iLounge

Protecting the Metal MacBook: InvisibleShield, Part 2

By Jeremy Horwitz | 11.20.08 | 5 comments |  tell-a-friend |  digg this story

As you’re no doubt already aware, iLounge—unlike other publications—is not willing to tell readers to rush out and buy the things we review. Our belief is that you’re smart enough to know whether something meets your needs and budget, and it’s our role to provide both facts and informed opinions to help you make your own decision. By the same token, if we really like or love something—the marks of our “recommended” or “highly recommended” ratings—we’ll tell you as much right away. Our high recommendations are rare, and the number of products receiving C, D, or F grades hit an all-time high this year.

Those words are a necessary prelude to our more detailed look at ZAGG’s InvisibleShield for the metal 13” MacBook ($55). After posting some pictures and a handful of details on the initial installation process yesterday, a couple of readers chimed in to knock the price and/or concept behind this product, which provides a clear layer of film coverage that renders Apple’s aluminum design largely scratch-proof. “$55 for 25 cents worth of plastic,” said one, while noting the value of screen protectors; “A 55 dollar piece of plastic to ruin the looks of your macbook?!,” opined the other. “That’s like putting plastic over your couch. Come on people get a life.”

We’re fairly certain that ZAGG and its most dismissive critics are never going to agree: it is very obvious that people are buying, using, and enjoying these clear film protectors, even though the prices are unquestionably high. So InvisibleShield is a classic “eye of the beholder” product, one that some people may see as worthless, but other people will welcome with open arms. Our own perspective is someplace in the middle, but as you’ll see from the review that follows, there are very good reasons to like film covers like this one. Read on for the details.

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Protecting the Metal MacBook: InvisibleShield, Part 1

By Jeremy Horwitz | 11.19.08 | 2 comments |  tell-a-friend |  digg this story

I had hoped to be able to share a complete end-to-end discussion of ZAGG’s version of InvisibleShield for the 13” metal MacBook ($55) with you today, but the installation is still ongoing.

Even having gone through the process with numerous iPod and iPhone variants of the same product, trying to get all the pieces of this clear, scratch-resistant film onto the computer is no easy feat. The major challenges are alignment and keeping the pieces of film clean given their size and tendency to bend during application. I’ve actually gone back a couple of times per piece trying to get alignment right after an initial misstep.

Why go through this trouble? To keep the MacBook in nearly perfect condition without the need for a thick case, of course. For now, I’ll leave you with a collection of photographs showing off the initial part of the process—most can be seen by clicking on the headline of this article—and additional details will be forthcoming soon.

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On the Election

By Jeremy Horwitz | 11.05.08 | 6 comments |  tell-a-friend |  digg this story

It’s a great day to wake up in America. Congratulations to our new President-Elect and Vice President-Elect on making history.

On Pricing and the App Store

By Jesse David Hollington | 10.31.08 | 5 comments |  tell-a-friend |  digg this story

As we wrap up our 2009 Buyers’ Guide and look back on three months spent reviewing hundreds of applications, I’ve been pondering the ways in which Apple has changed the game in the mobile applications market.

As some of our readers will know, I’m a very long-time PDA user, going back to the days when Palm was owned by U.S. Robotics. The device was actually called the “Pilot 1000” and had a whopping 128 KB of RAM—yes, that’s “KB” as in “KILObytes.” I bought my first Pilot 1000 for what it could actually do by itself, and only later discovered the fact that I could add more applications onto the device. Well, the result of that was that I quickly needed to upgrade to the 512KB model Pilot 5000, as I was pretty much hooked on the idea of third-party applications that expanded what my little pocket-sized friend could do.

Over the years, as the world of PDAs expanded and other vendors such as Microsoft entered the market, an entire ecosystem built around third-party PDA apps sprung up, with thousands of third-party developers focused on PDA applications, and numerous sites like Palmgear.com and Handango specializing in nothing more than providing store-fronts for these types of apps.

Thus, I watched with some interest last spring as Apple announced their concept of an iTunes App Store. On the one hand, the idea of buying a PDA application online was nothing particularly novel. However, as with most things that Apple does, the approach was just different enough to be intriguing. The business model was quite simple: developers would only be able to sell their applications through the iTunes App Store, and Apple would take a 30% cut of revenues. In return, however, Apple would handle all of the order processing and digital store front, collecting the money and simply handing the developers a check every so often.

Other than the prohibition on selling applications through any other channel, this wasn’t really that different from what Handango and other sites like it had been doing for several years. However, a funny thing happened on the way to the App Store: the average price of applications dropped dramatically.

If you search Handango and other sites like it, you will discover that it’s not at all uncommon to find relatively simple applications like alarm clocks selling for $10 or more for other devices, and $30-$40 applications for Palm and Windows Mobile devices are not at all uncommon. These are prices that we would now consider absolutely absurd for similar iPhone applications.

This discrepancy becomes interesting when you consider that people were and still are buying these applications for other platforms. Further, there’s no evidence that Apple has forced any kind of low pricing model on its developers—to the contrary, there was buzz early on that Apple was trying to persuade developers to charge more. The only pricing restrictions on the App Store are minimum $0.99 and maximum $999.99 price tags, and a requirement that prices be set to easily-rounded increments, meaning simply that you won’t see apps being sold for $7.39, for instance.

When you really sit down and think about it, the really interesting part is that it is the iTunes App Store business model combined with market forces that has led to this. Nobody told developers that they had to set their prices low—most of them just did so naturally, possibly expecting that they would make their money on volume of sales rather than higher profit margins. That appears to be the case; people selling $5 apps are carting away $250,000 in a month or two. Not bad.

The iTunes Store has always held a relatively unique position among online vendors in the way in which it is seamlessly integrated into an application that every iPod and iPhone user already has. You don’t have to search Google and wade through dozens of possibly irrelevant hits when looking for something. Further, developers do not have to rely on their customers knowing about third-party applications or sites that they can get them at. With the iTunes App Store, everything is right there in front of the user with generally no more than a few clicks of the mouse.

The result is that volume sales are easily achievable, since every developer is instantly on a mostly level playing field and has access to an established customer base of millions. For most developers, it’s the digital equivalent of being able to set up a shop selling home-made jewellery in the middle of Macy’s.

The other important factor that I think has contributed to driving prices down is the lack of any kind of shareware-style trial mode for software. While the App Store easily allows for free applications, these are simply given away. There is no way for a developer to provide a limited free application and later allow the customer to unlock additional functionality. In fact, selling features outside of the App Store is expressly prohibited by Apple. Some developers have worked around this by providing limited “Free” versions of their applications, and then paid “Pro” versions, but it seems that most developers have simply kept their prices low in the hopes that for a couple of bucks, most users will give the application a chance, sight unseen.

Other applications such as Twitterific, Exposure, and Griffin’s iTalk have taken the ad-supported approach. All of these applications are available for free if the user is willing to live with some unobtrusive advertising. While Twitterific and Exposure offer $10 paid versions which remove the ads, this is really ALL that these versions do, making them more of a “donationware” concept than anything else and allowing users who like the app to pay $10 to support the author’s future development. Based on what we’re seeing so far, it seems like $10 is too much to ask to remove ads from these apps; the developers might make more money if they lowered that price and thus appealed to more people. Other than the ability to easily provide an application to users for free, the ad-supported model is not so much a function of the App Store, but rather the iPhone’s extensive wireless capabilities. In order for an ad-supported model to work, you have to be putting your app on a device that has a relatively persistent Internet connection.

The bottom line is that whatever the reasons, the App Store model has driven the average price of mobile applications dramatically down. Throughout all of our application reviews, it has become pretty clear that with the exception of “professional” level applications, $10 is now a maximum realistic price at which an application should be sold—$8 is better for higher-end games—and at that price people expect outstanding functionality. Whatever other problems the App Store may have, this particular model has been generally good for pricing in the mobile device market.

Shhhh… We’ve Soft-Launched the 2009 Buyers’ Guide!

By Jeremy Horwitz | 10.30.08 | 1 comment |  tell-a-friend |  digg this story

Good evening, loyal Backstage readers.

The last month has been exhausting. Behind the scenes, we’ve been working very long hours to bring you the 2009 iPod + iPhone Buyers’ Guide.

Now it’s here. The PC and Mac-ready versions are available right now, a little ahead of our official October 31 release date. Our special iPhone and iPod touch-formatted version is coming shortly, and will be linked from the same page.

You’ll find two shots of V-Moda’s never-before-seen Vibe II inside—one hidden later in the Guide—along with Griffin’s Navigate wired display remote for iPhones and iPods, and a ton of other really cool stuff. Literally thousands of rated products. Cool new features such as the Top 100 Apps + Games. Winners of those $5,300 in contest prizes. Just lots and lots to digest, all free of charge, as always.

We’ll make the formal announcement on the iLounge.com home page a little later, but we wanted to let you get an early taste of what we’ve been cooking up. Enjoy. 

In the Labs: Altec Lansing’s Expressionist BASS

By Jeremy Horwitz | 10.17.08 | 0 comments |  tell-a-friend |  digg this story

We can’t claim to totally understand the design vibe behind Altec Lansing’s inMotion MAX, but Expressionist BASS ($130, aka FX3022) makes a bit more sense visually and conceptually. We’ve been playing with a pair of $600 Focal XS multimedia/iPod speakers for the last couple of weeks and enjoying them, yet Expressionist BASS seems like a way more mainstream concept: dump the need for a subwoofer by just integrating two firmly stabilized sub-class drivers into the bases of cone-shaped left and right desktop speakers.

Altec has placed 1.5” drivers at the top of each of the cones, firing forwards from steampunk-styled grilles, and 4” drivers at the bottom, with fin-like feet to provide stabilization. The result is nice, warm sound, though there’s no remote control, no way to play with the audio balance—volume and power controls are all you get—and of course no iPod dock for the setup. Hence, it’s here on Backstage. We’re going to continue to try it out for a little while and see whether it’s worthy of supplanting some of our other multimedia speaker favorites. More pictures of these interestingly designed audio towers are available by clicking on this article’s title.

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The MacBook That Apple Got So, So Right

By Jeremy Horwitz | 10.16.08 | 34 comments |  tell-a-friend |  digg this story

We don’t write much about Macs at iLounge, but I wanted to make an exception today to pat Apple on the back for doing something very right: the new aluminum MacBook. No pictures for this article; you can see the machine here.

Say what you will about the economy, the need for a Mac netbook, and Apple’s iterative approach to new product releases; in quick summary, the economy’s rough, a cheaper Mac would have been really smart, and the company definitely has become Machiavellian about dragging out user-requested feature bumps. If you can look past all of those things, the new 13” MacBooks are staggeringly close to the ideal portable Mac—so much so that three or four iLounge editors have either bought them or are planning to do so as we speak. All of us have Macs, but we never upgrade simultaneously, let alone to the same machine, which should be a sign that Apple has accomplished something amazing with this product.

It is, as Steve Jobs mentioned, the metal 13” that we’ve all been waiting for. It is, as history shows and the economy requires, a lot more affordable than the $1799 PowerBook 12” that people such as us lusted after but never purchased due to price and overheating problems. And it is, most importantly, a totally awesome computer. I’ve been using mine for the last day and completely loving it. The reasons:

Obvious things: the design. I’m not going to tell you that the new MacBook is amazing physically, because Apple introduced most of the new design touches in the MacBook Air, and thus most of this machine’s improvements appear derivative. But it’s obvious that everything about the past MacBook has been vigorously and wisely reconsidered for this model.

In a video, Jony Ive talks about making the machine as simple as is possible. It’s entirely true. The Pro’s old magnetic latch? It was a nifty design trick, but ultimately a non-useful moving part, and worthy of elimination here. The old battery indicator on the bottom? It’s much better on the side of the machine, and looks nicer now, too. MacBook’s IR sensor and sleep light are now subtle, rather than glaring, as are the iSight and microphone. Everything just seems so smart.

Obvious things: the size and weight. The new MacBook is lighter than its plastic predecessor, and correspondingly much lighter than the 15” Pro, which actually got a little heavier with this year’s update. And while the footprint isn’t as small as I would prefer—I could live with a 10” or 12” screen—I’m okay with it.

The trackpad. You would never, ever know that this was made from glass unless someone told you. It feels like a slightly smoother version of the prior trackpad, save for the shift of the button to the pad’s undercarriage, both changes highly welcome. There are issues with the pad—I find that it randomly causes text on web pages to scale upwards in size—but I’m convinced that they can be remedied in software. Multitouch remains a gimmick for now, but fun to play with.

Speed, drive, and screen. I went from a 2.4GHz MacBook Pro to a 2.4GHz MacBook. I haven’t run benchmark tests, but the new machine feels at least as fast as the old one, and has an extra 90GB of hard drive space. While Apple would have hit the hat trick on this machine by bumping the screen resolution up, I am actually very pleased with the glossy display, which I had resisted across several prior purchases and unnecessarily feared would impact my productivity. Apart from the lost pixels, it actually looks better than the screen on the Pro.

Of course, there are a couple of bummers. The absence of any non-USB expandability, namely FireWire connectivity or an ExpressCard slot, will definitely bother some users. Speaking for myself, dragging around the 15” MacBook Pro was so tiresome that I started formulating my escape plans months ago. No more ExpressCards, which I really never liked, and always found hot to the touch on removal. Any external hard disk I bought had to have multiple interfaces, including USB and FireWire. Et cetera. I’m disappointed that I can’t at least make a FireWire 800 connection from my big drives to the MacBook, but I can live. Maybe this Ethernet port can be put to some good use…

The other one is the Mini DisplayPort as a replacement for the old DVI connector. It’s no shock, given Apple’s history of choosing obscure connectors and going for things that are small, but for the time being it means that my 23” Cinema Display is useless, at least until Apple releases that adapter cable. I’m not planning to buy the new LED 24” as a replacement for my 23”, but as soon as Apple gets the 30” out the door—if the price is right—I’ll be there.

Overall, I’m extremely satisfied with the new MacBook. Having owned a number of Apple laptops in the past, starting with (seriously) the Macintosh Portable, I think it’s the company’s best portable computer ever. Check back with me in a few months and we’ll see if anything catastrophic has gone wrong, like the hard disk or video card problems (yes, a faulty nVidia 8600M processor, it seems) I’ve been dealing with in my MacBook Pros, but I have a really good feeling about this machine.

Apple + AT&T’s iPhone Antitrust Class Action Smackdown

By Jeremy Horwitz | 10.03.08 | 4 comments |  tell-a-friend |  digg this story

If I wasn’t busy working on other things at the moment, I would write more about this:

Apple + AT&T Lose Early Attempt to Fight Antitrust Class Action Lawsuit.

I’ve read through it. Apple and AT&T haven’t lost the case yet, but the language of the court’s decision is pretty brutal. A few of the findings:

(1) AT&T can’t force plaintiffs to submit to arbitration rather than a full trial, because the AT&T service contract requiring arbitration was unconscionable under California, New York, and Washington State law.

(2) Plaintiffs can proceed against Apple under antitrust law regarding voice and data services for restricting users’ ability to use their iPhones on competing networks.

(3) Plaintiffs can proceed against Apple under antitrust law regarding iPhone applications, for restricting users’ ability to use unapproved third-party iPhone applications.

(4) Plaintiffs can proceed against Apple under the common law, as well as the Computer Fraud Abuse Act and the California Penal Code, for damaging unlocked iPhones with version 1.1.1 software.

Say what you want to say about lawyers, but the way this case is settled has the potential to radically change the entire mobile phone industry in the United States—as well as Apple’s business practices regarding current and future iPhones. I say “settled” because this ruling radically increases the chances that Apple and AT&T will feel compelled to resolve things without letting the case go further through the trial process, and one can only hope that the plaintiffs’ attorneys don’t get so excited by the prospect of settlement dollars that they pass on achieving the larger (precedent) goals of the suit. Millions of iPhone customers have a stake in seeing Apple and AT&T act reasonably regarding contract terms, unlocking, and applications, and as this court has explained, there’s evidence that they previously haven’t.

Apple’s Gold, Yellow, and Orange iPods Compared

By Jeremy Horwitz | 10.03.08 | 0 comments |  tell-a-friend |  digg this story

Though we’ve put together a fairly exhaustive collection of iPod nano color comparison photos, one shot that we didn’t include was a comparison with the gold first-generation iPod mini—apparently Apple’s least popular color, and therefore discontinued when the second-generation mini was released.

Here’s the comparison. As expected, gold’s not exactly an inspiring color—a far cry from the saturated, intense ones that the new yellow and orange 4G nanos possess. But color tastes vary by season, country, and obviously individual preference, so it’ll be interesting to see if this, or any of last year’s similarly muted tones, ever returns to the iPod (or iPhone) family.

Notes and Pictures: The 4GB Fourth-Generation iPod nano

By Jeremy Horwitz | 09.26.08 | 6 comments |  tell-a-friend |  digg this story

It’s here! Okay, it’s not really exciting by comparison with the 8GB and 16GB versions of the fourth-generation iPod nano, but it’s great to finally have our hands on the considerably rarer 4GB model. (Thanks, Alicia Bankhofer, for making this happen!)

As you may or may not have heard, something weird was going on with the capacities of the fourth-generation iPod nano. On September 9, Apple announced that the device would come in 8GB and 16GB capacities, with the 8GB ones available almost immediately and the 16GB ones to follow soon thereafter. Then, some 4GB units started showing up in a handful of European cities. An Apple representative conceded that a small number of 4GB nanos were being sold in select countries, but oddly declined to say where, or why. They also showed up in Canada, where our editor Jesse Hollington says that they’re being sold on a “one-per-household limit” through third-party retailers such as Best Buy, and according to a report, U.S.-based Apple Stores received them, too, before being instructed to quietly return them. They were made in every color of the new nano’s rainbow.

Our previously mentioned best guess was that Apple was taken off-guard by Microsoft’s decision to sell $199 16GB flash-based Zunes and moved—a little late in production—to counter these with same-priced iPod nanos. Stuck with already-made 4GB units, Apple needed to decide whether to try and quietly sell them, bury them, or hold onto them for some later date. A semi-plausible alternative explanation was that Apple was so desperate to win over some countries’ budget-conscious customers that it made versions just for them, an explanation that seems unlikely if the U.S. Apple Stores in fact received and returned these units. It’s also possible that Apple was preparing to sell $129 4GB nanos and $149 8GB nanos—the sort of product transition-related price drop that it seemed to be hinting at in an earlier conference call—but changed its mind at the last minute. Notably, the purple 4GB model number MB657 is numerically much closer to the purple 8GB model MB739 than the higher 16GB model MB918. The second-generation 32GB iPod touch has an earlier model number of MB533, and the 120GB classic a model number of MB562. This seems to suggest that Apple internally prepped the new touch, then the classic, then the nanos, with the 16GB model coming much later than the others, but there may be another explanation.

What’s noteworthy about the 4GB unit we received is that the packaging is a little different from the 8GB and 16GB U.S. models. Instead of an Apple logo on the back of the box, there are content descriptions and system requirements in three languages, none English. The instructions inside are similarly in foreign languages, just as one would expect from a nano sold outside the U.S.; it’s possible that Apple saw the withdrawal of these foreign-packaged nanos as more difficult than the purely English ones destined for U.S. consumers.

In any case, the 4GB nano seems like it’s going to be something of a collector’s item—at least, as much as anything made in a quantity of a million or so units could be—so it’s nice to have one around. It’ll be interesting to see whether Apple releases the English-boxed ones more widely.

Wipeout HD, or, What a Sony $20 Digital Download Buys in 2008

By Jeremy Horwitz | 09.26.08 | 10 comments |  tell-a-friend |  digg this story

There’s a list of reasons that the very idea of paying more than $10 for an iPhone OS game strikes me as… well, not unfathomable, but just a real big stretch. Number one on that list? Sony’s $20 game Wipeout HD for the PlayStation 3.

You might recall that I wound up with a PlayStation 3 as a holiday gift a couple of years ago, and said quite explicitly that I wouldn’t have purchased the console for myself because of its way-too-expensive price. And yes, Virtua Fighter 5 was very impressive—for the brief time it was a PS3 exclusive—but it wasn’t a “go out and get a console” sort of game for me. The thing that would have forced me to buy a PlayStation 3 is this title. Developed by Sony Liverpool and released yesterday, Wipeout HD is a futuristic racing game that continues a series originally responsible for helping to popularize the PlayStation platform in Europe. Unlike its predecessors, which have been sold on PlayStation discs and PlayStation Portable UMDs for $30-$50, Wipeout HD is digitally distributed as a $20, 1GB download through Sony’s PlayStation Network. And it is just awesome.

I love futuristic racing games, and consider 1996’s Wipeout XL—a collaboration between Sony’s Psygnosis studio and The Designers Republic—to be pretty much the pinnacle of that genre, with the possible exception of Nintendo and Sega’s jointly-developed F-Zero GX/AX. Wipeout HD is the first title since those two to really nail everything from the gameplay to the looks and sounds of speeding through far-future metropolitan race tracks. And it runs at 60fps in 1080p resolution, making the most stunning use I’ve yet seen of high-definition displays. Click through for more pictures and a few more details; this isn’t a full review, so I’m just offering a sampling of what’s here to be enjoyed.

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On iPod Generations: 2008’s iPod shuffle and iPod classic

By Jeremy Horwitz | 09.18.08 | 6 comments |  tell-a-friend |  digg this story

As Apple has refreshed the second-generation iPod shuffle for the fourth time in two years, it’s worth mentioning that we’ve once again updated our November, 2006 second-generation shuffle review, with a couple of new photos and new details, all mentioned below. And it’s also worth discussing a topic that’s been of some confusion to iPod owners and vendors over the past couple of years, as the iPod shuffle and iPod classic have seen new models introduced without explanation as to what “generation” they belong to.

Every new iPod release inspires a new round of “which generation?” talk, and in the absence of any explicit cues from Apple, people have been left to draw their own assumptions about whether or not a given iPod release constitutes a new generation. Several years ago, a debate within iLounge led us to contact Apple and ask Steve Jobs whether the company’s renaming of the iPod photo to “iPod” was enough to make that device the “fifth-generation iPod.” His response was to stick with the “fourth-generation” moniker, and subsequently, the official “fifth-generation iPod” wound up being the “iPod (with video).” Jobs referred to this generational confusion in 2007 when introducing the iPod classic, which otherwise would have been called the “sixth-generation iPod.”

Over time, it’s become apparent that Apple only considers a device a generational sequel when it makes a big change in body shape—not when it swaps internal components. Thus, even though the fourth-generation iPod came in black-and-white- or color-screened variations, each with different features, the different models looked pretty much the same, and thus were called the same generation. The thinner, bigger-screened, video-capable iPod that followed was a separate product. And the iPod nano? Even though the first- and second-generation versions shared a virtually identical interface, their bodies changed, which made them different generations. Make sense?

That brings us to the iPod shuffle. We noticed some months ago that a few vendors, mostly in Asia, were referring to the then-current model as the “third-generation shuffle,” because it represented a color change over the “second-generation shuffle” introduced in late 2006. However, using color as a touchstone didn’t make sense, as Apple had actually rolled out new colors twice at that point for the new model, starting in early 2007, with a refresh in late 2007. Following color-shifting logic, this would have made the late 2007 model the “fourth-generation shuffle,” and the late 2008 model the “fifth-generation shuffle,” based on new colors alone; never mind the release of a 2GB model. But, other than earbud and color changes, today’s 1GB shuffle is the same as the one introduced two years ago. Because of improvements to other iPod models, the shuffle now has the highest static noise level of any iPod, the weakest battery life, and the slowest iTunes synchronization speeds by a fairly substantial margin. Yes, it’s still the second-generation iPod shuffle.

What about the iPod classic? The just-introduced model is not the “second-generation iPod classic,” despite several legitimate changes that were made to the hardware this time out, and detailed in our comprehensive review. Jobs blew through the product’s introduction in less than a minute on stage in San Francisco, mentioning only one change to the prior device—capacity—before moving on to other models. As it turns out, of course, battery, headphone port, and Genius features were added as well. But Apple is referring to the new model solely as the iPod classic 120GB to distinguish it from prior models, unlike the “iPod touch 2nd generation” and “iPod nano 4th generation (video)” names it has given the other new models. In other words, it’s the equivalent of the “enhanced fifth-generation iPod” that came in 30GB and 80GB capacities before the iPod classic was introduced, or a half-generation up the evolutionary scale—the “sixth-and-a-half-generation iPod,” perhaps.

Sure, it would be a lot easier if Apple just named its iPods “iPod nano 1,” “iPod nano 2,” and so on, but instead, the big print on the boxes always just says “iPod nano,” so most people have come to use various distinctions ("the fat one” or “the first red one” or “last year’s one") to differentiate them. If you care about accessory compatibility or just want to be correct in citing iPod family history, the actual naming conventions do matter, so hopefully the information above will help you to avoid making mistakes in the future.

iPod nano 4G and 120GB iPod classic Diagnostic Modes

By Jeremy Horwitz | 09.17.08 | 0 comments |  tell-a-friend |  digg this story

From past experience, most readers don’t seem to care much about the iPods’ hidden diagnostic modes, but since we’ve been playing around with them, we figured that a few pictures and details might be of interest to some of you.

Apple has been tossing diagnostic modes into iPods for years; the only model that doesn’t let you access diagnostics is the iPod touch, which like the iPhone has an icon-based hardware diagnostic screen, but completely hides it away. On Click Wheel iPods, including the fourth-generation iPod nano and 120GB iPod classic, you access this mode by holding down the center and Menu buttons at the same time until the iPod resets to an Apple logo screen, then immediately holding the center and reverse track buttons until the iPod boots into the Diagnostic screen shown below.

The iPod nano’s version of this screen has 10 menu options, while the classic’s starts with 2, expanding to 7 when you select “manual” test mode. Click on the title of this article for a list of what’s vaguely interesting inside.

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The Why Behind the 4GB Fourth-Gen iPod nano

By Jeremy Horwitz | 09.17.08 | 8 comments |  tell-a-friend |  digg this story

Apple is, at least most of the time, a global company. With the exception of the original iPhone, the products it produces are intended for sale across as many territories as possible, rather than just one or two countries. So when we heard yesterday from iFun.de that Amazon.com’s German division was unexpectedly listing a 4GB fourth-generation iPod nano, we knew that there were only two possible scenarios.

(a) Amazon was mistaken, or

(b) Apple had produced a bunch of 4GB fourth-generation iPod nanos before realizing that it needed to boost storage capacities, and decided to try and quietly sell off the units outside of the United States.

Why would Apple ever do that? As we’ve said before, the company likes to portray itself as unconcerned about Microsoft’s Zunes or other competing products, but in reality, the iPod family can’t fall considerably behind its competitors without risking loss of market share. So when Microsoft preps a 16GB, $200 flash-based Zune, Apple has two choices: let it happen, or get a 16GB, $200 flash-based iPod nano out there, too. And when Microsoft upgrades its $250, 80GB hard disk player to a $250, 120GB model, lo and behold the iPod classic goes in the same direction. If you’re wondering why there was a lag in stores between the 8GB nanos and 16GB nanos becoming available, here’s the probable answer: the 16GB ones started production later. Much later.

The existence of the 4GB fourth-generation iPod nano strongly suggests that Microsoft’s new 16GB Zune—the announcement of which was scheduled to overlap Apple’s event in San Francisco—truly caught Apple by surprise. Clearly, there were enough 4GB nanos manufactured that Apple couldn’t just give them away to employees, or alternately scrap them, recycling the cases and circuit boards. Yet there’s no mention on Apple’s web site—even in Europe—that this model exists, and they’re only available from third-party retailers overseas. The asking price of 129 Euros is, not coincidentally, as modest a step down as Microsoft has taken with its 4GB Zune from its $150 8GB model.

So, Zune haters, you might want to say a quiet thanks to Microsoft this holiday season. If it wasn’t for the competition, you might not have gotten that $199 16GB iPod nano until next year…

Full 2008 iPod + iPhone Battery Life Chart (Preliminary)

By Jeremy Horwitz | 09.13.08 | 5 comments |  tell-a-friend |  digg this story

Just wanted to give loyal Backstage readers a preview of the preliminary comparative results of our battery tests on the 2008 iPods and iPhone 3G, as well as comparisons with the 2007 models. We’re re-running one test for confirmation, but think the numbers are pretty solid.

Notable: Any claim that the iPod classic 120GB hasn’t changed from last year’s 80GB predecessor is clearly wrong. Apple’s own web site shows a 6 hour boost in audio and a 1 hour boost in video playback time. Actual results show those gains, but over the 80GB model’s real performance, not what was stated. In other words, the classic remains the iPod family’s longest-running audio and video player, with comfortable leads over the new iPod touch.

Also: We had heard that Apple was reworking the iPod shuffle, but between battery and audio test results, it seems that whatever the company’s planning has not materialized in the model shipping in late 2008. The 11-minute difference in run times is non-material.

The full results of our tests can be seen in the iPod nano review, iPod touch review, iPhone 3G review, and soon-to-be-released iPod classic review.