60GB iPod Coming?

An anonymous reader writes "Toshiba today announced that it will offer a 60GB version of its 1.8-inch hard drive in the coming months and that Apple has already placed its order. Cindy Lee, deputy manager of Toshiba's hard disk drive division, said the drive will enter mass production during July or August. All three iPod models (15GB, 20GB, and 40GB) use Toshiba drives, while the iPod mini uses a 4GB 1-inch drive from Hitachi. Lee noted that Toshiba is currently shipping 350,000 of the 1.8-inch drives per month to Apple."

Comments

Re:Enough is Enough

[niko9]

Do you listen to 3:05 minute pop songs? I don't. I have a alllot of classical music I would love to take with me. They take up alot of space.

Drives?

[TheOtherKiwi]

Anyone notice that "Lee noted that Toshiba is currently shipping 350,000" but Apple are stepping up production from 800,000 to 1,000,000 per month...where are all the other drives sourced from?

Pricing

[maelstrom]

So is Apple ever going to drop the pricing on the other models when they come out with more "advanced" ones?

Lossless is a waste of space on iPods

[CaptainCheese]

your plan has merits, but one colossal drawback.

The iPod's most serious drawback is its battery life. The biggest power drain on the iPod is when it spins up the HD to load new files. Encoding all your music into a lossless format will cause it to access the HD multiple times for each song, in most cases.

Therefore filling your ipod with losslessly encoded files and then playing them will flatten the battery at a very fast pace indeed.

The best use of 60gig iPod drive is to use it to store other large files - avi files for example...

Re:Woohoo!

[tm2b]

With that amount of music why don't you just put a computer in your plane? Won't have to worry about harddrive space then.

Funny you should ask...

That would be very cool, but FAA rules are kind of strange about this sort of thing. If a device is defined to be portable, it's the PIC's (Pilot In Command's) judgment as to whether it can be used in the cockpit safely without interfering with the airworthiness of the aircraft.

On the other hand, if it's a fixed installation, there's a ton of paperwork and bureacracy that has to be gone through in order to get FAA approval and navigating it correctly is neither quick nor cheap.

Worse than that, but as a mere pilot, I'm not authorized to do more than minor cosmetic and maintenance tasks on my airplane - I need somebody certified by the FAA to work on avionics in order to work on my panel. And they do not work cheap.

On top of all that, I do want to be able to take my music library with me in the car too, so portable is preferable to me anyway.