iPod Touch Asserts Its Presence

Apple's iPod Touch, introduced in late 2007 as essentially an iPhone minus the phone part, has quietly grown to prominence as a platform for more than just music playback and is changing the landscape for mobile devices.

While Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) has frequently discussed the App Store by mentioning both the iPhone and iPod Touch together, the iPhone has typically stolen the spotlight thanks to the dynamic effect it had on the smartphone market, where it remains one of the industry's hottest sellers. Now it seems that the iPod Touch plays a much greater role for those 100,000 App Store apps than previously believed.

Flurry, a San Francisco-based mobile analytics company, said in a blog post that of the 58 million iPhone OS devices sold worldwide through September, the iPod Touch (sometimes called "iTouch") represents 40 percent of the market, with 24 million units sold.

At the most recent iPod event, which featured the public return of Apple's CEO Steve Jobs, the company's chief executive disclosed that Apple has sold 220 million iPods worldwide. So the iTouch's 24 million units is only about one-tenth of the total sold. Then again, iPod has been on the market since 2001 and the iTouch is a relative newcomer.

In that time, though, Flurry has noted how deeply it has dug into people's lives, particularly young users.

"Apple is using the iPod Touch to build loyalty with pre-teens and teens, even before they have their own phones (think: McDonald's Happy Meal marketing strategy,)" Peter Farago, vice president of marketing for Flurry, said in the blog post. "When today's young iPod Touch users age by five years, they will already have iTunes accounts, saved personal contacts to their iPod Touch devices, purchased hundreds of apps and songs, and mastered the iPhone OS user interface. This translates into loyalty and switching costs, allowing Apple to seamlessly 'graduate' young users from the iPod Touch to the iPhone."

"For OEMs hoping to challenge Apple, we believe an even greater sense of urgency must be adopted," he added.

Anecdotally, Farago said he's noticed a shift in usage habits by his friends' children.

"What I was seeing with friends who have kids between 7 and 12 is all the boys had a Nintendo DS for years. Now I'm noticing it seemed like they don't have Nintendo any more, they have an iPod Touch. Their parents are like, 'Please, 99 cent games or a $30 cartridge? I don't have to go to the store and I can control how much they spend?' ... It's a no-brainer," he told InternetNews.com.

All that invested content and data on the Apple device gets them early and locks them in, he added.

"Just that alone makes the iPhone/iTouch very sticky," Farago said. "All the content you can own and can use again with a new device is also appealing."

It's a great reinvention for the iPod, a which began as a simple music playback device. Some pundits predicted Apple would kill off the iPod Classic, which is the only unit left that uses a hard drive instead of Flash memory, but so far it hangs in there.

More than that, though, the iPhone and iTouch may be greasing the skids for Apple's long-rumored iTablet, iPad, or whatever the tablet device might be called.

The general consensus among the rumormongers is that it's a 10- to 12-inch pad that operates like an iTouch, with some form of wireless support. But unlike the iPod Touch and iPhone, Apple tablet apps could run in windows, and it might support multiple apps simultaneously -- if the rumors are to be believed.

At the very least, Farago said, the iPhone and iPod Touch remain valuable stepping stones to even more advanced Apple products.

"If you think about just the user interface learning Apple has gotten out of iTouch and the iPhone, a lot of that is very transferable," Farago said. "For Apple, it's been extremely valuable to see how users to interact with this thing and they are also training users on [the use of] touch."



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The Best iPhone and iPod Touch Games of 2009

We reveal the best iPhone games of 2009 and 2010, plus the top free and commercial iPod touch game apps.

As some of the fastest-growing portable gaming platforms today, it’s no wonder that over a quarter of the 85,000 apps (applications) available to Apple iPhone 3G/3G S and iPod Touch owners are digital diversions. In fact, given these devices’ user-friendly, motion-sensing interfaces; sharp 3D graphics; selection of titles for all ages and interests at a variety of comfortable prices; and ability to retrieve content on-demand virtually anytime, anywhere, well… Let’s just say we’re confident that of the over two billion downloads users have presently notched up in the App Store, more than a few have been purchased with productivity the furthest thing from buyer’s minds. Looking for the perfect way to kill time while waiting for the bus or standing in line to score tickets to a sporting event? See below for our very own game industry analysts’ and experts’ top picks in several of the most popular categories:

Categories

• Action/Arcade

• Music and Puzzle

• Racing and Sports

• Strategy and Simulation

• Adventure and Role-Playing

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26



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How to take a Screenshot on an iPhone or iPod Touch

Learn how to take a screenshot on an iPhone or iPod Touch with just a few simple steps. Screenshots from the iPhone and iPod Touch can be emailed, giving you the ability to capture anything on your device and quickly show it off to friends.

Taking a screenshot with an iPhone or iPod Touch running firmware 3.0 is a very easy process. Follow the simple steps below and you can email your friends screenshots showing proof of your highest gaming scores or hilarious text messages in no time.

Locate the buttons. You need to locate the home and sleep buttons on your device. The home button is located at the bottom of the screen for both the iPhone and iPod Touch. The sleep button is on the top right for the iPhone and top left for the iPod Touch.

Take a screenshot. Press the home and sleep buttons at the same time. Your screen will flash white and you’ll hear a camera shutter sound.

Locate your screenshots. To locate the screenshots go to photos and look in camera roll. The screenshots will be located at the bottom because they are your latest images.

Download or email the image. You can either sync your device with iTunes to download the screenshots to your computer or email them to yourself or friends.

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Five misconceptions about iTunes and iPods

There’s a lot of misinformation floating around about the iTunes/iPod/iPhone ecosystem. Here’s a truthful look at a few of the more popular notions out there. Are there others that you hear people talking about? Share them in the comments.

1. The iTunes Store uses digital rights management (DRM) technology to restrict the use of music that I buy.

When Apple launched the then-named iTunes Music Store in April 2003, it employed Apple’s FairPlay DRM that determined how many Macs (there was no Windows support at launch) you could play purchased AAC audio files on, and restricted usage to iTunes and iPods. Four years later, Apple began offering the option to purchase some songs and albums without DRM in a format called iTunes Plus. Then in April 2009 Apple finally moved to a completely DRM-free catalog.

So, if you purchased any iTunes Plus tracks between 2007 and early 2009, or any tracks after the DRM-free transition, your music has no restrictions on usage. If you own any FairPlay-encumbered music, however, the DRM remains. You can, however, upgrade your music to DRM-free by clicking the iTunes Plus link on the iTunes Store. From there you can choose to upgrade individual albums, individually purchased tracks, or your entire library. Besides removing the DRM, the updated tracks also double the bit rate from 128 Kbps to 256 Kbps.

Remember, though, that your Apple ID is still embedded in every track you buy.

2. AAC is a proprietary Apple format, and only works in iTunes or on an iPod or iPhone.

AAC, or Advanced Audio Coding, is a compression standard developed by the MPEG group and considered to be the replacement for MP3. Apple uses it for all music sold on the iTunes Store, but it works on a lot more hardware and software than just Apple’s iTunes/iPod/iPhone combo.

Microsoft’s Zune and Sony’s Walkman players support AAC, for example, as do many Sony Ericsson phones, the Sony PlayStation and PSP, streaming audio systems such as Sonos and Squeezebox products, and many software players.

3. I can’t burn an audio CD from iTunes tracks.

From the very beginning, Apple has allowed you to create standard audio CDs from your purchased iTunes tracks that would play in any CD player. The only restriction was the number of times you could burn an individual playlist. But you could get around that limitation by simply creating a new playlist. DRM-free files have no such restrictions placed on them.

4. I can’t get my DVDs into iTunes or play them on an iPod.

Because of the copy protection on commercial DVDs (and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act), you can’t stick a DVD into your Mac, launch iTunes, and press a button to convert it to an iPod- and iPhone-friendly format. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

Using a free tool such as HandBrake, you can circumvent the copy protection of most DVDs and convert them to iTunes/Apple TV/iPod/iPhone-friendly formats. If HandBrake can’t handle it—which happens with some newer DVDs—you can use the $20 RipIt to first create an unprotected version of the DVD on your hard drive and then transcode it using HandBrake.

5. I can’t connect my iPod/iPhone to my TV to play videos.

Although there’s nothing in the iPod or iPhone box that lets you do so, Apple offers a few options for connecting your portable device to your TV for playback.

The Apple Component AV Cable and Apple Composite AV Cable ($49 each) plug into the Dock connector on your iPod, iPhone, or universal dock and provide connections on the other end to plug into your TV. As an added bonus, earch package also includes a USB power adapter in the box, normally a $29 purchase.

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The iPod touch generation

Is Apple's iPhone-without-a-phone the McDonald's Happy Meal of mobile communications?

Click to enlarge. Source: Flurry Analytics

Peter Farago of the mobile analytics firm Flurry uses data from its November report to make the case that Apple (AAPL) is quietly — and successfully — using the iPod touch to lock in a loyal base of under-age users who will eventually become the next generation of iPhone buyers.

"While it is clear that the iPhone has significant short-term revenue value for Apple," he writes in a report issued Sunday, "Flurry believes that the iPod Touch holds more long-term strategic value for Steve Jobs and team."

"In terms of Life Stage Marketing," Farago writes, "the practice of appealing to different age-based segments, Apple is using the iPod Touch to build loyalty with pre-teens and teens, even before they have their own phones (think: McDonalds' Happy Meal marketing strategy). When today's young iPod Touch users age by five years, they will already have iTunes accounts, saved personal contacts to their iPod Touch devices, purchased hundreds of apps and songs, and mastered the iPhone OS user interface." (link)

The evidence that Apple's strategy is working, Farago says, can be seen in a graph of end-user sessions recorded over the past six months.

Flurry, according to Farago, tracks 15 million end-user sessions every day from its "analytics solution" code embedded in 3,000 applications on 4 platforms: Apple's iPhone OS ( both iPhone and iPod Touch), Research in Motion's (RIMM) Blackberry, JavaME and Google (GOOG) Android.

The graph above shows that the iPod touch's share of those user sessions has grown 4 points over the past six months — the same as Android despite starting from a much larger user base. While the iPhone continues to grow in user sessions, its share in Flurry's data has dropped from 57% to 50%.

Even more significant, according to Farago, is that kind of things the kids are doing with their iPod touches.

"Anecdotally," he writes, "we know the 'iPod Touch Generation' is made up of heavy MySpace, Facebook and SMS users, who voraciously share their lives with, and influence their ever-expanding social graph. Importantly, this also includes promoting products they like. Empirically, Flurry compared how iPod Touch session usage has changed over the last six months across key application categories important to this demographic; namely, Social Networking and Games."

Farago's empirical evidence is displayed in the two charts below, which show the iPod Touch growing faster than both the iPhone and the Android devices in Flurry's Social Networking and Games categories.

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iPod Touch Is Apple’s Stealth Weapon for Mobile Growth

Steve Jobs once referred to the iPod Touch as “training wheels for the iPhone,” but it’s no novelty to Apple. An analytics firm estimates Apple has shipped about 24 million units of the iPod Touch, which represents about 40 percent of the devices running the iPhone operating system.

Mobile analytics firm Flurry claims it made the estimate based on a sample of 3,000 applications, 45 million consumers and four platforms. Apple provided a figure of 58 million devices running the iPhone OS, and of that total, Flurry believes 24 million are iPod Touch devices.

Flurry speculates that Apple’s iPod Touch is crucial for the company to retain and expand its market share in the mobile OS space.

“While it is clear that the iPhone has significant short-term revenue value for Apple, Flurry believes that the iPod Touch holds more long-term strategic value for Steve Jobs and team,” Flurry wrote in a blog post. “As all industry eyes look to the iPhone, the iPod Touch is quietly building a loyal base among the next generation of iPhone users, positioning Apple to corner the smartphone market not only today, but also tomorrow.”

That’s a believable number, because the iPod Touch caters to a broad market segment including gamers, teenagers (who presumably can’t afford the iPhone’s ~$100 monthly bill), Verizon customers avoiding AT&T and more.

The numbers also signify healthy growth for Apple’s iPhone platform. In September, Apple claimed it had shipped 40 million units of the iPhone and iPod Touch worldwide. In just three months, that number has increased 18 million — about 30 percent.



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The iPod turns eight years old

Do you remember where you were on October 23, 2001? I don’t, but I do remember that Apple make a very big announcement, which—at the time—I thought was a big mistake: the iPod. Today marks the eighth year of the iPod’s existence and these days I find it hard to image a time when the iPod wasn’t a part of the cultural zeitgeist.

The first iPod had 10 hours of battery life, a FireWire port (which I still miss), and 5GB of storage for $399. Oh, and it was Mac-compatible only. When I first heard about it I thought, “Who the heck even has one gig of music? Dumb move, Apple.” Good thing Apple doesn’t call me up for business pointers because I couldn’t have been more wrong about the iPod if I had tried.

Over the years, the iPod has morphed into far more than an MP3 player but today, on its eighth birthday, let us take a moment to remember fondly that simpler time, when seeing someone with white headphones was a rarity and there was a sort of unspoken bond between iPod users. Here's the news story that ran on Macworld about the announcement, and you can watch the Apple music event in which Steve unleashes the iPod an an unsuspecting world.

Here’s to another eight years of the iPod. (I’m sure that I’ll be amongst the first to line up for the iPod cranial implant that Apple will introduce in 2016.)

For more iPod nostalgia, check out our iPod 5th anniversary podcast, Jason Snell's recollections of that day, a timeline of the first five years of iPod, and a selection of iPod quotes from back in 2001. You can also read Jonathan Seff's first look at the original iPod.



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Welcome to the University of iTunes

The wisdom of business professors, once only available to MBAs and business students, can now be accessed by anybody with an Internet connection.

Hundreds of universities, and a growing number of business schools, are making recordings of lectures, seminars and conferences available to the general public via Web sites such as iTunes and YouTube.

Leading business schools including University of Cambridge Judge Business School, Fuqua School of Business, and Yale School of Management make course content available for download through iTunes University (iTunes U), part of the of the iTunes online store.

That means those whose budget won't stretch to a two-year MBA can simulate the experience at home -- or at work, in the gym or anywhere else they choose. And even better for money-conscious learners, the iTunes U content can all be downloaded free of charge.

French business school HEC Paris is due to launch its iTunes U content in the next few months, but it has been running an ambitious podcast program since 2006.

Begun as an experiment in partnership with Apple, all new MBAs at HEC are provided with an iPod Touch. Around half of the MBA lectures are filmed using an automatic camera system and the footage is made available for students to download and view on their iPhones.

Vanessa Klein, HEC's project manager for iTunes U, told CNN that the iPod-enabled curriculum has proved a hit with students. As well watching lectures, she said the students' own presentations are recorded and made available for download so they can review their performance.

She says one teacher noticed that each year his MBA students would ask the same questions after his end-of-course summary, so he made a podcast of recurring questions and answers. After encouraging students to come up with new questions, he is now recording responses to those in an effort to compile a video archive of questions and answers.

Read more business features

Klein says that by making lectures available via iTunes U, HEC wants to be at the forefront of providing content for the rest of the world, but she acknowledges that the technology is also a great way to promote the business school.

"It's a good marketing tool, not as publicity but to really show people what we are providing," she told CNN.

"You can watch a lecture, learn a lot and think 'I wish I could be there.' The idea is to show what you could learn if you were at this place."

YouTube EDU was launched in March this year and hosts the YouTube channels of hundreds of universities. Earlier this month it added content from 45 universities in Europe and Israel and now holds videos of lectures and discussions provided by business schools including INSEAD, ESCP Europe and University of California Haas School of Business.

Launched at the same time as YouTube EDU, Academic Earth hosts videos from U.S. universities including Harvard, Yale and Princeton, although the business content is provided almost exclusively by Stanford University.

Offering less audio/visual content, but still full of business school information, MIT's Open Course Ware site gives free access to almost all MIT course content, including extensive lecture notes, assignments and exams from MIT's Sloan School of Management.

Interested in the "Advanced Topics in Real Estate Finance?" You can download the complete lecture notes from Sloan's 2007 course on the subject at MIT's Open Course Ware site.

Other universities have their own Open Course Ware sites and the Open Course Ware Consortium has been set up as an agglomerator site, providing content from more over 200 higher education institutions.

But it's iTunes U that's generating the most interest. The University of Oxford says there have been more than one million downloads from its iTunes U site, while Stanford University says its course on creating iPhone applications was downloaded more than one million times in just seven weeks.

This week's most popular business download on iTunes U is a University of Oxford lecture called "Entrepreneurship and the Ideal Business Plan."

It may not get as many downloads as Michael Jackson's posthumous single, but it should prove more useful when it comes to getting a business off the ground.



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Apple lets iPhone apps get down to business

Apple said Friday that it is allowing businesses to sell content or services through applications given away for free at the iPhone maker's online App Store.

The shift of policy is seen as a boon to magazines and newspapers that can give away iPhone or iPod Touch programs featuring basic content and then sell premium articles piecemeal or by subscription.

"In App Purchase is being rapidly adopted by developers in their paid apps," Apple said in response to an AFP inquiry. "Now, developers can use In App Purchase in their free apps to sell content, subscriptions, and digital services."

Apple had previously barred suppliers of free iPhone applications from using the programs to sell content.

Suppliers of free applications can entice iPhone or iPod Touch users with free material in the hope they will eventually pay for enhanced content.

Apple gets a share of purchase prices of programs sold at the App Store and will reportedly share in revenue from sales in free applications.

The policy change comes as rumors abound that the California company behind the Macintosh computer, iPhone and iPod could release a portable tablet computer early next year that may double as an e-reader.

And not just a black-and-white e-reader but one that would boast full color and a 10-inch (25-centimeter) screen making it more of an oversized iPod Touch or a netbook computer, the increasingly popular low-cost mini-laptops.

If an Apple tablet computer does emerge, it would join an e-reader market that is becoming increasingly crowded but is undergoing tremendous growth.

An "iTablet" could also serve as an eye-pleasing platform for stories, video or other content sold through third-party applications.

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Apple iPod touch (32GB; third generation)

Now in its third year, Apple's iPod touch has evolved so many features and uses beyond media playback that we're not really sure what to call it anymore. Some flock to the touch for its first-class mobile Web browser and email support, while others see it primarily as a portable gaming device, and some still pick it up for good old-fashioned music and video playback. No matter how you choose to define the iPod touch, Apple's third-generation version has arrived, flaunting 8GB, 32GB, and 64GB capacities priced respectively at S$308 (US$217.54), S$468 (US$330.56), and S$628 (US$443.57). Its hardware design hasn't changed dramatically from the model we reviewed in 2008, but neither has its status as the world's most feature-packed portable media player.

Design

For better or worse, the first thing we noticed about the third-generation iPod touch is how unchanged it looks. Side by side with the second-generation iPod touch, you'd be hard-pressed to find a way to distinguish the two models from each other. Aside from minor differences in the etching on the back of the touch, the second- and third-generation models are splitting images of each other.

Just like its phone-wielding sibling, the iPhone, the iPod touch is a touchscreen device with a glass-covered 3.5-inch screen that sports a 480 x 320-pixel resolution. In spite of its touchscreen interface, Apple includes a few physical buttons, including a slim volume control on the left edge, a hold switch on the top, and a home button on the face of the player, placed below the screen. The bottom edge of the touch includes the same universal dock port and 3.5mm headphone jack as previous models, piercing the otherwise unbroken expanse of chromed steel that wraps around the back and edges of the device.

The shape and dimensions of the touch also remain unchanged (110 x 61.8 x 8.5mm), defined by a flat-glass front set inside a curved steel backing that feels natural in the hand but makes the iPod a little wobbly when you set it down on a table. Packaged with the touch is an Apple universal dock connector USB cable, a pair of white earbuds that include a microphone and remote control on the cable, and a molded universal dock insert to use with any charging or speaker accessories.

Features

Out of the box, the third-generation iPod touch includes an amazing music player, podcast support, video playback (including iTunes rentals and a YouTube player), a Safari Web browser, photo viewer, an email reader (compatible with Outlook, Exchange, MobileMe, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, or any POP email service), an integrated iTunes Store for music and video downloads, and a host of smaller utilities (weather, calendar, maps, stocks, notes, voice memos, clock, contacts, and calculator). Provided you become proficient with its touchscreen keyboard, the iPod touch is more pocket PC than an MP3 player.

iPod touch OS 3.0 media features

With version 3.1 of Apple's iPhone and iPod touch firmware, the device's stock features are just the starting point of apps available. An iTunes App Store, accessible from the computer or directly from the iPod touch, lets you download and install thousands of applications, including Internet radio players, games, voice recorders, and social-networking tools. You can also extend the capabilities of the iPod touch using third-party "Made for iPod" hardware accessories such as AV docks, external battery packs, and speaker systems.

Apple first introduced its Genius playlist feature with the second-generation iPod touch, letting you create instant 25-song playlists based on the musical characteristics of a single song. The Genius playlist feature is still here on the third-generation version, giving you an easy and fun way to generate playlists, provided their music collection holds enough songs to make interesting connections. You can create and save Genius playlists directly onto the iPod touch, and with automatic syncing enabled in iTunes, you can also transfer them back to your computer.

With the third-generation of the touch, Apple broadened the scope of Genius selections to include App Store recommendations and extended, genre-based playlists called Genius Mixes. After clicking on the App Store icon found on the main menu, you'll find Genius App picks in a separate "Genius" tab giving you a list of recommendations based on previous app purchases you've made. Genius Mixes are intuitively located in the iPod's Music menu, located by default in the lower submenu strip across the bottom, along with selections for artist, songs, playlists, and more. If you're the kind of person who typically listens to music by hitting shuffle, you might enjoy the way Genius Mixes provide a more curated and genre-specific selection of tunes with a minimum of effort. Those who are more deliberate about their music selections always have the option of knocking the feature into the "More" section and replacing it with a more useful menu item (podcasts, audiobooks, and so on).

Genius Mixes offer extended playlists of your music, which get programmed automatically by Apple. Think of it as "shuffle" with better taste.

Oddly, the touch's Genius Playlist and Mixes features won't work if you haven't enabled Genius on your computer's iTunes software. If you find iTunes' Genius features too demanding on your computer's resources or too invasive of your privacy (the feature reports your listening habits to Apple), then you'll need to live without the features on your iPod as well.

Not every member of the third-generation iPod touch family is created equally. Essentially, the 8GB iPod touch model is still running on second-generation hardware that uses a slower processor than the 32GB and 64GB models and lacks support for new features such as Voice Control, OpenGL graphic support, and advanced accessibility features. As we've already seen with the first-generation touch, future updates to the iPod firmware may bring features that only the latest hardware will support. Obviously, the 8GB model's S$308 (US$217.54) price tag makes it attractive to prospective buyers, but be aware that the lower price comes at the cost of performance and a few features.

Are you confused about what features are available on the 8GB touch compared with the 32GB and 64GB versions? So were we. For the record, iPhone OS 3.1 features such as Bluetooth audio, Genius Mixes, and voice memo recording are available on all versions of the third-generation iPod touch. Voice Control and accessibility settings, however, are the only features we've found so far that can only be found on the 32GB and 64GB touch models (or iPhone 3GS). In the next few paragraphs, we'll dive into these features a little more to see if they're worthwhile.

Voice control

The Voice Control screen of the Apple iPod touch.

As if touchscreen control wasn't futuristic enough, the iPod touch now includes the capability to control playback using voice commands. To activate this feature, you'll need to press and hold the headphone remote control button until the Voice Control screen appears. Using the microphone built into the included pair of earbuds, you can call out a song, artist name, album, or playlist, and the iPod will interpret your commands and play the request. Playback features such as shuffle, skip, play, and pause can also be controlled using voice commands, but it feels a little unnecessary, since the earbud remote control is available to perform these functions without making you look like a crazy person. One of the coolest uses of the technology is the capability to engage the Genius playlist function by saying "Play more songs like this", letting you steer your listening experience without taking the iPod out of your pocket.

We found Voice Control to be consistently accurate when it came to basic commands, such as "play", "next song", "shuffle" and so on. You do run into some trouble calling up artists with funky names or funky spellings (too bad, P!NK), but that's to be expected. Overall, Voice Control is a fun feature to have, and even more fun to show off. We wish Apple had thought of an easy way to let you to Voice Control while the touch is plugged into a car stereo aux input, but we've no doubt that third-party manufacturers will solve the problem with special cables or in-car charging docks.

Accessibility

The iPod touch accessibility menu.

Touchscreen devices present a unique challenge to users with visual impairment. By digging into the General settings of the 32GB or 64GB third-generation iPod touch, users can now enable features such as screen zooming, white/black reversal, mono audio, home button triple-click, an automatic text reader that will read everything from emails to entire Web pages, and a VoiceOver feature that offers spoken feedback of menus and any item selected by touch (apps launch with double-clicks in this mode). For users who have otherwise felt locked out of the iPod touch and apps experience, the inclusion of these relatively deep accessibility controls is certainly an advantage over previous models of the iPod touch, and a promising direction for touchscreen devices, generally.

iTunes on the go
Both the iPod touch and iPhone let you browse, preview, purchase, and download content from the new iTunes Wi-Fi store. You'll have to hop onto an available Wi-Fi Internet connection to take advantage of the wireless music store, but once connected, you can search for any artist, album, or song in the iTunes music catalog, as well as movies, TV shows, music videos, audiobooks, podcasts, and iTunes U educational content. Store purchases require you to enter your iTunes password as a security measure. Once the download is complete, the audio or video is immediately available to listen to and will transfer to your computer's iTunes music library the next time you sync the device. The feature seems to work without any kinks. Even interrupted downloads pick up once a Wi-Fi connection is re-established.



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Apple iPod Touch, The Third Generation (first part)

The iPod Touch uses a two-piece design that marries a flat glass-covered front with a single piece of chromed steel that wraps around the back and edges. For a such a thin and seemingly fragile device, the Touch feels surprisingly sturdy and the steel offers a reassuring heft compared to the iPhone's plastic design.

Apple's Cover Flow music menu is a bit useless on the smaller screens of the iPod Nano and iPod Classic, but it's a fantastic way to browse music on the iPod Touch.

CoverFlow is fun, but when you want a more exact way of finding a song, you'll need to scroll though a list. Fortunately, Apple provides quick tabs for sorting at the bottom of the screen, and a fast-find alphabet strip on the right side. By pulling down on the menu, you can also uncover a hidden box for typing in your search request.

Considering all the features crammed into the iPod Touch, including email, internet, music, video, and games--it's a wonder that the device fits so easily in your pocket.

There aren't a lot of differences between the second and third-generation iPod Touch, but we did notice an improved screen quality. Here you can see the second-generation Touch (above) screen is a little more washed out and yellow-tinted compared to the third-gen model set at a comparable brightness setting.

Ever feel like handing the wheel over to Apple's music experts when it comes to figuring out what music to play? Well then, welcome to Genius Mixes. As an alternative to simply hitting shuffle and taking a random stream of music, Apple's automatic Genius Mixes group together songs in your collection into mixes based around common genres.


To be continued.......

Will Apple's New iTunes Put You on Cloud Nine?

iTunes 9 is here. Find out what you should look for, and whether it's worth the download.

Earlier today Apple introduced iTunes 9 at the "It's Only Rock and Roll, But We Like It" media event. iTunes 9 has a number of new features, such as iTunes LP (which tries to bring full-blown album art, liner notes, and so on to the digital world), Home Sharing (which allows you to sync your music across computers in your household), and the redesigned iTunes Store. Though these new features make iTunes an even stronger media-playback app, you may find this version a little disappointing if you were hoping for a major revamp.

Home Sharing and Syncing

With the addition of Home Sharing, iTunes finally gives you a way to sync music automatically among the computers in your home. Once you enable Home Sharing on your computer, you'll be able to access the iTunes library on any other Mac or Windows PC on your network with Home Sharing enabled. From there, you can play music from other computers and import music from those computers as well, so you can have the same music on every machine in your house.

One important note: You'll have to ensure that all your computers are on the same network, and activated with the same iTunes account. This means that you can't share music between your iTunes account and your significant other's, for example, and you can't share music between your home PC and your work PC. Still, Home Sharing is a welcome addition, and it beats manually copying music files onto each of your computers.

A New Look

iTunes 9 sports an updated interface, but the changes are more than skin-deep. The window chrome has a polished-metal-and-glossy-plastic look. It isn't a huge difference, but iTunes 8 users will notice the change. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of this tweak, but you might like it. Windows Vista and Windows 7 users will notice that the iTunes main window finally has a drop shadow.

The updated iTunes Store.

Beyond those cosmetic tweaks, Apple completely redesigned the iTunes Store, and it's a big improvement. The new look is cleaner and more attractive--and easier to navigate, too, thanks to the addition of a navigation bar across the top that gives you easy access to the various parts of the iTunes Store. Album pages have been redesigned, as well. Gone is the split-pane view of old (album details and user reviews on top, songs below)--instead, the songs show in-line on the page, in a more prominent location. As you mouse over songs in a list, a preview button appears; click it, and you get a 30-second preview of that song.

The iTunes Store preview feature.

The rest of the interface has undergone some minor changes. While iTunes 9 is an improvement overall, it takes a step back in some areas. By default, when you view your library or a playlist in grid view, the app no longer gives you the toolbar that lets you change sort options on the fly (you can turn the toolbar on via the View menu). And various controls, such as the buttons for the drop-down genre menus in the iTunes Store, appear only when you mouse over them, making them less obvious than they should be.

Genius Mixes

What do you get when you take iTunes' Genius Playlists and merge them with Pandora? You get Genius Mixes. How does a Genius Mix differ from a Genius Playlist, you ask? With a Genius Playlist, you select a song and click the Genius button (bearing an atom icon), and iTunes creates a playlist of 25 to 100 songs that are similar to the one you picked. A Genius Mix, on the other hand, is more like a Genius-powered radio station: It will pull together any and all songs of a similar nature in your iTunes library, and play them in random order. To group similar artists and songs together, Genius will also collect song information from your iTunes library and compare it with what other iTunes users favor.

Genius Mixes did a pretty good job of bringing together similar artists and songs in my collection, but they also seemed to leave out a fair amount of my music. My tunes are largely a mix of alternative rock with some electronic thrown in. Genius created several alternative mixes, each combining different groups of artists, but it didn't create a single electronic playlist. My guess is that I don't have enough of that particular genre for Genius to make anything of it. The differences between my Genius Mixes, style-wise, are so slight that it defeats the purpose to some extent, too; it should work better if you listen to a wide array of music.

One more thing: You can't see what songs iTunes is using in a Genius Mix. It'll show you only icons displaying album covers of some of the albums included in a mix, but you can't see exactly what tracks are included, so you can't pick what song you want to listen to.

Genius on iPhone

The iPhone OS 3.1 update brings additional Genius features to the iPhone. Genius can now recommend apps based on what you already have.

Genius Mixes have made their way to the iPhone as well. Genius Mixes appear to carry over from your computer when you sync your iPhone, as the ones on my phone are identical to what I have in iTunes, and they didn't show up on my iPhone until I resynced it. Unfortunately, as with Genius Mixes in iTunes, on the iPhone you can't see what tracks are in each mix. Boo.

App Sanity!

With iTunes 9 and iPhone OS 3.1, you now have more control over how your apps are organized on your iPhone or iPod Touch. For example, you can pick and choose which apps to sync with your phone, and you can rearrange how your apps appear on your phone.

Overall, I can't think of a reason not to upgrade to iTunes 9 and iPhone OS 3.1 (unless your phone is jailbroken, in which case you might want to hold off for now). iTunes does need something of an overhaul, though. The sidebar, for example, is starting to get very crowded, as Apple tacks more features on. Maybe in version 10 we'll see Apple simplify and streamline iTunes.

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Apple to debut iTunes LP alongside launch of iTunes 9

It seemed that those reports about Cocktail, a new scheme to "stimulate sales of CD-length music," were true. The new, multimedia-adorned downloads are called iTunes LPs and iTunes Extras, and they require iTunes 9, which comes with a new store.

iTunes LP, likely the official name of Apple's "Cocktail" project designed to spur sales of full albums, is expected to be officially unveiled at today's media event along with iTunes 9.

A new listing on iTunes for a deluxe edition of Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited," as discovered by AppleInsider reader Cameron Phillips, has revealed both new products. The description states that the album's release date is Sept. 15, 2009, and that the album-enriching iTunes LP will include bonus content in the form of additional recordings, photos and videos. It is listed for $17.00.

"Get this watershed album with iTunes LP (only for use on a Mac or PC with iTunes 9 or later) for 13 bonus recordings taken from the original sessions, live videos recorded at the Newport Folk Festival, photos, and more," the iTunes page reads.

Originally revealed under the codename "Cocktail," the new product is designed to incentivize purchases of full-length albums rather than individual singles. The effort is purportedly a multi-party collaboration between Apple as well as EMI, Sony, Warner and Universal. Reports have alleged it will go well beyond the PDF liner notes often included today.

With Apple's keynote media event just moments away, it is likely that the iTunes LP format, along with iTunes 9, will be unveiled. Previous rumors have suggested that iTunes 9 will include social media integration and Blu-ray support.


The same goes for movies: iTunes Extra gives you a downloadable equivalent of DVD extras, with interviews, extra clips and photo galleries.



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