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Media (Apple) Media Businesses Apple

The Future of the iPod 396

Posted by Zonk from the stay-the-course dept.
sebFlyte writes "Those of you waiting for a video iPod, an iPod with a radio in, an iPod with Bluetooth in...or in fact an iPod that does anything except play music and have a pretty-but-basic interface, you're likely to be disappointed. According to silicon.com, Steve Jobs and the Apple crew insist that the iPod will remain simple for the time being." From the article: "Whether people want to buy a device just to watch video is not clear - so far the answer's been no. Devices that do video... have not been successful yet. No-one's figured out the right formula."
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The Future of the iPod More

The Future of the iPod

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  • The more he says no... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fembots ( 753724 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @05:52PM (#13609368) Homepage
    Gizmodo found a hidden video button in iTunes 5 [gizmodo.com] and Mac Rumors discovered iPod's trademark expanded to include video support [macrumors.com].

    • Re:The more he says no... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by captain_craptacular ( 580116 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @06:02PM (#13609455)
      They're a big corporation with a good legal department. Both those clues could simply point to Apple keeping their options open.

      I might get flamed for this but I don't really see Apple as a ground breaker. They'll come out with a video player when theres an established marked for one. Theirs will be 10x as cool and work 10x better and therefore the market will expand greatly by their entering it, but they won't create the market. Thats about what happened with the Ipod, it wasn't by far the first portable audio player, it was just cooler and better (and had much better marketing)...

      • Re:The more he says no... (Score:4, Informative)

        by jrau ( 880696 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @07:13PM (#13609932)
        I would generally agree with you... except for the Newton. That was pretty damn groundbreaking... unsuccessful, but groundbreaking.

      • Re:The more he says no... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by /ASCII ( 86998 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @07:15PM (#13609946) Homepage
        Apple is not a ground braker in that they create markets where none existed. They are a ground breaker in that they launch a product that completely redefines an existing market.

        • The Macintosh was not the first personal computer, but it had a revolutionary new user interface.
        • The iPod was not the first mp3-player, but it had a revolutionary new user interface.
        • iTunes music store was not the first way to download music of the net, but it was the first legal way to download legal music from a large number of labels.
        • OS X was not the first unix-like operating system, but it was a revolutionary mix of unix stability with Apple ease of use.

        I'd argue that looking at a market and finding why the existing products suck and create something that doesn't is much more ground braking than beeing the first to launch a sucky version of an obvious idea. It takes huge amounts of skill to repeatedly make such high quality designs as Apple.

        • "The Macintosh was not the first personal computer (Score:5, Informative)

          by msauve ( 701917 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @07:54PM (#13610196)
          Well, no, but the Apple 2 arguably was. Its shipment was about the same time as the Commodore PET and the TRS-80 (1977), and it became the most successful of the three (measured by longevity, if not $ sales). What differentiated these from other microcomputers available at the time was that they were useful out of the box, with keyboard input, video out, BASIC in ROM and a storage interface (cassette tape).

          The Apple 2 was the only one of these which was fully documented - it came with full schematics and Apple encouraged development using the expansion slots (bus). Apple even provided a source code listing of the monitor ROM (BIOS). It was also the only one of the three which was easily upgradable in memory (just add/change memory chips) and the only one to support color and bit mapped graphics. It was the first to offer a reasonably priced floppy disk drive and to take advantage of a switching power supply. The very first "killer app," Visicalc, was introduced first for the Apple 2.

          • The Pet and friends (Score:5, Informative)

            by cbreaker ( 561297 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @11:29PM (#13611132) Journal
            People don't give the C64 line (Pet, Vic20, C64, C128) enough credit. I guess it's because Commodore isn't around anymore.

            The Pet was useful out of the box - I'm not sure how the Apple II was any better in this regard. And it did hit the shelves months before the Apple II making it the first "real" personal computer available. It *did* support graphics, not just text. Some of the features of the Pet:

            - a keyboard with a separate numeric pad (almost completely unheard of at the time, even as an option)
            - a 9" integrated Blue and White monitor
            - a main board with a powerful new 1Mhz MOS 6502 processor
            - lots of room for an additional RAM or Processor board
            - 4K of memory
            - power supply
            - real storage device (cassette tape)
            - several expansion ports including an RS232 (serial) port
            - ability to handle and create fantastic graphics
            - upper and lower case text
            - an operating system that was burned onto ROM and loaded on boot

            Interestingly enough, the OS was Basic. And it was actually licensed from Microsoft in 1976.

            The Pet was considerably cheaper then the Apple II - initially $499 and then $595 when demand outgrew production - versus the $1295 Apple II with 4k of memory. You could buy a Pet (which included the tape drive, etc) PLUS a floppy drive (when released, roughly the same time the floppy was released for the Apple) for less then an Apple II with *no* peripherals.

            You could upgrade the Pet with memory chips in a similar fashion to the Apple II, but it was not as "user servicable" as the Apple. But the same process was involved - plop in more chips.

            But you're right about one point - the Apple II had color which the Pet did not.

            Commodore sold a lot of Pets but they sold an ass-load of Vic-20's and C64's - the C64 was wildly more popular then the Apple 2 ever was. They sold 30 million of them - more then any computer system ever and still. Commodore was the first computer company to do over 1bn in sales - largely due to the Vic20 and C64 sales.

            People still use the 64 for a wide range of hobby activities. Demo coders still write for it for fun. Musicians use the unique SID chip for music - either in C64's or you can get a MIDI synth based on the SID from a few companies out there.

            I realize that the Apple II was out for a few years before the most popular of the Commodore machines, the C64. But the C64 completely usurped the Apple II. Apple didn't have an answer to it for several years. Nobody did, really.

            If Commodore had made better business decisions and gotten new product to market more efficiently, they could have been the "Apple of today." Or maybe even more, since the Amiga was arguably a better system then the Mac - it was technically superior and had a GUI system that was both functional and efficient.

            Commodore brought a lot of unique computing ideas to the table.

            • Poor copy/paste... (Score:5, Informative)

              by msauve ( 701917 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @06:38AM (#13612311)
              of incorrect or misleading "facts."

              Claim: a keyboard with a separate numeric pad

              Fact: The keyboard was by far the most reviled part of the PET. Commodore was a calculator manufacturer, and the PET keyboard used the same (poor) style key mechanisms as the cheap calculators Commodore produced (aka "chicklet keyboard"). It could include a numeric keypad because the key spacing on the rest of they keyboard was significantly smaller that the norm. Touch typing was extremely difficult, if not impossible.

              Claim: lots of room for an additional RAM or Processor board

              Fact: Well, there was physical room, but that was it - there was no internal access to the microprocessor bus (all expansion was intended to be external to the unit, so expansion was difficult). The principal means of I/O expansion, via a (non-standard) IEEE-488 bus, was difficult to work with, and resulted in expensive peripherals.

              Claim: several expansion ports including an RS232 (serial) port

              Fact: The original PET did NOT have an RS232, or even serial, port. At the time, I built quite a few pseudo-RS232 hardware interfaces which allowed one to "bit bang" the parallel "User Port" to talk to a modem.

              Claim: ability to handle and create fantastic graphics

              Fact: The PET used character graphics, and so was limited to what the ROM provided in this regard. It was better than the TRS-80, however. The best graphical program for the PET was probably "Toker II," and the amazing thing was not the graphics, per se, but just the fact that it could be done on a PET.

              Claim: upper and lower case text

              Fact: Only when not using graphics. One had a choice of uppercase and graphics, or upper and lower case text. (POKE 59468,14) AIR, something which was uppercase in graphics mode was lowercase in text mode.

              Claim: The Pet was considerably cheaper then the Apple II - initially $499 and then $595

              Fact: That was the pricing for the 4K model, but good luck finding one. Commodore only shipped a few. At the time, I worked for the largest Commodore retailer east of the Mississippi (NCE Compumart), and only ever saw a handful of 4K PETs. The vast majority of PETs were the $795 8K model.

              Claim:You could upgrade the Pet with memory chips in a similar fashion to the Apple II, but it was not as "user servicable" as the Apple. But the same process was involved - plop in more chips.

              Fact: Absolutely untrue. The original PET used non standard static RAMs (6550s) available only from MOS Technology (the chip manufacturer which Commodore owned). All RAM was soldered directly to the motherboard, not socketed. On the 4K PETs, Commodore even went so far as to drill through the PC board locations where the additional memory chips might have otherwise been installed in order to prevent user expansion. Apple used industry standard 4K and 16K Dynamic RAMs, which were not only readily available from multiple sources, but significantly less expensive than static RAM. Every Apple 2 could easily be expanded to 48K simply by installing the appropriate chips in the socketed motherboard.

              Claim: You could buy a Pet PLUS a floppy drive for less then an Apple II with *no* peripherals.

              Wrong. Commodore's first disk drive, the 2040, cost more than the computer itself, originally selling for $1195 - as much as a 16K Apple 2 (1979). It couldn't handle random access files and was unreliable. It was also significantly slower than the competition, including Apple, North Star, and Cromemco (the latter being two popular S-100 disk controllers). The Apple Disk sold for $595, a breakthrough price at the time. To be fair, the 2040 was a dual drive, but that was an extravagance at the time.

              The C64 didn't ship until 1982 (5 years after the ones I mentioned!) was basically a toy and wasn't competitive for serious applications. Yes, it sold lots. It was cheap (not inexpensive

          • Yep, and after Wozniak left, Jobs spent as much time as possible locking down all the hardware. Thanks Steve!

            The Apple //gs was the last great Apple computer.
        • Apple is not a ground braker in that they create markets where none existed. They are a ground breaker in that they launch a product that completely redefines an existing market.

          Apple I and II* -- arguably the first personal computers; the Apple II wasn't just the first, it also had features such as self-configuring expansion card slots that allowed expansion cards to be inserted and *just work* (it took IBM and Microsoft to invent driver and interrupt hell)
          Apple II floppy drive -- cheaper and better than a
      • Maybe so. There's a lot of room for improvement. The portable video players from Creative are little more than a PocketPC with hard drive storage. Over two years ago, I could rip movies to a 320x240 WMV file and play them on a PDA. They shrank down to 100MB, so you could fit two full length movies on a 256MB flash card. The problem with recoding video is it takes hours even on a fast PC, and it's illegal to rip them from DVDs.

        Right now the most popular portable video players are those $150 portable DVD play

    • Re:The more he says no... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by blamanj ( 253811 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @06:03PM (#13609462)
      iTunes != iPod

      It makes a lot of sense to have video in iTunes where you have the bandwidth to command and your full monitor to display.

      The trademark thing had to be expanded to include images anyway, may as well add video to be safe. Not that it won't happen some day, but I'd bet on the desktop first.

    • If anybody could do it... but... (Score:5, Informative)

      by sterno ( 16320 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @06:20PM (#13609594) Homepage
      Devices that do video... have not been successful yet. No-one's figured out the right formula.

      There's a lot of good reasons why this hasn't taken off. While Apple might be able to get a nicer than average player, they will have a few snags:

      1) The existence of MP3 players was preceeded by a number of people having collections of digital music and a need for a way to play them.

      2) It's relatively trivial to rip a CD. It's not exactly legal to rip a DVD, and downloadable video is till in it's infancy and has all kinds of DRM issues.

      3) In a person's average day, how often do they have an opportunity to watch video on a portable device where there's no better means to do it. That is, in most situations, I could play video on my TV, my desktop, or my laptop with superior quality and no noticeable sacrifice of convenience.

      Have you ever tried to put a DVD on your computer. Beyond the fact, that you're violating the DMCA, it takes hours to pull the data off the DVD and then re-encode it in a compressed format. You'd better have a good reason to go through that hassle, and frankly most people don't.

      Now if video was built into a device that you already had, it might make sense. But I just don't see any good reason to buy a portable video device for it's own sake.
      • 1) true
        2) true
        3) depends, I have a lot of hurry up and wait in my job.

        I can do it in slightly better than real time, still not trivial, but very doable.
        I really liked my Archos, till it started having issues. My biggest gripe is that I can't play my preferred encoding schema in it. If they would support xvid I would buy a new one.
        Also,
        The damn Phillips DVD player with MP4 support borkes on xvid as well, anyone know of some open firmware for that thing?

        As to being worth it: All my DVDs are

  • The "right formula" (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @05:55PM (#13609386)
    Something tells me that the "right formula" for a video iPod involves pr0n.

  • THANK YOU APPLE!!! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by iamhassi ( 659463 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @05:55PM (#13609391) Journal
    thank you soooo much for not trying to throw everything + the frinkin kitchen sink into a device!

    You have no idea how tired I am of these crazy convergence devices that play mp3s, watch movies, take photos, check emails, play games, cellphone, organizer, calender, does GPS... but doesnt do any of them well!

    iPods do one thing and do it very very well, and that's all i want it to do, play music.... oh, and view photos, and really that's even too much on the teeny screen.

    • I totally agree... They should always keep a base iPod that just plays music.

      I also think that they should allow for attachments (such as a camera) that people can add on if they want to complicate their device.

      As for me, I keep things separate and simple.

    • Re:THANK YOU APPLE!!! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Bastian ( 66383 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @06:02PM (#13609452)
      Quite honestly, I'd love for Apple to still have a non-photo, black-and-white screened iPod. Mine is starting to age, and I've finally acquired enough music that it won't all fit on the thing at once. I'd much rather not spend the extra $50 (or $100, whatever) for the color screen and photos. I don't need colors to be able to read the name of a song, and I don't think I'll be looking at photos while I'm driving, walking down the street, reading in the park, whatever.

      All I want is a nice simple device that Just Plays Music, and Does It Well(tm).

      • Re:THANK YOU APPLE!!! (Score:3, Informative)

        by nunchux ( 869574 )
        I'd much rather not spend the extra $50 (or $100, whatever) for the color screen and photos.

        You're not. The 20 gig with color screen is the same price as last years' 20 gig with black and white (both $299), they didn't raise the price. Actually, it's cheaper than earlier ipods with smaller capacity (at one point a 15 gig was $399.)

        The difference in price for color over b&w screens is likely pennies for Apple, not $50 or $100.
    • I don't think most customers want the extra features and the additional features, it will just raise the price and drop popularity. Sure having a Radio seems nice but with a 1000 songs in your pocket, and features such as the shuffle, why do you really want to listen to the radio. I am sure there are some people like listening to the news and the annoying morning hosts. But for those people just get a portable radio for less then $20 By putting a radio in an I pod will probably add an additional $50 to the

    • Re:THANK YOU APPLE!!! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by spyrral ( 162842 )
      These kinds of posts are pure karma-whoring, and I wish people would stop modding them up. Cellphone, iPods, Gameboys, PDAs, and digital cameras all share the following components:
      • Display
      • CPU
      • User input device(scroll wheel, buttons, etc)

      They are basically computers. You never hear someone exclaim, "I don't want a device that does everything. I want a good wordprocessor, a good video game machine, a good webbrowser, etc" or if you do, you probably roll your eyes at the poor ludite. The idea that for s

      • Re:THANK YOU APPLE!!! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by soft_guy ( 534437 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @06:42PM (#13609747)
        If you didn't care about size, maybe.

        In that case, you could download iTunes for free and carry your computer around with you to listen to music.

        In fact, before I bought my iPod, that's just what I used to do. However, I have found that carrying my iPod to work is easier than carrying my PowerBook to work. Or jogging.
      • Because generally the embedded devices have to fit everything in firmware they are almost by default feature constrained. Furthermore, usually one design team manages the entire device (and if more than one design team, one manager owns the entire device). Because of this the design _will_ contain compromises. If it didn't it would be too late to market to make it worth producing. That is life.

        I want a cell phone, a media device (I like movies in my pocket, thus my purchase of an Archos), and possibly a

    • GPS? Music. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by lullabud ( 679893 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @06:34PM (#13609692)
      Man, GPS is something I wish Apple WOULD do, since no other vendors have a solution. Not one single vendor has a software that runs on OSX which will let you load maps into a consumer GPS device. I've e-mailed Magellan and Garmin and they both pretty much said "use windows." Ridiculous. I would really love to see a GPS with Apple quality integration...

      Digression aside, I do agree with you. I'm glad the iPod is a music device. That's all I want, music from my personal collection. No radio, no video. And that's what I have. :)

  • More features != Needed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dada21 ( 163177 ) * <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @05:55PM (#13609392) Homepage Journal

    Why is portable mini-video in demand at all? The iPod's greatest feature is how little attention it needs. I don't want it bogged down (bigger, worse battery life, more harassment from confused relatives) with more features.

    The article notes that the market currently has decided video is unnecessary. I'm sure Apple has dozens of features ready to release IF their test markets rate those features as "amazing" not just "useful."
    • I agree, in most cases portable video in an iPod form factor is ridiculous. However, it could be handy if I could grab a video podcast on my iPod every day. When you are talking about podcasting, it is literally the difference between radio and TV. A picture does make a big difference when you're taking about stuff OTHER than music... And people are podcasting just about everything.

  • Device that does video (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ampathee ( 682788 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @05:55PM (#13609393)
    How about a device that 'does video' via tv-out, rather than on a tiny little lcd screen? It could even have tv-IN as well - a mobile tivo kinda thing. That'd be real useful.

    Now go ahead and post links to the already existing devices that do this, but that I am unaware of :)
    • iPod Photo already added TV-out. Of course, the "video" is a photo slideshow with music, but all you need is the ability to decode video (firmware might do it, but something tells me something like H.264 might need a better CPU - maybe an XScale?)
    • Like one of those portable DVD players without a display? That would be nice, but they'd have to agree on a format first. It would be nice if it would have AVI, MPEG1-4, DivX OGG, WMV, RM and QT. If Apple makes it it will probably be QT and MPEG1. When MS makes on it will probably be DRMed WMV only.
      There are too many formats and they're not all going to be supported by any one player.
    • What I would much rather have is a media player that can read from USB and Firewire disks.

      I currently have a DVD player that can play CDs and DVDs containing many common video formats, and i think it's great, but it means I use a whole lot of discs just to get the stuff to my TV.

      I would LOVE it if I could just drop a video onto my iPod (or any other portable drive or flash device) and just plug it into the player.
    • If you're going to connect it to a TV, you're going to have a coaxial, component or s-video dongle, and if you're going to have that apparatus plugged in you might as well plug in power while you're at it since video hardware sucks power like mad, and if you're carrying that stuff around then it's probably not too much to carry a 12" laptop.

      Of course there are all the other solutions people offered... Never heard of any of them? Yeah, that's what Steve Jobs is saying. Real big market there...
    • Webbrowser/RSS feedreader, Voiceover on speed, and an MP3 encoder. Boom. Instant podcast from any news site.

    • Re:Device that does video (Score:5, Informative)

      by garcia ( 6573 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @06:43PM (#13609751)
      I have an Archos AV400. It does TV-in and TV-out as well as music, USB hard drive, etc.

      It solves the problem posed by another poster about ripping and saving a DVD to the device. You can record straight to the device and watch it back on the LCD (for encrypted DVDs saved to the archos you cannot TV-out) or to TV-out.

      I have all Family Guy episodes, all three Star Wars DVDs (for the wife), mulitple TV shows recorded via Tivo's "record to VCR" function, several GBs of music, and backups from my home network.

      Yeah, it's a bit bulkier than what the iPod lovers expect but I wouldn't trade it for an iPod ever.

    • Laptop (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Paul Slocum ( 598127 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @07:17PM (#13609968) Homepage Journal
      Mine's got a standard S-video out. It plays regular DVDs, has a big enough hard drive to store a lot of video, and the screen is actually big enough to comfortably watch a movie or TV show, plus it supports HD resolutions. I can even set up the S-Video out as a secondary monitor and watch a movie or TV off of it while I work. As far as I'm concerned, it's the ideal portable video device, and that was a significant motivator for me buying it.

      I don't see any need for it to be smaller. For any place that I actually want to watch video, a laptop will fit just fine.

  • A 100GB is all I want. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MrArmyAnt ( 847547 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @05:55PM (#13609394) Homepage
    I love the iPod, but won't buy one till they reach 100GB, the size of my music collection. I think iPod is going in the right direction right now, releasing too many new products at once seems to stun the market, and then you get those pople sitting around wiating for the latest and greatest. Subtle changes everys often is fine, but that would be a bit too major, just after the Nano replaced the mini.
    • Anyone who has 100GB of music has 96GB of crap.

      Prove me wrong.

      • You insensitive clod! I only have 90G of music!
      • Ever hear of a little thing called Apple Lossless? I have over 200 GB of music, and while I obviously don't listen to all of it, most of it is from the 800 or so CDs I have bought and ripped. I listen to it through my stereo using my Airport Express. I can now get rid of my CDs. And while my 60 GB iPod isn't big enough for my entire collection, it'll have to do for now. Either way, it's not that hard to acquire a large collection of music that is not crap.
        • I can now get rid of my CDs.

          Then why did you buy the CDs in the first place?

          Either way, it's not that hard to acquire a large collection of music that is not crap.Yes it is. Even with Lossless codecs 100gb is a lot of music. If you tell me you're a DJ or you have it for some proffesional reason that one thing, but no one can possibly have 100GB of music that they like. Sound to me like you're a digital pack rat and I can prove it. What song do you have the most versions of and what are the differences?

          • Even with Lossless codecs 100gb is a lot of music.

            Compact Disc Digital Audio has been out for about 20 years, or roughly 1043 weeks. Buy one CD every three weeks (say through one of those music clubs) and you have 347 CDs. Given that each CD is about 0.3 GB when encoded using Shorten, FLAC, or similar codecs, you're up to 104 GB.

            That said, you could transcode to 192 kbps AAC or something else that's totally transparent in a noisy (outdoor or motor-vehicle) playing environment when copying songs to yo

          • Re:A 100GB is all I want. (Score:5, Insightful)

            by dal20402 ( 895630 ) * <<dal20402> <at> <mac.com>> on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @08:24PM (#13610339) Journal
            Then why did you buy the CDs in the first place?

            For my 170GB of losslessly compressed, mostly classical music, I bought the CDs because no significant amount of classical music is available online, and if it were, the codec would suck.

            Out of that 170GB, I'd say maybe 10GB is crap, and even that I keep for a reason. The rest is either good or essential -- my "essentials" playlist, which I use compressed on my 60GB iPod, is around 90GB. (A 100GB iPod would fit my collection comfortably if it were compressed to 256k AAC.)

            When you're not dealing with the artificial 4-minute song format collections grow quickly.

            What song do you have the most versions of and what are the differences?

            I have five recordings of Bruckner's 7th: Chailly, Harnoncourt, Szell, and two by Masur (with Leipzig and the NY Phil). I have some specific reason, usually a great reading of a particular moment, for keeping each in the collection. Other than that, I don't have more than three versions of any work, and even duplicates are kind of rare.

  • At a guess (Score:5, Funny)

    by Frogbert ( 589961 ) <frogbert@nOSpAm.gmail.com> on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @05:55PM (#13609396)
    Using my superior pattern recognition skills I've deduced that a iPod Pico will be forthcomming.

    • Re:At a guess (Score:3, Interesting)

      by forkazoo ( 138186 )
      I'm holingout for the iPod Femto.

      That said, ipodlinux.org has been working on a video player...

      http://ipodlinux.org/Video_player [ipodlinux.org]

      They also have a working Doom port. Neither is quite perfect yet. I have a feeling that there is considerable room for improvement, but I've only just started to look through the source, and the iPod's LCD interface is surprisingly baroque for somebody used to having either easy access to a frame buffer, or mature accelerated video drivers... :(

      I don't think anybody has done anyt
    • Unfortunately the prototype of the iPod Pico was swallowed by Steve Jobs' cat, thus production will be delayed indefinitely.

  • WiFi would be nice (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tkrotchko ( 124118 ) * on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @05:56PM (#13609398) Homepage
    Syncing without plugging in cables would be appreciated. That's my prediction for the next incremental improvement in the full-sized iPod.

    • 802.11 isn't likely ... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Stan Chesnutt ( 2253 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @06:09PM (#13609509) Homepage
      802.11 protocols (11b, 11g, 11a) all consume too much power: you would suck the battery dry in no time. Of course, if you had the external power cable connected, then the battery wouldn't drain. But once you've connected the external power, you are probably using a powered USB2 or Firewire cable, in which case you're also connected to your computer.

      ergo, wifi ain't practical at this point. The good news is that chip manufacturers such as Intel and Broadcom are making WIFI mac and phy chips smaller, cheaper, and more power-thrifty every calendar quarter. There might be something really cool next year.

  • Ok... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Raindance ( 680694 ) <johnsonmx@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @05:56PM (#13609400) Homepage Journal
    The question is, whatever Apple plans to do, why would they say anything else after this latest ipod (nano) launch?

    You don't cannibalize your business with promises of imminent future products with more capabilities.

  • Seems silly to me. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kuzb ( 724081 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @05:56PM (#13609404)
    Why would you publish an article on the front page of Slashdot that essentially says "There is nothing happening with ipods right now"? Doesn't it make more sense to say something when there IS something going on?
  • It seems to me that the device doesn't matter nearly so much as the content. When some company can figure out how to get consumers the content that they're looking for, then that company will be successful.

    Apple did it with music, why not video? I'd put even money on them figuring it out.
  • There are successful devices that play video. They include the PSP and the Gameboy. That's where Apple should be headed with the iPod.
  • Apple are sticking to a known formula and single function, which they've arguably perfected in the iPod. They've added photo support and the like over time, but the main focus of the device has always retained music. I think if consumer demands started switching toward video, we'd see a significantly different product (and name, most probably), it doesn't seem to be Apple's style to kludge increasing functionality into a single device.
  • Watching a movie on a 3" screen simply won't cut it for anyone. Except, maybe, on a plane or bus ride. Not for very long though. Maybe that's just me.

    Unfortunately, due to the paradigm surrounding portability, smaller device = smaller viewing area for video.

    Now, what I would like to see is a portable video projection unit the size of an iPod, or similar device. It would cast the video onto a wall, or other surface. It's very important that the device be able to stand on its own (using a stand of course). I
  • And even if they were going to, they wouldn't tell you anyways because that would devalue current their current stock of MP3 players. Theres your NaCl.

  • It still makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) * <jhummel@jo[ ]ummel.net ['hnh' in gap]> on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @06:01PM (#13609446) Homepage
    Right now, the iPod does its "one thing" very well: play music.

    Adding radio would be bad for it since that would detract from Apple's goal to have the iTunes store be the center of all Internet audio traffic - whether that be music, books, podcasts, etc. Right now, they may not *host* all of those files - but they are the gatekeeper, and can use it as a sort of Long Tail approach: if they are the way to all online audio, and the only way out is through iTunes or the iPod, then they control the audio future.

    As for the video side, the biggest issue is "how to do it right" which Mr. Jobs is right to ask. Video would be good for a minority of iPod users. Would I like to see it? Sure - but again, I'm probably in the minority who, while traveling, don't mind looking at a little screen (right now, I rip my DVD's to my PSP for the 4 hour plane flight - when I'm not reading or playing my DS, or, even more likely, trying to sleep).

    Video will take some time, I think. They're building some options into the iTunes store now (movie trailers, music videos, and the like), but distribution is still an issue, even over bandwidth lines.

    My own video dream would be a Tivo like device, where I could order movies or TV episodes I've missed (say, $1 an episode or $15 for the whole season). A device in the living room would either do it all for me through a Tivo like system and either store the movies in my local computer system, let me download them to the movie device and upload to my computer later, or burn them to DVD's. (You know - like the Tivo should, if the damn guys would update their OS X software to support 10.4.)

    Until then, Apple's got a good thing going, and they don't want to muck it up. I'm sure they could have a video iPod out within 60 days just with some changes in the chipsets (I remember an Ars Techana issue over the kind of chips they use now, and how the new genereration of the same chipset supports video with better power options. For all we know, they're used in the iPod Nanos now, so a firmware/software upgrade would add basic video support).

    Perhaps in time the iPod could be used with a special cradle that plugs into the TV so you can take your iMovie made shows over to other people's houses to show off the videos.

    But for now, leave the iPod as it is - it does 90% of what I want it to do now, and the other 10% is so specialized I can supply that need myself.
    • Plus, why make a radio fit in when you can get a perectly good portable radio for a tenner?
  • radio may be dead if you live in the middle of nowhere and get one pop station

    but i live in midtown manhattan, so i get unbelievable listening choices over radio... everything from classical to jazz to country to bbc to classic rock to one station that plays reggaeton nonstop all day, would that ever appeal to me

    and for such a listener as me, i chose the iRiver IFP-180T simply because it has a radio tuner, and would never buy an iPod, because i can't believe apple wouldn't devote the 50 cents it would cost to put a radio tuner in there

    seriously, apple: do cost-benefit analysis of a radio tuner... how much does the circuitry cost? what kind of new listening choices do you receive in return?

    seems like a no-brainer to me!

    and please, enough with the "radio is dead" refrain: just because you can't get a good station in east bohunk arkansas doesn't mean that those who live in a major city should be denied the 50 cents of added circuitry... besides, you couldn't imagine that even in a rural area a radio tuner might be useful during say, a crisis or disaster when electric is hit?

    and it's not even like radio is peripheral to the function of an iPod: listening to music!

    if sony could figure that out with the walkman in 1980, why can't apple in 2005?

    i seriously do not understand why radio isn't included... and every "in my rural area the local pop station sucks" argument against its inclusion is steamrolled by how little it costs to add the dang thing

    radio is NOT dead
    • how much bigger would the ipod be if it had a radio that got good reception?

    • seriously, apple: do cost-benefit analysis of a radio tuner... how much does the circuitry cost? what kind of new listening choices do you receive in return? ... how much money can you make by selling music downloads to people who listen to the radio?

    • Re:the exclusion of radio is pretty stupid (Score:4, Insightful)

      by GlassHeart ( 579618 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @07:14PM (#13609942) Journal
      i chose the iRiver IFP-180T simply because it has a radio tuner, and would never buy an iPod, because i can't believe apple wouldn't devote the 50 cents it would cost to put a radio tuner in there

      seriously, apple: do cost-benefit analysis of a radio tuner... how much does the circuitry cost?

      If a radio tuner takes up negligible space, no engineering or manufacturing effort, and costs $0.50 to include in every iPod, then it would cost Apple $2.5M every quarter if it sold 5 million iPods in the span. Assuming Apple makes $50 per iPod sold, it would have to sell an additional (i.e., to people like you) 50,000 iPods each quarter just to break even on the effort. Now, note that space, engineering, and manufacturing all cost real money, and a very small radio tuner (you wouldn't expect the form factor to change just for this, right?) just might cost more than $0.50 each.

      If there aren't significantly more than 200,000 of you every year, then your radio tuner would probably not be a standard part of the iPod. Hope this helps.

  • 2 + 2 = 4 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by That's Unpossible! ( 722232 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @06:06PM (#13609486)
    The coolest thing about the ipods with photo capabilities are that they have video out and let you do slideshows from your ipod to your TV. I have no interest in browsing photos on my ipod, but being able to show photos from a recent trip so easily is awesome.

    Now you see iTunes with video podcast support. How far behind are movie/TV show sales?

    The video ipod's draw won't be so much in watching videos on the tiny little screen, but in sending them out to your TV.

    Hmmm, Quicktime now does HD decoding, ergo iTunes does HD decoding. How hard will it be to put those algos in a video ipod? How cheaply (and efficiently, size-wise) can Apple fit an HD video decoder into an ipod?

    Kind of the idea that Mark Cuban was touting recently -- what's the distribution method of the future for movies? He says, hard drives. Well, Apple just so happens to sell lots of hard drives... with nice white interfaces wrapped around them. And they've got the most popular, legal media distribution store on the planet.

    C'mon folks, 2+2 = ...

    P.S. I had to post this through an anonymizing service, because Slashdot's fucked moderation system has deemed me a troll. This is based on a couple downmods received, versus how many +3, +4, +5 posts I've had in the past few weeks? Is there any logic to their system at all? I have Excellent karma and a huge track record of non-troll behavior. Another reason I've stopped subscribing to this place.
    • How hard will it be to put those algos in a video ipod? How cheaply (and efficiently, size-wise) can Apple fit an HD video decoder into an ipod?

      It can be done, but not cheaply, and the chips would seriously stress the currently limited spaces within the iPod. Not to mention that HD chips are currently pretty expensive, and you'd need to more than double the processing power in the iPod to effectively playback video and audio and have them synchronized (probably more so for HD as it has more than double t

  • Video iPod = Never (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ecko3437 ( 802386 )
    I'll tell you why there will never be a video iPod:

    No one wants to sit there and hold an iPod up so they can watch a video. Think about it, whenever we watch video, the source is something like a computer monitor or a TV screen -- stationary things.

    Now imagine trying to hold up and be able to view it comfortably for any period longer than five minutes. It would just get tiring. Who wants to hold an iPod to their face for two hours?

  • Perfect for music videos (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Matt Perry ( 793115 ) <<perry.matt54> <at> <yahoo.com>> on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @06:10PM (#13609512)
    Devices that do video... have not been successful yet.
    Right. I don't want to watch a whole movie on my iPod screen. However, something short like a music video purchased via iTMS is something I could go for. In fact, that seems like an untapped market. Can you purchase music videos, at least without purchasing an entire DVD with every video ever made for an artist? There are some nice music videos out there that I would pay 99 cents to download.

  • Bring back the Newton (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Fished ( 574624 ) <(moc.liamg) (ta) (yrogihpma)> on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @06:11PM (#13609525)
    What I really want is an ipod with a touch screen and some PDA software. I tend to think it would be possible (perhaps even easy) to implement the ipod's trademark jog-wheel on a touch screen, and having a 60GB hard drive in a PDA would rock. Plus, it would actually work WELL with Macs, unlike most of the other PDAs on the market.

    Bring back the Newton, Steve!

  • Video devices get used to watch prOn, and when that happens SIZE MATTERS!
  • "No-one's figured out the right formula."

    Yet.

    But when WE do it, it'll be the right way.

  • I tried watching a movie on my phone (Score:3, Informative)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @06:20PM (#13609588)
    just for the fun of it, i converted a full length feature into a 3GP file (just under 50mb) and uploaded it into my Motorola V635i.

    I don't know if the battery would last the whole movie, and I'm not sure I'd watch a full length feature on such a small screen, but I gotta admit that video playback is a fun toy to play with.

    I think Apple should add video capability to an iPod, just cuz they probably can and it wouldnt be complicated. Plus Quicktime plays 3GP as well.
  • Right formula = DRM the MPAA will accept?

  • Video iPod in 5-10 years (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FlynnMP3 ( 33498 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @06:26PM (#13609644)
    What made the iPod so successful? 1) Integration, 2) Ease of use, 3) Design purity.

    So let's apply that to the mythical video iPod.
    1) Integration - Nearly there. A couple more generations of storage mediums and digital transfer interfaces will get us the required storage and speed.
    2) Ease of use. Quite a bit is needed here. There isn't even a clear idea on how people want to enjoy movies. One at a time? Snipits? (unknown). What about enjoying them while doing something else, like background music? Is that possible? One thing I would hope for is special goggles that go with it that present a large videoscape in front of you and have the audio cues necessary for multichannel sound. Both of those are possible today. Not in enough resolution yet.
    3 Design Purity. I am pretty confident that Apple could come up with a good hardware design that would appeal to large numbers of people.

    See? Not that hard. Just need to wait a few years.

    -FlynnMP3

  • No radio is why i dont have a ipod/nano yet (Score:3, Insightful)

    by deft ( 253558 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @06:36PM (#13609712) Homepage
    I run.... far.

    Music, no matter how much I can fit on it, gets repetitive. I want to be able to access local radio, AM and FM. Especially things like NPR and talk radio that is new every day. Long runs go by quick when you have something engaging to listen too.

    I was dicussing why they dont do radio yet, and I guess they'd rather force you to podcast it than just allow it real time.

    I'm not convinced this is bad, as i think the tivo is cool too... but i have a gallery of stations and programs I listen too now, and i dont want to wait to listen to them later (IF) they podcast.

    For that reason ilook at other MP3 players right now.

    For the time being, i use a am/fm radio. I'm so 1970's :)
  • "Devices that do video... have not been successful yet. No-one's figured out the right formula." ...that Apple was the pinnacle of innovation. Are you trying to tell me that the innovative geniuses at Apple can't come up with the video player that everyone will want?
  • The iPod rules the gym. No doubt. Being the gadget geek that I am I notice what people are using, and a lot have iPods. But I need a radio simply because my gym and many others use FM to distribute the audio from the TVs. I love watching TV with my cardio, so I am using an iRiver flash unit. I will still own an iPod, but if Jobs gave me an iPod with a radio I'd buy it even if it didn't add capacity just to use it at the gym.
  • There isn't a good formula because the screen size/device size curves don't intersect. Compromising screen size for device size will make the screen too small. Make the screen big enough, and the device becomes too big to be portable (think portable DVD players). Either way, a large chunk of people won't buy it. It won't be until this [slashdot.org] can play motion pictures that this problem will be worked out. By then, the iPod would have gone the way of the dinosaur in favor of Apple's newest MP3 player.

    Then, there are

  • No-one's figured out the right formula. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) ( 613870 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @06:48PM (#13609791) Journal
    Portable devices have tiny screens. I like to watch movies on big screens. So why would I buy a portable video player? There's nothing more horrible than spoiling a good movie by watching it on a tiny airliner screen embedded in the back of someone's seat. I don't see why a video iPod would be any better. Maybe a portable device that projects onto a big screen would be cool. Except it wouldn't be cool, if it generated enough lumens it'd be so hot it'd burn its way through the table.

  • No Video iPod coming, but close? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lying Superbastard ( 726438 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @07:16PM (#13609954)
    1. iTunes has a "hidden" component for handling video. 2. The Sony PSP can connect to and use a local network. 3. About a year ago, Jobs talked about Apple & Sony working together on the future of video. The Sony PSP as the "video iPod"? How big of a stretch would it be to load video from a computer running iTunes to a memory stick in a PSP if the capability was more obvious? My PSP will play content from QT 7 and AAC files, but I haven't moved anything to it wirelessly yet. Sony released a ceramic-white PSP in Japan about a week ago. It won't play UMD movies from Region 1, but if you need an idea about how a "video iPod" with a decent screen would look like, you could do worse. If it was an Apple-branded build with no UMD drive & replaced it with a 20G hard drive, I'd consider buying one. http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000997051360/ [engadget.com] Just saying, is all...

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