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iPod touch Released

Every other product today looked worse than the photoshop mockups. A look on the Apple site shows that they are a lot more attractive in real life, but geez the iPods looked like crap in the keynote.
The iPod touch looks fantastic. I didn't quite get what steve meant by Safari was a solution to not being able to access foreign wifi networks.
Anyway, I doubt I'll ever buy a regular iPod again given that there's an iPhone (being practically given away now). It's just a matter of time before it's downunder.
 
Hello,

Stupid question I know(sorry if it's been answered or asked beforehand)

Anyone know how the Wi-FI on the Ipod Touch is going to be implemented? By this I mean will the Ipod Touch use your existing wireless network connection, or will it use the various public wireless acess points that are about, and if so what sort of costs are we looking at to use such services?? I've heard about some kind of deal with Starbucks, not sure on what other costs may be involved when downloading songs other than the usual £0.99 charge for each song download.
 
I wish people would stop bitching or anti-bitching about the touch capacity, and move on and answer my question:

cookies supported in Safari on iPhone (and so now iPod touch) after power off/power on, browser close, etc?
 
Drpepper99uk said:
Hello,

Stupid question I know(sorry if it's been answered or asked beforehand)

Anyone know how the Wi-FI on the Ipod Touch is going to be implemented? By this I mean will the Ipod Touch use your existing wireless network connection, or will it use the various public wireless acess points that are about, and if so what sort of costs are we looking at to use such services?? I've heard about some kind of deal with Starbucks, not sure on what other costs may be involved when downloading songs other than the usual £0.99 charge for each song download.
Click to expand...

Wireless is wireless, so you'll be able to use any wireless conneciton you want.

Simply put, it's free, unless you are using a hot spot provided by a commercial company (such as in Starbucks or many airports).

At home, etc, it will be free to use. It's the same wifi your laptop uses.
 
iEdd said:
I didn't quite get what steve meant by Safari was a solution to not being able to access foreign wifi networks.
Click to expand...


This was a reference to the devices out there with wi-fi but no in-built desktop styled web browser..... what he was referring to was that many wireless hot-spots in cafes, universities, airports etc. require you to log in first via a full scale web page... even if its free wi-fi..... other devices with wi-fi can't handle this as they don't have a web browser or a limited one therefore meaning you can't log in..... with iPod touch and iPhone you can ! and in addition he was firing a shot of MS's bows (or bowls) in saying you can build wi-fi into Zune but without a full-scale web-browser people aint gonna log into wi-fi hot-spots like they can on a laptop or with touch.......
 
Analog Kid said:
I think Apple has forgotten that the beauty of the iPod was "everything in your pocket", and that what pulled them out of the gutter 10 years ago was a new CEO who simplified their product matrix.

Now we've got a tiny little shuffle suitable for party favors, a Nano that's great for people with small libraries but that also supports novelty image and video viewing, the Classic for people who want to carry around pictures and video and the Touch for people who want to look at pictures and video.

Or is the touch for people who want an iPhone but don't want to deal with AT&T?

The battery life arguments I'm seeing are missing the point. They made the thing thinner than the iPhone. If they put the RAM in there to cache the video, the hard drive would barely effect the battery life, and if they thickened the thing up enough to hold the drive, they'd have plenty of space around it for battery.

Despite all the back and forth on these boards about "cannibalizing iPhone sales", they went and stuck the Touch right in the place where it will have the greatest impact on iPhone sales-- it's essentially the same device for $100 less. Why didn't they follow the original argument they made which was that the iPhone was for people who wanted a phone and a Nano in one device?

If they had done that, they could have put a hard drive based Touch out at premium and there would be a natural progression: The Touch for the serious iPod user, the iPhone for convergence freaks, the Nano for mass market, and the Shuffle because it's cute.

Instead they've left me, and it sounds like a lot of people like me, stuck in this place where there are not products that meet my needs.

It's possible that Apple is being overly cautious here and they want to make sure people are still happy without the click wheel, but I don't think that's too likely if you view the iPhone success as a referendum on touch.
Click to expand...

Indeed, none of these devices meet my needs, I was really expecting an iPod Touch with plenty of storage space to replace my ailing 3G iPod (40GB). It's just that making selections is such a chore with a large library and syncing can be time-consuming.
 
Steve said it was an iPhone without the phone, maybe this has been asked and answered already, but why not put everything from the iPhone on the iPod touch, like the camera, Mail, SMS, etc? There's no reason any of it can't work over WiFi, and there's no reason you shouldn't be able to make VOIP calls with it! ]

Is it for price? Or differentiation?
 
?????

I would prefer the iphone to the touch but can't afford the 20$ a month. I'm already an ATT member but was wondering is there anyway out of the 20$ a month????

Thanks
 
Analog Kid said:
The battery life arguments I'm seeing are missing the point. They made the thing thinner than the iPhone. If they put the RAM in there to cache the video, the hard drive would barely effect the battery life, and if they thickened the thing up enough to hold the drive, they'd have plenty of space around it for battery.
Click to expand...

I imagine that it would be possible to do this. But there would need to be plenty of RAM, not to cache the video, but to run OS X, Safari, etc.

Saying that having a video cache means the hard drive would barely effect battery life is innaccurate IMO (or at least an oversimplification.) If a user runs a lot of Safari, switches around different albums, etc., the iPod is hitting the hard drive each time and that is going to affect the battery life.

I do agree that extra thickness for hard drive would mean more room for a battery.

I don't know what the net effect of all these changes would be, whether it would add to the cost of the Touch, etc. Would people complain if Apple had to use smaller hard drives than the Classic, to hit the $299 and $399 price points? Or would some people say "Well, you may as well use flash if you can't use a 160GB HD!", etc. Keep in mind that the hard drive in the full size iPod takes up a lot of bulk, especially since the hard drive is insulated for shock protection.
 
Skype?

A thought? Will it practically run skype in wifi mode whilst at Starbucks? Maybe the point is - does it have a way microphone setup/input
 
madmaxmedia said:
I've been playing around with HandBrake in advance of the Touch. The following gives me excellent results-

- 480 x 320 resolution (autocropped if source aspect ratio is different)
- H264 single pass encoding
- 500 kbps bitrate

This results in files of 600 MB or so (obviously depends on length of movie.) So on a 16GB iPod, that's quite a few movies.

400 kbps is also quite watchable, but then I start noticing artifacts more.
Click to expand...

That's not too bad. How long is that 600MB movie? 2 hours? 1 1/2?

One thing I want one for is for the kids on a long trip. I'm almost thinking the Nano would be fine, but I'm not sure how many of their movies I could fit in 4GB. I'm thinking 6 or 7, which isn't that bad. But those only need to be 320 x 240.
 
swingerofbirch said:
Steve said it was an iPhone without the phone, maybe this has been asked and answered already, but why not put everything from the iPhone on the iPod touch, like the camera, Mail, SMS, etc? There's no reason any of it can't work over WiFi, and there's no reason you shouldn't be able to make VOIP calls with it! ]

Is it for price? Or differentiation?
Click to expand...

Those are phone features, if you want them....get the iPhone
 
I think the iPhone is the winner of today's announcement. Clearly Apple try to hold iPhone as the king of iPods.
iPod touch with 16gig max of storage is a joke. I will only buy it if when I buy my iPhone the AT&T reception and service turns out to be crap. If not I would think the iPhone is a much better deal (mail, edge, camera, more apps, goggle maps, etc) for $100 more than the iPod Touch. If you need a cell phone anyway and one device that does it all, iPhone is the one. It offers much more than the Touch. So that's where I am going to spend my money.

I wish the iPod touch had 80 gig and 160gig hard drives on it. It could be thicker. I don't mind. So I guess we will have to wait a good time to increase flash storage.
 
Dimwhit said:
That's not too bad. How long is that 600MB movie? 2 hours? 1 1/2?

One thing I want one for is for the kids on a long trip. I'm almost thinking the Nano would be fine, but I'm not sure how many of their movies I could fit in 4GB. I'm thinking 6 or 7, which isn't that bad. But those only need to be 320 x 240.
Click to expand...

Quick check- I encoded Lost in Translation at those settings. It is 1:41 (101 minutes), and it came out to 465 MB. The image quality is excellent IMO considering the resolution and file size. That's a pretty average length for a movie, so you could ballpark at 500 to 600 MB per flick. If you used your 16GB at 50/50 movies/music, you could fit around 15 movies (assuming it's not LOTR Director's cut, etc.)

Couple of other details-

1. H.264 encoding apparently doesn't need 2-pass encoding as much as older codecs (i.e. you're not gaining much quality by doing 2-pass.)
2. On my CD 1.83 MacBook, I get about 40 FPS encoding straight from the retail, encrypted DVD. That's plenty fast for me.

EDIT- For the Nano and 320 x 240, 300 kbps is around equivalent image quality. So then you're looking around 300 MB per movie.
 
Genius APple

Appart for all critics, apple just filled all the holes it had in the market created with the iphone.
The Iphone was selled as the best Ipod ever, with a phone etc... so iphone owners (not apple's hardcore fans) should be purchasing 1 device for the phone and Ipod. Apart for Usa At&t customers, all the rest of us cant have an Iphone and so will continue having 2 devices.
So it comes to you to choose:

160 gb, a LOT of music and Videos, good price, beautyfull new Os, and a sexy and Small Design (No touch)

Dont need so much space, have 400 dollars, get the most incredible music player in the Globe (well maybe the iphone is, but CANT buy it..), surf the web!!! (maybe later on skype), and watch the latest battlestar galactica gorgeusly.

If i want to spend less, according to how much, Nano or Shuffle....

Dont tell me i can crack the iphone to make it work on other providers, I know and i'll probably do it, what i've said is to be intended for all those whould never spend 5 minutes finding how, or even would want to patch or crack theyr phone. Most of Ipod and iphone buyers are in this category.

instead,
For all the ones who would have wanted to see a 80 / 32 /160gb Ipod touch with 5 Inch Hd screen 500ppi, with the ability to run osx apps and a with timeless battery life, there is just one thing to do: Wait you can dream of it but is not yet the Technological moment for his introduction
it certainly is not impossible to build at this time, but the fact is that at the moment the cost and the size it should have is not suited for any real relevant marketshare, Wait for tech development......

p.s sorry for the lenght and the english (i'm italian)
 
I've ordered mine

To everybody who's bellyaching about the storage:

It's a Nano. An 8/16GB touchscreen wireless Nano with a bunch of PDA functions. If you want 160GB, you want a hard drive in a nice case, it's an iPod Classic. The Touch is meant to be thin and light, with no moving parts. I hate moving parts in small portable devices - they make it large, heavier, use more power and more fragile. You heard Steve - the best selling digital music player in the world isn't the iPod, it's the iPod Nano, so why the heck would they introduce a hard drive Touch first? (I bet they follow up with a hard drive Touch next year.)

As soon as I saw the info about it on one of the live blogs I refreshed my browser until the Apple Store came back online and ordered a 16GB model. This is to replace my 8GB Nano, and my 64MB Windows PDA - and selling those on Ebay will get me most of my $400 back.

As far as I'm concerned, and I think a lot of people will agree, Apple got this damn near perfect - I only want three things added, a Mail program, iChat and some kind of text editor. But if Apple doesn't release those soon the hackers will.
 
Well basically this is an iPhone for the rest of us. If you thought the iPhone was very cool, but did not want an AT&T contract or AT&T does not do business in your area, you can now have just almost the same thing minus the phone.
 
Spades said:
For anybody really wondering about how much video an iPod Touch could really store, as opposed to people that just want to whine, from my collection I could fit:

Season 1 of Star Trek Voyager
Star Trek 2, 4, 6, and 7
Click to expand...

NNNNNNEEEERRRRRRRR-HHHEEEERRRRR-DDDDDDDDDD

SOrry, couldn't resist! Seriously though, he has a good point. But, Email should have been there. Why on earth leave it out? The home run Apple could have had is now a double.
 
Actually, I see now that people have already got a Terminal on the iPhone and ports of a bunch of Unix apps, and I can't imagine it will take very long to get whatever works on the iPhone to work on the iPod, so that gives it all the software I'll need.
 
iEdd said:
Every other product today looked worse than the photoshop mockups. A look on the Apple site shows that they are a lot more attractive in real life, but geez the iPods looked like crap in the keynote.
The iPod touch looks fantastic. I didn't quite get what steve meant by Safari was a solution to not being able to access foreign wifi networks.
Anyway, I doubt I'll ever buy a regular iPod again given that there's an iPhone (being practically given away now). It's just a matter of time before it's downunder.
Click to expand...

He meant those wifi networks that require you to login through the browser (such as my university's wireless network)

This made me wonder when they will update iPhone's software so we get that spiffy new "dock" too!
 
madmaxmedia said:
Quick check- I encoded Lost in Translation at those settings. It is 1:41 (101 minutes), and it came out to 465 MB. The image quality is excellent IMO considering the resolution and file size. That's a pretty average length for a movie, so you could ballpark at 500 to 600 MB per flick. If you used your 16GB at 50/50 movies/music, you could fit around 15 movies (assuming it's not LOTR Director's cut, etc.)

Couple of other details-

1. H.264 encoding apparently doesn't need 2-pass encoding as much as older codecs (i.e. you're not gaining much quality by doing 2-pass.)
2. On my CD 1.83 MacBook, I get about 40 FPS encoding straight from the retail, encrypted DVD. That's plenty fast for me.
Click to expand...

Excellent. Thanks! That's good info to know.
 
I've got my 8GB on order now. How I wish it were the 28th :( It cost me $419 Aussie dollars. A bit steep :( but I'm sure I will love it considering I have barely 3GB of music! I was thinking of buying the nano but I don't really like its design.
 
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