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Posts tagged with "ipod"

Fake iPhones and iPods Worth $10 Million Seized By L.A. Police

The Los Angeles Port police has seized thousands of fake iPhones and iPods coming from China in an operation that prevented these counterfeit models from ending up on the U.S. market and generate $10 million in revenue. The models, shipped from China as “replacement parts” and re-assembled to look like old Apple devices, were so similar to the original ones buyers could recognize the scam only when trying to sync them with iTunes.

Two brothers were charged for the sale of counterfeit goods and bank account records also revealed the operation had already generated $7 million in revenue. That’s quite a business for fake Chinese iPods. Apparently, the guys behind these devices thought it might be a good idea to replicate older iPods and iPhones rather than the most recent iterations.

We have seen lots of fake Apple products in the past, and it’s good to know police is always working to prevent them from ending up on customers’ hands. With the iPad 2 coming soon, I guess we’ll see several fake “used iPad 1” in 2012. [via Cult of Mac]

OnCue Brings Great Queue Features To iPod App

OnCue is one of those iPhone apps you don’t know you need until you start playing with it. The concept is simple: Apple’s default iPod app allows you to import playlists from iTunes and customize the way you listen to music by combining different songs and artists in a single list, it lets you shuffle your music, but it’s doesn’t come with any queue functionality.

While you’re listening to music on your iPhone or iPod touch and you’re on the go, it’d be nice to be able to select the songs you want to listen to without having to pull out the device from your pockets every time. Use a playlist, you might suggest. But what if I don’t want to create a playlist for each day? I just want to say “hey, today I want to listen to these songs in this specific order”.  You can’t create a new playlist every day, yet you know what songs you want. You need a queue function. OnCue does just that, and it works with both songs and podcasts. Read more

This Free App Lets You Control Music with Gestures

The app is called SongSwiper, it’s available for free in the App Store and it was updated yesterday to include Retina-ready graphics for the iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4th gen. SongSwiper is basically a controller for music playing from the standard Apple iPod app, but it allows you to control songs with swipes and taps instead of buttons, as in the iPod application.

The app looks a lot like Bowtie or Coversutra for OS X in the way it displays the artwork for a song currently playing. Unlike the aforementioned Mac apps, though, SongSwiper can’t live on top of your desktop – you’ll have to open the app every time if you want to enjoy its feature set. You can change between songs with a single swipe left or right, or adjust volume with a swipe up / down. To play and pause, double tap on the artwork. You can shuffle, manually pick songs from your Library.

SongSwiper might be the perfect app for those who use the iPhone in their car a lot and find it easier to swipe on the screen rather than having to point to a specific little button. The app’s free, so you should give it a try.

Spotted: History of Apple’s Devices

Spotted by TUAW at iLounge’s CES booth, here’s a gallery of Apple’s mobile devices through the years. The collection starts from the original iPod in 2001 and goes straight to the latest iPhones and iPods released in 2010, with the exception of the iPad, which is probably not considered a mobile device by iLounge either.

Looking at the photos, it’s clear how much is changed in 10 years. Even more than iTunes’ interface. Look at the original iPod, or a model from 2005 and 2006 and then take a look at the devices listed under 2007 and 2008. The difference is enormous. Sure, the iPod Classic is still alive and kicking (I have a 160 GB one right here), but we know the majority of consumers are buying iPod touches or Nanos now. These photos are the best example of Apple’s evolution and refinement process from 2001, and then 2007,  through today.

Check out the full gallery here.

Apple Patented Gestures For When You’re Not Looking At The Screen

Multi-touch gestures are great. With natural gestures like pinch, swipe and tap you can flick through your photos, scroll webpages, point items. The obvious downside is that, in order to confirm a gesture has worked properly, you need to look at the screen. And when the screen is not a MacBook’s one but an iPod touch and you’re running for your daily workout session, you can guess looking at the screen can become quite a task. That’s why Apple put buttons back in the Nano, for instance, but the engineers at Cupertino think it’s not enough.

Apple has, in fact, patented a way to perform certain multi-touch gestures and have actions happen on screen without actually looking at it. According to the patent, people could perform gestures similar to the commands on Apple’s own earbuds, or adjust the playback volume with a circular gesture similar to the classic iPod’s click-wheel. Other “special gestures” are mentioned in the patent.

The device used in the patent filing is a sixth generation iPod Nano, something that would suggest Apple is looking forward to a firmware update to enable more features, and gestures, in the device. Or maybe, the Nano being depicted in the patent is simply used to illustrate how Apple may implement “lookaway” gestures in future mobile devices.

My Artists 1.1 - Still My Favorite iPod Alternative

In my review of My Artists for iPhone months ago, I wrote that the app was the ultimate iPod.app replacement for me. It still is, months after its release and with lots of alternative music players available in the App Store. I never deleted My Artists from my device, and I don’t see it going away from that Music folder on my homescreen anytime soon.

My Artists fetches artists and songs already synced to your device and sitting in the iPod app but provides a completely new layout that offers more information thanks to the magic of the Internet. Not only does the app provide better artist profile pics and cover albums, it also lets you check on detailed bios and related artists.

The latest 1.1 update brings several interface improvements, especially in the main list view where the app feels more solid and crisp than ever. You can also shuffle entire albums or artists now – heck, you can even shuffle your entire library from the main view. That’s quite handy. Last, the app’s engine has been update to be faster, and more stable.

My Artists 1.1 is a nice update to an app that is still one of my favorites on the iPhone. Highly recommended. Go download it here.

Airfoil 4 Streamlines Audio, Video Experience

Apple may have introduced AirPlay, but that doesn’t mean Rogue Amoeba is out of the game. In fact, AirPlay is rather limited unless you enjoy hacking your way out of a paper bag, and by no means can it expand its territory outside of iTunes. If you ever wanted to sit back on the couch and watch CNET TV on your 27” Cinema Display through your iPod’s headphones, you’re out of luck. But with Airfoil, streaming audio anywhere allows one to achieve a state of wireless bliss.

Read more

Apple and Costco: It’s (Officially) Over

You may remember there was a time when retail chain Costco was selling iPods. Everything was fine and cool back then, until the day Apple got bigger and started giving iPads away to other retail chains such as Target, WalMart and Sam’s Club – cutting out the old partner Costco. The iPad started appearing everywhere, but not at Costco.

Soon after that, and we’re talking October 2010, Costco started dropping the iPods they had because they were left out of the iPad distribution game. Several reports pointed out that Apple products had gone missing at Costco. Today, the end of the relationship between Apple and Costco is official. Read more