On iPods and AppleTV - a response to Apple's media event

Having decided to wait until the cold light of day before posting a response to Apple's 1st September media event - in order to minimise the effect of the Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field - I find myself marginally impressed with the offering that was placed before us yesterday. I often find myself feeling a bit "meh" about Apple keynotes, as they never seem to deliver what they promised. However, I think they've done a pretty good job with their lineup this time.

So what have we got? We've got all-new iPods, that's what we've got. A new Shuffle, a new Nano and a new Touch.

I was never taken with the third-gen Shuffle, with its lack of buttons and "voiceover" function. This, to me, screamed just one thing - "you can't use your own headphones any more". Being a bit of an audiophile, I had no intention of using Apple's earbuds, so the Shuffle was off the cards. I had been perusing eBay in the hope of finding a 2nd-gen to overcome this problem, but they're going for silly money (probably because no-one liked the 3rd-gen). Naturally, now Apple have seen the error of their ways and (sensibly) decided to put the buttons back on the Shuffle, I'm very happy. And at £39, I hope one will be coming my way this Christmas.

Onto the Nano then. Or should that be more accurately named the "iPod Shuffle Touch"? Not much bigger than the Shuffle, it now has a 3cmx3cm touch screen - just big enough to display 4 icons at once. I'm not really as convinced by this idea - it just seems too different to the original concept of the Nano. Yes, we still have a decent amount of flash storage, but over time the Nano had become a genuine competitor to the Classic in terms of its capacity and functionality. Hell, it even had a decent camera on it - which now, unfortunately, has disappeared. In an effort to make it smaller, it seems to have lost some of its "essence". And it's a bit pricey too. I'm sure it will sell well, but not to me.

And onto the iPod Touch then. I, personally, think Apple have done a brilliant job with this - although some will disagree. Slimmer casing, Retina display (very nice indeed), A4 chip (bringing performance on a par with iPhone4), front and rear cameras, Facetime, HD video recording, Game Center - the list goes on. So what is there not to like? Well, one of my Mac-loving compatriots has decried the Touch in no uncertain terms for the quality of its rear camera. If you were hoping for the (rather good) 5MP unit from the iPhone4, you'll be very disappointed. The Touch's camera manages all of 0.7MP. That sounds pretty poor (and, to be fair, is), but that does equate to HD-resolution video (960x720). In company with the iOS iMovie app, this will make a lot of YouTubers very happy indeed. And, for my money, the camera is perfectly capable of doing all the fun stuff with apps that I would want - Evernote snaps, barcode reading, Dropbox, Twitpic etc. The front-facing camera/Facetime combination is also a very pleasing offer.

As for the iPod Classic, this is the only iPod that didn't get an update - but then, what is there to update? Massive storage, brilliant UI, plays anything you throw at it, sounds great, lovely screen. End of.

I'm interested to see whether the upcoming iOS 4.1 update makes my current iPod Touch run any better. At the moment, it's a bit laggy. Steve promised that 4.1 will fix "iPhone 3G performance issues" so I hope that goes for iPod Touch too.

So, finally, onto Steve's "One More Thing", or as he quipped last night "One More Hobby" - the AppleTV. I've admired the AppleTV from afar ever since it was released, but I've never quite got round to taking the plunge. The price was a bit steep, and the implementation was always a bit half-assed and I never quite convinced myself that I genuinely needed one. However, now things are different. We now have ourselves a second-generation AppleTV. And the best bit? £99. That's a price point I can like, and cheap enough to make it worth a try. Recently, the movie collection on my Mac has been growing (mainly thanks to the brilliance that is Handbrake) and getting those movies to my televisions has been a bit hit and miss. I bought a WDTV Live recently, and it's very good. It's very similar in functionality to the new AppleTV, insofar as it is able to find media on my Mac and stream it to my bedroom TV over the network. However, there are a few things I don't like about the WDTV - the UI is ugly, its networking is wired only and it has no integration with iTunes, meaning that I just get a massive list of folders and filenames instead of the glossy artwork and metadata that I've painstakingly added.

The lack of purchasing content from the AppleTV isn't an issue for me - I neither purchase nor rent video content from iTunes. I merely want this unit to plug into my TV, display my iTunes library (movies, TV shows and music) on the screen and play it. Hopefully that's exactly what it will deliver. I've got my preorder in, so in four weeks' time I'll be able to tell you whether it does.

Map me up

Just a quick post to mention this Memory Map iPhone app that I was emailed about this morning. As a long-time user and big fan of Memory Map, I'm very interested to see how this will work. I'm hoping that it will use your pre-installed OS maps, and that there will be some way of selecting maps in the desktop software and then sending them to your iPhone. Two caveats - hopefully it'll also be iPod Touch compatible, and hopefully it won't be too expensive (or require any ongoing subscription). I shall eagerly await more news.

Essential upgrade - maybe

Word on the street (i.e. internet) says that there will be a new version of the iPod Touch arriving as early as September this year. And, if rumours are to be believed, it could come complete with everything from a built-in camera to a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

The things I would most like to see, and the things that are most likely to be included in the update, are a camera (hopefully the autofocus/macro model from the iPhone 3GS) and the GPS capabilities (also from the iPhone). These two things would make the Touch even more indespensable than it already is. The number of apps that would benefit from a camera are immense, and equally GPS for being properly "location aware" would be brilliant. Less likely, but also high on my personal wishlist, would be a built-in microphone. I'm guessing a processor speed bump and more RAM are a given, as is the version 3.0 OS.

However, if these things really were included the the third-gen Touch, wouldn't it be straying just a bit *too* far into iPhone territory? Already it's 75% iPhone, and these additions would push it to about 90%. The only thing missing would be the telephony features. I'm thinking that Apple would be wary of eating into its iPhone sales (and associated revenue from the stupidly long and stupidly expensive tarriffs).

Needless to say though, if they did manage to put a camera and GPS in the next model, mine would be straight on eBay and I'd preorder the day it was announced - providing it can come in at a sensible price. Let's hope that the money men at Apple see the sales opportunities for a better Touch and don't fret too much about their iPhone contracts...

Remotely interesting

I've had two Roku Soundbridges for quite a while now. I started with just the one soon after they were first released in the UK, and I loved it so much that I bought a second one soon after for another room. The principle is simple - they're merely audio streamers that use your iTunes library to wirelessly pipe your music to an attached hi-fi. The good bit is, the system works seamlessly and they look nice, which is always a bonus.

However, a couple of months back, my original Soundbridge gave up the ghost. After extensive testing, I came to the conclusion that it was shafted (I think it may have been the power supply) but try as I might, I couldn't get it working again. I looked around for a replacement unit, but it turns out they're now as rare as rocking horse poo, and the only place I could get one was secondhand on Fleabay. I considered alternative options like the Squeezebox Duet and the Sonos multiroom system, but they were way out of my price range. I thought about an Apple Airport Express, but discounted it because I needed to be able to control it without sitting at my computer.

However, it was while I was researching these options that I came across the iPhone/Touch remote app for controlling iTunes. I'd never really noticed it existed before as I had no real need to use it, but I decided that it just might be what I was looking for to make the Airport Express a viable option. I searched around a bit more, but strangely I couldn't get a definitive answer about whether I would be able to use it to remotely control an Airport Express attached to iTunes. Not even the combined geek-knowledge of Richbos and OliTee could answer the question.

I figured that there *should* be a way of using the Remote app to control iTunes to, in turn, stream its music to the Airport Express - all via wi-fi. If it did what I wanted - and if it worked correctly - it would be quite an elegant solution. I could be sat in the kitchen, use the Touch to browse the iTunes library held on my iMac, choose some music and tell it to be sent to the Airport Express in the lounge. Or was I just expecting too much?



First things first - I downloaded the free Remote app via the Apple App Store. Dead easy, and all done in seconds via the Touch itself. Within no time I was enjoying controlling iTunes using it, despite being sat only two feet from my iMac. So far, so good - but a bit pointless without the Airport Express.

I managed to secure myself an Airport Express on eBay for the very reasonable sum of £45, and just two days later I was feverishly unboxing it. I figured that I might be able to just plug it in and get cracking, but even though its an Apple product, it's not *that* clever. There's still some configuration to be done - but it's reasonably simple.

Firstly, my Airport Express was still configured to its previous owner's settings, so as soon as I tried to connect to it with my iMac it requested a password. Fortunately, it's an easy job to do a factory reset and wipe the unit of its configuration. Hold down the reset button for ten seconds, and there you go.

Once that was done, I ran the Airport Setup Utility on my iMac. My mac is normally hooked up via ethernet, but for this step I had to activate the built-in wi-fi so that the iMac and Airport Express could talk to each other. Very quickly the iMac had detected the wireless signal that the AE was broadcasting, and I connected to it. The utility then takes you through some simple steps to find out how you want to use the AE. I opted to make it a client device on my existing wi-fi network (which was sufficient for my purposes) and with that it was set up and raring to go. A 3.5mm jack to stereo RCA lead to connect it to the AUX input on my hi-fi and I was ready to unleash some tunes.



I fired up iTunes, and after a bit of searching I located a previously unseen dropdown menu in the bottom right of the screen which listed both my computer and the new Airport Express as speaker options. From this you can choose one or both to determine where the audio from iTunes gets sent. I chose both, just for fun, and hit play. I was pleasantly surprised to hear my music emanating from both my computer speakers and my hi-fi speakers in the other room, both in perfect sync with each other. Result!

So then - moment of truth. I switched on the iPod Touch and selected the Remote app. I went to the 'settings' screen (from where you choose which iTunes library to connect to) and, right there in front of me, were two new menu options for 'Speakers' - it listed my iMac and my Airport Express, with on/off switches next to them! I navigated through to my library, found a new album and pressed play on the Touch. Again, without so much as a hiccup, the music changed on both computer and AE.

I then discovered that you can activate and deactivate the speakers from the 'Now playing' screen without having to go back to the 'Settings' page every time. Simply tap the album cover, and not only do you get shuffle, repeat and genius options at the top you also get speaker options at the bottom. I spent a good five minutes switching the speakers on and off - just for fun!

So the upshot of all this is - yes, it works as I wanted it to. And it does it beautifully. So well, in fact, that I'm thinking of eBaying my other Soundbridge and buying another Airport Express. It's a brilliant, elegant and simple solution - how very "Apple"...

Mobile

So about that mobile tech I mentioned earlier, I'm just dropping this quick post in from my iPod Touch to test out its Wordpress app. The Touch was a birthday present, and I'm really very impressed with it so far. In fact, I'm starting to see the appeal of the iPhone now.