In response to mounding pressure from environmental activists, Apple today announced a free recycling program for its iPod digital music players.
Beginning today, customers can bring iPods they no longer want to any of Apple’s 100 retail stores in the US for free environmentally friendly disposal, and those who drop off an iPod, iPod mini or iPod photo will receive a 10 percent discount on the purchase of a new iPod that day. iPods received for recycling in the US will be processed domestically and no hazardous material will be shipped overseas, Apple said in a statement to the press.
View:
Apple iPod Recycle Website
News source:
AppleInsider
Here are some key features of "Exact Audio Copy":
Usage of the Windows 95 and Windows NT ASPI Interface, so both SCSI and ATAPI CD-ROM drives are supported
Hidden sector synchronization (jitter correction)
Secure, fast and burst extraction methods selectable. Fast extraction should run at the same speed as other grabbers, but is probably not exact anymore. Burst mode just grabs the audio data without any synchronization.
Read error and complete loss of sync detection and correction in secure modes, as far as possible
Output of time positions of all non-exact corrections and listen to these positions
Copy of ranges of music data, not only tracks
Automatic Speed reduction on errors and fallback afterwards
Normalization of extracted audio
Usage of the Windows Audio Compression Manager (ACM Codecs) for direct compression e.g. to MP3 waves
Support for the BladeEnc DLL that is usable like an ACM Codec for online MP3 compression
Support of external MP3, VQF, RA and AAC encoders for automatic compression after extraction
Batch compression and decompression of/to WAV files
Compression offset support for exact compression/decompression
Detection of pre-track gaps
Detection of silence in pre-track gaps
Automatic creation of CUE sheets for CDRWin, including all gaps, indicies, track attributes, UPC and ISRC
CD player functionality and prelistening to selected ranges
Automatic detection of drive features, whether a drive has an accurate stream and/or does caching
Sample Offsets for drives with no accurate streams, including the option of filling up missing samples with silence
Option for synchronizing tracks for non-accurate stream drives
Filename editing with local and remote CDDB database and cdplayer.ini support and more features like ID3 tagging
Browse and edit local database
Certified Escient CDDB(TM) Compatible
Local CDDB support
Record and Loop Record functions for recording from LP, radio, etc.
Automatic rename of MP3 files according to their ID3 tag
Catalog extraction function
Multisession (CD-Extra) support
CD-Text support
CD-Write support for some drives
ID3 Tag editor with drag and drop possibility from track listing and database
Glitch removal after extraction
Small WAV editor with the following functionality: delete, trim, normalize, pad, glitch removal, pop detection, interpolation of ranges, noise reduction, fade in/out, undo (and more)
Program is Cardware, so feel free to copy
i hate to sound like a fanboy though but damn, i take value with everything i buy, i dont think of when its going to die or break down on me. although if it does you better be sure ill fight for it. (the battery thing would piss me off)
Apple is good at ripping people off, so there is no way I will let it get away with it.
10% discount is truly only useful if you have a complete dead iPod, meaning hard drive doesn't even work at all.. Otherwise, it is not an attractive deal at all.
You paid $300 for a hard drive, and you are going to throw it away for $30 (10% discount) because of a dead battery? Not me
kgraphik: I agree, it isn't a bad offer at all. Especially when you consider there was no offer previously.
What formats and what bitrates are supported?
I'm asking as if they do support MP3 natively, I intend to go tomorrow and buy a 60GB Ipod IPhoto.
GJ
I use VBR/ABR of 256kbps via LAME for my personal encodes, and it works fine on my iPod.
When I sold my 2nd generation iPod on ebay I got $175.00 for it.
if you are going to give away to apple a used but functioning ipod then that is your fault, this benefits ppl that their iPod might have died and can't claim the warranty...
I think this is mostly for disposal of the battery and other electronics.
This wasn't put in motion so that you get 10%, its meant to improve the disposal of toxic chemicals and hazardous material from sitting in landfills. This is an environmental issue and not an economic one!
Exactly... if they can get enough new customers in then it's great PR and the sales cover the operating costs of the recycling program. Savvy business sense, but this should have been put in place years ago.
There must be some sort of government or state incentive that we aren't being made aware of considering how the government (whether its federal or state) is giving incentives to companies having some sort of enviromental policy in place.
I'm off this planet in less then 80 years. I don't care about the ozone being destroyed. I care about my iPod. How's that for human apathy?
That's about inline with the US's environmental policy.
Not ratifying the Kyoto agreement and ignoring global warming is the right direction? Drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the right direction? That's a backward step against everything Clinton worked for, prioritising the environment over energy production. Clinton, however sleazy his personal life was, built bridges to other countries, particularly the UK - Bush seems to be burning them at every step.
These things will be striped, yes, but not for parts; for valuable metals (gold, copper, zinc, etc.) The rest is worthless. Do you really think anyone wants an old iPod drive or a used LCD screen?
It's all shiped off to China or India where cheap labour and no enviromental law enforcement ensures cost efectiveness for the corporations, a toxic waste dump for a living room for the rural town unfortunate enough to have the "recycling industry", and an early death for thousands of children exposed to horrendous levels of mercury.
Fun for the whole family, right?
That doesn't mean they won't ship it of to China, it just means they will remove the nukes from the iPods first.
I would rather hold onto my old iPod and replace the battery.. Only filthy rich people will throw away hard drive like that
Thanks.
I can fix almost anything, wouldn't you rather it go to someone who'd use it rather than the trash heap? (hell, $30 is nothing to give up for older technology, it's what you'd get if you took it back to apple, and they'd just throw it out)
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