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

I am very pleased.

[samrolken]

I always thought that the radial design of the 1G and 2G iPods was superior to the "row of buttons" of the 3G iPod. I thought that the iPod mini was even better with the combining of the wheel and the buttons.

Another notable difference here is the darker buttons. I've yet to decide if that's a good or bad thing, as far as design goes. What do you people think?

Repeat of the iMac leak?

[Anonymous Coward]

When the last big rev of the iMac got released (flat screen), Time mag. leaked all the details something like 12 hours before Steve officially intro'd it. Obviously, Jobs had a cow over it -- they stole his thunder!

I wonder if Newsweek just pulled the same stunt by mistake?

Man, I just would not want to be anywhere near Steve Jobs right now...

Re:Price drop?

[super awesome]

The new ones are supposed to be priced lower than the current models, so you might be able to pick one of the new models up. And if not, the introduction of the new iPods will dramatically drive down the price of the 3G ones.

Re:no anodized metal?

[jomas1]

Although I have not really heard any complaints about scratches on the ipod mini, anodized metal scratches too. People who don't understand anodizing often complain that the paint on their Sony Clies is coming off even though the Clies are made with anodized magnesium. Anodized metal is better than paint because you can buff the scrathches out to some extent but people who like to whine will still do so.

Out of the ordinary

[Xemu]

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. Here most of the readership are in their teens and thus are a perfect match the products intended demographics. It's marked up as news and not as the ad it really is. This is a marketers wet dream.

Best of all, you don't even realize your strings are being pulled. You think you're outsmarting Apple and reading something they don't want you to read.

Or...

[Kjella]

...use Privoxy with referrer-spoofing. Any link I click to www.domain.com/foo/bar.html, has a referrer of "www.domain.com", no matter where I came from. Works with every site I know of. I consider it the same way as pop-ups. It was a privilidge, you abused it, I revoked it. No referrers for anyone.

Kjella

What about accessories?

[Belgand]

I'm certainly curious about what this means to the market for iPod accessories. When the 3G came out third-party manufacturers immediately dropped support for 1G and 2G iPods in most cases. Apple as well decided to more or less drop support of the older models up to and including the lack of firmware updates to provide many of the same features as present in the new models (I am told that it would be possible to add such things as on the go playlists and such, but Apple merely chooses not to). As the owner of a 2G I was, of course, upset by the idea that my iPod no longer seemed to exist.

While this design seems to be much more in line with the non-3G what with the return to the wheel as opposed to the independent buttons I'm curious as to where the compatibility will lie. Will earlier models suddenly be supported once again (probably unlikely, the wheel looks to be sized differently and the cutouts for the various ports are different, it might work as a kludge at best)? Will 3G-style products suddenly drop out of sight just like what happened when the design was last changed significantly?

There are some valid questions here that I don't think Apple or many others are bothering to consider. Yes there are advantages to making improved designs, but Apple doesn't seem to be paying any attention to the benefits of a consistent design with only functional improvements.

Re:Price drop?

[cryptochrome]

Unfortunately, due to the way hard drives are constructed, the major part of the cost is the base cost of the hard drive mechanics. Using multiple platters (the actually disks) for large capacity costs relatively little in comparison; using denser platters raises cost virtually not at all. Thus small hard drives still cost a lot, and larger ones cost only marginally more, and the cost of the cheapest models never really drops even as capacity increases. Likewise, the cost of the rest of the iPod electronics is exactly the same for all same generation models.

I've been waiting for my magic price point, $200, for some time now. I'm probably going to keep waiting.