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Apple Store Down, 4GB iPod Shuffle in the Wings?
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I hope so; I've been looking for just such a cable for my existing Shuffle, since you can't keep that fragile dock/pin thing in your laptop bag.
No, there are no set audio waveforms. Speech synthesis software emulates the natural resonance of the human mouth; it's (more or less) a set of formant filters operating on a simple carrier wave for the vowels, and a little more complex filtering algorithm for the consonants. These are run through an inflection process that raises or lowers the pitch of words as they are "spoken", so that it sounds more like a human reading a sentence.
The differences in the resulting speech from different operating systems depends on both the shape and starting pitch of the carrier wave used as well as the tonal quality of the filters.
According to the Apple Store it's only compatible with 3rd gen Shuffles:
http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MC003?mco=NDI3MzM3NQ
Great Aussie pricing... not !!!
Yes, once again we get screwed over Down Under...
The wireless keyboard lists at US$79 as does the new Shuffle.
Aussie prices? $109 for the keyboard, $129 for the Shuffle.
What the???
Guess we can live in hope this is either a mistake (rather than greed) or our dollar starts to climb out of the toilet again sometime soon.
Yes, once again we get screwed over Down Under...
The wireless keyboard lists at US$79 as does the new Shuffle.
Aussie prices? $109 for the keyboard, $129 for the Shuffle.
What the???
Guess we can live in hope this is either a mistake (rather than greed) or our dollar starts to climb out of the toilet again sometime soon.
Just back from www.apple.com and have to say I'm impressed!
Before we get into the new Shuffle I have to say the girl giving the tour is a real babe. Makes me wish for the younger years.
About this Shuffle I have to say I'm impressed and I believe Apple will sell a bunch of them. The unit has been improved in multiple ways and has enough storage to make it of interest to even current Shuffle owners.
There are a couple of surprises though that I find bothersome. The price increase isn't all that swift especially for a device that is likely to be cheaper for Apple to produce. The other thing that struck me as odd is the devices operating and storage temperature range, the unit tops out at 95degrees F. Frankly that is a bit of a limit on usability. Storage isn't much higher than that, guess you won't be able to leave it in the car. Frankly I've not taken notice on the environmentals on other iPods but I can't believe they are all this limited in temperature range. Hopefully this will be improved in a revision to hardware.
In any event I do like the feature set. The multiple play lists ought to work out really nice. They did a nice job with the controls and voice over. Plus this means a new version of iTunes which is always nice.
With reservations, nice Job Apple
Dave
Before we get into the new Shuffle I have to say the girl giving the tour is a real babe. Makes me wish for the younger years.
About this Shuffle I have to say I'm impressed and I believe Apple will sell a bunch of them. The unit has been improved in multiple ways and has enough storage to make it of interest to even current Shuffle owners.
There are a couple of surprises though that I find bothersome. The price increase isn't all that swift especially for a device that is likely to be cheaper for Apple to produce. The other thing that struck me as odd is the devices operating and storage temperature range, the unit tops out at 95degrees F. Frankly that is a bit of a limit on usability. Storage isn't much higher than that, guess you won't be able to leave it in the car. Frankly I've not taken notice on the environmentals on other iPods but I can't believe they are all this limited in temperature range. Hopefully this will be improved in a revision to hardware.
In any event I do like the feature set. The multiple play lists ought to work out really nice. They did a nice job with the controls and voice over. Plus this means a new version of iTunes which is always nice.
With reservations, nice Job Apple
Dave
How would they generate excitement?
Interesting thought and the first thing that come to mind is a marketing ploy. Having the store down creates excitment, speculation and discussion. Apple may be using the store shutdowns as a way to replace Mac World.
That is one perspective, my technical guess is that the store runs on multiple servers in different locations and they need to sync things up before restarting the store. They could also be doing something like flip between a development and production server. If it was me I'd would want a hot backup until I knew the store was 100%.
The more I think about it the more I wonder. Niether explanation above really does it fir me.
Dave
Interesting thought and the first thing that come to mind is a marketing ploy. Having the store down creates excitment, speculation and discussion. Apple may be using the store shutdowns as a way to replace Mac World.
That is one perspective, my technical guess is that the store runs on multiple servers in different locations and they need to sync things up before restarting the store. They could also be doing something like flip between a development and production server. If it was me I'd would want a hot backup until I knew the store was 100%.
The more I think about it the more I wonder. Niether explanation above really does it fir me.
Dave
I really can't understand how people don't get that this is target to low-budget people, so no need for good headphones. If you are serious about music you would never buy a shuffle. Get an ipod with good headphones, that's what I do
Yes you would. The shuffles have traditionally given the best audio quality in listening tests.
High-end hi-fi traditionally does away with features to improve the sound quality.
