iPhone 3.1, iTunes 9 and the new Apple iPods…

I know it’s all over the internet and it’s all the Apple Fanboys are talking about,but I thought I’d share my thoughts on Apple’s latest announcement. In case you missed it, Apple have tonight released a minor update to the iPhone/iPod touch operating system, a few new iPods and a major upgrade to iTunes which adds a load of new features. I’ll keep it brief, but here’s the main changes:

iTunes 9
Loads of changes and improvements to iTunes, mostly good, but a couple of things that were better the way they were before. Onto the changes then – first the good ones.

Home Sharing – this for me is the best new feature by a mile. It allows you to share your music with up to 5 other computers on the same network (wired or wireless) by simply dragging and dropping the music from the shared playlist into your own music library. This is great as it means that you only need to buy an album once and you can legally share it with the rest of your household in seconds – in fact iTunes will look for new content on other computers on the network and copy it to the other computers for you automatically. What’s more, if you’re an iPhone user you can share downloaded Apps too – meaning that the £60 price tag for TomTom just got a whole lot more appealing now that you can use it on up to 5 devices.

The new-look iTunes Store

Music Albums & Films on iTunes have been given a refresh too, with a new range of iTunes LP’s and iTunes Extras now being made available to encourage you to buy the whole album rather than just a couple of songs. The idea behind it is that when you buy an album or a movie, you’ll have access to a range of special features similar to those that you’dnormally get when buying a DVD (or an enhanced CD with multimedia content that was popular in the late 90’s early 00’s). It gives you access to song lyrics, cast/artist interviews, extra videos and loads of other content not normally available. For me, this is a bit of a take it or leave it feature – if I’m listening to music, I’m normally working in other applications or surfing the web, so can’t really see as this will appeal to everyone, but if you’re an avid fan of an artist and have to have every bit of information you can then you’ll probably love this.

The iTunes store has been given a complete overhaul and I think it’s now much more user friendly. There’s a full screen option that you can set in preferences and when activated, the sidebar is hidden when you launch the store. Navigating has been made much easier as there is now a bar across the top of the screen with drop down menu’s to the most popular categories of music, film, TV and podcasts etc. To preview a song you no longer need to click through to an album page, instead you can click on a thumbnail of the album to show a summary page that will give you a full track listing, the option to preview or buy songs as well as add them to your wishlist or post them to your Facebook or Twitter page.

Genius playlists were introduced this time last year with iTunes 8.0 and it allowed you to find other music that you’d like based on the contents of your music library. It also allowed you to create a playlist of upto 25 songs on your iPhone or 100 songs in iTunes that go well together. Genius Mixes takes this a step further and creates 12 different mixes of your songs. It’s a bit hard to explain as it doesn’t really sound that different to Genius playlists, but rather than you specifying a track to base the Genius Mix on, it uses data from Apple to group songs together based on the genre and artist. These mixes can then be synced to your iPod or iPhone and unlike playlists, they aren’t limited to a certain number of songs. Genius Mixes will take a bit of getting used to, but once you’ve got the hang of them and as long as you like listening to music in a random order, you’ll find yourself listening to your mixes all the time.

iTunes now creates 12 Genius Mixes based on your favourite music

Overall I think the new iTunes is great, Home Sharing on it’s own makes the upgrade worth having, but I’m not so sure on the most noticeable change – the white background. It makes it feel a bit cheap and empty, having said that, It’s starting to grow on me and isn’t as depressing as the old black/grey one. I know it’s getting a lot of attention in the Apple Forums, so it’ll be interesting to see if Apple make any changes to it in the 9.1 update which almost certainly won’t be far away.

iPhone 3.1
At first glance, not much has changed with iPhone 3.1 – most of the changes seem to be there to incorporate the new features added to iTunes and the two go very much hand in hand. One thing that did jump out at me is that the cost of upgrading the iPod touch has dropped from £5.99 to £2.99 so there’s really no excuse not to do it now – £6 was cheap, £3 is a bargain – especially when you consider how many new features you get with 3.0.

The App Store on the phone now supports the Genius feature from iTunes, so now when you launch the App store you’ll see a ‘Genius’ button on the featured tab of the App store. I use Genius quite a lot in iTunes and on my phone, and given the growing number of apps in the App store, this is definitely a welcome addition as browsing the Apps can be a bit overwhelming.

The only other real change that I’ve spotted on the phone is to do with the Genius Mixes that you can create in iTunes – you’ve got an option to play them on your phone – just launch iPod, press more and you’ll see the option to play them.

Manage the Apps on your phone through iTunes

The final thing worth mentioning is that if your phone or iPod touch is running 3.1 and you’re using iTunes 9, you can now arrange the icons on your homescreen in iTunes and then sync them over to your device. Not a ground breaking addition, but it’s something a lot of people have been asking for.

iPods
As well as the software updates, the whole iPod line up is getting a refresh with the biggest changes coming to the iPod nano.

The new 5th generation iPod nano is the same size as it’s predecessor, but it has a larger 2.2″ screen, a video camera and surprisingly a an FM radio. The camera isn’t capable of capturing still images, but it does record video in the h.264 format at 640 x 480 pixels. The nano now has a microphone and speaker which allows you to add sound to your videos. Any videos you create can be uploaded to youtube or facebook. Is video needed in the nano?  Probably not,  but I’m guessing the makers of the Flip video camera’s aren’t too impressed!

iPod shuffle gets new colours and is available in 2GB or 4GB sizes, with the older 2nd generation shuffle finally being phased out. A stainless steel version is also available exclusively from Apple and iis by far the best looking shuffle I’ve seen. It’s amazing just how much the shuffle has changed since the original white plastic USB one.

New iPod nano and iPod shuffle

The iPod touch gets the same processor speed increase that the iPhone 3G had when it became the 3GS as well as a memory increase from 32GB to 64GB. Rumours of a camera being added turned out to be just that as there were no other changes annouced for the iPod touch.

iPod classic – rumoured to be dropped, but instead sees an increase in capacity. It now has a 160 GB hard drive, up from 120GB on the previous model. Strange choice by Apple, as this time last year they discontinued an 80GB and 160GB model to make way for the 120GB. Why they didn’t just kill the 80GB and leave the 160GB version I don’t know.

Which iPod have I got?

Since Apple launched their original iPod back in October 2001, the range has grown and evolved. Although iPod’s look fairly similar, each one is individual, and has its own range of accessories. Here you can determine which iPod you have, and find out what accessories are available for it.

What does the “G” mean?
When Apple launched the early iPod’s, they weren’t given names like they are today. The original iPod was replaced by a newer model also called iPod. As the newer model had several advanced features over its predecessor, it was dubbed the new generation of iPod, this over time change to 2nd Generation, which in turn got shortened to 2G.

The number preceding the “G” just determines where that particular model sits in the range of iPods. Even now with the Nano iPod, we are seeing 2nd and 3rd Generation models. The original style of iPod is now called the iPod Classic, and no doubt as time goes on, more generations will follow. The only exception to this is the iPhone 3G, where the 3G refers to the technology within the phone, and not the generation of iPhone.

Read more »

New iPod Touch on its way?

Is this the iPhone Nano?

According to developers who have been dissecting the latest version (2.1) of the iPhone/iPod Touch software, we’re about to get a brand new iPod Touch. The current iPod Touch has previously been referred to in the source code as “iPod1,1″, but the latest software points to a device “iPod2,1″ – and as of yet no such device exists, so leading developers believe a new iPod is not that far away.

This may not mean a lot to most people, and you would be right for thinking that this might just mean a larger capacity iPod Touch coming, but a change in source code has not meant a change in capacity in previous models!

So what are we likely to see then? An all new iPod Nano Touch? A Shuffle Touch? I don’t think we’ll have that long to wait to find out as Apple normally update their iPod line up around September. So as the kids go back to school and you start thinking about Christmas , watch our for some big announcements.

Via MacRumours

iPhone Sat-Nav Confirmed?

Sat Nav on iPhone

JUNE 2009 UPDATE: TomTom software has been confirmed for the iPhone – Read More.

Since the launch of the iPhone 3G last week, stories are surfacing on the availability of a full Sat Nav application. Rumours were flying around prior to its launch that TomTom had a full version of its mapping software ready to launch, and according to Gizmodo, TeleNav have a version ready for release too. Nothing as yet has been confirmed on release details, but it would seem that there are a few issues that the software vendors will need to resolve first.

Software developers have stated that the iPhone SDK (software development kit), bans the use of real time navigation, presumably to avoid any potential lawsuits from people directed into a ditch by their iPhone. No doubt developers such as TomTom and TeleNav will be working closely with Apple to make sure this doesn’t happen.

Via Gizmodo

Head to Head: HTC Touch Diamond Vs iPhone 3G

This week I’m comparing two of the most talked about touch screen phones around – the iPhone 3G and the HTC Touch Diamond.

HTC Touch Diamond

The tiny size is the first thing that you notice when you first hold a HTC Touch Diamond in the palm of your hand, but don’t think this constrains its use as the TouchFLO interface is a joy to use. Navigating through menus and websites is a very simple process. Flicking through photo albums has a nice touch when using your finger and the accelerometer mean that when you turn the phone on its side, the screen automatically rotates to landscape mode so your photos fill the whole screen.

It looks great – the back of the phone has many faceted edges, resembling the surface of a diamond. This gives the phone a special feel and makes it look classy! Also a cool little feature is that the slot that the stylus is stored in is magnetized, so the stylus is ’sucked’ back into the slot when inserting the stylus.

Overall, internet browsing is a simple, enjoyable experience with the large 2.8″ inch screen and full Internet Explorer functionality giving you a classy user experience.

iPhone 3G

When the original iPhone launched last year, I was all set to get one. That was until I saw the spec and realised how limited it was in regards to the choice of network operator (only available on 02), the lack of 3G and the price. Knowing Apple as I do, I knew it wouldn’t be long until they brought out an upgraded model and that it would be the one I’d get. I use my phone a lot for browsing the internet and for email, so having a phone only running on O2’s Edge would be painful. The Edge network was poor but I’ve noticed that over the last few months, coverage has increased and you can now get HSDPA signal pretty much everywhere you go – equating to speeds of around 3mbps.

Although there have been loads of “iPhone Killers” launched over the last 12 months, none of them have come close to the iPhone. Their touch screen interfaces tend to be sticky and uncomfortable to use, where as the iPhone is slick and easy. iPhone 3G also comes shipped with the latest version iPhone 2.0 software, which adds support for third party applications and games. This was something that was only possible on earlier versions if you unlocked you iPhone. The iPhone 2.0 software is also rumoured to act as a remote control for iTunes, so no more running around the house to change tracks – great if you use airport express at home to stream your music around the house.

Visually, there’s not much difference between the new version and the old iPhone, other than the introduction of a white 16GB model. The best news for me now is that i’m not going to have to shell out £269 for it as I can get this iPhone for free!