And a Big “Welcome Home” to Steve Jobs, Too
OK, whew.
Big-ish announcements from Apple today. iTunes 9 looks very nice, especially all the new sharing stuff. The new iPod Touch models are priced aggressively and specced out, from the mid-priced model and up. The new nano, which everyone expected to get a still camera, instead got built-in video. 8 GB of digital video for $149 in a device not much bigger (and much, much thinner) than a Bic? The nano might just re-invent the mini camcorder market. Oh, and it’s an iPod, too.
The best news for me though is what Apple didn’t do — they didn’t kill off the big, dumb iPod Classic, as they were rumored to do.
The Classic didn’t get a camera. It didn’t get an FM radio. It didn’t get anything but a bigger hard drive and the same simple, single price of $249. And that’s perfect.
My “brilliant playlists” work properly only if all my music is on board. At last count, that was 10,264 songs requiring 72.76 GB of hard drive space. And growing almost daily, since I discovered the (inexpensive) joys of Amazon’s used CD stores, and the (space-killing) pleasures of recording at 320 kbps. So, pretty much any time I think of an old album I’m missing, I order it up for four bucks. And then lose another 150 MB of hard drive. Hard drives are cheap, but less so when you want them small enough to stick in your pocket.
That, however, is the genius of the Classic. There’ll always be a market of guys (almost always guys) who want need to carry around all their music, all the time, and don’t want to be bothered with fancy touch screens or any of that. And every couple of years, we’d like a bigger hard drive.
The R&D for the Classic is all paid off. If they need to fancy up the interface any, they can crib it off the nano, where they generate the big sales. All Apple has to do is stick in that bigger drive every September, and watch as their profit margins get fatter every year. We Classic fanboys aren’t a big market, but we’re reliable 12-24 month-cycle upgraders — and that bigger drive (paid for by someone else’s R&D, not Apple’s) is the only new feature we want or need.
Thanks for not forgetting us, Apple.
Agreed, except for this obsessive music nerd, 160 gigs is not nearly enough at this point. I’m running over 700 gigs of music on an external hard drive, and I still haven’t even gotten anywhere near digitizing my vinyl!
I make some sweet mixes, too…
COOP –
That’s an enviable collection. Then again, I’ve been concentrating on movies this year. So far, I’ve got about 650 DVD ripped, and 850 or so TV episodes, and filled three terabytes of HD space. HD prices collapsed just in time.
Oh, and for ripping DVD to HQ M4V files, I can’t recommend Nehalems highly enough.
Why are you recording at 320 kbps? Your ear can only use about 44 kbps.
Charlie –
A cymbal crash at 128k sounds like mud. At 320k, it sounds like a cymbal. And, yes, I can pass this test “blind.”
My Touch was stolen yesterday, and if they’d announced a Touch with a camera today, I’d be buying one tonight. But now I’m looking at getting a Refurb, or a Zune HD, or possibly the Android-based Archos 5 when it’s released. (I really like the idea of a portable device that could bittorrent files and then show them directly on TV.)
It really is a surprise for Apple, given that the driving ideology is if your (iPod, iPhone, laptop, desktop, etc.) is more than three years old, it’s obsolete and you should just buy a new one from us, because we’re going to stop supporting the older equipment. Works if you want to be a niche company with a small but loyal fanbase that will follow you anywhere; less so when you’re trying to broaden your market share (though Apple also may have learned the lesson with the iPod a few years ago from all the bad press they got over the iPod battery replacement kerfuffle, forcing them to go to a more consumer-friendly policy to avoid theatening a market they dominate right now).
Why are you recording at 320 kbps? Your ear can only use about 44 kbps.
I am positive you are thinking of 44khz, which is the sampling rate and not the data rate.
I’m curious as to how you’re ripping the DVDs? External drive or the computers drive? (Feel free to plead the fifth on… other methods.)
DF –
I just use the OS X front end for Handbrake. Very satisfied with the results. And all kidding aside, I own every disc I rip.
John –
If it’s a choice between Apple’s policy (which is usually more like a five-year cycle) of forcing people to upgrade machines they really ought to upgrade anyway…
Or Microsoft’s policy of making every little goddamn thing backward compatible to 1981…
Then I choose (freely, I might add) Apple. MS works on a lowest common denominator principle, and it shows in their lousy code.
I despise the LCD when politicians shove it down my throat, but in computers I don’t have to put up with it.
Stephen –
The MS backward compatibility policy does institutionalize clunkiness, but unfortunately it’s part of the price to pay for customer satisfaction. Even as lousy as Mr. Gates’ company image is, it would be worse if they went on Apple’s cycle (which I’ll agree is probably five years to total obsolescence — no Snow Leopard for you, Motorola chip users — but closer to three years to initial clunkiness). Were Apple to eventually grow back to, say, 30-40 percent of the market, my guess is you’d see more back-downs from the “Update or Die” attitude that a smaller, highly loyal base provides, in the same way they backed down on the initial refusal to replace the dead iPod batteries, where the attitude crashed into the iPod’s huge profile and market share.
(As far as the computers, in hindsight, Jobs & Co. probably should have bitten the bullet when OSX was introduced and made the switch to Intel processors at the same time, since it also created outside obsolescence problems, such as with the Adobe CS 2.x and earlier suites being dead in the water on 10.5 and the new Intel processors. Not Apple’s fault, but having to go out and spend another $1,500 on a new CS package is something I don’t think they would dare try by making their first post Windows 7 release suite for PC incompatible with computers running XP, since both Adobe and Microsoft would catch all kinds of crap).
Love the updated iPod line–lots of stuff in there that I really want. I’m particularly happy that they didn’t kill the Classic, although I’m feeling drawn to the new Nano.
Anyway, yes to Handbrake. Works a freakin’ charm.
Have you tried your public library for music? For box sets, old stuff, and stuff I’d never pay a dime for, it’s a great place for loading up a computer. You already paid for that Willie Nelson box set and the Jazz Greats CD collections and that CCR greatest hits collection, so you may as well enjoy them.
Wow. The way my girlfriend acts I thought I was the only one on the planet with a classic. That 120GB thing with a battery that will last a week is great. I love my itouch for what it can do but I would be lost without my classic
People show remarkable variation is their tolerance for digital compression. VP might think 320kbps is a great sound but I find regular Redbook CDs lacking in quality compared to SACDs, quality vinyl, and 192/24 DVD/As.
If I were to buy an iPod, it would have only the highest bandwidth music on it – straight CDs, no compression. Unfortunately, it can’t store beyond current Redbook.
The iPod has been compariatively reviewed to have the best audio drive hardware available so I’ll give it that.
I think that tolerance has a lot of do with the quality of their earphones. While you might not notice artifacts and such from digital compression on those craptastic ipod earbuds, fit yourself with a pair of Ulitmate Ears TripleFi 10′s and you’ll cringe and what going to .mp3 did to your beloved music.