Articles tagged with: ipod

Not that we imagine Apple will either care or comment, still less anyone notice on US election day, but a renowned coder has demonstrated a bug could enable malicious types to crash an iPhone on demand when playing cobbled videos.

Piergiorgio Zambrini, the chap behind the Ziphone iPhone-jailbreaking tool, also reckons the same flaw could be exploited to crash other Apple devices, including iPods and Macs. He revealed his trick to Forbes over the weekend, though the technical details have been reserved for Apple – if it bothers to contact him. More after the cut.

From today, users of Apple’s UK iTunes Store can rent or buy movies from a catalogue of over 700 titles.

The company has signed agreements with several big-name studios, including 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Warner Bros. At the time of writing, the top-ten downloads included Batman Begins, I Am Legend and, inevitably, The Matrix.

Pricing starts at £2.49 for a 30-day rental of ‘library’ titles (ie, back-catalogue flicks), rising to £10.99 for purchases of new releases. Rentals for new releases are charged at £3.49. High-definition (HD) versions of some movies are also available, but are charged at another £1.00. To purchase library titles costs £6.99.

Since many car head units lack a line-in socket, an FM transmitter is usually the simplest way to listen to an MP3 player while you’re driving. The problem is that finding a clear frequency in a built-up area can be a real challenge and even then, you’re likely to lose it if you drive any appreciable distance.

Apple clearly knows a thing or two when it comes to industrial design, but like the iPhone before it, the new iPod Touch is the most breathtakingly gorgeous electronic device we’ve ever seen. From the wraparound chrome back to the single sheet of glass that covers the front, it just oozes high-tech allure.

One of the most impressive aspects of the Touch’s design is how thin it is — a mere 8mm. This is the result of Apple switching from 1.8” hard disks to solid state flash memory, but this isn’t entirely without compromise. Flash memory is still comparatively expensive and to keep the Touch affordable, Apple is only offering it with 8Gb and 16Gb capacities.

The iPod Touch may be the very apotheosis of the personal media player concept, but the new Nano’s redesign is far less radical. It’s a whisker thinner than the old model, but wider with it and, it must be said, somewhat squat.

The peculiar shape is the result of squeezing in a 2” colour screen — just the thing for exploiting the Nano’s new video-playing ability. In reality, sitting through anything longer than a music video will send you cross-eyed — the screen is crisp, colours are vibrant and playback is smooth, but it’s just too small to stare at for long.

Apple is renowned for not releasing updates to make new iPod features available for older models that are otherwise identical, but now you can do it yourself.

You need a 5G Video iPod to make use of the hack, which is available as a download from the DrivenDesign site. Once installed, you get the new split-screen menu system from the new iPod Classic, but there's no Cover Flow view -- yet.

Having seen it in action on the new Nano, I think the new interface looks like a terrible mish mash, but each to their own, I guess...

[DrivenDesign]

Gizmodo is reporting that one of its readers has figured out a way to run iPhone applications on the iPod Touch -- email, Google Maps, the lot (apart from the phone app, obviously).

There's a guide on how to do it available already, but it's lengthy and looks fiendishly complicated. It's based on the Jailbreak trick used to unlock the iPhone, and that recently backfired when Apple's latest update rendered unlocked phones all but useless.

The iPhone problem seemed to lie with its mobile phone functionality, though -- something that the Touch lacks. So, this is possibly a safer hack, though use it at your own risk...

[Gizmodo]