Interesting news/reviews/deals from the portable audio market
If your iPod’s out of warranty and your battery is slowly giving up the ghost, you can get it to an Apple Store (or Apple Authorised Service Provider) and have it replaced for £49 inc VAT (€69 inc VAT, if you’re in Ireland). This is in contrast to the previous price of £69. If your [...]
New Toshiba Gigabeat X30 HDD MP3 Players (30GB, 2.4-inch QVGA display, smaller than the F-series models at 59.3×14.5×99.3, Windows Media DRM 10 support, improved photo viewer, comes in three colors; ships on September 22nd in Japan, no word on US availability yet) GeekPod is a lithium-ion battery pack for your iPod that lasts for 100 [...]
Before the Apple Expo officially kicked off yesterday, Steve Jobs & Phil Schiller (senior vice president of worldwide product marketing) held a Q&A session with the press, where they discussed all things that’s interesting about Apple nowadays (the transition to Intel chips, the dominance of the iPod and iTunes, etc.). Mostly thanks to Macworld UK’s [...]
Deal: Costco sells the 4GB iPod mini for $149.99 (great price) Mass Storage Synchronizer is an iTunes plugin for Sony Ericsson devices (these show up as a folder in the iTunes source list, and tracks that your put there from within the program are automatically synced with device; Motorola’s ROKR won’t like this; compatible with [...]
Deal: Pacific Rim Cube Travel Speakers 50% off to $19.99 (it’s compatible with all HDD-based iPods, no word on Nano; seems like a nice deal; offer valid till September 24th, use coupon code “APPLEEXPO”) [via] FS1 High Definition Earphones (announced by XtremeMac in Apple Expo; in-ear, result of the partnership with Future Sonics, we’ll try [...]
We’ve talked about it last week, and it was available in Dell’s website for $99 (512MB) for
Second weekend 4GB iPod nano sales strong (and apparently, black is where it’s at) Flash memory chip demand to explode (some interesting stats and facts about Samsung and Toshiba’s efforts in the NAND memory sector) Archos AV500 photos (the PVP + video recorder is to be released this week) [via] Matias USB 2.0 keyboard (first [...]
iTunes 5: No music shows up in iTunes after upgrading (howto in Apple’s knowledge base) Baidu ordered to halt music downloading service (they claim they provide search—not download—services and they’ll appeal; inexplicably company shares went up 31c to $79.84; read our previous coverage) iCube (speaker + charger for all iPods, line in/out; available in November [...]
There is a severe bass roll-off in iAudio X5’s line-out Round-up of Waterproof MP3 Players and Waterproof Housings for MP3 Players (dude, this should have been compiled 4 months ago!) [via] Testing mobiBLU DAH-1500i on a Mac (works just fine, no drivers needed) [via] iCove is an in-wall display and storage cabinet for portable electronics [...]
These were unveiled (via) at CEDIA. Sporting a 2.2-inch QVGA LCD (320×240 pixels), they come in 4 capacities (10/20/40/60GB) and various colors, and they support Windows Media DRM 10 (meaning your tracks from subscription services will play fine). Battery lasts for 16 hours, and it can be recharged either via USB or via the supplied [...]