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> It's a PDA.

Well, no, because it can access the laptops hardware, at least when the laptop isn't actually powered down.

http://www.portalplayer.com/preface/whitepaper.pdf

Reading is FUN-damental!

Why do you think adding video playback to an iPod would greatly increase the cost? As long as Apple can limit the resolution of the supported video, which it can, current-generation ARM or XScale chipsets are more than powerful enough to do the job - they're used in current-generation cell phones for just that kind of thing, right?

From the PortalPlayer website :

Our SoC platforms utilize dual 32-bit ARM7 microprocessor cores to provide scaleable performance.

And I suppose you can run Linux on a mouse?

You say "embedded controller", the documentation calls it "System-on-a-chip". So what? You think Intel wouldn't like to provide the processors for all those iPods? Combine that with increasing Mac sales, Apple should get some decent discounts.

Mind you, I'm no apologist for switching to Intel. I think Intel is just as capable as IBM of wandering off their roadmap or running out of gas halfway there (see: Itanium), and I find it ironic that Apple switches to x86 just as all the consoles seem to be switching to PPC. It will be very interesting to see how IBM chips compare to Intel chips over the next 5 years (in performance, power consumption and cost). I wouldn't put it past Apple to use both architectures for several more years, and even switch back solely to PPC if IBM comes through (or Intel doesn't), but I wouldn't bet on it.

I'm most concerned about Apple taking a step backwards from 64-bit, and moving to a clunky architecture, but that's because I'm interested in some things that benefit greatly from 64-bit processing and some machine-code generation. I regret the apparent shift away from Open Firmware, and a real shift backwards to the hoary old DOS partition format, but I'm truly thankful that they didn't switch to Itanium.

Actually the 4G ipod's processor has usb-on-the-go so it can act like a host or a client. Apple hasn't implemented the host mode yet & it might be tricky to get ipod linux to do that because there are no examples of its use in the standard firmware.

Looks like you're correct, thanks for catching that. I had gotten the impression that the 1-3 gen were single-core chipsets. In fact, they are dual core just like the 4Gs. The earlier ones are rated to 90Mhz, while the 4G is only rated to 80Mhz.

I looked up the spec sheets to double-check my info (and realized I was wrong.) Here they are in case anyone else wants to check them out:

PP5002 for 1-3 Gen iPods:
PP5002

PP5020 for 4+ Gen iPods:
PP5020

Looks like you're correct, thanks for catching that. I had gotten the impression that the 1-3 gen were single-core chipsets. In fact, they are dual core just like the 4Gs. The earlier ones are rated to 90Mhz, while the 4G is only rated to 80Mhz.

I looked up the spec sheets to double-check my info (and realized I was wrong.) Here they are in case anyone else wants to check them out:

PP5002 for 1-3 Gen iPods:
PP5002

PP5020 for 4+ Gen iPods:
PP5020

The article mentions a company called Portal Player. This is 'headquartered' in the USA, but it is in effect run from India. They run out of a couple of bunglows down my road and employ a few hundred people. It is now called PINEXE.
They supply design and supply chips for MP3 players. It is as silly to give entire credit to Apple for iPoD design, if the reproduction is good, it is not due to any new compression algorithm invented by Steve Jobs. Slashdotters know better.

The iPod's OS isn't MacOS. It isn't even made by Apple. They bought the OS and most of the hardware spec from PortalPlayer and then customized it to their liking.

He's probably talking about the fact that Apple doesn't offer the specs for the hardware inside the iPod so that he can run Linux on it and listen to Ogg... this is just my guess, but it's probably correct.

Mind, if he had looked at an iPod for a few minutes, he would have noticed that the guts of the iPod run on technology from PortalPlayer

Apple can't open what it doesn't own...

At any rate... you best remember that this is the same type of person who would likely complain that they can't get easy access to the instruction set documentation for the processor in their stereo receiver.... ie .... best just ignore him.

If I had the points left, I'd mod him down as a troll.

I think you hit the nail on the head there. If you look at the technology the iPod was built on you'll find it already supports WMA by default (it's the PortalPlayer PP5002 platform) - Apple must've disabled this in the firmware.

Like you said, they weren't going to let this happen as it'd have spoilt the Mac exclusivity that the iPod originally enjoyed and hamper adoption of their favoured codec, not to mention having to pay a per-player licence to Microsoft. They'd have to have had a massively good reason to keep WMA in, and there wasn't one. Simple as that!

the apple ipod (actually designed by a small company called portalplayer) uses two arm7 cpu's. however, it's not exactly what you'd call smp. it runs an rtos on each of the cpu's.

At the moment much of the possibilities for the hardware in the iPod is going unused, for whatever reasons.
It's difficult to tell exactly what the out-of-the-box features are, as precise details are closed... but:
There's a PP5002B-C in there, and the PP5002 product brief(pdf) states support for mp3 encoding, and decoding of mp3, wma, wma, aac and accelp.net formats. Of course, Apple use custom firmware which may not have all of these facilities.
There's also been talk of using the iPod for direct sharing over firewire. There's possibility of using IP-over-Firewire and running a webserver on the thing. There's a lot of fun possibilities out there, especially if a few more hackers get on board, although no alternative firmware will gain popularity until it has a simple UI, one of the things apple tend to be rather good at.
There's obviously a fair way to go with this uClinux project, and I'd expect much of it's initial progress has been made thanks to the ARM7TDMI port of UClinux - I'm not belittling the hard work of Bernard Leach here. The current mp3 and ogg playback is probably not as optimised as it could be with full knowledge of the portalplayer chip and the rest of the iPod's hardware. It would be great if information on the hardware would be opened up, but I don't see this happening for a while, in the mean time, get this man an official FDK!! (or maybe not, because of them damn legal issues).
All things said, looks like a great start, just wish I had an iPod....

Write ONCE media.
If cameras and PDA's were the target, this was the first fatal flaw.
(multisession sure, but that just eats up even more precious space)

EXPENSIVE MEDIA
($11.66 each, $0.46/MB. Compare that to MD- DATA2 650MB discs at $2.00 (And they're rewritable)

Digital Rights Managment, included FREE! for those who can't govern themselves.

Trying to fill a niche that the might of Sony couldn't for 10 years

Proprietary transport. With no S/PDIF digital out. In other words, NO FAIR USE.

UGLY and EXPENSIVE players.

Media -begging- to be lost.
How long do you think you could keep from losing this $11 gem??

I could add many more reasons but I have to get to work! ;)

Maybe we could keep this list growing and send it to the (out of work) CEO...but then again, I'm sure they already knew what a horrible format it was before unit 1 shipped. This is a blatant attempt to copy Minidisc's design and burden it down with DRM (as well as package and market it to kids) ---NEXT!

-=Chud-Wretch

Actually, the big problem is that the iPod player runs audio through a chip that takes MP3 audio on one pin and produces PCM audio on another. It's much harder to change hardware than software.

this is not the case with the iPod, which is based around a dual ARM system. all decoding is performed in software running on one of the ARMs. according to my friend / mole at PortalPlayer (which did the reference design the iPod is based on) the only reason OGG hasn't been added is that there has been little to no customer demand. there aren't any good technical reasons.

if you want OGG on your iPod, pester apple silly, who in turn will pester portalplayer to do the support.