New iPod Design Pictures Leak

Brian Hoyt writes "Apple's new iPod design will be announced Monday. A cover picture depicting the new design from Newsweek has been discovered early. MacRumors broke the story - MacRumors and more specifically the cover itself - NewsWeek"

Comments

New Design:

[Oculus Habent]

It's not a big stretch from the iPod Mini to the design shown in the picture. I'm pleased with the new design... kind of back to it's roots.

My biggest problem with the previous design is the unapparent secondary button function. When the buttons are arranged around the wheel, the special combinations (Menu & Play/Pause to reset) make a fair sight more sense. Holding Menu for the backlight is especially obscure. I discovered this intuitively on my Original iPod - all of the buttons on the Original had an important Continuous Press function before the first several updates that gave us a new time search for the songs. My friend didn't know about the Menu Backlight - he used the automatic backlight - until I told him with his 30g. He's not stupid by any means, there just wasn't any reason that the second button over would also be a special Backlight control.

Re:New Design:

[Pfhor]

Well, part of how the ipod is so fast is that itunes actually generates the file database on its end for the ipod. There is a specific file structure on the ipod that is meant to streamline the listening experience. Instead of having ot read file names with long extensions, possibly none english characters, all of that information is stored in a database and the song files are give just a number.

You can get yourself an Archos which you can just drop mp3s onto and play it back that way, but the battery life from my experience is shorter, its bulkier, and it still takes a while just to browse the disk for files. Also, the ipod has two processors, one for audio playback and one for the gui. So it makes sense that apple would make as simple streamlined file structure that the gui processor can feed to the audio playback (ie, user selects to play "Bob Marley - No Woman.mp3" and the gui system feeds /1234/456/32.mp3 to the audio processor).

Its ingeniously simple: why make processor on the ipod built for effeciency have to do all this directory / database management (althou the 3g ones do this now) when you can get a desktop computer to do it in a snap.

And i believe there are third party programs out there which you can mount on the ipods "data share" that will easily let you drag and drop files back and forth from the playable section of your ipod.

Re:New Design:

[afidel]

There are TONS of open source iPod file loaders. Part of the reason the iPod works so well is the file database, since people figured out the format within about a month of the initial iPod's launch I wouldn't be too worried about losing the ability to use your iPod.

Price drop?

[Flyboy Connor]

Hopefully the sale of a new iPod will make the price of the older versions drop considerably. I really want one, but I think they currently are ridiculously overpriced. Especially here in the Old World. Is a 15Gb iPod for 100 euros too much to ask?

Re:Price drop?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you take a look at the Apple quarterly earnings you will find that this is not true. Their profit is relatively small (something like 60 million on 2 billion sales or about 3%.) If they cut the price of their products in half (as you suggest) they would no longer make a 3% profit, they would make about a 47% loss.

The margin on Apple products is said to be somewhere in the range of 20 to 30%. However, that money goes into R&D, advertising, and other business overhead. The 3% profit is what is left over after all of that. So, if they were to stop advertising, stop all R&D work, and fire as many employees as possible, they could sell the iPod for maybe 25% less. Somehow that doesn't seem like a valid option.

Is there a way to reduce cost? Probably. They could invest R&D money into reducing cost but what this likely means is 1) design a custom ASIC that has the CPU, LCD drivers, USB/1394 interfaces, and *hard drive control* circuits all on a single chip and thereby 2) attach the hard drive heads, servo, and spindle motor directly to that custom chip. (In other words, eliminate the extra controller circuit board that normally comes as part of an "off the shelf" hard drive and truly make the hard drive part of the iPod custom circuitry.) There are certainly undesirable aspects of this approach - for example, it becomes much more difficult to increase the device storage capacity as you have essentially taken on the R&D that would normally be done by a hard drive manufacturer.

I think it is much better to spend the R&D money on enhancing the device in other ways.

Re:Haven't we had enough of these ipod stories ?

[catwh0re]

I think this article legitimately makes it to the front page.
The reason for that is, slashdot is about technology, the iPod happens to be an example of technology that has become a growing cultural icon.
When the three headlines for a huge publication are "9/11", "Iraq", and "iPod", with the "iPod" leading. It's almost surprising that slashdot doesn't have _more_ articles about it.

Despite the lack of significance (it is, after all, simply a music player), there are many surrounding wider effects that have come from it, and this is where the publicity is deserved.

Re:close up

[catwh0re]

The thickness and power requirements of a colour screen make it a poor choice for a device that is designed to play music. What use is colour? Perhaps some minimal labelling or to flitter visualisations at me here and there?
When you see people using their iPods, the behaviour is that the interface lets them choose music quickly, with little/or no need to look at the screen after this.

A colour screen would be nothing more than an eyecandy waste.
Reality is most of an iPod's life is to live in someone's pocket. Apple realise this, moving the buttons back to a previous arrangement where a user does not need to look at the iPod to press each button, which was a common UI issue with the former generation iPod.

Re:One can only hope that it features Bluetooth

[Oculus Habent]

Not a chance. Wireless technology would mean the death of battery life. Also, few people would be accepting of a separate technology to sync contancs and notes, especially at the cost of battery life. The addition is hardly needed, either. Most people don't sync from multiple computers so removing the "inconvenience" of having to place the iPod in the Dock - virtually no work - just isn't worth the additional price (or reduced profit) and confusion for the user.

A call for perspective

[Jack Auf]

In the scope of all things, is it of any real importance that Apple has yet again changed the buttons on the iPod? I own several Macs and an iPod 3G and I couldn't care less.

What does that say about our society when a fairly simple re-design of a product garners such attention? Is it really important? Does it make your life better somehow?

Just get over yourselves.

Re:Never going to buy one

[nuxx]

And with that you just explained why most people buy iPods. Not to flame you, but most people don't care about support for anything beyond MP3 and "whatever iTMS uses". Most people also don't care about how the files are stored on the disk. Just the fact that an iPod can be used as a FW/USB external disk is good enough, although most people probably don't care about this either.

So, yes, once again it comes down to the interface. You can easily use it with one hand while driving, walking, whatever, and it's just fairly intuitive.

Re:Out of the ordinary

[Midnight Thunder]

Apple's marketing department is the best. Not many vendors can get their products announced to the target audience before they officially exist, but Apple keep making front page news on slashdot.

I wonder how much it has to do with marketing in certain cases and instead with the shear enthusiasim of the the customers? For example are there AppleInsider.com or macrumors.com equivalents for other stuff such as Microsoft, Dell, HP, etc?

Few companies in the IT world provide a line of products where people are willing to cut off their arm to find out what's coming next. Its like people expect Christmas from Apple.

Re:Still no radio?!?

[Nexx]

There's no radio because Apple wants to sell the same box internationally.

Personally, I don't listen to radio, so it's not a big loss to me.