Slashdot Mirror
Sirius Confirms iPod Satellite Talks
An anonymous reader writes "Remember those iPod Satellite rumors last December? Mel Karmazin, the CEO of Sirius Satellite Radio, announced at the 2005 Media Summit that he had discussions with Steve Jobs about the possibility of putting Sirius' technology in future iPods. Steve's response? Not interested."
Except iTunes isn't the cash cow: the iPod is. Apple has made no secret of the fact that their profit margin on each song sold is extremely low, and the primary objective of the iTunes music store is to sell more iPods, where quite a bit of profit is made off of each unit sold.
For reference, check out this article: Apple profit surges on iPod sales
An effective signature identifies a particular user amongst a base of thousands.
Perhaps Steve's just seen what some people ran into with the MyFi.
Right before I graduated from college, I was working at a large consumer electronics store to pay the bills. As frequently happened, we were given the opportunity to purchase XM equipment directly from a manufacturer at ludicrously low prices. This sort of thing is common in certain sections of electronics retailers; car audio and home audio traditionally have a huge markup, and manufacturers offer direct purchase plans that end up being better than the normal employee discount, all in the hope that an employee will fall in love with the product and recommend it to customers.
This time, we were offered the XM MyFi for 6 months of service. That was it. We paid shipping on the player and prepaid six months of service. That meant $60 for a player that was retailing in the mid to high- $300s. Several guys jumped on it.
AND HATED THEM.
These things were wretched. I'm not sure if we got a crappy batch (although some personal online reviews at the time were similar to our experiences), but these things couldn't hold onto a signal if the fate of the earth depended on it.
One guy actually walked outside with his MyFi while it was hooked to a small set of portable speakers for purpose of demonstrating the new utter crappiness to the rest of us. He held it out from his body. The unit played fine. He held a small stack of about 15 papers above it. The signal died completely.
Most of us simply sold them on eBay. The profit was reasonable, but given the amount of problems, I was just glad I never purchased one.
Indirectly, it confirms what I'd already seen with my father's car satellite radio system. Terrestrial rebroadcast is great in some areas. In others, pulling into a gas station cuts out audio entirely.
iPods work damned well. The iTunes sync system is great, the interface is nearly as simple as it gets, and unless you have a peculiar niche desire for your player, it does everything most people want. Now imagine the same player randomly cutting out when you walk under trees by the sidewalk, or when you walk into the gym because rebroadcast isn't reaching the area you're in, or when you stick it in your pocket (if it behaves like some of our MyFi's). If and when Sirius or XM can demonstrate a 99% effective coverage system for a player that can't guarantee free view of the sky, then we'll talk.
Until then, Steve, don't pollute an otherwise great player.
Steve isn't stupid. He knows something the rest of us don't. For example, he may be angling for a better deal from Sirius or XM. Or he may just be a realist who gets that the iPod would have to become the iBrick to accommodate the battery life needed to mix in radio.
This is why people who don't understand technology shouldn't speculate about it. Increased battery drain from an XM/Sirius tuner? A tuner would be 100% solid state, as opposed to the hard drive that currently has to be spun up to read MP3s. And what, exactly, would they need to add?
LO - Check
DSP - Check
Audio Amplifier - Check
User Interface - Check
Most of the main parts of a receiver are already existant in the current iPod. All they really need to add is a low noise RF amp, program the digital decoding method, and slap an antenna on that sucker. It takes a minimal amount of power to drive most of the circuitry -- the biggest power drain is the audio amp. If anything, the satellite radio enabled iPod would get better battery life when used as a reciever.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere