Handicapping the 6th Generation iPod 250
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.'"
They already have the last item (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't need a "ipod dock on a mini" to accomplish attaching a mini to any HDTV input, you just need to be able to get the content to it easily somehow. One friend of mine has had a mini attached to his HDTV for awhile now, and have most of his DVD's on the HD for play. The mini comes with a remote already, all that is missing is convenient movie sales via ITunes, or perhaps it shoud be renamed IMedia. And that seems to be a sure bet, given the "It's Showtime" announcement on Thursday.
IMHO we are on the cusp of a change in the way A/V is delivered to our tubes.... er.. i mean plasma/lcd/DLP/etc...
Re:Well (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Well (Score:5, Interesting)
Ahem (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It is already DRMed. Was:Only one thing (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
- Content purchased at iTunes has DRM on it. (yes there are programms or you could burn a purchased track and then rip/mix/burn it to remove the DRM.
Agreed, but I would be willing to bet that the majority of iPod owners get their music from CD's that are ripped into iTunes. While the iTMS may be terribly successful as an online retailer, it's still got a ways to go before it catches up with physical album sales. This DRM, while inconvenient to the
I've always had a theory that the DRM on iPod's is so easy to break by intention. Apple may be being forced to apply some DRM, but they don't have to put good DRM in place.
Re:Well (Score:3, Interesting)
Playlist management? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:it needs a phone (Score:4, Interesting)
However, the ads specifically mention their WMA compatibility, so maybe Apple might be missing the boat in this market.
(and, of course, one of the phones is ATRAC compatible. Care to guess which manufacturer makes that one?)
Re:Well (Score:1, Interesting)
To your average consumer they find files and they download them from wherever. If a garage band offers their stuff in OGG (however unlikely) and the consumer tries to put it on their iPod - it is a no-go, however if iPod supported it it would work an customers would be happy.
Sure the average person knows MP3 and little else, but those same people typically have file extension's hidden and determine a file's type based on icon. To them MP3 means music on a computer, not a file with a '.mp3' ext. All the iTunes software would need to do is to make the OGG icon appear like an MP3 icon and to the average user it would be transparent, while us more tech-orintated types are happy too as we don't need to transcode anything to play it on an iPod.
Re:Apple is (mostly) on our side here (Score:4, Interesting)
Historically they have never had a problem with incorporating software and hardware features into the Mac that have wiped out third party markets, and they've never been the best partner for retail stores (even before they had their own / own online store).
My favourite rumour (the one I hope is true) is the one about Dashboard widgets for iPods, of which there was some hint buried somewhere.
Given that Nokia phones are using a WebKit based browser, it is not too fanciful to imagine a WebKit port to the iPod, and Widgets would provide a nice sandbox for third party applications on the iPod. With a wifi connection that would be even more useful than just 'sync' based. I'm sure power issues could be addressed there (i.e. don't keep WIfi powered on, until it's actually used). Web access via BT-enabled mobile phones seems a more 'mobile' solution. I can't see a fully fledged web browser yet, given the limitations of browsing on the PSP - but I'd love to have my basic set of widgets on a mobile device.
I can just see Jobs casually pulling out his 6G iPod and showing it tracking some ebay auctions, then the Weather widget, sports results, etc - that level of functionality seems to have the right 'fit' for mobile browsing, but the typical Dashboard widget looks far better than any WAP page or Java App I've seen on a mobile.
What the iPod really needs... (Score:1, Interesting)
iNewton (Score:5, Interesting)
Hey, and if they could put a spot on the back for credit cards and money, I could leave my wallet at home too!
iPod with drag and drop.. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Well, You can make your ipod play ogg... (Score:2, Interesting)
I got a 30GB Video ipod as a present (5gen), while I was looking for an irivier, because I wanted ogg vorbis support. But by the end of it, I came across the Rockbox [rockbox.org] firmware, which is an opensource replacement for the apple firmware, and provides a lot of extra features like:
Support for lots of codecs, including AAC,mp3,Ogg,ALAC,FLAC
Gapless playback
Replaygain support
Extensions in the form of plugins (including games)
Fully Theamable
Can copy songs both too it and from it, appears like a USB storage device
And others, but those are the ones I use. While Apple caters to the masses, who are not interested in things like vorbis support, for those of us that are, the option exists. As such I see little reason for apple to bother implementing it, as long as they do not try to prevent people doing it themselves.
Also Rockbox does not remove the apple firmware, so you can switch between the two, allowing you to use the Apple firmware (and iTunes) if you wish side by side with rockbox.
FM Transmitter would be nice (Score:3, Interesting)
And speaking of FM, why hasnt anyone made one with a AM receiver?
What it will be (Score:3, Interesting)
The device will work in multiple modes. As an iPod you hold it vertically. The entire screen shows the list of artists, menus and so forth. Touch anywhere on the screen and a translucent image of a click wheel appears. The location of the wheel varies a bit according to unit orientation and touch position. You use it as usual. Drag around the circle to scroll, tap or press to click in the five positions. The unit senses strength of touch by pressure on the case and/or variation in area of contact. Bluetooth allows loading stuff on the device albeit slowly, and using BT headphones.
The unit also works as a video player. The click wheel appears on top of the video as you touch. BT allows slow file transfers. Of course the port is high speed.
The unit also works as a learning remote control. A set of remote buttons appears on touch. It is an IR remote for CE devices, and a Bluetooth remote for your Mac. Your Mac shows a second screen on the screen of the device. Your touch controls the cursor and you can use guestures, and type if necessary on an onscreen keyboard. Fully control your Mac through this, ala Apple Remote Desktop. Audio output from Mac transmits to device so you can hear it. Using a bluetooth headset you can both hear the other Mac and transmit your voice to it, to control ot via Apple Speech recognition.
The unit also is a GSM quad band phone. You open the unit and put in your SIM card. Phone controls appear on the touch screen. Use BT headset and voice control.
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.
Re:it needs a phone (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple did? Multiple choice:
The first thing a person would want to do with such an iTunes-phone is download something from iTunes and use it as a ringtone. But you cannot do this with the ROKR. This is because:
a) Apple hates it when you buy songs off iTunes.
b) Motorola would rather you paid them $2.99 for the ringtones they already provide.
c) The technology to make this happen is just too hard and/or expensive.