iPod

The revamped Apple TV set top box and iPad Pro will both begin showing up in Apple Retail Stores for sale during the first week of November after going on sale via Apple’s website in late October, according to reliable sources. It is also likely that the first online orders of both products will reach customers in early November.

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Apple is about to discontinue repair support for a handful of products as it plans to designate some Apple TV, iPod, and display models ‘obsolete’ a day before its iPhone event next month.
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Apple is continuing to tweak its Apple Watch showroom experience within Apple Stores. Upon the initial rollout of the Apple Watch in April, Apple Stores installed large glass tables as a showcase for the different Apple Watch variations. Customers could test drive the Apple Watch via a demo unit connected to an iPad mini or try it on at a series of try-on stations. Following a pilot program across select Apple Stores across the world, Apple has now begun a widespread rollout of a new Apple Watch testing program called Mobile Try-On, according to Apple Retail employees.

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Apple is planning to retire its long existing One to One training program within Apple Stores on September 28th, according to a memo sent this week to Apple retail employees. One to One launched in 2007 as a $99 per year subscription program where a Mac user could make appointments with a “Creative” at an Apple Store to learn more about using their Mac and creating content with either consumer or professional applications. Apple cites “fewer customers” signing up for One to One as the reason behind the service’s upcoming closure:

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“Bigger and better” has been a safe sequel strategy for years, but “smaller, lighter, and slightly more affordable” sequels began to take off when Apple debuted the iPod mini and iPod nano a decade ago. Anker relied upon “bigger and better” for its insanely powerful 25,600mAh Astro E7 battery, and now is using “smaller and lighter” with PowerCore 20100 ($40), a sequel with nearly 80% of Astro E7’s power. But Anker’s diverging from Apple’s formula on one key point: PowerCore 20100 sells for only 50% of Astro E7’s price. It’s still capable of recharging many iPads twice, which is more than enough portable energy for most people. Given its more manageable size and excellent price point, it’s likely to be an even bigger hit than its predecessor.

Anker has also released a “you’ll never need another USB charging port again” solution called PowerPort 10 ($40, shown above). PowerPort 10 steps up from Anker’s excellent 60W 6-Port USB Charger (reviewed here), which was recently renamed PowerPort 6. For only $4 more than PowerPort 6, PowerPort 10 gives you 4 additional USB ports for charging. Ten ports is enough for a family full of iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch users to simultaneously recharge all their devices. The only hitch: PowerPort 10 has the same 60W power output as PowerPort 6, the details of which I’ll explain further in the review below…

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Like many other people right now, I’m in the midst of watching my house transform as a direct result of Marie Kondo’s best-selling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. As the title suggests, the book powerfully explains how to properly keep any room tidy, in the process helping you resolve lingering issues in your life. Thanks to positive press, strong word of mouth, and surprisingly tangible results, Tidying Up is rapidly taking minimalism mainstream, bucking an age-old trend towards hoarding untold quantities of stuff and leaving it scattered around one’s living and working spaces.

As a long-time minimalist, it’s refreshing to see decluttering catching on. But Kondo’s KonMari system — keep only those items that “spark joy” and are actually being used, discarding everything else — has created a problem for tech-savvy readers. No matter how necessary they’ve become in our lives, Apple device chargers don’t “spark joy.” In Kondo terminology, their cables are untidy; particularly if you’ve purchased inexpensive third-party options, they’re not particularly nice to look at.

I knew this was a problem when my wife, inspired by Tidying Up, nearly tossed out the multi-iPad charger our family has used for years. Yes, the charger was creating visual clutter, but we needed it — or something better — to keep everyone’s iPads working. My hunt to find minimalist solutions to our daily charging needs inspired this article. Below, I’ll run through a few options that will help you tidy up your iPad, iPhone, iPod, Apple Watch, and Mac spaces, so you (and/or your significant other) can achieve minimalism without giving up your favorite devices…

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Today we’re taking a look at Apple’s 6th generation iPod touch for 2015 and determining whether or not it’s worth the money. It’s been a while since the iPod touch has been refreshed and even though it’s a minor one, this time around it brings along some important changes. If you’ve had Apple’s iPod touch on your must-have gadget list, there are a few things you need to know…

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You might have heard some discussing the state of Apple Music on the iPod nano and shuffle, two products that just got a minor facelift alongside a larger refresh for their bigger brother, the iPod touch. And you might have already guessed that streaming to the devices was a no-go from the lack of Wi-Fi capabilities, but it turns out you won’t even be able to store your offline Apple Music collection on the devices either.

The reason, according to sources, is simply to prevent piracy…
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Apple introduced a new iPod touch on Wednesday as we expected after selling nearly the same model for almost three years, and today iFixit has shared its routine teardown to grade the device’s ability to be repaired and catalog exactly what’s inside Apple’s newest iOS device.

While the exterior of the new iPod touch remains largely the same aside from new color options and the removal of the Loop camera strap, the teardown does confirm the RAM upgrade caught in benchmarks earlier this week and a slightly larger battery than the previous model…
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Earlier today, Apple released a refreshed iPod touch with a faster processor, improved cameras, and new color and storage options. The iPod shuffle and nano also saw minor refreshes with the two devices now being available in dark blue, pink, and gold variations. Apple’s overdue iPod refresh, however, has prompted many users to wonder if it’s even worth it for Apple to continue investing energy and time into the iPod line of products.

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As expected, Apple updated its iPod lineup today and I just wanted to add a few notes on the new hardware.

The iPod shuffle and nano lines got new colors but otherwise are the same internally with the 2GB and 16GB storage inside and same skeuomorphic UI for the nano. To me this is Apple saying the long goodbye to these products the same way the iPod classic was ushered out. Expect these to last as long as whatever inventory Apple decides to build.

The new iPod touch is much more interesting. It got the same new color palette and otherwise is the same externally – except losing the unpopular Loop strap. However, internally it gets supercharged with the same A8 processor as the current iPhone 6 and 6 Plus but running about 15% slower, the M ‘motion’ coprocessor, Bluetooth 4.1 – an Apple first and 1GB of RAM. Techcrunch was the first to run some benchmarks on a review unit:

We’ve got some of the new iPods here to play with and we ran an initial benchmark on the iPod touch. The processor appears to be running at 1.10GHz per core, vs the iPhone 6’s A8 processor, which clocks in at 1.39GHz. The Geekbench scores clock in at 1379 and 2440 right out of the box with as much idle state as I could manage. This means that the iPod touch A8 processor is under-clocked slightly from the iPhone 6, which is not surprising given the battery constraints I mentioned above. It also appears to have 1GB of RAM.

Starting at $199, the iPod touch costs less than the margins Apple makes on even its cheapest iPhones. Almost every human has or will have a phone and Apple surely wants everyone who buys a phone to buy an iPhone. But there are some important features to consider here:
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As we reported this morning, Apple has today launched a new version of the iPod touch, featuring a 64-bit A8 CPU. This breaks a long run of neglect for Apple’s cheapest iOS device, which last received an update way back in 2012. It will be a huge leap in performance over the previous iPod touch which featured an A5 SoC. Both the front and back cameras have been improved, with the back shooter now featuring 8 megapixels of resolution.

The new iPod touch is also available for the first time in gold matching the iPhone and iPad in addition to new dark blue and pink case options. The iPod touch is also getting a storage bump at least at the higher end — there is now a $399 128 GB model. The base $199 iPod touch remains the same with 16 GB of onboard storage, the 32 GB model is $249 and the 64 GB version is $299.

There are also updates to the iPod shuffle and iPod nano, although these are merely cosmetic changes to fascia of the products. The shuffle and nano now come in dark blue, pink and gold variants.

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Apple will be rolling out a refreshed line of iPods today, according to sources. As indicated by new colors recently found in iTunes on the Mac, the new iPod touch, shuffle, and nano will come in new darker blue and pink colors. A gold color will be added as well for all three iPods.

The new Nanos and Shuffles won’t get new features, but the iOS-based iPod touch will see a considerable upgrade. Here’s what we’re hearing is coming to the touch:

• Major camera upgrade from 5 megapixels to 8, matching the count on the iPhone 6 and iPad Air 2.
• New 64-bit chip for faster operation and better graphics for gaming. Will also help it plow through future iOS versions beyond iOS 9.
• “M” chip from the iPhone for fitness, steps, and elevation tracking.
• Pre-loaded with iOS 8.4 and Apple Music following the June 30th launch.
• New 128GB model for $399, still starting at $199 for 16GB. There will also be a $299 model with 64GB of space.

As indicated by the references last month in iTunes 12.2, the overall designs and screens of the new iPods will remain the same as their predecessors. These are the first major iPod upgrades since 2012, and with Apple’s focus on the iPhone and iPad, these will likely also be the last for some time.
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Just yesterday I was speculating about the future of the iPod, and it appears we may not have long to wait until we learn a little more about it. French site iGen, which has a good track-record, says that the iPod line-up will see a refresh on or around 14th July.

It appears to have little hard information beyond internal model numbers, but based on those speculates that the Shuffle and Nano will see only the color changes spotted in iTunes 12.2, while the Touch may receive a more substantive update … 
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The tech sector does love its hype. Every new product is revolutionary. All new apps are ground-breaking. Everything anyone ever launched is going to change the way we do X. Almost without exception, it isn’t, they aren’t and it doesn’t.

But the iPod in 2001 definitely qualified. That simple, clever marketing slogan – “a thousand songs in your pocket” – beautifully summarised something that really was revolutionary. For the first time ever, we could carry close to a hundred albums in a device that slipped into our pocket and could go everywhere with us. Most of us listened to a lot more music in a lot more places.

It also propelled Apple along a new path. It’s no exaggeration to say that without the iPod, there would likely never have been an iPhone. The iPod revolutionized music and also transformed Apple.

But there have been a couple of recent signs that Apple no longer views the iPod as an important product … 
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Last week, we noted that Apple’s latest iOS 8.4 release with Apple Music removes support for the long-existing Music Home Sharing feature. This function allows an iOS device user to stream music from a computer running iTunes on their own WiFi network. Today, Apple Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services noted on Twitter that Apple is “working” to restore Home Sharing functionality in iOS 9. It is likely that Home Sharing was removed in iOS 8.4 due to changes necessary with the record labels to launch the new streaming music service. Cook previously revealed details on this week’s iOS 9 beta, streaming bit rates, and more via Twitter.

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Spotify is almost synonymous with streaming music. It may not quite have managed the Google trick of becoming a verb, but it’s pretty much the default way to stream music.

Spotify has 75M active users and, despite doubts in many quarters about its ability to convert free users to paid subscribers, it has succeeded there too. The company announced this week that it now has more than 20M paid subscribers, half of them added in the past 12 months, at a rate of one every three seconds.

It seems hard to imagine that any new entrant into the market, even one with Apple’s clout, could steal its crown. And yet early market leaders often look unassailable – until they are left behind. Look at Nokia or BlackBerry. I wondered back in February whether Apple could decimate the competition, and now the company has thrown the wraps off Apple Music, I think it’s time to revisit the question …

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The iPod, which has had its own tab on the Apple.com web site’s homepage for over 13 years, today disappeared from Apple’s homepage and menu bar  — replaced with and subordinated under a new Music button.
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Slice Intelligence, which monitors purchase receipts in the email inboxes of a panel of two million online shoppers, has published a chart showing that the majority of Apple Watch orders were placed on the first day of pre-orders, and have since fallen to far smaller numbers than some analysts have predicted.

Quartz tech editor Dan Frommer notes that while the company’s data shows that almost 1.5 million U.S. orders were placed on day one (up from its initial estimate of one million), subsequent orders have typically been running at under 30,000 per day – compared to the 100,000 per day globally needed to meet some predictions … 
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New Brussels shopping complex<em> La Toison d’Or</em>

Apple is getting closer to taking its retail stores to a new market: Belgium. According to sources within Apple retail, Apple today sent out a memo announcing the new market. The note also was sent to gauge interest from employees who may be inclined to relocate to Belgium to assist with opening up the new location…

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Apple is currently planning to use the new system font developed for the Apple Watch to refresh the looks of iPads, iPhones, and Macs running iOS 9 “Monarch” and OS X 10.11 “Gala,” according to sources with knowledge of the preparations. Current plans call for the Apple-designed San Francisco font to replace Helvetica Neue, which came to iOS 7 in 2013 and OS X Yosemite just last year, beginning with a June debut at WWDC…

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