Are Apple iPods like pocket pcs?: Steve Jobs

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Apple’s chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, discussed his health and Apple’s new product line in an interview Wednesday with David Pogue, the personal technology columnist for The New York Times. Context has been added to the original quotes posted here.

Wednesday in San Francisco, I attended Apple’s annual iPod Show, its holiday-season kickoff of new iPods and iTunes Store developments.

I’ll have a look at what’s new in a post on Pogue’s Posts on Thursday. But Wednesday, I had the chance to chat with Steve Jobs after the event.

I asked him, first of all, what the blogosphere’s been buzzing about: why Apple put a video camera into the tiny iPod Nano—and not the iPod Touch.

Mr. Jobs reiterated what Phil Schiller, the marketing vice president, had said earlier in the onstage presentation: that Apple is really pitching the iPod Touch as a game machine these days. And to do that, you have to make it as inexpensive as possible.

“Originally, we weren’t exactly sure how to market the Touch. Was it an iPhone without the phone? Was it a pocket computer? What happened was, what customers told us was, they started to see it as a game machine,” he said. “We started to market it that way, and it just took off. And now what we really see is it’s the lowest-cost way to the App Store, and that’s the big draw. So what we were focused on is just reducing the price to $199. We don’t need to add new stuff. We need to get the price down where everyone can afford it.”

I also asked him why the Nano can record video, but can’t snap still photos. That reason, he said, is technical: the sensors you need to record video are extremely thin these days—thin enough to fit into the wafer-thin Nano. But the ones with enough resolution for stills, especially with autofocus (like the sensor in the iPhone), are much too thick to cram into a player that’s only 0.2 inches thick.

A couple of years ago, pre-Kindle, Mr. Jobs expressed his doubts that e-readers were ready for prime time. So today, I asked if his opinions have changed.

“I’m sure there will always be dedicated devices, and they may have a few advantages in doing just one thing,” he said. “But I think the general-purpose devices will win the day. Because I think people just probably aren’t willing to pay for a dedicated device.”

He said that Apple doesn’t see e-books as a big market at this point, and pointed out that Amazon.com, for example, doesn’t ever say how many Kindles it sells. “Usually, if they sell a lot of something, you want to tell everybody.”

The products that Apple revealed today have been in the works for a while—since before Mr. Jobs’s health-related hiatus from running Apple. I wondered: since he was gone for several months, will we see a several-month gap in the new products coming out of Apple? “There are some things that I’m focusing a lot of attention on right now—to polish,” he said. “No, I don’t think we’re going to miss a beat. We have some really good stuff coming up.”

Finally, as I left, I asked him how he’s feeling these days—another question on everybody’s mind. “I probably need to gain about 30 pounds, but I feel really good. I’m eating like crazy. A lot of ice cream,” he said with a chuckle.

(By David Pogue)
Source: click here

Image via Wikipedia

Last night Apple once again did what they do best and launched a new range of iPod players.

First on the list was the new iPod Nano with a built in video camera that lets users capture footage when they're on the move, and upload the clip to video-sharing sites such as YouTube. It also has an FM radio and voice recorder .The video Nano 8GB can store up to 2,000 songs and will cost £115, while the 16GB version is priced at £135.

"Video is exploding in popularity, we want a piece of that," Steve Jobs said.

Next on the Apple play list was a larger capacity version of the iPod touch, which at 64GB can store up to 14,000 songs. This will cost £299.

The company also updated its iTunes software, and showed off a a new service, iTunes LP, which allows users to download cover art, sleeve notes, and other content, such as artist videos and interviews, when they download an album from the iTunes store. "Some of us are old enough to have bought LPs," said Mr Jobs, who promised that the new service would recreate some of the joys of listening to old records. However, if you don't fancy any of these new gadgets then you're in luck. The company also lowered the prices of existing iPods.

We think Apple has done amazingly well over the years, bringing out newer products, and in my view, revolutionizing the way we listen to music.

With this new announcement, we decide to look back at the history of this music device, which has gone from brick to slick over the years.

Read on over the jump for more information.

Apple introduced the first-generation iPod classic on October 23, 2001. The first iPod had a 5 GB hard drive capable of storing 1,000 songs encoded using MP3. It also had a 1.8" hard drive, compared to other manufacturers that used a 2.5" hard drives at the time. The iPod had a rated battery life of 12 hours.

The second generation iPod classic was introduced on July 17, 2002 and had the same body style as the first generation. The hold switch was redesigned, a cover was added to the FireWire port, and the mechanical wheel was replaced with a touch-sensitive wheel.

On April 18, 2003, Apple revamped its iPod classic, giving it the very original name of the third-generation iPod classic. Thinner than the previous models, the third generation models replaced the FireWire port with a new Dock Connector.

Released on February 20, 2004, The iPod mini kept the same scroll wheel as the 3rd generation ipod but because of its size the four touch buttons that were beneath the screen were moved beneath the wheel itself. It was the height and width of a business card and was built around a 1 inch 4 GB hard drive.

A second Generation ipod mini was introduced in February 2005 with a new chipset, 6 GB version, and much longer battery life of 18 hours. This year also saw the launch of the ipod photo.

The ipod shuffle was created in 2005 to keep the price of the iPod down. To do this Apple scrapped the scroll wheel and the LCD display and upgraded the device's shuffle mode. This was the year the first iPod Nano was launched and was intended to replace the iPod mini which was discontinued the same day the nano was released.

The old Nano was replaced in September 2006. The new one was still tiny but tougher and dressed in aluminium. It had a brighter screen and an improved battery life and came in three capacities and six different colors; 4 GB blue, green,pink, and silver; 2 GB silver, and 8 GB black. This year the first iPod Touch was also launched.

The iphone. In my opinion one of Apple's best product, this device was launched in January 2007. It didn't have a scroll wheel but used the same touch screen technology as the iPod Touch and let people make calls.

In 2008, we saw the iPod Touch Second generation and iPod Nano 4th and 2009 bought us the iPhone 3GS and our most recent announcements.

We expect to see a lot more from Apple in the future.

(By Andrea)
Source: click here