We already had a news on this topic last July : new Motorola mobile phones able to play the songs downloaded from iTunes, available around mid-2005.
According to
Forbes, it seems that contrarily to its habits, Apple might be
in advance on its schedule, and could present those phones featuring iTunes during Macworld arounf the January, 10.
The Software Vice-President at Apple even said that this mobile iTunes would be available not only for hig-end products, but also for mid-range ones. Furthermore, Forbes reports that there should be enough memory for a dozen songs. Let's bet they are shipped with something like a 32 MB flash memory within the phone...
One precision however, though Apple very likely worked hand-in-hand with Motorola to realize those new phones, and even though the shortcut is seducing, do not thing that Apple manufactures those phones. They are both built and branded by Motorola. Nothing to do with an hypothetical iPhone.
More details in a few weeks, maybe...
According to Reuters, Apple lodged a complaint last week against whoever might have divulgated sensible info about products that are to be announced in the future. If there's a matter on which we may blow our own trumpet about knowing Apple, it's that of rumour and the way they handle this. And this complaint really makes us wonder.
Apple usually put pressure on Internet sites which gave away rumours that were too informative, without taking law action. When they finally resorted to the law, it usually was after the product had eventually been put on the market. Yet this time, with no further detail, we learn that Apple is looking for someone who divulgated information on a product, knowing not which. We may suspect this is about the rumour of a future flash memory-based iPod. Could it have caused this whole rumble ? The first leaks came from Taiwan some weeks ago, from memory manufacturers themselves, after Apple had contacted them to buy huge quantities. There must be some other reason, something so huge we can't guess it already.
There could be other kinds of reasons to this: Apple might be trying to frighten some employees that may happen to be too talkative, or to avoid leaks on a future big project that's just being completed now. Only future will tell us where the truth is in all those speculations.
The success of the iPod mini is total, and it has given birth to an army of clones. Here's another one, the
i-Pocket, which is based on a SD/MMC/MS card reader.
Please note the EXTREME similarity of the enclosure with a real mini... it's probably some "leftovers" from the ones made for Apple.
Change of style: you like Krautrock? your iPod mini does too and the Fuerstenberg beer will match perfectly with your Gold edition mini. Only on
fuerstenberg.de.
Retroplayer, that small piece of software with a big success* has just gone 1.6 (thanks Michaël).
It's now possible to launch if from iTunes with a selected playlist.
http://www.studio-kura.com/download/retroplayer/index_e.html
[* let's remind our not-so-loyal readers who haven't followed our Retroplayer news that this cutie allows you to play MP3 with all the scratches and hisses you (or your parents...) used to enjoy when they played vinyls**).
** let's remind to our youngest readers*** that vinyls are sort of large blacks CDs that you read with a needle.
*** ok, sorry funky DJ-guys.
