Motorola Announces MotoACTV, Touchscreen Fitness Music Player

Motorola has announced of a new square shaped music player with fitness tracking performance functionalities. Looks and sounds familiar? Looks like Motorola wants to bank in on Apple's success with its iPod Nano. Hey, we're not judging here. The more choices out there the better! Motorola's new MotoACTV is first and foremost a fitness-focused device before it's a music player with things like heart monitoring through the optional $179 Motorola SF700 wireless sport headphones and $99 Motorola SF500 wired sport headphones that have built-in heart rate monitors with real-time audible readouts of your heart rate allowing you to track your performance, all without using a chest strap.

With the MotoACTV you can keep track of your ongoing fitness performance stats, including pace, distance, calories burned, and map tracking your outdoor performance with a map detailing the route covered using the built-in GPS. Automatic wireless syncing of all of your workout data is then pushed to your online account. 

The MotoACTV isn't just an iPad Nano clone despite the similarities. It's much richer in features. You'll find a 1.6" multi-touch touchscreen display with Gorilla Glass that's sweat-proof, rain-resistant and scratch-resistant that auto-adjusts for indoor or outdoor lighting. The MotoACTV supports both Bluetooth 4.0 and ANT+ wireless connectivity for existing and future sensors and accessories, FM radio, option to sync with the latest Android-powered smartphone to receive and control incoming calls and texts on your touchscreen and a rechargeable battery that will last you up to 5 hours for outdoor workouts due to GPS performance tracking, 10 hours indoors, and nearly two weeks on standby.

You'll be available to pre-order the Motorola MotoACTV starting today in 8GB and 16GB models for $249 and $299, respectively. Additional accessories like the wristband aren't going to be included. Expect to get your hands on it on November 6. 

Amazon Kindle Touch Loses Keyboard, Adds Touchscreen At $99

After Amazon's press event today in New York and the release of its first Android tablet the Kindle Fire, Amazon has refreshed the Kindle yet again with the new Kindle Touch priced at just $99 with Amazon's Special Offers ads, and $139 without. The Kindle Touch loses the physical keyboard for an on-screen virtual touch keyboard and an even sleeker design with an aluminum back. The same 6" touchscreen remains to be E Ink display that's also multi-touch. The now older 6" Kindle will be called the Kindle Keyboard and is priced at $99 as well.

Amazon's Kindle Touch comes in a WiFi-only version as well as a WiFi and 3G version priced at $149. Both models are now available for pre-order and will start shipping on November 21.

Sony Announces The NGP

Sony announced today their new PSP 2 called the NGP, Next Generation Portable. The new NGP packs so many new features like a 5" OLED touchscreen with a resolution of 960x544. Sony says the new NGP will not use UMD media for games and movies but instead an all new form of media that is yet to be revealed. Expect the NGP to be released later this year. Full specs below.

• CPU: ARM® Cortex™-A9 core (4 core)
• GPU: SGX543MP4+
• External Dimensions: Approx. 182.0 x 18.6 x 83.5mm (width x height x depth) (tentative, excludes largest projection)
• Rear touch pad: Multi touch pad (capacitive type)
• Cameras: Front camera, Rear camera
• Sound: Built-in stereo speakers, Built-in microphone
• Sensors: Six-axis motion sensing system (three-axis gyroscope, three-axis accelerometer), Three-axis electronic compass
• Location: Built-in GPS, Wi-Fi location service support
• Keys / Switches: PS button, Power button, Directional buttons (Up/Down/Right/Left), Action buttons (Triangle, Circle, Cross, Square), Shoulder buttons (Right/Left), Right stick, Left stick, START button, SELECT button, Volume buttons
• Wireless communications: Mobile network connectivity (3G), IEEE 802.11b/g/n (n = 1x1)(Wi-Fi) (Infrastructure mode/Ad-hoc mode), Bluetooth® 2.1+EDR （A2DP/AVRCP/HSP）

Apple's Back To Mac Keynote Predictions

 

With Apple's return to the Mac after the mountain of mobile devices announced, it is meant to be a huge announcement. Starting at 10 am PST tomorrow, and the invite sent out to media last week, caused the entire internet to explode with predictions of what Apple is going to announce, and here is mine. 

For starters, if you look at the invite above, you can see a Lion behind the Apple logo, which probably means that the next version of Mac OS will be announced as Mac OS 10.7 Lion, as all recent versions of Mac OS  are named after big cats. Main features of the new version of the new Mac OS that have been floating around are touch screen support, drastic speed increases and subtle UI changes to stuff like the dock and the menu bar. The reason that touchscreen is in there, is because Apple has filed several patents about touchscreen iMacs and MacBooks, and this would be a great time for Apple to include some parts of iOS into Mac OS, i.e. the touchscreen aspect. Call me an Apple fanboy, but I cannot see what drastically new features Apple could add, as I think it is as good as it can get, yet we will find out tomorrow. 

 

In terms of hardware, the rumours about the long overdue update to the MacBook Air are picking up again. These rumours are saying that the new MacBook Air will be smaller with a 11.6" screen, a new version of SSD that is similar to a stick of RAM that is supposedly really fast and even slimmer profile. There are also some rumours of the MacBook and the MacBook Pros being updated, but I don't think that will happen as the Mac laptops got updated around April, and the MacBook family usually have a refresh cycle of around 9-10 months. Alike the laptops, I do not think that the desktops will get updated as they got their refresh this summer. 

So, not long to wait until we find out so stay tuned to the live blogs like Engadget's for all the latest stuff coming out of Cupertino. However, it is still not clear if Apple will be streaming the event itself, like the iPod event, so get ready for the Lion to come out of the cage.

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Update on 2010-10-20 16:51 by Patrick Rigby

Apple has just posted the live stream page. Check it out here.

Apple Reveals New iPod Nanos and Shuffles

 

At the Apple Music Keynote today in San Francisco, Steve Jobs took the stage to announced the holiday line up of iPods. So any way lets get into it.

The iPod Shuffle was first to receive an update. The iPod shuffle has been a strange device. Many say it is pointless because of the lack of a screen, while others say (mainly people who exercise) say it is an essential part of the iPod line up. This year it got back the buttons but also has the same voice features of last years buttonless model. Not much else to say except it has a clip so you can clip it on clothes, it comes in 5 colours and it has 2GB of storage, all for $49. 

Next, iPod Nano. Earlier this year, we saw a very small touchscreen leaked out into the world with apparently Apple branding all over it. Well it seems like this one has come true. The new nano has ditched the click wheel for a touch screen, a very small touch screen at that, but it is still a touch screen and seems to have some sort of version of iOS running on it. All the usual stuff is on there in the form of icons on different screens and yes you can make it do the jiggly dance so you can move the icons around. Reports from places like Engadget are saying that the touchscreen is very responsive and great to look at. Also, seeing as it has a clock app, if you strap it to a wrist strap, you can turn it into an iWatch! And that is the only reason I'm getting one.

Tiny Apple Touchscreen Leaked!

 

Another Apple leak! But this time, a tiny touchscreen! Nobody knows what it is or what it could be, but the Taiwanese site Apple.pro just posted up some photos of a tiny touchscreen panel covered in Apple labels. The panel measures 3cm (1.18 inches) square. Apple.pro is the website that leaked the white iPhone 4 enclosure and the Macbook Pro Unibody enclosure, so given it's track record, I'm starting to think that this is a genuine Apple product.

So what could this be? Well there are talks of the next Apple TV remote, new iPod nano or iPod Shuffle and the one that I hope it is, the iWatch!

 

 

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Source Apple.pro