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Apple Rumored to Be After Samsung Flash Memory
Steve Nixon writes "An unconfirmed report today from Reuters quotes an industry analyst firm iSuppli as saying that Apple plans to buy as much as 40 percent of Samsung's second-half flash memory output.
The NAND flash memory cards will be used in a new, 4 GB iPod Mini, which Apple would release in time for the holiday shopping season, the report stated. The current version of the 4 GB mini contains a hard drive. Apple's iPod Shuffle uses flash memory."
Flash memory is going to do wonders for both battery life and size. Maybe I'll buy one of the new iPod minis if the rumors are true.
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Rumors for nerds. Stuff that may turn out to matter tomorrow.
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to
"It just seems flashier!"
All your memory are belong to us. Well 40% of it anyways. After we pay you for it.
Sincerely,
Apple Computer
I hope this will help drive down the cost of flash memory so that flash-based hard drives will become available to the general public. Silent, less power-hungry, more reliable. How longer will we have to put up with very fragile magnetic disks spinning at 7000+ rpm under a head that would cut them in half if contact occurred...
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Having a 4GB iPod for $50 less thana full iPod seemed like a bad idea, but it worked. I'm wondering if using flash, which should increase price, will shorten the gap between the Mini and the low-end iPod. Then again, maybe apple wants people to notice the GB/price ratio and get the full-fledged iPod instead.
I don't get it.
I don't think the big news here is that Apple is making a Shuffle-Mini hybrid, but that Fourty percent of the world's Samsung Flash memory stock is going to be eaten by a single buyer. Think about how many different manufacturers and resellers buy that memory - and 40% of it is going to Apple. Wow.
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Looks like Samsung is wooing Apple with a price reduction. Samsung also makes mp3 players. Seems like they would hoard the memory for themselves. Maybe they have figured out the sweet spot, in terms of profit, of how much to keep for themselves and how much to sell to the best selling brand.
An iPod mini with flash memory instead of a hard drive obviously would have much better battery life and be significantly lighter.
What's it worth to you, though? $300? Will we have to wait a while before the price point becomes attractive? For me, frankly, battery life has never been an issue.
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Hopefully this would push down the size of the iPod mini. I can't help but hide a smile when people talk about how small the minis are, when you can get 10 times the storage on something only about twice as big...
Until the iPod mini is really small (like shuffle size), it is just impractical for people with decent sized music collections. The size and weight you save vs the large models isn't enough to outweigh the loss in capacity. Of course, I guess it's ok for people who call 64kbps "near CD quality"...
I call FUD. I jog with my 20GB iPod every day, and I've never had a problem.
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Nothing says Apple has to stick with using only one 4GB flash memory... (beyond price).
A smaller Mini that holds 8GB might go over well, and fit even better between the large iPods and the Shuffle.
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This has been brought up in photography circles for quite some time. A surprising number of people were adverse to flash based Compact Flash (CF) cards because of this.
BUT - you get unlimited reads, lots and lots of writes (about 10^6 with modern cards) and the write longevity can be improved by buffering algorithms. I wouldn't use flash for a swap file, but unless your taste in music changes every 30 seconds, flash memory should be just fine.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
...which is exactly what Apple does, doesn't it?
Apple almost never drops their prices, they just make things better at the current price point... remember, $300 5 years ago got you a black and white 5 GB iPod... look what it gets you now.
I bet it will be redesigned a little, but the price is going to stay where it is.
I call FUD on you! People who post to ./ don't jog, their only heavy breathing occurs when a bugfix is released to the Linux kernel.
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This is getting to be an urban legend...
Yes, flash memory has a limited lifespan. So too does magnetic media. One can reasonably expect at least 10,000 write cycles on a particular NAND gate for consumer level flash memory - and that's the barest minimum. It's even more likely that you'll get a million cycles out of consumer NAND flash memory these days. And even that is conservative - it could be several million.
In normal operation, how long would it take before you would use up a million writes on a particular sector? And with arranging files intelligently on the memory, that's going to be less of a concern. Do you completely recreate your entire music library on your iPod every single time you add a song? Probably not. Would you do this a million times before buying a new iPod. I'm guessing no.
The number of cycles on current NAND flash technology is more than enough to last for years. Granted, I wouldn't want to use it for a swap partition, but for storing your music library you should be perfectly fine.
But then low-lifes like yourself would be part of the hip, chic, "wealthy-appearing" culture that is Apple's base. Since you obviously aren't rich enough to flush $350 for a consumer item that will be passe in a year, you arean't really a good advertisement for Apple, now are you?
;-)
Gotta keep the riff-raff out, you know?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
And here's a great big reason why Apple doesn't support Ogg Vorbis (besides the fact that it doesn't do anything for you that MP3 doesn't), it's widely used for distributing music on bittorrent based sites, that is to say that it is widely used in piracy, and Apple doesn't need to get assfucked by the RIAA over iPod sales for a bunch of geeks, especially after the Grokster decision.
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Ok, I have to wonder, why these never caught on. I have a mini-disc player and I love it.
I get 30 hours off of one AA, 15 off the rechargable.
I can throw my MP3's on it easily, (sonicstage sure, stupid program, but its easy)
I pay $5 for 1GB discs and it came with one.
Playlist management on the device.
Plus I can record through a mic to it, transfer back and forth and whatnot.
It has never skipped for me.
They are fairly small, smaller than an IPod.
USB, optical or stereo jack in.
Anyway, yea, I would love to be enlightened
I've wanted to replace my 192 mb (w/ extra memory card) creative nomad mg II for a while. The other day I stopped into the local Apple store to poke around and I saw that they had 3g 15gb ipods for sale at $199. These include a dock and a wallwart charger (headphones, beltclip, and sync cable of course). It's a refurbished one (Apple has these on their website for $189 -- but I like the instant gratifaction of store buying). Anyway, I have a psychological barrier against paying more than $200 for a music player -- so this was perfect. I know the 20gb color model is only $100 more (more like $140 if you throw in the missing dock), but I'm not going to spend that much on music player ... I learned my lesson w/ the nomad. I think it was about $250 (with base 64mbs, another $100 for the memor card) and I don't think I ever got my money's worth out of it.
....
With the 15gb ipod I will get my money back -- I've copied over all my CDs and I've finally heard old beloved songs I hadn't heard in ages merely because digging through piles of CDs for one good song is such a pain. Anyway, shall I ramble even more?
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320kbps MP3s are a fucking waste of diskspace and time. You gain nothing with a bitrate that high, a 192VBR would be much better.
And in case nobody has bothered to tell you or you're too ignorant to do your own research, there is no DRM on files you rip yourself, so I have no idea what you're talking about at the end there.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I'm an Apple zealot, I'm typing this on a Mac Mini, and I'm going to be clicking submit with my one mouse button, but there is no way I'll be buying a flash-based iPod. My free upgrade phone is on order (a Sony Ericsson K750), it has a USB connector, plays mp3s and takes a Memory Stick Duo Pro card (currently maxing out at 2Gb, but 4Gb version promised soon).
By the time Apple gets to market, I'll have all it's functionality plus the ESSENTIAL feature of automatically stopping playing when my phone rings, just by adding a card to my phone - which also has the simple game play and video playback functionality that is missing from iPods (even if Sony forgot to add a usable fast forward/rewind or pause button).
I'd love have an Apple device in my pocket, because they get the user interface right in ways that Sony Ericsson can't be bothered to think about, but until they have a LOT more functionality, I can't justify buying one.
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is that if apple buys up 40% of their production, they're likely to seriously increase their production in the next year, and the market will likely be flooded in a couple years. it has been a long time coming, but flash ram is about to undergo a serious price drop. combined with continual improvements in scaling and capacity, perhaps this means we'll have 40GB flash drives by 2007. that ought to shake things up a bit...
In case you haven't been around in the last year, the current minidisc players play mp3s. No encoding to other formats. Also, these have the ability to record in raw PCM stereo, with a mic. And upload it USB to your computer to edit.
That's great. But the guy asked why MDs never took off like ipods. MDs just added the feature you speak of DUE TO the popularity of mp3 players.
If you love DRM, enjoy. Not me.
iTunes DRM has never adversely effected me.
And yes, you can also use the new minidisc models as external USB storage drives. 1GB disc are about $6 each.
See above. I am not giving a state of the union on md's, I am explaining why they didn't take off like ipods.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.