But they were the first to make all of those technologies easy to use.  And for most people, that is what matters most.  Apple haters always make big lists of functions proving that Apple is not the best.  But it's not the list of functions themselves that makes a piece of technology useful, but actually being able to use that list of functions. This is what Apple haters don't get. 
 
And yes, then they add smart marketing that promotes a "lifestyle" on top of these products that humanize technology, and that's why Apple has been so successful. 
 
You can claim that the Zune NOW has better UI, and not only is that debatable, but the Zune would not even exist in it's current form if it weren't for the ipod. Likewise, the Droid would not exist if it weren't for the iphone. 

Aye I get a few people blab at me about how xyz phone has a better camera, faster processor, bigger screen, more customisable, there's this one coming out that will DESTROY the iPhone e.t.c. and it's like, way to miss the point... have you even USED one for an extended period?
 
Currently I've managed to convert half a dozen people in my social circle into buying one haha. I don't actively preach about how amazing it is or anything, I just show them a few things and let them mess about on it. They're not as nerdy or interested in tech as me, just normal people who want something easy to use, has Facebook, can browse the web, okay camera, put music on and so on. When they come back to me genuinely enthused about their new iPhone, it's a testament to Apple that they can get that reaction from people who usually find using computers a chore or event.
 
That isn't to say other companies can or are doing similar things, obviously, just Apple are better at advertising and marketing it.

 

[penartur]

Quote:

Same. My plan for my room is:
 
Hackintosh Atom build, basically a quiet, low power, cheap thing in an HTPC case that houses a decent amount of HDDs and a little SSD (like the Fractal Design Array case). OSX on the SSD with iTunes really being the only thing installed, along with several TB of storage (i.e. way cheaper than buying a Mac Mini and adding a bunch of external HDDs)...

Just in case, Chenbro ES34069 greatly suits your needs - it is really small and has 4 hot-swap 3.5" hdd bays