Shuffle, refreshed again with new colors.
It's a refresh of the older duller colors, which is now... much less duller. But overall, I'd say i like the new colors much more than the older ones.
Classic - 6th generation refreshed, a bump from 80GB and a drop from 160GB.
Now only available in 120GB. Thinner than before. And new Genius feature (along with iTunes 8).
Why only 120GB? Most probably Samsung or whoever the HDD manufacturer came out with a thinner drive, which also explains why Microsoft released a new 120GB Zune.
Nano - 4th generation, back to 2nd generation retro.
Comes with accelerometer for auto landscape/potrait rotate. New UI with Genius feature. Only 8GB and 16GB now.
The new UI definitely has the iPhone/iPod touch looks to it. And the screen is still the same 2" that you get in the fatty 3rd generation Nano.
Not forgetting, curved edge and still thinner than last gen (there must be a limit someday!).
Touch 2nd generation, praised.
Now with the curved edges like the iPhone 3G, obviously. Thinner (or feels thinner due to the curved edges). Dedicated volume buttons at the side!! Speaker!! Nike+ integration!! (shoes transmitter thingy). Same 8GB, 16GB, 32GB.
The black plastic patch is Wi-Fi antenna (if you're wondering why, it's because radio waves can't go through metal), looks more integrated now.
Volume buttons are godsend if you've used the 1st gen touch. Imagine having to press the Home button twice to bring up volume control, and then u'll have to look at the screen to control it.
As for speaker, take not there's no dedicated hole for it, so the quality is questionable.
The BEST PART is... the price point shifted down. In USD, it's a 100$ drop. For Malaysians, (most probably) new 32GB will get old 16GB's price... and so on and so forth.
Do check out Touch's gallery and give the 360 view a spin... very cool.
iTunes 8, +Genius, ~combined List and Album Art view, +Grid view
Genius
First thing, the Genius feature... which "...makes playlist from songs in your library that go great together", which I shall not bother using.
It requires Internet connection, collects information, recommends songs from iTunes store (wtf!), so NO, i myself know what kind of songs i like and go great together... and i buy CDs.
List View (with Album Art)
Apple did away with the Album Art view, and combined it with List view.
The arrow button circled in red toggles the display of the album art. I personally have some playlist in List view and some in Album Art view, and iTunes auto hide list that do not have Album Arts... neat.
And overall, the scrolling through the new List view with album arts is smooth, unlike the now gone Album Art view, which is a little jerky.
Grid View
Then, the new Grid view... which was already available in WMP11 a long time ago.
A slider controls the thumbnail size. 1st time starting up iTunes 8 will create this thumbnails, which will take a while or forever, depending on your arts collection.
To play a song from the Grid view,
- hover on top of the thumbnail and a Play Album/Artist/Genre icon will appear,
- clicking on it will randomly play a song under the Album/Artist/Genre.
If there are multiple entries underneath (like if I sort by Artist, with multiple albums under it), moving the cursor above the thumnail will scroll through the images like on OSX.
Double clicking the thumbnail will bring you to List view with that Album only.
Now... complains!
- Black background is very jarring from iTunes' majority light color.
- Grid View is a seperate entity to List and Cover flow view.
- as you can see, I'm playing the song - 牛仔很忙 (niu zai hen mang),
- but there's no speaker icon beside the song (as pointed out in the above image).
- and, a click at the "point to the song" button brings me to the List view
- why? because I played it from List view.
- If you play the song from List view or Cover flow view, you can see the speaker icon on both. But you can't see it in Grid view. And it points back to List or Cover flow, depending on which u played it from.
- If you play the song from Gird view, you can see the speaker icon in Grid view, but not the other two. And it points back to Gird view.
So,as you can see, it's sort of "separated" and looks pretty slapped on. Hopefully this gets corrected soon. And don't put your hopes up on iTunes 8 being lighter on the memory.
Images retrieved from
>> http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/
>> http://www.apple.com/ipodclassic/
>> http://www.apple.com/ipodnano/
>> http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/
