Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Really hard to fit inside with armor and swords

The iPod Touch gained an external speaker. Jobs described the speaker as really only for personal use in a quiet environment, and demonstrated that it failed to cut through noise well during his CNBC interview. This marks the first instance of a Jobs-led discussion of Apple products that talks down a hardware feature. (Software is his land for mea culpas and both dimensions are usually a hype-fest.) Truly, he seems to be right. I see literally no reason for the speaker to exist, save for accentuation of a gaming experience when one lacks headphones. Apple irons these vanishingly useful features out usually.

Why all the work, then, to get the speaker in?

Apple iPod Headphones with Remote (once known as "the ones with the iPhone that I wish worked on my iPod) now work with all iPods. Indeed, the mic-in even works, though Jobs only confirmed this for the Nano. He ignored the ability for the Touch, which can leverage the App Store and lots more control surfaces, to accept and store audio recordings. Attending to the Nano is one thing, but the sin of this omission is really striking, as Jobs usually only neglects to discuss features when he is asleep.

Why the studious ignorance?

Because, as Lil Wayne says, Wayne isn't Weezy, Weezy is Wayne. The iPod Mic Clicker is a hard trojan horse to cram into, but OS X Mobile isn't for iPhone.

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