finally

Finally, it’s out. The replacement. The repair. The way for Apple to sweep the third generation under the carpet, and let it rot. The next iPod Nano is out.

And by God, isn’t it a beuty…

There are many who think I’m an Apple fanatic, and maybe I am. Anyway, I’m happy Apple has corrected the shape of the Nano. I simply retched whenever I saw that squat little creation they called the Nano 3G. All in the name of video. It simply wasn’t worth it. I always preferred it being much longer than it was broad.

But, have they dropped video, for a longer screen. No way! All they’ve done is put an accelerometer, like the one in the iPhone and iPod Touch. When you’re viewing a video, you can simply rotate the iPod and view it.

Another interesting feature is ‘Shake to Shuffle’. Apparently, if you don’t like a song, just shake your iPod, and it’ll shuffle off to another song. Now, in India, Sony Ericsson released a music phone with a similar feature, so I must say that it’s not completely original. Anyone remember Hritik Roshan dancing with that phone in his hand?

It’s also got a new feature called Genius. Apparently, you can select one song, and the iPod can automatically create a playlist out of songs that go well with it. This is also available in iTunes 8, which’s also been released. I’m yet to try it out.

Back to the iPod. I somehow like the curved design. I think it might be better to hold in the hand, but on the other hand, it might rock about on a table too much. The black clickwheel is an experiment. Stains are less likely to show up on it, but I don’t know how everyone will like it. The iPod also has a revised user interface. The Nano will be coming in 8GB and 16GB models.

In other news, a new iPod Touch is also out. Mainly in the same form factor, but thinner, with a new in-built speaker. According to PCWorld, Apple said that the speaker was meant for casual listening. What I infer from that, is if you try cranking up the volume too much, it’ll just go to pieces. Either that or it has a volume limiter. It’s also possible that Apple has made a good quality loudspeaker, in which case, hats off to them. Anyways, I think that introducing a sub-standard component in a quality product would be a blunder. It would spread like wildfire throught blogs, reviews, word-of-mouth, anything and everything.

The Touch will be available in 8GB, 16GB and 32GB models.

Another thing I’ve noticed from the gallery pictures on Apple’s site, the iPod interface is slowly losing it’s ‘all-white’ clean look. I noticed one pic, where the pod was playing a song, and the top, where ‘Now Playing’ appears, was black, as was the playing bar, with time. And the album art is full screen, instead of a small screen on the left.

One more thing…the iTunes store seems to be available in India now. Because I can reach the iTunes Store screen while making an account. Will investigate that later…