Samsung unveils Galaxy Player 5.8, pockets everywhere brace for impact

Samsung unveils Galaxy Player 58, pockets everywhere brace for impact

We hope you wear baggy pants, because you're going to want big pockets to carry Samsung's giant new jukebox. The Galaxy Player 5.8 is dominated by its namesake 5.8-inch, 960 x 540 LCD -- a screen that makes the 4.8-inch AMOLED on the closely related Galaxy S III look downright modest by comparison. Android 4.0 and the latest generation of TouchWiz make their first appearances in a Samsung media player here, with the spin naturally on books and movies instead of the tasks you'd associate with a smartphone. You're otherwise looking at the kind of media player you'd expect in 2012: there's either 16GB or 32GB of built-in storage, a microSD slot, a front VGA camera for those face-to-face sessions and a huge 2,500mAh battery to compensate for the display. We're still waiting on a few details, such as the exact processor and the Galaxy Player 5.8's launch schedule, although the announcement's timing suggests we may get a peek at this behemoth when IFA 2012 kicks off later this week. In the meantime, we'd advise against buying a pair of skinny jeans.

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Samsung unveils Galaxy Player 5.8, pockets everywhere brace for impact originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Aug 2012 00:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple opens iTunes Store in Hong Kong, Taiwan and 10 other Asia-Pacific territories

Apple opens iTunes Store in Hong Kong, Taiwan and 10 other AsiaPacific countries

Many Apple fans on the opposite side of the Pacific from Cupertino haven't had much of a choice to shop from iTunes, even though they've had the App Store for some time. There's now a much better sense of balance: Apple just flicked the switch on the iTunes Store for music and movies in a dozen countries and territories across the Asia-Pacific region. The company singles out our own Richard Lai's Hong Kong as well as Singapore and Taiwan, but we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam are also getting the media catalogs, which include local content along with the international hits. It's a full catch-up as well, with iTunes in the Cloud re-downloads and iTunes Match subscriptions available in every new country. If you're a huge Andy Lau fan but wanted his albums from the most iPhone-friendly store possible, the wait is over.

Apple opens iTunes Store in Hong Kong, Taiwan and 10 other Asia-Pacific territories originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jun 2012 19:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ex-Microsoftie Robbie Bach: I wouldn’t have made Zune MP3 players, we were just ‘chasing Apple’

Robbie Bach

It took some time after Robbie Bach left Microsoft for the Zune device line to wind to a close, but that hasn't stopped the former music (and gaming) executive from suggesting that it should have been ramped down much, much sooner. While discussing the best way to get a startup company humming at a Northwest Entrepreneur Network event, Bach mentioned his view that Microsoft should never have started down the MP3 player path to start with and should have instead gone service-only. The Zune was a too-little-too-late reaction to the iPod, according to him, and the option to squirt your songs apparently wasn't enough of a lure:

"We just weren't brave enough, honestly, and we ended up chasing Apple with a product that actually wasn't a bad product, but it was still a chasing product, and there wasn't a reason for somebody to say, oh, I have to go out and get that thing."

We've had some affection for the Zune in the past, but there's no denying that it faced an uphill battle from the start. Sales leveled off almost immediately, and the damage was primarily to smaller competitors like Creative and SanDisk that couldn't throw their weight around the way Microsoft did.

Ex-Microsoftie Robbie Bach: I wouldn't have made Zune MP3 players, we were just 'chasing Apple' originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 May 2012 21:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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