01-10-2007, 04:15 AM
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Developer & Designer, News Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 12,959
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Apple's iPhone: Touch Screen Is In
"iPhone is a widescreen iPod with touch controls that lets you enjoy all your content — including music, audiobooks, videos, TV shows, and movies — on a beautiful 3.5-inch widescreen display. It also lets you sync your content from the iTunes library on your PC or Mac. And then you can access it all with just the touch of a finger."
Summarizing the iPhone is no easy feat. There's a huge amount of information, pictures, and QuickTime demonstrations to digest, so I recommend you visit the iPhone page when you have a spare moment. But phone and data capabilities aside, the iPhone is an iPod and it has a new UI and new capabilities that make it unlike any iPod that has ever been released. Let's break it down. It handles music, pictures, and video. It supports large album art on a 3.5" Multi-Touch 320 x 480 display (which supports multi-finger gestures), Cover Flow browsing, automatic switching between portrait and landscape modes, and it has 4GB or 8GB built-in, along with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. There are definitely features here that no longer make the Zune UI as unique as it once was, but there are also some features it's missing, which gives the Zune a slight edge. Whichever way you look at it, it's healthy competition, and it'll be interesting to see what both Apple and Microsoft can conjure in the months and years ahead.
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01-10-2007, 06:34 AM
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Pupil
Join Date: Jan 2007
Posts: 36
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Yes, it's the idiotproof smartphone...you know, for idiots...
Hello!
Can you say "lowest common denominator"? Did I miss something or is there NO stylus? No handwriting recognition?
The keyboard thing sounds like my Wii....
Oh yeah, they will sell 10 million in no time...to the same people who made the RAZR "the" phone.
The best thing you could say about it is that it is the idiot-proof smartphone (think about that one for a minute, I'll wait).
One other rant (having not watched the video, only reading the reporting...
IF this was a Microsoft debut, everyone would be ripping on security vulnerabilities, network integration, etc.
Obviously this is a consumer device that could not possibly fit into a corporate network.
I mean, does Apple Inc. use Yahoo for their mail backbone?
Last edited by eufreka; 01-10-2007 at 06:47 AM..
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01-10-2007, 06:47 AM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 1,053
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Yeah, they'll sell a couple these. For $500 - $600? They're dreaming...
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01-10-2007, 08:05 AM
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Pupil
Join Date: Dec 2006
Posts: 13
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Will do well among the trendy types, I suppose. For anyone else who's on a budget, and those of us who CAN'T stand Cingular...I have to think that this is a big no sale, despite the cool design. I certainly don't see myself giving up MY BlackBerry for one of these, especially if it mean I have to go over to THAT service provider.
So...touch screen...synonymous for scratched screen? Fingerprint-littered screen?
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01-10-2007, 01:44 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 67
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I know my mac zealot friend will be touting this and purchasing one asap. I expect that fully.
But let me ask this- just to bring this back around to the Zune:
Do you think there will be issues with cover art displaying poorly and pixelated on that glorious screen? I will be you a jillion dollars Steve Jobs will not allow the iPhone to have ugly, jagged album art. Every image will be hi-res so not one single glance at one of these devices will look less than perfect. (until the scratches and smears appear, of course  )
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01-10-2007, 01:55 PM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 316
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I don't know much about it yet, other than the few pictures and news clips I've seen, but it sure is a nice looking device. I can't wait to see one in person and play around with it.
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01-10-2007, 02:48 PM
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Developer & Designer, News Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 12,959
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Quote:
Originally Posted by priesmeyer
Do you think there will be issues with cover art displaying poorly and pixelated on that glorious screen? I will be you a jillion dollars Steve Jobs will not allow the iPhone to have ugly, jagged album art. Every image will be hi-res so not one single glance at one of these devices will look less than perfect. (until the scratches and smears appear, of course ) |
Yes, Apple certainly wins in this area. iTunes offers high resolution (roughly 600 x 600) album art and it looks great on the iPod, and like you've suggested, I'm sure Jobs and his team made double sure that it'd look good on the iPhone as well. Microsoft just doesn't get it here. They really need to see that there's room for improvement in the way the Zune handles album art. 
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01-10-2007, 05:42 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 32
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Quote:
Originally Posted by priesmeyer
Do you think there will be issues with cover art displaying poorly and pixelated on that glorious screen? I will be you a jillion dollars Steve Jobs will not allow the iPhone to have ugly, jagged album art. Every image will be hi-res so not one single glance at one of these devices will look less than perfect. (until the scratches and smears appear, of course ) |
iTunes Store already supplies overkill 600x600 resolution album art embeded into each .M4A file. No problem scaling that to the screen resolution. The new iTunes 7 "Find Album Art" function for your own rips, if it finds the album correctly, also uses the same 600x600 source image. (But it does not waste space by embedding it into the content.)
On the other hand... The content provider Zune uses supplies 150x150 resolution art embedded into the .WMA file. YUCK for anything other than a thumbnail.  (The first thing I do: Remove it.) Self-rip/"Find Album Info" images comes from a different place, thankfully, and supplies normally acceptable 200 x 200 images. I often manually embed small but higher resolution images (400x400) myself.
It would be nice if Microsoft got everyone on the same page and made everything 240x240 to match the Zune, but I'm not holding my breath.
Sigh...
Last edited by grommet; 01-10-2007 at 07:55 PM..
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01-10-2007, 08:00 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 14
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The interface seems pretty cool, but after a couple of weeks of use you will be lucky if you can even see the album art through all the scratches and fingerprint smudges.
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01-11-2007, 12:47 AM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Dec 2006
Posts: 88
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While I think the iPhone looks amazing, it's just not practical for the average consumer, and definitely won't do much to hurt the Zune (yet). For the price, most people are NOT going to purchase the iPhone as a primary mp3 player. And the fact they went exclusively with Cingular it will also prevent a lot of people from purchasing it as a phone too.
Once Apple incorporates the technology into a dedicated iPod, then they'll have an amazing mass-market product. But until then, this gives the Zune more of a chance to catch up in the mp3 player marketspace
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