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Rumored iPod Flash Leaked
An anonymous reader writes "Apparently a -->detailed design of the new Flash-based iPod--> has been leaked. It doesn't have a screen and is this size of a cookie!" With size estimates ranging from 256 megs to a gig, it will have a much lower price point, and can be worn around your neck. Assuming it's not just a rumor. Update: 12/07 19:31 GMT by M : Temporary working link.
Just for a second I thought: "Why the fuck would Apple want to put Flash on an iPod?" Then I realised they mean the memory technology and not the annoying product from Macromedia.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
If Apple files a Cease & Desist order, then maybe there's some truth to it. I doubt they would waste that time for a simple fanboi dream.
And I think gave a good argument why it isn't likely:
Here
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World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Ñ'
RCA is one brand that apparently comes with the armbands, but I see some others whose brand I don't know.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
The only thing that Apple could really bring to the table in this department is firewire, which really doesn't matter at these small sizes. There are already SO many flash players out there (some which are downright tiny), and without a screen, I don't see the point. That is of course, if this is true...
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
(Assuming it's not a rumor), it's an interesting idea that perhaps Apple is posisition these devices as the next form of music distribution ( the CDs successor). Dependant on the price point of the device of course, one could load one of these little guys up with a new album, maybe some new features (videos/interview/etc like a DVD), add in a player and it's a pretty neat gift.
Even if it wasn't used for single album released, boxed sets (a la U2's recent release) come to mind.
And of course, DRM would become very interesting. Knowing Apple, you'd be able to transfer the files to your computer but only to iTunes.
-Teiresias
It will have a much lower price point than...? ... other iPods? ... other flash MP3 players? ... other MP3 players in general?
I can get a Gigabyte Lexar flash for their MP3 player for the low $70's off of eBay. I am using a part in the same family now "Jumpdrive" and am satisfied with its quality under heavy use.
This must be true, because I just got an iPod about 2 weeks ago.
no
I don't see how you're supposed to navigate through 1 GB of music/etc. with no screen. I've got a little 1 GB mp3 player MPIO's FL300, and I can't imagine moving through all all the various folders and songs to try to find the one I want without a screen. I suppose you'd need listen to the first few hundredths of seconds of songs as you scroll. Sounds thoroughly unpleasant to me. Am I missing something?
Don't vote for Eugene Papansanovich for Congress!
It certainly held fewer songs, and definitely was smaller, but it was still pretty expensive. Hopefully this one actually does have a lower price point.
I had one of the original Creative Muvo players, and it was great for how small it was, but the absence of a screen was a serious hinderance. You needed to listen to the first few seconds of each song in order to tell which it was- remembering a 30-song playlist exactly is out of the question. Plus, the flash-based mp3 player market is much more crowded, so I doubt Apple could make inroads against the Creatives and Jen of Swedens and iRivers of the world. Remember, the hard drive mp3 market was much sparser when the original iPod was introduced.
Maybe it's too complicated for a grandfather to use?
Another proprietary standard in the Corporate marketplace; clearly an exclusivity deal between Apple and Pepperidge Farm. What follows will be 4 years of "Mint iPod", "Orange iPod" and eventually, "Double Chocolate iPod" and "Enrobed iPod".
The open source community must respond quickly to this threat in its inimical global fashion. An open standard for digital music players must be started based on the Danish butter cookie, or, "dansk-be/urrhoekkoe/n" standards. There is enough community-based prior art on this one, that we should stand our ground.
I will be the first in line for a "3 sugar pretzel"-sized music player, as long as I don't have to whack it against a desk (crumble the cookie) to get it to work.
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
"the size would be comparable to a Milano cookie"
Glad to hear it. My first thought was one of those giant oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies they sell at cafes.
Walking around with that on my neck like some weird Vanilla Ice retro-puke with my plate-sized bling bling, with my "Go Away Or I Will Replace You With a Small Perl Script" t-shirt.
For $100 you can send it back and they'll replace the battery.
PS I'm going to want a glass of milk with it (sorry, I've got a 2 year old...it's the first thing that sprang to mind)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Remember back in the day when Steve talked about the digital hub? And then when the iPod came out and he said he wanted to use them to help sell Macs? Then iTunes came out and even though Apple doesn't make much money from iTMS, Steve says he wants to use it to help sell iPods.
Evidently his plan is working. Last week that report came out showing about 6% of iPod users had switched from PCs to Macs and that another 7% plan on buying a Mac. The halo effect is boosting Apple's revenue.
So the iPod rules the HD-based market. Now it's time to take over the flash-based market and make sure no other company erodes Apple's dominance in the player market. I see this as yet another opportunity...people that can't afford an iPod will buy the new flash-based one. Money for Apple. When these people can afford it, they'll buy the big iPod. It's like the gateway drug to Macs.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Lighten up and learn to laugh. You'll be happier. Trust me.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
I resent that !
...no real man would need a CP or LT for better pressure !
No real man would ever need a drill... all you need is your toothbrush (as drilling tool), your laptop or cellphone (for better applied pressure) and an iron will.
--
This comment is to be regarded entirely as a joke.
By reading this signature you agree to not disagree with the post you just read.
Is he Korean?
No, Vern. They just let him in.
TheMacMind isn't known in the Mac world as being the source of intel on the latest Apple products, however through an anyonmous tipster (to you! We happen to know this person is 100% valid), we've been tipped off to a whole bevy of facts about the new Flash-based iPod from Apple. We also had this confirmed by a second contact at Apple.
.5" thick.
When I first heard about the iPod Flash, I met it with the same scepticism as Daring Fireball did.
AppleInsider brought you the basic concept, but TheMacMind is here to let loose about how the new iPod works, what it looks like, and how it feels! And we're looking forward to being there when it's released at MacWorld San Francisco! (Sorry Steve, we couldn't resist!)
The Meat: Milano cookie. That's the basic principle. I like Tim-Tams, but that's just me. Rounded edges, flat, and tiny. We're looking at something that is about 2.5" long, 1.5" wide, and just
Get this: NO SCREEN. Got a cellphone with one of those flat joysticks? This is apparently how you'll get around on the screenless iPod. Left and right move between songs, up and down change the volume, and pressing straight down will play/pause your music. With any other company, I'd be incredibly doubtful that their techs would be able to pull off anything useable. Scroll through 250 songs in one big list? We're betting Apple has something better up their sleeve, and we'll hopefully be able to tell you about the interface in the next few days. Evenything goes in and out through a full-size FireWire port. Apparently, they are also virtually indestructible. We did a mock up of the iPod Flash in 3D. You can see how big it is compared to a business card (the same size as an iPod mini) and an Apple Firewire cable.
What does that tiny size mean? Well, the iPod Flash is meant to be worn around the neck. Yep, a nice little lanyard will keep the smallest of the iPod family twirling around your neck while jogging.
AppleInsider said "less than $200", but we we're told that the Flash iPod will be priced at $99. Freaking sweet, we're hoping that that's right on the money! There have been reports of storage capacities from 256 MB - 1 GB, which would correlate with that price. This release will make an iPod available to people in any price range.
TheMacMind
Image by Robert Padbury
rpadbury@themacmind.com
More info about the Flash Ipod http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000040022898/
this new iPod variant will fail miserably, mark my words. just like the lack of wireless and ogg support destroyed the original iPod's chances of success, and the lack of an FM tuner and getting the price point all wrong prevented Apple from selling more than a handful of the iPod minis, this one will never be more than a bragging point for the apple hard-core. when will Apple learn? everyone on slashdot knows how to build a killer iPod... killer...
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Marketing has an idea, then they *leak* the information to some site. Then Steve and the marketing watch /. Depending on our reaction, they decide if they should proceed, what features they should or shouldn't include... and save a bundle of money on actual market research.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Sounds *exactly* like today's WOOT (12/6/04) http://www.woot.com/ PCH
Two reasons. Both are over-generalizations with plenty of exceptions.
1) Younger people tend to be more technically savy, or at least more comfortable using technology for its basic purposes than older people. THere's no great mystery there. They grew up with the technology. I knew how to program my VCR when I was five. My mother still struggles with it. She didn't have any such device when she was at the oh-so-impressionalbe age of five, when you sap up knowledge and skills like a sponge.
2) Men tend to be more gizmo-happy then women. We like our toys. We like to know how things work. We like to MASTER our devices, and tweak and play aroudn with them. This is why there are more male mechanics. This is why there are more men in IT. We're not any more capable than women in the tech field, just generally more interested in it. It's probably because we've been socialized to have more of a leaning toward tech, but I wouldn't doubt there's some evolutionary biological component to it to.
That being said, there are plenty of technically competent, older women out there. I'd venture any reasonably intelligent woman of any age who makes an effort to understand tech could do so. But they're not the norm.
And for that matter, 48 is a reasonably young grandman. I'd wager your grandchild is still, just that, a child. The audience reading the article is, at the least, composed of people in their teens. Many are adults. Their grandmothers are 60 to 70 years old, or more. Mine's nearly 80. When she was my age, MP3 players didn't exist. Neither did CD players. Neither did computers. She grew up in an age that didn't give her an inclination to these sorts of things.
So stop being so sentitive.
I won't be impressed with them until they come out with some of the ideas here.
"iRule. Override all iPods within a given radius with your choice of music" - now we're talking.
Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error.
They will have to come up with a protective dohickey now, dunno, maybe the iPod Flash Condoms...
"This is you left and that's your left. This is your right and that's your right. You're gonna die!
Just because "halo effect" is recieved from the iPod does not mean it will be recieved in the same way from the hypothetical iPod Flash. There are two problems here:
1. A selection effect. The Macintosh and the iPod both target the same group-- people who are willing to pay more for a pleasant experience with their electronics. If someone buys an iPod that means they're okay with paying a bit more for a device that might not have quite as much functionality or disk space as some of the same-price-range alternatives, due to a perception that the thing they're buying will look cooler or be nicer to use or make them happier. This means this is the ideal person to make some sort of iMac sales pitch to. If you make a cheap minimal flash player you lose this selection effect; you are now targetting the budget market, where the halo effect is less likely to be effective because these are the people more likely to just go buy eMachines or whatever it is they make these days with a minimum of fuss.
2. The reason people are convinced to buy macs from the iPod is that after using their new iPods, they basically just think, I am really enjoying my iPod. If their music players are this nice, wouldn't their computers be even better? And start looking into getting a mac. So in order for the halo effect to kick in from the iPod the person has to be really impressed by the iPod. Being really impressive, even for the lower cost, is going to be a heck of a lot harder with a device without a screen or such. So the halo effect will be much harder for Apple to attain via the iPod Flash, if it's real.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
"Dude, your cookies look pretty cool, but they taste like shit."
"What cookies?"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'm suddenly seeing the image of a 90-year old sticking her hand up out of the dirt, shifting momentarily into vamp face, then back, then flash forward to a hundred years later... she's there in a cemetary in Sunnydale. As Buffy stakes her, she grabs the iPod as it falls from her shirt pocket.
Buffy: Ooh. Free iPod... and I didn't even have to sign up a hundred of my "friends".
Then I mutter something about how Sunnydale sounds an awful lot like Sunnyvale where a lot of Apple employees live, and start wondering if there might be something to this.... Or not....Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I like to throw in an occasional one-two-one skip every time I go out for a run. It reminds me of my childhood.
And what do you do in case you come across a puddle? Run around it? Pfft, much easier to skip over it IMHO.
Just my 2 cents...
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
TMM switched hosting companies recently, and they've taken us offline. We thought we could survive a slashdotting, alas, we cannot.
Here's a mirror of the image (hosted on .mac)
http://homepage.mac.com/dark_lotus/ipodflash.jpg
I've used ITMS for a while, and now have an iPod (not purchased, it was a "reward" for a job well done - and I'd probably have preferred the cash). Before the iPod I owned two different flash-based MP3 players.
:-)
Perhaps Apple can make a usable MP3 player. Both of the flash-based MP3 players I owned before my iPod had clunky interfaces that were torture to use. It was easy to just play, but setting up playlists, suffling, etc. was a process that took a long time. The PC software sucked, too.,
The digital watch sized buttons were also a pain. I frequently had to pull one out of it's nylon holder to squint at the tiny screen and manipulate the tiny buttons.
If I were still in the market for a player, I think Apple's intergration with ITMS and the usability factor might influence me to give these a look. If they exist
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Apple-X.net :: TheMacMind.com Unveils Flash iPod Concept Image Based On Inside Info (Image Mirror Included)
Enjoy!
--Trent L.
CEO of Apple-X.net
Right now, the iPod and iPod mini have a lot of marketshare because of two things:
1. Look
2. Feel
Look: If you pull out either an iPod or the "white headphones" (um, like the ones I have in now attached to the iPod on my desk), you'll have people who know what it is. When I was in DC on business, I was easily able to notice the people with iPods.
Feel: The Jog Wheel (patented or copyrighted by Apple, I'll let the lawyers here complain about which) is a perfect medium for MP3 players. Up, down, find the song and fast forward or back - all in one interface.
So what would an iPod flash look light?
Here's my $0.02: it will look like an iPod mini.
Take an iPod mini. Take out the hard drive and squeeze the electronics together. With just flash RAM, you could probably have a device that looks the same, acts the same, costs $100 - $150 (256 MB - 1 GB), and looks like an iPod Mini only with the thickness of two stacked quarters, and weighs a little more. Battery could still last 12 hours (remember - no moving parts).
So, for Apple to make a "display-less device" that nobody would recognize as an iPod, I call "bullshit".
I'll use the same skills for when I was 12 and heard about a new "Star Wars Episode I" coming out "someday": until I saw a trailer, I wouldn't believe. Saved me about 10 years of unhappiness. (Granted, not seeing Episode I would have saved me more, but that's another story for another day.)
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
In other news, iPod competitors leak fake rumors in order to sabotage christmas iPod sales.
My CD player never told me what song I'm listening to. That's what my ears are for.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
At first I thought that having no screen would be a horrible move, but it makes sense.
I use my flash based player when I go for a jog and I don't think I've ever looked at the screen. Actually the screen has so much dust on the inside of it (brilliant Creative construction), you can barely see it anyway.
$5 says that the Apple Marketing Machine calls this the iPod Sport.
Why is it people think flash doesn't fail?
I've lost a fair amount of data on my Sony camera's memory stick when it started going bad and quit saving things reliably on parts of it.
You can only rewrite/erase flash so many times before it fails, and from my observations - some cards out there fail long before they should.
I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't know any BJ, but if I did, I think I would feel dirty asking him/it for a pizookie.
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
ever walk into an apple store? the most popular item is undoubtedly the ipod mini. these things sell not because of "value" or number of gizmos but for design.
you don't find teenage girls walking into best buy, picking up a rio mp3 player and saying "ooh it's so cute, i want pink!" "yuck becky, pink is so last week, i want gold. that's hot." but you do see that in apple stores. and then their mom comes in behind them and says, "ok, but you're not getting that louis vuitton bag for christmas!"
i'd like to see a breakdown by ipod model as well, but anecdotal data says the ipod mini has cache among markets that other mp3 players don't even address. other tech companies are trying to market to the slashdot crowd, with gee-whiz features and more storage for less money. apple's realized the rest of the world is a much bigger, less fickle market and now they're getting paid for it.
The only evolutionary componant is that men are physically stronger than women and as a result were more able to physically control women.
I was with you right up to here (my mom was once denied a library card because she wasn't married and thus didn't have a man to guaruntee her penny a fucking day library fines).
Physical force only rarely, even in the bad old days, plays a role in the interaction between the sexes, and women are just as likely to apply it as men, to the extent that the shrew weilding a rolling pin is just as much a stereotype as a wifebeater.
My welder wife will also take me 10 out of 10 in arm wrestling and my aunt worked loading dock at the Post Office, one of the most back breaking jobs in existence.
Your statement is sexist. There is too much variation in individuals for it to be true, and thus also quite a bit of variation in the composition of tribal members/partners. There are also any number of examples of matriarchial societies.
It also cuts both ways. It's just as easy to say that men are stronger for the benefit of women as it is the other way around.
"Yo, Harry, go fetch me that mastadon!"
Squish!
"Oh, bummer. Oh, Thoooooooomas!"
Among the higher order animals the men may fight for mates, but it is the rule that women make the choice.
Leading to the inexorable conclusion that women have, over the millenia, bred men to be big, strong, stupid and pliable.
Every plan can backfire now and again. Be careful what you wish for.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have my knitting and spinning (seriously) to get back to. Go catch your own damned mastadon.
KFG
A computer noise announces the track name at the press of a button.
;)
Thats what i'd do anyway
Bush and Blair ate my sig!
He's 58 years old, and learned how to use it in about 5 minutes.
Figuring out how to plug the usb cable in took another minute. The cable signage is bad, so you can't tell which orientation is right until you try.
Well actually, Apple wasn't blazing a trail in disk-based mp3 players either. It wasn't blazing a trail in the 4gb market, and it won't be blazing a trail in the flash market.
Well, it depends on which mass market you're talking about. The iPod is hardly a niche, given that it basically owns its category. The iPod mini is hardly a niche, given that also owns its category.
In fact, Apple owns the market. What kind of niche are you talking about?
What you probably mean is "Apple needs to drop the price down even lower to broaden the iPod market."
Value depends on what the consumer is looking for. My father-in-law values size more than capacity. He doesn't have a lot of music to begin with, so the mini was fine.
You're making the classic mistake of thinking that consumers are like you in their value judgements. They aren't. Consumers buy for all sorts of reasons, and a lot of those reasons don't appear rational to disinterested observers.
Some of the article discussion complains that leaving out the screen is a bad move, but is that necessarily the case?
Maybe not.
In the essay What have we got to lose? (as anthologized in _The Salmon of Doubt_), Douglas Adams gives a fascinating overview of all the cases where a clever new product was born not by adding some dazzling new feature, but by identifying properties that could easily be dispensed with.
So... an iPod with no screen. Well why not? How often do you actually look at the screen? Probably not very -- most of the time the device sits in your pocket, and a lot of people just control the thing through Apple's remote control, which of course has already dispensed with the screen, and has in fact left you with something that looks a lot like the device in the article's photo.
But okay, some of the complaints are right -- browsing through even a modest music collection can get tedious when the only controls you have are to skip forward & back by a track. Being able to see what's going on is nice, but do you have to be able to see it when every iPod listener is already ipso facto listening to the device? Think about it: this would be an excellent place to use some kind of audio / speech interface, and Apple certainly knows how to design a system that way, having had a speech interface built into Macs for many years now.
That may or may not be what Apple is up to here, but it seems like an obvious future direction for the suite of products. It wouldn't surprise me at all if, for example, a future version of the bundled headphones doubled as a microphone somehow, so that you could control the device by just saying "iPod, shuffle playlist Beatles", and it would go forth and do your bidding, and you didn't have to dig it out of your pocked or your backpack or whereever you keep yours stashed.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Of course only an AC troll like you would assume you need to "overpower whatever station", when there's already a blank frequency available for such devices. (DUH!!)
Yes, I do enjoy my MP3 player. Gee, I say MP3 player, not "TV/VCR/DVD" or 'TV/VCR/DVD/MP3' or 'TV/VCR/DVD/PVR/DVD-R/WATCH-RADIO-SCUBA-GEAR'. Did you read that, troll?
So how about you just STFU and stop being a waste of internet bandwidth, lameass troll?
AC comments get piped to