Apple today announced a handful of minor updates to its iPod line: the iPod Nano and iPod Touch have received modest upgrades and price cuts. The iPod Classic, however, is MIA.
The Nano (9 for 8GB and 9 for 16GB) will retain the same basic form factor of last year's model, but is given bigger icons to improve navigation, improves Nike+ support, and is given some new clock faces for people who want to use it as a watch. It seems like a firmware update could do all of this for the old Nano, but no such update was introduced.
The iPod Touch (8GB for 9, 32GB for 9, 64GB for 9) remains the same on the inside, but gets new capabilities courtesy of iOS 5 (reinforcing the software-centric nature of these updates). It now also comes in white. Apple’s decision not to use the A5 in the iPod Touch reflects both the fact that the A4 is still Good Enough for most tasks, and the fact that Apple needs all the A5s it can get for its phones and tablets.
I expect the iPod Classic will be discontinued, but cannot confirm or deny this at this time – the product was absent from Apple's slides, for what that's worth. The iPod shuffle remains the same – last year's 2GB player for .
Two days ago I flew out to VIA's Centaur headquarters in Austin, Texas to be briefed on a new CPU. When I wrote about VIA's Dual-Core Nano I expected the next time we heard from VIA about CPUs to be about its next-generation microprocessor architecture. While Nano still holds a performance advantage over Atom and Bobcat, it's still missing a number of key architectural innovations that both Intel and AMD have adopted in their current generation hardware (e.g. GPU integration, power gating).
Much to my surprise, the meeting wasn't about VIA's next-generation microprocessor architecture but rather the last hurrah for Nano: a quad-core version simply called the VIA QuadCore.
Read on for details on VIA's first quad-core CPU.
September 18th, 2010
admin
Boutique gaming systems are usually big, fancy, ornate affairs. They're often totally extreme, marketed to the Mountain Dew set, with massive cases and bright lights. So what happens when a manufacturer goes a little off their rocker, gets a wild hair and decides to see just how much power can be crammed into a Mini-ITX case? See how AVADirect crammed an AMD Radeon HD 5870 and an Intel quad-core into a case so small and light it makes other gaming machines seem like candidates for the next season of The Biggest Loser.
TOYMAKER FOR THE WELL HEELED Apple has been ordered by Japan’s trade ministry to announce that users fearful that their Ipod Nano could catch fire can receive a new battery.
The ministry read Apple the riot act after 27 incidents of first generation Ipod Nanos overheating. The cappuccino company laid the blame on one of its battery suppliers and said that safety was a high priority.
Apple’s explanation led to the ministry issuing an order to publish an “easy to understand” statement on its website. That should allay fanbois’ fears of getting burned by the pint-sized music player.
Apple has offered users the option of replacement batteries and even advice, as Apple advises users to handle Ipods with oven gloves, though we imagine that tongs might work just as well. So far the company has yet to update its Japanese website to comply with the ministry’s order.
It seems that with the Ipod Nano, Apple has a device that can burn more than just its fanbois’ wallets. µ
