“In releasing newly affordable iPod photo hardware, Apple Computer has changed the product’s packaging to a thinner and highly attractive black and metal foiled design. Metal foil is used for the box’s front text, while an all-black matte background highlights the metallic luster,” iPodlounge reports.
iPodlounge has a photo of the box which shows that Apple has “dramatically” de-emphasized the word ‘photo’ on its front, reducing it to a tiny badge underneath the letters “PC” in Apple’s “PC+Mac” portion of the packaging. “This contrasts markedly with Apple’s new iPod mini packaging, which continues to grant the word ‘mini’ equal prominence with the iPod name,” iPodlounge reports.
Full article with image here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s obviously working on the iPod photo line. As Apple doesn’t break out individual iPod models from sales totals, nobody really knows for sure how well the first iPod photo units sold. Of course, the iPod photo is the most full-featured iPod with the color screen, nicer system font, ability to display album art, large drive capacity, extended battery life, and the photo features, but it also carried a stiff price tag upon launch, so one would guess that sales naturally weren’t as robust as, say, the iPod 20GB. Now, with new lower prices and packaging, Apple seems to be positioning iPod photo for a marked sales increase. We bet that a lot of those 30GB iPod photo units start showing up all over in coming months.
And for those of you who want to watch movies from your iPod:
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000940025880/
Finally the iPod photo has direct transfer of photos (all types, I hope) from camera to iPod. This makes it FAR more attractive. The lack of this feature was immediately thrashed about by digital shutterbugs everywhere. Now the price has even dropped (even when picking up the FireWire cable)!
I hope that “Syncs iPod-viewable photos in JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PSD (Mac only) and PNG formats” is only for display on the iPod and does exclude RAW file transfers.
I suspect that the iPod photo was a little lackluster initially because photo syncing was a Mac-only feature. The color screen (pretty low-res, too) was quite a premium to pay for if you were a Windows user.
It’s been said, but I think this is a forward-looking move. In the next generation or two, I would guess Apple is going to go all color screens for the standard iPods (I don’t know about the mini), which means there will no longer be a distinction between iPods and iPod Photos, there will just be iPods with color screens.
Very soon, all iPods will have color and have the ability to display images, perhaps even QuickTime movies for presentations (iPhoto and Keynote slideshows).
I think the iPod name itself leaves Apple open to adding a multitude of advanced digital media/data functions. It will be more like a portable storage device with intelligence… awesome intelligence.