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.

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: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.

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: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.