New iPod Nano and iPod Touch Disassembled

New iPod nano and iPod touch disassembled
Dan Moren

You’ve seen Apple roll out the new iPod nano and new iPod touch. Heck, you’ve heard what we have to say on both the new models. But perhaps you’re wondering what really makes these suckers tick. Fortunately, iFixit is in the business of satisfying your prurient interests in that regard.

As is its habit, the company has posted in-depth slideshows of the newest Apple products in all their disassembled glory. You can see the nano’s new video camera, microphone, and speaker, all the while marveling at the incredible tolerances of engineering that make it possible to fit all that tech in such a small package. The camera itself, for example, is just 3mm thick—as iFixit points out, that’s half the size of the unit used in the iPhone 3G, which is likely why they don’t use the same hardware.

Then there’s the third-generation iPod touch. While it doesn’t look very different from its predecessor on the outside, you can’t judge an iPod from its exterior. As we know, there’s a new, faster processor on the inside, and a wireless chip that supports 802.11n (though the software at this point does not). There’s also an FM receiver and transmitter in the Bluetooth chip, though no antenna to use them. Conspiracy theorists can run wild on the fact that there appears to be room for a camera similar to the nano’s, and the internals even look similar to allegedly leaked photos of the new internals from a few months back which actually had cameras in them.

There you have it: the nano and touch—two innocent iPods—dissected for your amusement. I hope you’re happy.

New iPod Nano Fulfills Its Mission, Mostly

New iPod Nano Fulfills Its Mission, Mostly
By Stephen Williams

It’s glossy, it’s slick, the video’s for real, the audio speaker’s not.

I took a run up to the Apple store on 14th Street in Manhattan on Thursday, and a young lady showed me the new iPod Nano, a gold colored version with a sassy gloss finish and a nifty camera lens peeking out the rear. It was the only demo Nano in the house, she said, but I could buy all the Nanos I wanted — in any color — for about $150 and up.

After a short hands-on fool-around with it — others were waiting, real customers — I concluded that:

* The video camera’s a delightful feature.
* The speaker inside the Nano — if you can call it a speaker — lacks any fidelity.
* The FM tuner’s a neat addition (although not too effective inside the store).
* The satiny finish is cool.

The larger issue, however, is: why is there no camera in the new iPod Touch model?

It’s curious, since little brother Nano has one, and its seems a no-brainer to install a camera into the Touch, since it could be transplanted directly from the iPhone 3GS, which shares a similar form factor. There were stories last week that some “technical problems” had arisen in the camera option, but it appears that Apple might just be waiting to upgrade the device. Again.

Back to the FM radio, a component that Apple has steadfastly refused to include in its portable music players. As an article in Wired points out, “the answer comes with iTunes-Tagging. In addition to live pausing of the radio stream (and rewinding up to 15 minutes through the buffer) you can tag tracks by hitting the center button. If a radio station supports it, the song info is saved and later you can see a list in iTunes alongside, you guessed it, the option to buy the song.”

Meanwhile, as I reported earlier, it had appeared that Apple has lowered the prices on some “older” iPod models, including dropping the price on the iPod Touch with 32 gigabytes from $399 to $279. However, the latest update to Apple’s online Store page only refers to the new models introduced on Wednesday. A manager at the Apple store in Manhattan told me that all previous iPod incarnations had been boxed and shipped out of the Chelsea location.
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Smaller? Thinner? Camera enabled? Rewind capable? This is a cool ipod!
Find out more here.

Textbooks Coming to iPhones, iPods

Report: Textbooks coming to iPhones, iPods
The Business Journal of the Greater Triad Area

CourseSmart LLC is reportedly going to offer more than 7,000 e-textbooks through Apple Inc.'s iPhones and iPod Touches.

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the company will let students add digital notes to their texts and search for specific words and phrases.

Digital textbooks are offered by CourseSmart for about half what it costs to buy the physical books, but they can't be resold at the end of the rental period.

The company is a joint venture of six publishers, including McGraw-Hill Education and Pearson PLC's Pearson Education.

The books being offered on Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) devices aren't available at this time on Amazon.com Inc.'s (NASDAQ:AMZN) Kindle.

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This is going to be great especially for travelers.
More of the ipod, iphone.