Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

8 & 10 GB iPod Nanos Rumored

Posted by CowboyNeal on Sat Apr 22, 2006 09:46 AM
from the on-the-horizon dept.
Media Media (Apple) Businesses Apple
koweja writes "The UK based technology magazine T3 is predicting that Apple will release larger iPod Nanos in the near future. From the article, "Munster's reasoning is that, as the touchscreen iPod will likely not now appear until next year, Apple needs to launch something eye-catching in time for the lucrative run-up to Christmas - and bigger capacity nanos fit the bill nicely." Granted it's an almost completely unsubstantiated prediction from somebody outside of Apple, but it is what a lot of people have been asking for since the original Nanos came out."
+ -
story
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

8 & 10 GB iPod Nanos Rumored 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • In Other News (Score:5, Funny)

    by ciroknight (601098) on Saturday April 22 2006, @09:48AM (#15180449)
    I rumored a 16GB iNewton is in the works. Does that make me any more credible!?

  • Wow! Baseless speculation! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2006, @09:53AM (#15180465)
    Gosh... here's some more... Apple will eventually release a 16 gig ipod Nano! You heard it here first.

    Anyway, a 10 gig Nano makes no sense. 8? Sure, but 10? No. It can't be a single chip, and the size difference between it and an 8 gig isn't enough to justify the price difference for most people.

    • Re:Wow! Baseless speculation! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jeff DeMaagd (2015) on Saturday April 22 2006, @10:11AM (#15180536) Homepage Journal
      I've seen product tear-downs that showed the current nano had two flash chips in the 4GB version, one in the 2GB version. Some might have two 1GB chips if it was more cost-effective. So an 8GB nano would have two two 4GB chips. Of course, bare flash chips are rated in bits, not bytes, so the chips might be 8Gb, 16Gb and 32Gb for the respective sizes.

      It might be more realistic to expect to see a 6GB version (1x 4GB and 1x 2GB chip) and the 4 and 2 GB models pushed down in price $50 each.

      • Re:Wow! Baseless speculation! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Kjella (173770) on Saturday April 22 2006, @10:47AM (#15180682) Homepage
        I'm too lazy to actually check out the sources, but wikipedia says it's 1x1GB, 2x1GB and 1x4GB respectively. Since there's 4GB chips already, and apparently room for two I imagine it's a matter of cost. An 8GB Nano would have a quite high price point.

  • my prediction (Score:5, Funny)

    by gEvil (beta) (945888) on Saturday April 22 2006, @09:54AM (#15180469)
    I'm gonna go out on a limb here and predict that Apple will never increase the capacity of the Nano. Why would they do something as stupid as that?

  • Nanos were made to have smaller capacity (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kestasjk (933987) on Saturday April 22 2006, @09:54AM (#15180472) Homepage
    Nanos were made to have smaller capacity because Apple weren't selling a good balance of Minis and normal iPods, if they increase the storage capacity it gives people less incentive to buy a more expensive regular iPod.

    And does this really qualify as news?
    • Not if they bump the storage on the larger iPods as well.
      • Not if they bump the storage on the larger iPods as well.

        No, there's a break-even point. Even a 20GB iPod will play about music for about two weeks continuously, day and night before repeating. Every CD and vinyl record I've collected in the past 20 years will fit on a 40GB iPod, and that's close to AU$20,000 worth.

        I suspect everything I'd ever want to listen to would fit on a 100G iPod, and it would only take a 6 TB iPod to play music continuously for every waking hour of my life without repeats. I wouldn't want to buy anything bigger than that.

        • Re:Nanos were made to have smaller capacity (Score:5, Insightful)

          by radish (98371) on Saturday April 22 2006, @11:41AM (#15180944) Homepage
          Right, but you forget two major factors.

          1) The fullsize ipods do video now. That needs a whole lot more space. The nano doesn't do video (does it?) and so the nano almost fits the "music only" category, which tops out around 20-40GB for most people. The HD based ipods then become more and more targetted at video customers.

          2) Lossless. I listen to my music at home via Squeezeboxes [slimdevices.com], and lots of people are starting to use HTPCs, Airport, etc to listen to the same rips at home as on the go. I know I sure as hell don't want to listen to AAC or MP3 on my nice hifi, so it's lossless all the way. Now I could (and in fact, do) keep two copies of everything - one for portable and one for home. But that's a pain to maintain. Would be easier if I didn't have to worry about space and could store all those huge files on a portable player too. My CD rips are currently around 200GB, and most of it is still lossy. When it's all reripped as lossless we'll be looking at over 0.5TB. Bring on the big portable players :)

          • Re:Nanos were made to have smaller capacity (Score:5, Insightful)

            by timeOday (582209) on Saturday April 22 2006, @01:44PM (#15181495)
            1) The fullsize ipods do video now. That needs a whole lot more space.
            But will portable video ever take off enough for that to matter? It's not clear to me how many are buying the video iPod for the video. Even on the plane, it surprises me how few people I see watching movies on laptops, since it's about the only place I ever do so.

        • Re:Nanos were made to have smaller capacity (Score:5, Insightful)

          by plumby (179557) on Saturday April 22 2006, @12:21PM (#15181129)
          There is a point at which it would become pointless, but 60GB aint it. I've got over 100GB of (legally aquired) mp3s in my library, and although there's a limit to the amount of music that I can listen to while I'm out, I don't know when I leave the house exactly which tracks I'm going to want to listen to - greater capacity means greater choice of music when I'm in the mood.
    • Yes, well one factor is the storage capacity, but let's not forget the size. At least for me, the smaller form factor of the Nano makes it much more attractive than the normal iPod and I don't think that I'm alone. These are really two distinct product lines with usually quite distinct user bases.

    • Re:Nanos were made to have smaller capacity (Score:4, Informative)

      by teslar (706653) on Saturday April 22 2006, @12:00PM (#15181034)
      Nanos were made to have smaller capacity because Apple weren't selling a good balance of Minis and normal iPods.
      I'd say the capacity of the Nano has more to do with the flash memory than with any marketing goals. Flash memory is expensive and doesn't come in large-capacity flavours. Once it becomes cheaper and comes in higher capacities, you can bet that there will be higher-capacity Nanos out.
      if they increase the storage capacity it gives people less incentive to buy a more expensive regular iPod.
      Precisley. Which is why the regular iPods will be phased out, save perhaps for some large-screen video iPod. After all, why would I want a hard disk based mp3 player if I can have a solid state one with the same capacity for the same price? Hard disk players are going to die out, it's inevitable. Regular iPods won't be an exception.
    • Has flash memory become cheap enough for 8-10gb nano's to be out with a nice profit margin?
    • "if they increase the storage capacity it gives people less incentive to buy a more expensive regular iPod."

      This is probably why the other iPods support video, now. In any event, yes there's less incentive to buy the more expensive regular ipod, but there's also more incentive to those (like me) who don't want to pay $300+ for that iPod. I actually never seriously considered buying an iPod until the Nano came out. $200ish price tag + really small + adequate storage == MobileTatsu friendly. (I only reall
    • The nanos were made with smaller capacity because those 2GB flash chips were what was available at the time. The chips are already expensive as it is, and the 4GB nano is using two of them. It has nothing to do with "balance." Apple just loves to sell iPods, and if the minis and nanos outsell the bigger versions, they're fine with that since it's more money for them. Steve Jobs predicted the nano would be the biggest selling iPod ever, so they know what models appeal to consumers.

  • Larger Nano (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ryz0r (849412) on Saturday April 22 2006, @09:58AM (#15180497)
    >>Apple will release larger iPod Nanos in the near future

    I hear it's going to be called the iPodx10^-8

  • Do 8 & 10 gig flash media drives even exist at this time (or in the near future)?

  • Just 10GB? (Score:5, Funny)

    by mobby_6kl (668092) on Saturday April 22 2006, @10:19AM (#15180564)
    10GB? Lame, that's barely enough for my Frank Zappa MP3s.

    And what about wireless?

  • Here is Why... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2006, @10:27AM (#15180603)
    You can get a 4GB USB thumb drive for $100 [meritline.com] (or get four 512MB and one 2GB bundled together [dealmac.com] for $108). The current crop of MicroDrives (CompactFlash-compatible miniature hard drives [buy.com]) of similar capacity runs even less.

    If a normal consumer can buy these things on the retail market today, Apple really needs to get its act together and start increasing capacity on its lower end or it is going to lose that market to these cheap drives and the simple add-ons that allow playback of music.
    • Apple has never competed on price. The basic iPod is still the most expensive MP3 player by about 30%. And for the cost of a 4GB nano, you can get a 20GB HDD based MP3 player. Heck, you can get a 20 GB Archos Jukebox for 100 dollars [dealtree.net] if you look.

      Where Apple shines is form factor. That Archos Jukebox can be amazingly cheap, but it won't fit in your pocket. The iRiver [iriver.com] is a powerful, fully featured player, but just try to get it to do anything without taking a course at your technical school. Even the reg

  • More Music (Score:5, Funny)

    by Metabolife (961249) on Saturday April 22 2006, @10:41AM (#15180658)
    Great, a 10GB would let you have 2,500 songs (according to apple's rating), this is great business for apple. Now instead of just getting 1,000 dollars from people to fill it, they can bump it up to 2,500 dollars! Brilliant!

  • Difference between rumor and speculation (Score:3, Insightful)

    by heli_flyer (614850) on Saturday April 22 2006, @10:48AM (#15180688)
    There's a difference between rumor and speculation, and this is more speculation than rumor.

  • nano replaced mini (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fermion (181285) on Saturday April 22 2006, @10:48AM (#15180689) Homepage Journal
    The nanos were clearly created to replace the minis, which were cute but had limited battery life due to the power requirements of the hard drives, and as they were so small could not have larger batteries.

    As the minis were phased out, they had a capacity of 6 gig. I have been expecting the nano to increase to 8 gig for a while. Of course the nano still has a short battery life, and perhpas the added memeory is just going to make that worse.

    The 4GB are available, and given Apple discounts are not overly expensive. I do not see a 10 gig nano, as the nanos seem to have pairs of cards. Hopefully they will come out with a 8 gig Nano in the $250 price range, and drop the other prices according. That might be enough space to make it worthwhile. I would also like to see a 2gig shuffle, though that product line also seems to be dead.

    • Modded 5 insightful? The battery life on the 2G minis was very good, around 15-18hrs (more than the full iPods at the time IIRC). The nano's battery life seems a little shorter, around 10-14hrs.

  • why? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by penguin-collective (932038) on Saturday April 22 2006, @11:00AM (#15180740)
    I don't see the point. If you're gonna dock to your computer, then you only need memory for one battery charge, and 2G is plenty. If you're going to use a charger while traveling, 10G strikes me as too small for a regular music collection.

    I bought the 4G but discovered through use that I could have saved my money and lived just fine with the 1G or 2G model.

    • Re:why? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by matt21811 (830841) * on Saturday April 22 2006, @12:29PM (#15181169) Homepage
      "10G strikes me as too small for a regular music collection."

      Actually, 10 gig is almost exactly the size of average music collection when stored in 128kbit compressed format. This BBC article shows that men own, on average, 178 albums (women, on average, own less).
      http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/410 2786.stm [bbc.co.uk]

      178 (albums) * 650MB (maximum data per album) * 128 Kb/sec (good quality compression rate) / 1411.2 Kb (per sec data rate e on the CD) = 10493.5 MB. This is over just 10 GB to store the average mans music collection.

  • Well, I'm convinced (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tim Browse (9263) on Saturday April 22 2006, @11:08AM (#15180779)
    Granted it's an almost completely unsubstantiated prediction from somebody outside of Apple, but it is what a lot of people have been asking for since the original Nanos came out.

    There are rumours that God exists. Granted it's an almost completely unsubstantiated prediction from somebody outside of Heaven, but it is what a lot of people have been wanting since the original Homo Sapiens came out.

  • It has been done already (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kryptonian Jor-El (970056) on Saturday April 22 2006, @11:11AM (#15180797)
    Hackaday.com recently had an article about converting a 4 GB iPod nano to an 8 GB. Apparently apple only uses 1 flash chip in the Nano to make up the entire 4 GBs, but in fact it has a second spot on the board to attach a second 4 GB flash chip. It wouold be pretty cool to have an 8 GB iPod Nano though. http://ipod.hackaday.com/entry/1234000233073484/ [hackaday.com]

  • 8Gigs? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2006, @11:20AM (#15180836)
    640k should be enough for anybody.

  • My iPod (Score:3, Funny)

    by EZLeeAmused (869996) on Saturday April 22 2006, @12:10PM (#15181079)
    is going to have 11GB

    • Re:Bigger? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2006, @09:58AM (#15180498)
      Congrats, you're the first poster on slashdot to manage fusing a HORRIBLE joke with extreme grammar nazism!
    • I've been waiting to buy one for the size to hit around 15 gigs so they can hold all the music on my computer at once. That seems useful to me. I don't really want to hassle with changing what's on there when I get bored of the selection.

      • Re:Does size matter? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Jeff DeMaagd (2015) on Saturday April 22 2006, @10:31AM (#15180622) Homepage Journal
        I don't really want to hassle with changing what's on there when I get bored of the selection.

        You don't have to. I have my iTunes auto-rotate tracks on my 4GB nano. It's not obvious, but what you can do is sync the unit to one or more smart playlists. The smart playlists are set to randomly select a certain number of tracks that have been played less than "X" number of times. Right now, my "X" is "1". Once it has been played, it is removed and another track replaces it. With this scheme, I think I can do very well with a 1GB nano.
      • Meh...my music library is around 200GB (all legal, I might add). My portable player is only 20 so there's a lot not on it - the larger the better as far as I'm concerned.

        Oh and I don't say this to boast, I'm music obsessed and realise I'm not "normal" in that sense, but it's the old slashdot adage - just because it's not useful for you doesn't mean it's not useful.

      • I don't think that there are a lot of people around who could fill 10 GB with legal music.

        10 gigabytes * 1000000 kilobytes per gigabyte * 8 bits per byte / 160 kilobits per second / 3000 seconds per CD = 166 CDs. I know a lot of people who own two or three times that many. Given that CDs have been around for over two decades, 8 CDs a year is not that many.

        But for the iPod Nano? Flip-books?

        Google sees over 13 million slide shows available through the Web [google.com].

      • exactly...like the two previous posters i have over a terabyte of music and video that i legally own. i have purchased well over 1000 cds in my lifetime and i do remember when cds first came out in 1983. i was working in a record store and we had three titles to choose from.

        but the problem that i see is navigation and sync times on these devices are going to get longer and longer unless they start using gigabit networking.
    • the so-called 6 gb mini doesn't really hold 6 gb, it's slightly smaller (it reports 5.6 gb on the About screen).
      .
      The drive does have a capacity of 6GB. The 0.4GB discrepancy is due to two factors:

      • The formatted capacity of any drive will be slightly less.
      • Hardware manufacturers consider 1GB to be 1,000,000,000B; whereas, the software considers 1GB to be 1,073,741,824B.

      So saying the mini holds 6GB is not incorrect at all.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.