Mini-iPod Mystery Drive Unveiled?

squiggleslash writes "One of the aspects of the '2G mini-iPod' rumour that's so far made it unlikely is the lack of a tiny, cheap, 2G, drive. Well, today Cornice has announced a 2G hard drive (PDF, 100k) that fits the bill. It's available for about $70 in lots of 100,000. The Mac Rumour sites are going faily nuts over this for obvious reasons. The reason the drive is so cheap is that it contains virtually no driver electronics, there's not even a memory buffer - this is the equivalent of a 1980's RLL or MFM drive. At $70 it seems unlikely that the mini-iPod, assuming it's announced tomorrow, will be under $100, but on the other hand the original iPod sold for the same price as the harddrive inside it. Here's hoping..."

Comments

I wonder....

[Taboo]

how the hard drive data density trend compares with Moore's Law.

Re:I wonder....

[Anonymous Coward]

In 1994 I thought I was a bad ass because I had dual 420 MEGAbyte (not gig) hard drives which I paid almost $270 each for. Today I can get a 300 GIGAbyte drive for $284. Ten years later, 714x larger in capacity - Moore's law doesn't have shit on that. It seemed like only a few years of time passed when hard drives reached the magical $1 per megabyte until they hit $1 per gigabyte (about 5yrs or so).
Is your current CPU 500x faster than it was 10 years ago, NO!

Other uses

[pvt_medic]

While this may allow for an iPod that I can finally be able to afford. I am more interested in the implicationgs for other handheld devices like palm pilot. This is just another step towards having fully functioning PC in a handheld device.

$70 for a 2 gig drive!

[strider69666]

Jesus, that gave me a flashback! A bad one too. For a second there, I was reliving shelling out $200 for 64Mb of PC66 RAM. But seriously, what kind of seek time does a micro 2Gb drive have with no buffer and virtually no electronics? And how many platters is it/could it use?

Re:$70 for a 2 gig drive!

[msgmonkey]

Well even seek times of even 100ms would be more than acceptable for playing back compressed audio. Transfer rate would n't need to be high either, 0.5mb/sec would mean most songs could be cached to memory in a few seconds.

Re:$70 for a 2 gig drive!

[wrmrxxx]

The marketing brochure at the Cornice web site lists the transfer rate for the new drive as 4.5 MB/s (that's megabytes, not megabits), or more than 280 times the rate required for 128Kb/s audio playback. You need it to be much faster than the audio playback rate so that you can run the drive only for some of the time and cache the data in memory, therefore using less power.

It also lists the average power consumption for typical audio playback as only 4mW. That assumes that you have 32MB of memory available as a cache and that the audio is 64Kb/sec.

Interestingly, the brochure also claims that the electrical interface to the device uses true IDE mode. Using a well established standard like this means that just about anyone could interface with it - I would love to get my hands on one of these to put into my own MP3 player, but it doesn't look like this company is particular interested in selling single drives to people like me. Using a standard IDE interface also means that existing hardware and software drivers can be re-used: for example there are USB2 to IDE bridge chips that could (in theory) connected directly to this drive for a portable MP3 player, and there is also plenty of GPL'ed code for interfacing to IDE devices.

BOM Cost...

[jasno]

$70/100k? So maybe apple buys 500k and gets it for $55.. Add in the electronics and case tooling... Probably costs apple $90 to make. That'd put the cost around $150-$180, unless they want to sell it at cost, but then its still pushing $125.

Just my 2 cents...

Re:BOM Cost...

[laird]

"70/100k? So maybe apple buys 500k and gets it for $55.. Add in the electronics and case tooling... Probably costs apple $90 to make. That'd put the cost around $150-$180, unless they want to sell it at cost, but then its still pushing $125."

I think that even at $199 a 2 GB iPod could really excite people. $150 would be pretty amazing, but then Apple's margins would be pretty low (relative to the current iPods) so it'd have to be a volume play.

Perhaps Apple could bundle pre-paid music from iTMS, to make the effective price $100? For example, $199 bundled with $100 of music is kinda like a $100 iPod. Music companies do discounted promotional bundles all the time, so this wouldn't be far fetched. And for bundling with an iPod, it could be pre-loaded on the hard drive, or pre-paid (gift certificate) to download from iTMS, so there would be no physical costs, just licensing costs. Or perhaps each iPod comes with $100 of sode (which gives iTunes away)? :-)

Re:BOM Cost...

[r0b0t b0y]

this is very unlikely as, it has been reported widely in the past, apple makes VERY little in pure profit on sales of songs - on the order of a penny or two a track. i believe steve has even been quoted as saying that they expect to make all their profit from this foray into the music biz with the iPod (with which they have HUGE margins). so, your analogy is somewhat correct, only reversed. i agree with the original parent .. if the iPod turns out to retail at $99, it's a volume play, pure and simple. but i doubt it'll happen b/c apple will try to maximize profit .. esp. since this is a new product. maybe in a coupla months, the price will drop if the volume isn't as high as expected.

Re:BOM Cost...

[Lord Kano]

That's a shame -- after really being pretty dull for a couple of years, Apple hardware is really fantastic these days. Every tech conference I go to is dominated by Apple PowerBooks running MacOS X. The hardware is better and cheaper than PC laptops, and you get to run MacOS X, which is a thing of beauty.

I lost interest in Apple harware after the Beige G3s. I HATED all of that F'ing clear plastic and happy colors nonsense. X is nice, but the software that I need to run isn't available on X. I like the flexability of building my own machines. Almost 7 years ago I built my first PC. It was a Pentium 100 with 16 Mb of ram and Windoze 95. It cost me about 40% of the price of the Mac that I bought that same year, a Performa 6400/200. The Mac was faster and ran a better OS. It also didn't run Duke Nukem, Quake, Red Alert, or Diablo. I kept using the programs that I needed to on the Mac. Photoshop. Strata Studio Pro and several others. I kept my PC strictly for gaming. Over time when I had a little extra cash, I'd upgrade my machines. More memory for my Mac. A new HDD for my PC. etc... Once I hit a ceiling with my Mac I was looking at much higher costs to upgrade it. I'd have to replace it. My PC was so much easier to upgrade. It was so much cheaper to upgrade. In time I stopped buying upgrades for my Mac.

When I was seriously thinking about replacing my Mac with a beige G3, Apple stopped making them. Apple decided to do away with SCSI and mini din serial, thus making all of my peripherals obsolete. I was NOT going to replace equipment that worked perfectly well just to get a new Mac.

I still have no interest in buying any new Apple hardware. With no control over what kind of hardware is in it, I'd be at Apple's mercy again. The next time they wish to radically change the architecture, me and my peripherals will be left out in the cold. No thank you.

With my PC the closest that I came to this was in having to replace an ISA modem with a PCI modem when I went to my current Athlon XP setup.

I'm with you there. Apple sells more Windows iPods than Mac iPods, which means that they're showing lots of new people that there are better options than Microsoft.

Microsoft gets a C+ for innovation. They get a C- for execution. But they get an A+ for knowing where the market is heading, before it does. I suspect that the iPod/portable MP3 player scene is just a passing fad, but digital music is here to stay. I don't care which company dominates it, as long as there are still viable choices for consumers like you and I.

LK

Re:Finally!

[PepsiProgrammer]

Ill stick with my zaurus + memory cards I just have to swap music every once in a while, but its a much more versatile device :)

Re:Flash Memory

[ceejayoz]

Got anywhere I can buy 2 gigabyte flash memory cards for $100 or so?

As for the dropping problem, everyone I know who has an iPod has dropped it at least once, no problems.

New Rumor - GarageBand

[joekra]

MacRumors is also confident that a new product called GarageBand will be released tomorrow. Probably a consumer audio application

Garage Band

Fine, here is an ON topic post...

[strider69666]

Being as the drive is a micro drive, and the abuse it will undoubtedly recieve, are these drives up to the task? How well are they stress tested to make sure that they would be suitable for a mini-Ipod? I have heard complaints about regular Ipod drives not lasting as long as expected, so I wonder if a micro drive would fail even faster.

Re:Fine, here is an ON topic post...

[RalphBNumbers]

Being a "micro" drive actually makes the things less fragile, not more.

The acceleration needed to bend a head down to impact with a platter increases with the shrinking length of the arm the head is mounted on, and increases again with the decrease in mass of the head and arm. It's a simple matter of scale. So a smaller mechanisim could be much more resistant to crashing.

Anyway, I've never heard any actual complaints about iPod drives, just speculation by pundits that *maybe* there *might* eventually be problems with some constantly abused units. And I have heard plenty of stories of people bouncing them off the concrete multiple times with no ill effects. Therefore I question your sources.

Hang on...

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

All along we've heard that iTunes isn't making Apple any money and that it's really just a way to push iPods out the door. If that's the case, how could they be selling the iPod at the same cost as the hard drive within it? Assuming they get some bulk discount, that's still very little profit there.

So how do the books balance out? I would expect if Apple is so interested in pushing the iPods [as evidenced by the creation of iTunes], they'd want to get a nice profit from each unit sold.

Re:Hang on...

[PepsiProgrammer]

Maybe they are pushing ipods to bring themselves into the consumer eye again, and promote the sale of their computers (Which must have fucking huge! margins considering how overpriced they are)

Good Lord, that's smalls

[hackshack]

If ya'll check the PDF, the drive itself is only about 40x40mm square. This is about the size of the current iPod's LCD screen. Perhaps Apple will omit the LCD or replace it with a single- or dual-line display to save money... one would think navigation would be impaired as a result, but perhaps they've got something up their sleeves. They've gotta save money somewhere, in any case... perhaps they've figured out a way to reduce the number of on board ICs from 4-5 to 1-2. Maybe it'll be essentially a USB "thumb drive" with no cable to speak of... it'll save on FireWire controllers at least.

Interesting how, despite the poster's comparison to old-tyme MFM drives, the Cornice is apparently equipped with a "true IDE" interface. Dunno what level ATA that is, but parts is parts to a certain extent, and it looks like a fairly simple drop-in solution. The iPod, despite being incredibly compact, uses no custom ICs- everything's all off the shelf- this was done on purpose and the Cornice SE jives perfectly with this design methodology.

Maybe this'll be the next Gameboy, from a pop culture standpoint.

This is the beginning of something good...

[overbyj]

One of the biggest gripes about the iPod has been the price (let's not get into the battery issue here). These mini-iPods will fill a void in the Apple lineup and compete with the lower end MP3 players. However, if they get these mini-iPods at a price point of around $120-150, they will crush the competition because of what the competition is selling pricewise.

I was in Best Buy recently and saw a Rio MP3 player with a whopping 128 MB for $109. If Apple gets a mini-iPod for about that price, who in their right mind will buy a Rio player for that price. The only potential drawback to the iPod is that it can't WMA files served up by MusicMatch, Napster and other crappy music services. Granted, if you are buying any iPod, you are probably not wasting your time with those sites anyway.

Here's to hoping to something good tomorrow at MacWorld. Please Steve, I want an affordable iPod!

Re:WHy not

[squiggleslash]

The new iPod that this drive is supposedly intended for will be a much smaller player.

Even if it wasn't, the selling point is that this is going to be a cheap, load-it-up-and-forget-it, player. Right now the choices are between cheap, constantly-reupdate-it-with-different-music, type players where you can barely fit more than two or three hours of music on them at a time, and expensive maintain-irregularly players like the iPod.

This adds something new. And it'll be small and cheap too, if the rumours are to be believed.

Oh, and First Post trolls: I meant to write "fairly nuts", meaning "quite crazy" or "slightly insane". Sorry about that. I note I also put spaced hard-drive inconsistantly too. So shoot me ;)

A couple ways this could happen...

[YllabianBitPipe]

After skimming all the Mac Rumour sites, here's some possibilities: iPod junior comes out with this micro drive but USB instead of Firewire. Or, iPod junior debuts with upgradeable flash storage. They give you a piddly amount to start, and keep it under 100 bucks that way. My money is on an iPod jr using the microdrive, USB, and priced at 149.

Cornice????

[Andy_R]

I've never heard of Cornice before (am I woefully uninformed? maybe!)

I suspect one of the bigger names will turn out to be Apple's supplier. Apple have been at the cutting edge ofindustrial design for years now, so I would also expect the drive for a mini ipod would not be a off-the-shelf product at all, instead it would be very tightly integrated into the mini ipod.

As for $70 per 100,000, I think that's a sign this isn't the drive too. Apple would be putting in an order for a few million a year. If Cornice was the supplier for a product as hot as mini ipod, would they really have 100,000 spare to offer to anyone else, and would Apple let them pitch it so boldly at other mp3 player builders the day before (supposed) launch?

Re:Why would you?

[X_Caffeine]

I had access to a roommate's 20gig iPod all last summer, and hated it. Too big, too clunky.

The only place I really wanted to use it was at the gym, and the device (in a belt clip) kept tugging my shorts down. And all I want is maybe a dozen albums to pick from while I'm lifting weights, walking to and from home.

(and before you mention solid state devices -- I want something that works with iTunes!)

A mini-iPod would be perfect for me. Unfortunately, I don't believe the rumors at all.

Yes, but....

[djupedal]

That was then....this is now.

All it takes is a breakthrough in compression to mean you don't have to spend so much time and energy handling the read/decode/buffer/play routine.

Cut at least two of those dramactically and you've compensated for an otherwise/relatively slow drive.

Apple has been very busy with QuickTime, iTunes and AAC lately - note that current purchased music has a profile of 'Low Complexity'.

I betting they have an advanced codec that allows them to overcome traditional restrictions that may baffle others that have attempted and given up on the same combination of mechanicals and electronics.

Re:More likely to be $199....

[idiot900]

$200 for 2GB seems an awful lot to the average consumer, when one can pay $300 for five times the space in the 10GB version. Pricing it like this makes the 2GB player look like a terrible value. Even as a student with little disposable income, I would much rather pay the extra $100 than sacrifice 8GB.

That is, unless there is some amazing killer feature to it. Obscenely long battery life? Really small? It would have to be amazingly sexy for it to be worth $200 when the premium for the next higher model is so little given the much greater capacity.

Also, the quoted price is $70 each for the media in 100k quantities. Perhaps this price is artificially raised for Apple's competitors, by agreement with Apple, in order to discourage them from buying the same media from Cornice and making knockoff players. And maybe Cornice does not have the capacity to make too many more of these things above and beyond Apple's order, and jacking up the price for everyone but Apple saves them from losing face by denying orders. Cornice loses nothing, Apple gets to make their player, and competitors are left high and dry.

I've said this before - if come tomorrow these "microPods" actually exist and are selling for $100, I will buy one immediately. Let's hope it'll be easy to coerce Linux to talk to it :)

apple's master plan == low profit margins on ipod

[nudicle]

iPod profit margins as of today may be large, but consider a plan for Apple in the nearish future:

1) build os x for intel

2) build ipod, ilife, and other devices such as fantastic set-top devices, etc... for computer users

as #2 grows, the number of Apple HW owners increases and its user base increases dramatically. Even iPod and iTMS accomplishes this.

Eventually, apple will release #1 .. os x for Intel. This will hurt, badly, their own cpu hardware sales for desktop PCs. But instead of killing the close market like before, Apple will welcome it because their revenue will be coming from their host of excellent iLife, iPod, and other iDevice hardware, as well as their OS updates.

Steve realizes that tying his revenue to IBM/Moto hardware bundled to his OS ultimately is a losing venture and the best way to go is to build the 'apple lifestyle' .. and that's, I bet, the long-term plan at Apple.

I am not an insider, but I'd lay even money that OS X is running well on Intel internally and Apple is betting on switching its revenue stream to sources other than its own pc hardware sales. This will free it from the 80s-90s computer co. model and into the realm of the future.

Or maybe I'm totally off base.

evil apple

[fresh27]

its all an evil apple scheme. before, i was pretty skeptical about buying an ipod, but now i look at the high price of this one and think "11GBs more for $50, hmmmmmm" and now the big ipod looks more attractive to me.