Tag Archives: iPod

09.02.10
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Why doesn’t the new iPod Touch have GPS?

Yesterday was the big Apple iPod announcement event for 2010.  There has been oodles of coverage of the event.  I was surprised that the iPad didn’t get an OS update and was pleased to see buttons back on the Shuffle.  The Nano is ok although I am not sure losing the slim rectangular shape and click wheel is a good idea, only time will tell.

The real interesting device was the iPod Touch.  I have a second generation 8GB iPod Touch which I bought off of Craig’s List before I committed to the iPhone.  I was unsure about only having a touch screen key board so a used iPod Touch let me test it out without committing to a two year contract for the iPhone which I eventually did.

I like the Touch and actually use mine quite a bit even though I have an iPhone.  I was looking forward to the new Touch, in particular for the rumored camera feature.  Having an HD video camera would be nice, the camera in my 3GS is so-so at best.

Today I was speaking with my co-worker Nick and we were talking about the Touch and my desire to have one, even though I don’t need it.  Nick mentioned that if it had GPS, the Touch would be perfect.  It got me thinking – why did Apple leave out the GPS?

If the Touch had GPS then it could:

  • Geo tag photos and video
  • Enable navigation with Google and/or Bing Maps (there is nothing worse than using my iPhone for GPS only yo have a call come in)
  • Possibly replace dedicated GPS hardware
  • All the location based services that Apps offer

I am sure there are other uses too but these came to mind.  Lack of GPS is really the only short coming that I could see.

I was hopeful that the rumors about the new Apple TV would be true and it would be a screen-less iPod Touch for the TV.  While the new Apple TV has some pretty cool features, I don’t see much differentiation over comting products from Roku, Western Digital, Boxee and others.  Each of these streaming devices seems to have one limitation or another.  I haven’t seen anything that says the new Apple TV supports UPnP which both my Xbox and WDTV Live do support.

I am disappointed in the Flickr support from the WDTV Live so was hopeful that the Apple TV would be more compelling than it is.  As it is, if I had to buy something right now, I think I’d get the Roku HD for $69.

01.22.09
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Audio Books and iTunes

Off and on I have tried to get Audio Books which have been ripped from CD to work correctly in iTunes and on my iPod.  The best source I have found so is Aldo on Audiobooks which has been very helpful but I have yet to be successful.

I need to try the Audio Book Builder and see if that helps – right now I am to the point where the books show up correctly in iTunes, under Audiobooks and each one separate, but on my iPod, all of the tracks are all mixed together under the Audiobooks menu.  Bleh.  Makes it really hard to listen to more than one book when the tracks are all jumbled up.

There has to be a good solution to this dilemma.

03.14.08
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Fixing Broken iTunes Compilations

I have been trying to import a bunch of songs from Guitar Hero III into iTunes and have them appear as single album. While it worked great for Rock Band, I couldn’t get it to work for Guitar Hero III.  After messing around with every logical control available with Get Info, I finally found a post which explained it.  Changing the Album Artist field to Various Artists did the trick and now I only have one Guitar Hero three album in the album view instead of one for every song!