A few interesting things about some of the upcoming Apple devices, found on
vowe.net.
First, a useful piece of info for anyone considering a Motorola ROKR:
The phone includes a removable 512MB Flash memory chip (found under the battery in the back of the phone). This chip will hold up to 100 tracks but the number of songs it holds isn’t dependant strictly on the size of the chip (though it obviously can’t contain more than 512MB of data). Rather, the 100 track limitation is part of a DRM scheme that prevents the phone from playing more than 100 tracks.
iTunes 5 keeps track of the number of tracks authorized for playback on the phone so even if your 100 tracks have used only 350MB of the card’s capacity, you can’t add more. Similarly, although you can swap in a new card that contains new tracks, those tracks won’t play until they’ve been approved for playback by iTunes.
Thats.. stupid. I can think of a few examples where you might have large numbers of small tracks due to the audio type (short hardcore songs? spoken word broken up into small passages?). Got to love DRM - sure there'll be someone out there who will come up with a way around it, but it still means that the average consumer has the choice of purchasing a crippled product or finding an alternative. As Volker says, "DRM hurts the customer". Another link here, on boingboing.net.
Next, something which seems kind of weird to me:
According to an Apple representative we spoke with, the new iPod nano can be charged over either a USB 2.0 or FireWire connection, but the nano will sync only over USB 2.0.
Why abandon FireWire? I'd love to know how much extra cost per unit, or how much R&D would have been required to make the device support it, call me curious. This one doesn't matter so much to me, but I can see a few people getting pissed off over it.