Handicapping the 6th Generation iPod

An anonymous reader writes "It's that time of the year again, when Apple rumors bloom with the fall foliage and the press is inundated with hype and wishful thinking. MP3 Newswire has a reasonably sober article addressing 17 of those rumors, even giving odds on the validity of each. From the article: 'It is the peripheral manufacturers that now have a heavy sway on what features the iPod will add to its 6th generation. The peripheral market has done more to cement Apple's proprietary technology as a standard than Apple itself, adding to the iPod's dominance. Mr. Jobs will not upset that balance without good reason and Apple's recent deal with Creative to make iPod peripherals shows he wants to feed it further. But the iPod needs something new to keep it fresh and ahead of the competition.'"

Apple is (mostly) on our side here

[QuantumFTL]

I think Apple's priorities here are fairly close to the average consumers (especially those who support copyright even if they dislike restrictive DRM). I trust Steve Jobs' business intuition enough that I don't believe the next generation iPod will be crippled, etc. Who knows what features apple has coming? It could be a new look, a new feel, maybe lighter and brighter? To be honest, I don't know what else I want out of an MP3 player, except easier booting of linux on the damn thing, for whatever reason I'd want that..

Only one thing

[NexFlamma]

There is only one thing that could actively cripple the iPod, and that is DRM.

Apple's machine has an insurmountable mindshare lead on the competition. They have reached the point where their product name is synonymous with it's purpose. Tell 50 people that you're going to the store to buy a DAP and they'll have no idea what you're talking about, but if you tell them you're going to buy an iPod, they'll smile and tell you all about how they think iPod's are the bee's knees.

However, if Apple falls into the trap of DRMing the iPod/iTunes interface to the point where it becomes too difficult for the average person to use quickly and efficiently (read: anything that takes more than 30 seconds will lose the average person's attention span), just to appease the music conglomerates, people will very quickly lose interest.

Luckily for Apple, they're smart enough to know this, and the powers that be in the recording industry are quickly realizing that they need Apple more than Apple needs them.

Re:it needs a phone

[NexFlamma]

Correction: Apple sabotaged Motorola's ability to be the one profitting from that phone.

Eventually you'll see your iPhone, but that time will not be until Apple is the only force behind it.

Re:Well

[NexFlamma]

As much as I'm going to be burned alive for saying this, the reality is that no one outside of the Slashdot/IT/geek-cred camp cares (or even knows) about OGG support. You could do a poll of 100 people anywhere on the planet and maybe 1 or 2 of them would know what OGG is, and of those 1 or 2, I'd be amazed if they would request it on a DAP.

People know what an MP3 is, and talking about OGG and AAC and Apple Lossless just confuses them. Confusion leads to aversion. Aversion leads to fewer sales for Apple. Hence, you're going to have to get by without your OGG supporting iPod.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

Riiiight - So Apple CAN spend the time to do "Apple Lossless" (which the market place was begging for at the time - NOT) but CAN'T take a chunk of free code without encumbrances (key point) and implement it? Logitec Mice have always been supported in all their glory (well most of it) yet no where (except for the astroturfers on /.) does Apple "rave" about it - "I imagine" it's a silent feature! The real difference is Apple's ability to control the market and technology. Last time we saw a dominant company actively ignore free software in favour of proprietary (DRM) formats was - wait for it.... Microsoft, yet there was not an army of FUD drones insisting it was all in our best interests.... But because it's Apple - it's all good? wake up to yourself.... please.

Re:Well, the article suggests that

[1u3hr]

Maybe they should use a glass display. What do you mean you don't fancy having a fragile piece of glass in your pocket.

There are extremely tough glasses, eg as used on quality watches.

Re:Well

[klang]

And yet, every time speculation on the next generation iPod starts, people ask for:

- ogg (Face it, it's the BetaMax of this decade. Cross encode to mp3 and get over it.)
- replacable battery (plastic latch => worse design. Battery packs are available for those who need it)
- FM radio (can be bought as an extention => extra sales to Apple + lower unit cost)
- WiFi (which can not replace a wired connection => extra cost for Apple)
- BlueTooth (headsets are not universally accepted yet => unknown by Joe Sixpack => no benefits for Apple)
- CF, SD card bay (ext. for camera available. oh, to transfer music? get real.)

A new one:
- IM integration (I am listening to music in my world => do not disturb)

Re:it needs a phone

[heffeque]

Motorola has always made extremely unstable phones. It's no surprise that that one was buggy too.

Re:Well

[NexFlamma]

Correction: Those are things that we ask for.

You're falling into the trap of assuming that we are the average consumer group, when in reality, the average iPod consumer is the 14 year old kid whose parents bought him or her and iPod for a birthday present to keep the kid from bitching about how all of his friends have one, but they don't.

Do you think that a kid who believes 50 Cent to be the voice of his generation is going to have any idea about open formats and removable memory/battery benefits?

Just because a group happens to be VERY vocal about their desires, they are not necessarily the majority, or even the most desired demographic.

Re:Well

[JonathanBoyd]

Apple wanted to use ALE for transmitting music over wireless to Airport Express, so there was reason to create it anyway. And for ALE is a greater improvement over WAV than OGG Vorbis would be over MP3 or AAC.

Re:Apple is (mostly) on our side here

[timeOday]

To be honest, I don't know what else I want out of an MP3 player, except easier booting of linux on the damn thing, for whatever reason I'd want that..

I think that's Apple's problem right there. MP3 playing, in itself, is practically a free add-on for any device with a bit of storage space and a display. Much simpler than designing a good cell phone, I'd argue. I recently noticed an ad for a GPS device. After describing all the GPS functions, they casually mentioned that it is also an mp3 player. I can't see why every cellphone made in the near future would not have a good mp3 player in it. 1 GB flash retails for $25 now, and the power required to power headphones isn't much.

Re:It is already DRMed. Was:Only one thing

[thatguywhoiam]

Sure, but the only real reason one would need to retrieve songs from an iPod would be after a re-format, and god knows that the average user simply does not reformat all that often. Hence this DRM is not really a worry for them.

There is another legitimate reason: limited HD space.

Up until a year ago, my girlfriend had an old 500Mhz white iBook (20GB drive) and a 20GB iPod. So logically she figured she had 40 gigs to store music. But because of the iPod's one-way street (at least with iTunes) you really only have 20GB again, as the iPod simply mirrors what you have on your HD. You can't use it as 'additional' storage unless you put the songs on the data partition, and then you can't access them on-the-go with the iPod.

Re:It is already DRMed. Was:Only one thing

[eraserewind]

You are cutting Apple slack because of a historical system (CD sales) that they have nothing to do with. Apple's sales are DRMed. CD sales are not (well, more or less) Apple seeks to replace CD sales with iTunes sales. Apple seeks to replace DRM free sales with DRM sales. And it's precicely the slashdot crowd that is not inconvenienced by DRM. It's those who don't know any better.

Re:it needs a phone

[soft_guy]

Motorola has always made extremely unstable phones. It's no surprise that that one was buggy too.

No one knows whether the ROKR is buggy or not because when people heard "holds 100 songs", no one bought one to find out whether it was buggy.

Re:What it will be

[Anonymous Coward]

The new device will be 4" by 6" by 0.75. The unit will be white plastic. All sides will be flat except all corners are rounded. There are no controls on the device except a hold switch. There will be an iPod dock port and a headphone jack and an infrared port. The entire front will be a touch sensitive 16:9 color screen. The front is touch sensitive.

This is all speculation. But it is perfectly logical and CAN BE DONE NOW. Well worth $500. I don't know if it comes out next week but you can bet the farm it will come out.

You might have some trouble finding a 4x6 16:9 screen.

(Bold for emphasis mine.)

Re:Apple is (mostly) on our side here

[ceoyoyo]

No no no! Hands off my iPod.

You're describing a handheld computer -- a little Newton or Palm Pilot or something. I'd love to see one from Apple, but I wouldn't like to see the iPod turned into one.

Apple has been very good about resisting feature creep in the iPod.

Re:What I'd like to see...

[moggie_xev]

A2DP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A2DP [wikipedia.org]

The quality is good way above 8KHz. They are the best wireless headphones I have used ( my wired set are grado 60s )

Re:Dopey Alert!

[mrchaotica]

If you won't buy a player with DRM, why did you buy the SanDisk? It does have DRM (namely, "PlaysForSure") on it, you know!

Re:DRM IS GETTING worse on the ipod already!

[fbartho]

dude that's different than DRM, the actual filename is not what matters to the IPOD, it reads the name of the track from the ID3 tags. Those folders and names of files are a hash of somekind for the track and a unique ID for the track. Look at the Itunes Library.xml file that stores the description of your library on your computer. Each track has a unique ID as well as each playlist and the playlists simply reference the unique ID's of the tracks they contain. Blame the industry that made it such that you couldn't officially remove the files from your IPOD, that made it a possibility for the programmers to optimize the internal workings of tracking specific songs on the Ipod. Instead of manually trying to find the song you somehow lost within the official library, just use one of the 3rd party Ipod explorers to do the looking. They will scan the files and list them by their real name instead of the alpha numeric.

Re:It is already DRMed. Was:Only one thing

[k_187]

then don't buy an ipod? why bitch about something not being what you want when you aren't forced to buy it?