31–40 of 42 posts
So you have to use their earbuds? Hrm.
No, there are earbuds from other companies compatible with Apple's remote stuff. There's also an extension cord with which you can make any earbuds remote-compatible (though you'll have to deal with the cable mess). See this review for some examples: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2009/02/13/replacement-ipho...
For the techies here: At first I was wondering how the hell they fit a text to speech engine in that little package - but in the vid they explain that the new shuffle's VoiceOver feature uses a different voice for windows and mac. Ahhhh. So it seems that they must be getting the OS to do the text to speech, store the output as little audio files alongside each track/playlist and then play them back when the user requ…
If they used a custom chip, I bet they could fit a text-to-speech engine in less chip space than the flash required to store the prerecorded audio of the track information.
http://watchingapple.com/2008/05/voices/ http://gannett-hscp.blogspot.com/2008/03/biggest-file-in-leo...
If they could cram an accelerometer in there, then you could pick a song by tapping on it a la songtapper.com ...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they used a custom chip, I bet they could fit a text-to-speech engine in less chip space than the flash required to store the prerecorded audio of the track information.
Sure, they could fit a crappy TTS engine on a chip, but Alex (what Apple is using) is 670MB. I suspect a 4GB Shuffle has significantly less than 670MB worth of voice clips in it. http://watchingapple.com/2008/05/voices/ http://gannett-hscp.blogspot.com/2008/03/biggest-file-in-leo...
The first music player that talks to you? You don't even have to look outside of Apple's own product line up to see that's not true, the Nano has it. http://www.apple.com/ipodnano/specs.html "Spoken menus allow listeners to hear many of the names of menus, song titles, and artists without viewing the screen."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they used a custom chip, I bet they could fit a text-to-speech engine in less chip space than the flash required to store the prerecorded audio of the track information.
Sure, they could fit a crappy TTS engine on a chip, but Alex (what Apple is using) is 670MB. I suspect a 4GB Shuffle has significantly less than 670MB worth of voice clips in it. http://watchingapple.com/2008/05/voices/ http://gannett-hscp.blogspot.com/2008/03/biggest-file-in-leo...
So you have to use their earbuds? Hrm.
I would guess that 80% of shuffle owners (maybe even all iPod owners) use the default earbuds. For the ones that don't, I'd also wager that the aftermarket community will offer an in-line adapter that adds the buttons capability to any set of standard headphones/earphones.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, they could fit a crappy TTS engine on a chip, but Alex (what Apple is using) is 670MB. I suspect a 4GB Shuffle has significantly less than 670MB worth of voice clips in it. http://watchingapple.com/2008/05/voices/ http://gannett-hscp.blogspot.com/2008/03/biggest-file-in-leo...
FYI, you need to sync from Leopard to get Alex on the shuffle, both Tiger and Windows use a lower quality voice (so says Daring Fireball).
Alex takes up 18% of Leopard.
incredibly popular shuffle feature I agree that the shuffle iPod itself is very popular but do many people actually use the shuffle feature ? I like the shuffle because it's small and light-weight - even my first generation one. Which has 512MB - my factor-of-ten improvement rule means it's approximately time to upgrade.
This is terrible UI design, and very unlike Apple. A symptom of Steve's absence?