Comments on: Apple’s 2009 iPod Event

By: tinytim09

tinytim09 — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 17:56:35 +0000

I respectfully disagree gus2000. The ZuneHD still has the look of the classic Zunes and stayed true to the Zune line. The iPod Touch/iPhone definently threw touchscreens into the public line but soft keyboards have been around for way longer. When a device is only touhscreen of course it’s gonna have a soft keyboard.

By: gus2000

gus2000 — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 07:24:54 +0000

@tinytim09

You make a compelling argument. However, if you look at how the ZuneHD differs from its predecessor, you’ll find the bulk of the changes (touchscreen, soft keyboard, etc) are taken right from the Touch. And why not? It’s a wildly successful platform.

By: tinytim09

tinytim09 — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 22:40:52 +0000

The ZuneHD is a blatant copy of the iPod Touch? Yep, they look almost exactly alike, have the same specs.. oh wait. Nope!

I seriously don’t understand how anybody with an ounce of intelligence can call the ZuneHD a BLATANT copy.

By: daGUY

daGUY — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:16:37 +0000

@Dorotea: yeah, I agree. Apparently the 8 GB model is unchanged in terms of hardware – they just dropped the price. The 32 and 64 GB models are upgraded to the same hardware as the iPhone 3GS (faster processor, etc.).

I read an interview with Steve Jobs in the Times where they asked him specifically why the Touch doesn’t have a camera. He says it’s because they’re positioning it more as a portable game player and thus it’s more important to lower the cost (and barrier to entry to the App Store) than add new features.

I guess that kind of makes sense for the 8 GB model (since $199 is apparently the “magic” price point), but could they not have added one for the 32 and 64 GB? I mean, come on, the Nano has a camera for $149…

By: Dorotea

Dorotea — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 02:40:06 +0000

No new iPod Touch for me. Wanted more in the iPod touch than it currently has. I have 1G 16gb iPod Touch. Moving to the 32gb for $299 doesn’t make sense. If it had new capabilities I’d do it. But I’ll keep my money – wimpy upgrade if you ask me.

By: daGUY

daGUY — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:55:54 +0000

All the announcements were pretty cool, but what’s up with no camera on the Touch?? I’ve been waiting to get one specifically because of this (and also the price drop), and it seemed like such a forgone conclusion that I’m shocked they didn’t add one.

I don’t get it. The Touch uses the same hardware as the iPhone, runs the same OS…you have all those camera-based apps in the App Store…wifi for uploading straight to Flickr/Facebook…a camera makes so much sense. But they gave it to the Nano instead, with its 8 GB of storage (much less after you copy your music, photos, etc. over), no third-party apps, and no wifi.

The only thing I can think of is that they want to upsell people to the iPhone. But that’s so stupid, because anyone who would want a Touch over an iPhone (like myself) probably has a very specific reason why – they don’t want to pay for service, or switch carriers, etc. So intentionally leaving features off of the Touch doesn’t push me to an iPhone – it just makes it less likely I’ll buy a Touch.

Everything else looks good though.

By: truthseeker

truthseeker — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:48:35 +0000

yes, Yes, YES!!! I was already excited now I’m really excited!!! Yes to castrating parasitic phone companies and their exorbitant long distance charges with VoIP. Now (hopefully) let’s take these bastard satellite and cable companies out with TVoIP!!! Replace! Go, go, go!!!

By: danieleran

danieleran — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:14:02 +0000

@bartfat “Actually, Peter Oppenheimer has debunked that rumor that Apple TV will have cable box integration”

What he said was that Apple TV wasn’t turning into a conventional cablebox tuner/decoder (which requires additional hardware, and is Microsoft’s approach).

It very clearly is capable of delivering HTTP Live Streams however, which are like live/on-demand podcasts streamed back to back. There’s nothing keeping the cable broadcasters from streaming video to devices over the web as opposed to using sat uplinks to beam them to cable providers, who pad them with 80 channels of garbage and charge you $100 per month to put up with this.

The only issue is trying to find an Internet Service Provider. And Apple already has a deal with AT&T that it could turn into something more valuable. That would replace, not copy, the cable companies.

Think of it as the VoIP of cable TV.

By: danieleran

danieleran — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:07:40 +0000

@Raymond: daringfireball suggests Apple will use WebKit to do this, which makes sense. That gets Apple cross platform iTunes and 64-bit support on the Mac side too.

By: Raymond

Raymond — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:10:22 +0000

Porting iTunes to Cocoa raises an interesting problem. The Windows version of iTunes is based on the Carbon API ported to run on top of the Windows API. It would be hard to imagine Apple maintaining two code streams for iTunes, so I think Apple will need to port enough of Cocoa to Win32 as necessary.