OSNews

MAC - Mandatory Access Control, Media Access Control, etc
Mac - Common abbreviation for a Macintosh computer

Sorry about being pedantic, that is just a pet peeve of mine

Still... What Mac event? Seriously, do you believe every OSnews reader has apple.com as its home page?

What is this Mac event? Some kind of product presentation? When will it be? Today? Has it started?

Really, I'm not an Apple zealot. I'm just trying to get some information about the nature of this event that I've never heard of until now.

No, but we assume you've been to any tech site on planet earth in the last month. This is not news. It's been hyped everywhere.

Google it.

If it's not news, what's the purpose this article?

I've been reading tech sites every day for the last month, thank you. I suppose we don't read the same ones.

I guess so.

It's not news anymore. It was news when it was announced well over a week ago.

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/apple-announces-sept...

Dear god, what site DO you visit - porn doesn't count as an IT site btw.

Heck, Zdnet, Arstechnica, Neowin and numerous links on Digg to name a few have been raving on the leaks that have appeared, what the new one ipod could be, the new size of the hard disk etc. etc. Heck this 'presentation' has been known since last week.

What is the purpose of the article? well, when the presentation is going, people can chat about their impressions of the product launch - personally, I would have though an IRC session linking what was said back to a website would be better - but hey, its good enough I guess.

No, it hasn't. I'd wager I read more tech news sites than the average person and I haven't seen anything about this "event". I guess "tech site" is a synonym for apple news site now?

Hey Adam, Instead of biting back, why not just acknowledge that this news posting does not supply adequate background information to someone who does not already know what "The Mac Event" is about? I think it is fair critique.

yeah I don't think I heard about this event either till probably tuesday and I frequent the usual tech sites

Anyways - I believe that this story is really about the new OSNews Talk beta - which looks pretty cool
- Joe

here you go:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/05/steve-jobs-live-apples-the-beat-...

Why is there always someone who feels the need to advertise their ignorance in just about every story posted. Do they think it makes them clever or special. 12 Seconds with Google and you'd have your answer.

"12 Seconds with Google and you'd have your answer."

Why should we have to use Google to find out what event a news item is about? News are intended to be informative, not guesswork.

The news, I gather, is about the updated iPod series of Apple. There was a press conference/show yesterday.

And this entire discussion could have been avoided by writing a short summary of what the event is/was about... or just the words 'new iPods' in the title and/or summary text.

Edited 2007-09-06 06:07

Your not an Apple zealot? No kidding, as if anyone interested in a product announcement from Apple is. How is the weather under that bridge, troll?

it's a pet peeve of mine too...people never learn

Sooo....I am modded down for expressing a point of view that I have openly expressed on my blog as well?

Makes me wonder where the 16GB version of the iPhone is.
The 4GB seems to be in the process of being phased out, so there is only one iPhone in the market.

A release date for Leopard! Seriously, where IS that thing?

I know people holding out on buying Macs because of it.

October. This has been the target for months.

That's not very specific. I'm looking for an actual date, not just a vague season.

You can thank the music industry for that. The music industry insists that ringtones have to be done under a separate licensing agreement. It's retarded, you and I know that, but the music industry thinks otherwise. Apple is stuck between a legal hard place and a rock here.

Yeah I know...
Good thing the modding community exists and we can load ringtones that way ;-)

Very true and considering the amount of money they make out of it, it's not gonna change anytime soon.

The music industry has been needing a good kick up the rear end for a long time now and what happens? Along comes the internet! :-)

Still, I'm really interested in the iPod Touch. I have been needing a new PDA and at first glance, it looks like it could do the trick.

Be thankful it's only 99¢. I bet Apple had to fight for that. In the UK, you can be charged as much as £3 ($6) for a ringtone. It's a massively lucrative market.

utube.com, the company who got so much typo traffic they couldn't afford it, solved the problem by selling ringtones off of the back of the free traffic they were getting from people looking for youtube.com

Honestly, what is the purpose of these 'custom ring tones'? easy, they're a cash cow used by telecoms to extract money out of energy-drink guzzling teenagers who have more money than sense.

Me? I have a Nokia flip-phone, I use the standard ring tones, I don't purchase music - to me, its a communication device, not some sort of object for me to 'express my individuality' to the world.

Can you explain a bit please? (I'm being serious here)

Whilst the new products are great and a very solid entry in the market (I think an iPod touch would suit me right down to the ground), it annoys me that Apple is more and more 'selling out' in a way that is increasingly hampering the capabilities of their devices and what the users can do.

* The Starbucks deal is typical. Rather than an open deal with many coffee outlets to provide an easier way to get onto WiFi systems, Apple strike a lucrative deal to force people into Starbucks. If there's two coffee shops next to each other, and you have an iPod touch, then at least once, you're going to go to Starbucks because of the WiFi. This is just a little less freedom being passed onto the user, but it all adds up. Apple are not acting in the best interests of the market, and the technology here, it's pure consumerism / profit making. Fair be to them, but no Sir, I don't like it.

* The iPod touch treads a thin line between the features of it and the iPhone. Why is there no [native] Google Maps on the iPod touch? Simple it would detract from the value of the iPhone. This only enforces my belief that there won't ever be a [sufficient] SDK. Apple can't allow third party developers to patch up the holes that they're purposefully leaving in the product.

All in all, how I see it is that as Apple continues to be more Apple inc. instead of Apple Computers Inc. they're going to continue piling on restrictions and crippleware because it works very well for selling consumer electronics. Take the LinkSys WRT54G; running the linux firmware, you can get all the features of a $600 router, on a $50 router. The iPod touch could be similarly capable if it was fully open, but as it stands I don't see it happening, unless without even more restrictions in the mix.

But, its not much different from OSX, which is similarly crippled by a restricted range of hardware that you can run it on. Its always been Apple's strategy surely?

Thanks for the explanation. That's sort of like IF the Amarok developers would only offer Amazon as an integrated music store. But instead they offer Magnatune by default (ideological reasons) and are working on a frame work so every interested shop could join; whether that'd be Jamendo or Amazon or Rhapsody or...

And you are right... the products are sweet, but they are walking a different, less open, way now. Which is a bit of a shame, in my opinion.

Edited 2007-09-06 11:30

And somehow I don't think Apple had your goals for such a device in mind when they developed it.

It's a hit the day it was announced.

I suggest you read the forums, many are the customers who wanted large capacity Touches.

My thoughts exactly, it looks almost like downgrading. 16 GB of storage space is not sufficient at all, with iPod Touch being capable of playing videos, etc. Apple should atleast offered a 32 GB model. Btw, is Apple using ARM processor in iPod Touch.

It would be difficult to watch/listen to 16GB of content in one day. You just sync what you need with iTunes, make a playlist of top rated, most listened to, or do it manually. Really, the point of the device isn't to carry your entire library with you, that's what the Classic is for. 16GB is more than enough for a week's worth of content if you're going away on a trip &c.

Thanks for the info, iPod Touch would be more of a secondary iPod. Kinda like the Desktop and Laptop analogy. Thanks again

Well, this surely depends on your listening behaviour. I'm often travelling (yeah, without my 12" Notebook) and I can't foresee what I wan't so listen to next week. In Addition to that, 16GB isn't that much if you put a few movies on it.
I think the problem here is that apple won't release just two different TouchPods, one with Harddrive and one with flash an let the user decide what he likes best. That is generally my major problem with Apple.

16GB isn't much? Ripping a DVD with Handbrake is about 500MB. If a movie is on average 1:30, then you could fit 32 movies / 48 Hours of continuous video on the device.

I suggest you don't take the forums as representing anything more than a small minority of people.

"The iPod touch is cool, kind of expensive..."

yea.... what ever!

"Open Development framework, please!"
&
"With an open platform it could have been THE killer device.
A sort of Newton (sigh).
But for now is just a cool, stylish gadget... "
&
"but can you imagine having the possibility to develop easily ANY application for a device that actually have good cpu, a unix like OS, touch screen, without having to invent any kind of workaround ? "

>>>>calm you jets mr Dev Dude! apple does thing a bit differently! openness for the sake of openness is sort-a like a vacuum! apple is bringing somthing to the PDA-Cell phone market that NO ONE before them could, or did! give them some time!

"So sad, I will keep using my functional, sad, boring iPaq."

>>>>>> like i said, openness for the sake of openness! i believe the "closed iPhone's market share blew past the MS power Open iPaq in like 30seconds after release.... (pardon the slight exaggeration!!!) so much for your so called "Open Development framework"


Children.... this is apples ball game now... please... have a seat... and enjoy your pop corn and colas!!!!

Steve'll be throwing the Zune itself; it's practically a house brick compared to the iPod touch.

It doesn't look like you can purchase videos on the iTunes WiFi Store. It may have been put off because of bandwidth concerns (staying on WiFi long enough to download a 500MB file / fast enough on shared WiFi). Perhaps it'll come later.

What I would personally like is that your Podcasts could be checked and downloaded on the iPod touch itself.

Mate, I made the same comment on Arstechnica about those who at these expo's feel the need to hoot, holler, stamp their feet and whistle with excitment about everything being shown.

The problem is, the average people is a moron, their excitment is derived from new devices with pretty colours, glossy backgrounds and charismatic sales folk bouncing around stage like a twink high on Ecstasy.

I mean, these are the same people who purchase covers for their mobile phone, spend NZ$6 on ring tones and spent over $20 per month on text messages - they may be a marketers wet dream but for the rest of society they're the sort of people who make stupid decisions then expect everyone else to dig them out of that (subprime mortgage market anyone?)

hehehe nicely put.