Comments on: Will iPod Touch Really Kill Off Newspapers?

By: Ciaran

Ciaran — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 08:58:03 +0000

matt - you make some good points regarding battery life; however I’m yet to be convinced that books will die, if only for the reason that I need something to read on a plane during the take-off when all electrical devices have to be turned off.

The other point is that if one were to use the Touch for reading a book, the light would have to be on by default.

By: matt

matt — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 21:27:39 +0000

I am a proud ipod touch owner
I agree with everything that your saying, however I don't think that battery life will get in the way of people switching from newspapers to web.
The ipod touch, i will admit, does seem to have a short battery life, however if you know how to use it, you can make the battery stretch for days.
The reason it seems to drain so quickly, is because users tend to mess with it non stop; basically, you turn the brightness down, select a song, and then tap the sleep/wake button - the screen turns off while the music plays, and it will play all the next songs in the list as welll
If you do that, your battery can last probably 90% longer
I'll put it like this; once, i was listening to my ipod, around mid day. Then my dad needed help with something
Later that night i found that my ipod had been playing music the whole time because i hadnt stopped it and forgot about it; I turned it on and had 82% battery left. I know it was 82% because i hacked it and now it displays a number instead of a battery icon

(Editor's note - comment edited for formatting)

By: iPod Touch » LNiTR October 10 2007: Review: iPod touch with 1.1.1 update, Is iPod’s Hard Drive Days Numbered?

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 06:18:12 +0000

[…] Will iPod Touch Really Kill Off Newspapers? @ Alltogether Digital The always interesting Jeff Jarvis has suggested in his column in The […]

By: Lucie Bartlett

Lucie Bartlett — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 17:46:25 +0000

In the last couple of years, the ‘death of the newspaper’ seems to have taken hold of the current cultural imagination with just as much force as Roland Barthes’ ‘death of the author’ did in the late 1960s and early 1970s (the interesting parallels, though numerous, are too complex to touch on here). However, my initial response to the question posed above would be: not in the next 50 years at least.

Jarvis quoted Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams in his piece: “When you have a web browser in your pocket, a printed newspaper is redundant.” Well, call me old fashioned, but I have had a fully web enabled phone in my pocket for the last four months - granted, not the wonderous iPhone - and yet I still buy a newspaper on a daily basis. Until improvements in supporting technology can catch up with these devices (erradicating electronic interference on planes, eternal battery life, 3G mobile signal made available on the London Underground etc.), we will continue to rely on traditional media to carry us through where new media fails.

In theory, I fundamentally agree with Alan Rusbridger’s notion that an ‘iPod moment’ for newspapers is inevitable (although, if he is using the eradication of the traditional music industry as the blueprint, this ‘moment’ may in reality span a number of years). However, perhaps it is not the invention or initial emergence of a suitable mass-market device (such as the iPhone) which marks this ‘moment’, but the point at which it becomes ‘quite normal’ to own and use one on a daily basis - with a simultaneous complete rejection of the printed form. The iPod moment for newspapers will therefore be a sociological rather than technological one.

And surely - one can only hope - that is generations away.

By: Blog Feeds about Music » Archive » Will iPod Touch Really Kill Off Newspapers?

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 10:15:48 +0000

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