iPod rumors

Scotsman.com News - Sci-Tech - Apple pips its rivals with the iPod that talks: "Converting text into speech has been a major goal of the computer industry for decades, but early versions of the technology struggled with difficult words and names."

I think he's confusing text-to-speech (TTS) with speech-to-text (STT). The Mac could do TTS since practically the beginning, and now with companies like AT&T and Cepstral there are some really good voices on the market, that sound very natural.

On the other hand, STT still has a few stumbling blocks to overcome. It has come a long way since it needed extensive training and is useful for a lot of things.
I have a friend who uses Naturally Speaking extensively and it is quite good but it has failed badly on some recorded content he was trying to transcribe.

On the whole however a talking iPod could be rather useful while driving around, it would be fun if it could do more then just speak the title, artist and album but also a little blurb about the song, maybe gotten from the comments field. That would be a fun little app or script, someone would have to create a wiki that could have all kinds of fun sayings to fill in between songs with. Things like: The weatherperson says it will be chili today but hot tamale.


Of course there needs to be an easy way to turn this off. You wouldn't want song announcements during a romantic evening.

There are also ideas of the iPod changing its signature white/black skin for metal. Aluminum is the big idea but I've also seen hints at magnesium, but that is too light except maybe for a redesigned iPod shuffle which is very weight conscience, and stainless steel. anything is possible.

Cutting Off the Oxygen of iPod Rivals

Cutting Off the Oxygen of iPod Rivals: "Apple announced a 1-gig iPod nano today, for just $149, as well as price cuts that bring the price of the iPod shuffle's to just $69 and $99. Now, that's pricing 'for the rest of us.'"

Peter Drucker would love this. Apple is running a textbook business campaign. They leveraged their strengths into a new product. Recreated that market, since there existed products in that market. And now they are building higher walls to make it harder for others to enter that market by lowering their prices before someone else can come in with a cheaper product.

Dell just discontinued their HDD based mp3 players which couldn't compete against the iPod and now Apple has preemptively dropped the prices on the flash based iPods so Dell is playing catchup again.

A bureaucracy-infested company could not move like this. They would have milked the iPod mini a lot longer and would have had a hard time even just dropping prices.

The question I have is why isn't Apple doing similar things on the Mac side as well?

Dell drops out of HDD MP3 player biz | Reg Hardware

Dell drops out of HDD MP3 player biz | Reg Hardware
: "Dell has dropped its line of hard drive-based MP3 players, but it's taken more than a month for anyone to notice"

You know it's bad when it takes more then month for anyone to notice that you've stopped selling a product. iPods are great at what they do. There is a certain elegance to simplicity.

But with all the talk about the next iPod killer, whatever the latest and greatest from anyone else, and it always just sits on the store shelf. The Walkman held sway for 20 years. The iPod may just last that long.

And then it might just morph into something completely different.

Kiwis craft first iPod-integrating bed | Reg Hardware

Kiwis craft first iPod-integrating bed | Reg Hardware
: "What do you give the iPod owner who has everything? An opportunity to listen to their favourite digital music player while they sleep with none of that tangled-in-the-duvet earphone misery, that's what. And now you can, courtesy of New Zealand bed maker Design Mobel. The company's Pause bed incorporates not only an iPod dock, but a pair of Bose speakers and - just for the truly media obsessive - a built-in LCD TV."


Boy, howdy. That is a very impressive bed. Way over the top for me, but it is the first iPod bed I've seen. not too bad a thing.

Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online

Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online: "HMS Daring's 230-strong crew should be happy too. She and her sisters will be the first 'gender-neutral' warships to enter Royal Navy service, and the Hotel Facilities, as the living quarters are known, are the most opulent ever fitted in a British warship. Mess decks are replaced by individual cabins, each with their own� I-pod charging points, CD player,�internet access, five channel recreational audio and larger berths."

A warship got an iPod port before most American Cars, isn't that a sad take on the car manufacturer's nimbleness. It isn't as though they need to put a full dock connector on it, just a little stereo jack that anything can hook into. Oh well one of these days it'll all come together.

Why wait for Apple?

Words Alone Cannot Describe: "What I needed at that particular moment was to reach into my laptop case and pull out a free DVD video showing adults and youths playfully using GarageBand. I should have said, %u201CI think a Windows laptop is a fine choice. By the way, here%u2019s a DVD you can have that shows some adults and youth using Apple%u2019s GarageBand software. GarageBand comes for free with all new Macs.%u201D"

I just don't see why we should wait for Apple to come up with such a thing. We all have our own favorite pieces of Apple software or hardware.

I can't tell you how many commercials I've seen from other computer companies that touted something Apple's been doing for a while.

With the new iMovie and Garageband I don't see why we can't do someone like this ourselves and post it to .mac accounts or Google Video The best will float to the top.

iPod Garage : iPod, iTunes, and Music : News, Commentary, and Reviews : Switch to the iPod Garage - Video Podcasting starts with a video camcorder

iPod Garage : iPod, iTunes, and Music : News, Commentary, and Reviews : Switch to the iPod Garage - Video Podcasting starts with a video camcorder: "For creating a video podcast you are going to need a video camcorder."

My latest article is up at iPodGarage discussing how to choose a videocamera.

MacBook Garage

MacBook Garage: "So what's the big deal about a MacBook site? Isn't the MacBook Pro just a rebranded PowerBook? Isn't this just the same old thing but faster?"

iPodGarage is expanding with a new site dedicated to the rest of Apple's products.

Striving for Excellence

Macworld UK - Behind a Steve Jobs keynote: "Jobs' focus drives the company: 'It is one of the most important aspects of Steve Jobs's impact on Apple: he has little or no patience for anything but excellence from himself or others,' Evangelist writes."

Are you expecting excellence from yourself? It is hard, but every time you do it you get a little bit stronger and a little bit better. Just one decision a day that brings you closer to excellence will allow you to reap greater rewards in just a couple of years.