Category: Apple
Rumored iPod nano/touch dimensions start making the rounds
From arstechnica.com:
TweetWe totally get it. Everyone is expecting a revamped iPod nano and iPod touch updates/price drops during next week’s Apple Special Event. Now, schematic drawings along with dimensions for the updated devices have mysteriously popped up at iLounge, apparently lending even further evidence to what we already “know” based on recent rumors.
According to iLounge, the fourth-gen iPod nano will be 90.75mm tall by 38.75mm wide by 6.08mm deep. Compared to the second-gen iPod nano—90mm by 40mm by 6.5mm—the new device will be the slimmest yet, although the differences are so minute that it will be surprising if anyone notices.
The iPod touch is slated to get a slight design update as well, according to the drawings—most notably a more iPhone 3G-like tapered backing. The new iTouch’s dimensions will allegedly be 111mm tall by 61.8mm wide and 8.4mm deep, which will be exactly one millimeter taller and 0.4 millimeters deeper than the current iPod touch model.
Although these schematics and dimensions are unconfirmed, they aren’t particularly surprising. With under a week left until Apple’s expected announcements, all we can do is wait and speculate.
Album-loving artists blame iTunes for changed music tastes
From arstechnica.com:
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Online music sales continue to skyrocket at the expense of CDs. iTunes continues to be the leader of the pack, too, not only in online sales, but music sales overall. But a small rebellion is brewing against iTunes as artists become disgruntled with the hit they’re taking on overall album sales thanks to the now-wildly-popular method of cherry-picking favorite tracks for download.
As we reported on Infinite Loop back in June, Kid Rock is one of the artists who have begun to speak out against what they consider to be an unfair distribution system in iTunes. Rock said at the time that iTunes was representative of the “old system,” where distributors and record labels take money instead of giving it to artists. iTunes, for instance, pushes the a la carte music track system instead of allowing artists to sell music in album-only format. But selling millions of singles isn’t necessarily as lucrative as selling far fewer full albums, and for some artists (we don’t necessarily include Kid Rock in this category), there’s the artistic vision realized only in the full-album experience.
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Movie “tracking devices” are here.
Everyone has seen movies where a character secretly installs a “tracking device” on a vehicle to follow someone else. These scenes are often written off as science-fiction, or at least that’s how I would tend to see them.
But now, with the new iPhone receiving GPS, it got me thinking… has this whole notion of a discrete “tracking device” become a reality? I can imagine that someone, at some point, will develop a hack for the iPhone that will allow for remote “watching” of wherever that phone goes and, in turn, wherever its owner goes. Call me paranoid, but I’m sure it’s possible.
Thinking about this notion further, I did a search online and found this GPS Tracking site. I had no idea this type of technology existed in so many forms, though I probably should have… I just never thought about it. After all, Disney had previously included GPS trackers with their now-defunct mobile phone service, but I never realized there were so many options for tracking someone.
I don’t see any cool “launching” devices on that site that would allow you to secretly shoot your GPS tracker and suction it to a person or vehicle to follow them… I suppose that part is still science-fiction for now. But I wonder how often people be tracked in the future without even knowing it.
TweetA Million New iPhones Sold in the First Weekend
From nytimes.com:
TweetApple said Monday it sold one million new iPhones in the initial weekend, on par with estimates set by analysts.The original iPhone, introduced in late June 2007 in the United States only, sold about 270,000 units in its first two days. Sales topped one million by early September. The new device is sold in 21 countries.
“IPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend,†Apple’s chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, said in a statement.
A Clean Inbox!
Thanks to Apple adding To Do list functionality to Leopard’s Mail client, I have now achieved something I haven’t seen in years… a clean inbox! That is, my e-mail inbox is now completely empty, with no messages staring at me, waiting me to do something in response to them.
Most of my day-to-day conversations happen through e-mail and thus most of the things I need to accomplished are eventually brought up via one of those conversations. Until now, my method of organizing my tasks was to simply leave certain emails in my inbox to remind me of what I needed to do.
It got to the point where I would have so many e-mails in my inbox that nothing would ever get done. I would occasionally glance at the messages that had been sitting there for months, sometimes years, and continue to put them off in favor of responding to new emails that came in. If a new email warranted an action beyond a simple response, I’d let it sit at the bottom of the inbox with the rest.
Then the really fun thing happened: my hard drive completely died. Fortunately, my inbox is stored in an IMAP server, so I didn’t lose any of the emails waiting to be addressed. The crash forced me to buy a new hard drive and, in the process, gave me an opportunity to start clean with a new copy of Mac OS X Leopard, which I never bothered to upgrade to.
I decided to spend today sifting through the hundreds of e-mails that had piled up in my inboxes since the time my hard drive crashed on Saturday. In the process, I discovered that the new version of Mail included with Leopard has To Do lists built in.
Previously, I used the To Do list functionality on Netvibes.com, my RSS reader of choice. It’s a nice centralized place to have a To Do list, but it also means I have to actually remember to visit Netvibes on a daily basis in order to actually attempt to check off anything on the list. If I avoided Netvibes completely, it was like there was nothin to do, which is a better feeling than staring at a giant list of nagging tasks.
I can’t avoid e-mail and *always* have Mail open. So, having my To Do lists inside Mail is a great way for me to not ignore what I have to do. It’s also a great way to get those lingering emails off of the bottom of my inbox, tucked away in a “To Do” folder, and listed in the To Do section of Mail where I can sort them by priority, give them due dates, and even add iCal events associated with the To Do list, which is a program I’ve never bothered to use before. In other words, Mail is actually getting me a bit more organized.
Even better is the feature that allows me to highlight text in an email message and use that text as the basis for a new To Do item. That To Do item then automatically links to the email so, when it’s time to finally attack that task, I can click on a convenient little grey arrow next to the task to take me to the related email so I can read more about what I need to do. It’s all very easy.
So now, rather than e-mails piling up in my inbox, I store them away in a folder and will visit my To Do list every day, as it will be staring at me whenever I check my mail (which is normally hundreds of times a day).
Thanks, Apple!
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