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The Future of the iPod
sebFlyte writes "Those of you waiting for a video iPod, an iPod with a radio in, an iPod with Bluetooth in...or in fact an iPod that does anything except play music and have a pretty-but-basic interface, you're likely to be disappointed. According to silicon.com, Steve Jobs and the Apple crew insist that the iPod will remain simple for the time being." From the article: "Whether people want to buy a device just to watch video is not clear - so far the answer's been no. Devices that do video... have not been successful yet. No-one's figured out the right formula."
Gizmodo found a hidden video button in iTunes 5 and Mac Rumors discovered iPod's trademark expanded to include video support.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Why is portable mini-video in demand at all? The iPod's greatest feature is how little attention it needs. I don't want it bogged down (bigger, worse battery life, more harassment from confused relatives) with more features.
The article notes that the market currently has decided video is unnecessary. I'm sure Apple has dozens of features ready to release IF their test markets rate those features as "amazing" not just "useful."
How about a device that 'does video' via tv-out, rather than on a tiny little lcd screen? It could even have tv-IN as well - a mobile tivo kinda thing. That'd be real useful.
:)
Now go ahead and post links to the already existing devices that do this, but that I am unaware of
I love the iPod, but won't buy one till they reach 100GB, the size of my music collection. I think iPod is going in the right direction right now, releasing too many new products at once seems to stun the market, and then you get those pople sitting around wiating for the latest and greatest. Subtle changes everys often is fine, but that would be a bit too major, just after the Nano replaced the mini.
ModLife.Net - If it ain't modded, what's the point?
Syncing without plugging in cables would be appreciated. That's my prediction for the next incremental improvement in the full-sized iPod.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
http://downloads.oreilly.com/make/ipodlinux.mov
Watching a movie on a 3" screen simply won't cut it for anyone. Except, maybe, on a plane or bus ride. Not for very long though. Maybe that's just me.
Unfortunately, due to the paradigm surrounding portability, smaller device = smaller viewing area for video.
Now, what I would like to see is a portable video projection unit the size of an iPod, or similar device. It would cast the video onto a wall, or other surface. It's very important that the device be able to stand on its own (using a stand of course). I don't think I'm alone in not wanting to support it like that.
Secondly, it needs to be able to interface with many different types of formats. There's no way I'm going to buy separate viewing files so I can watch something I've already bought on my PVP.
Finally, the device MAY include a speaker, however, it MUST include an interface for headphones, or external speakers, along with the ability to disable the internal speaker.
Do all this, and, they'll sell wonderfully.
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Quite honestly, I'd love for Apple to still have a non-photo, black-and-white screened iPod. Mine is starting to age, and I've finally acquired enough music that it won't all fit on the thing at once. I'd much rather not spend the extra $50 (or $100, whatever) for the color screen and photos. I don't need colors to be able to read the name of a song, and I don't think I'll be looking at photos while I'm driving, walking down the street, reading in the park, whatever.
All I want is a nice simple device that Just Plays Music, and Does It Well(tm).
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Why?
It's a tiny, tiny, tiny niche in regards to how many people know about it.
Sticking with MP3 as a buzzword and as the single format is easier for Apple.
Bring back the Newton, Steve!
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
I'm holingout for the iPod Femto.
:(
:(
That said, ipodlinux.org has been working on a video player...
http://ipodlinux.org/Video_player
They also have a working Doom port. Neither is quite perfect yet. I have a feeling that there is considerable room for improvement, but I've only just started to look through the source, and the iPod's LCD interface is surprisingly baroque for somebody used to having either easy access to a frame buffer, or mature accelerated video drivers...
I don't think anybody has done anything with the TV encoder chip on the Photo. Personally, what I'd like to see is a video player app that doesn't use the LCD, but just goes straight to the TV encoder, and can play decently compressed video. This would allow me to carry quite a lot of TV on my iPod Photo, and easily plug it ito a TV wherever I happen to be to watch it.
I only skimmed the docs, but the interface to the TV encoder actually looks a bit less baroque, so in theory it might work better than trying to play to the LCD. OTOH, the TV encoder apparently expects higher resolution, so it may be a loss overall for performance.
Audio devices let you multitask your listening... say, with walking, driving, or reading. So, the "right formula" for a video device may be awaiting an evolutionary step that, e.g., equips us with a second head...
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
1) true
2) true
3) depends, I have a lot of hurry up and wait in my job.
I can do it in slightly better than real time, still not trivial, but very doable.
I really liked my Archos, till it started having issues. My biggest gripe is that I can't play my preferred encoding schema in it. If they would support xvid I would buy a new one.
Also,
The damn Phillips DVD player with MP4 support borkes on xvid as well, anyone know of some open firmware for that thing?
As to being worth it: All my DVDs are available in my house to any TV as video on demand. I do this with a big HDD, the Linksys NSLU2, and some modded xboxes. It is better than any commercial setup available. I no longer have to worry about my 2 year old wanting to watch a movie and trying to put the disk in the player herself.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Man, GPS is something I wish Apple WOULD do, since no other vendors have a solution. Not one single vendor has a software that runs on OSX which will let you load maps into a consumer GPS device. I've e-mailed Magellan and Garmin and they both pretty much said "use windows." Ridiculous. I would really love to see a GPS with Apple quality integration...
:)
Digression aside, I do agree with you. I'm glad the iPod is a music device. That's all I want, music from my personal collection. No radio, no video. And that's what I have.
But, shipping with Bluetooth would be really awesome for cellphone compatibility and wireless headphones. I don't mind plugging in my iPod to sync it, but I hate having to carry around a cable tying my arms up. Yes, I know logitech has a set of wireless headphones, but I'm not paying 150 dollars for them (they're ugly and clunky).
With Bluetooth, you could make a small program so that you can search for music on your iPod. You could make it so that when the phone rings the iPod's volume dims. Simple conviencences like this would be nice to have.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Even with Lossless codecs 100gb is a lot of music.
Compact Disc Digital Audio has been out for about 20 years, or roughly 1043 weeks. Buy one CD every three weeks (say through one of those music clubs) and you have 347 CDs. Given that each CD is about 0.3 GB when encoded using Shorten, FLAC, or similar codecs, you're up to 104 GB.
That said, you could transcode to 192 kbps AAC or something else that's totally transparent in a noisy (outdoor or motor-vehicle) playing environment when copying songs to your portable player.
I own an mp3 player with a radio in it. I used it once, when the device was still pretty gee whiz and I was pushing the buttons as fast as I could. Since then, I haven't used it.
I primarily listen to music in three places: my car, exercising and in front of my computer. In front of my computer, I have no desire for radio. Exercising, I have no desire for radio. In my car, I have a radio. I get your argument that radio isn't dead, but Apple didn't think that very many people cared about it. Unfortunately for you I guess. Radio isn't dead, but it clearly isn't an important selling point either.
Personally, I doubt that a decent tuner costs $0.50. Probably more like $5 or $10. $10 would seriously affect Apples ability to set attractive price points like $199 and what-not.
As an aside, when disasters strike rural areas, nothing happens. Sure, we depend on the grid, but not in the same way you big city folks do. We don't care what 'the authorities' are doing to help us. The power has, so far, come back on every time it has gone off.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
In just the same way that there were various 3rd party dock appliances for the dockable iPods (external speakers etc.) I'm going to suggested that keeping the iPod nano simple, and small, will enable other dockable hardware to be produced to add the functionality that people seem to be asking for.
eg. Video - Create a module which has a larger colour screen, but when combined with the IPod nano has a similar size of the original IPod.
Bluetooth expansion - can be used as a 'store' for photos captured by a camera or phone.
Face it only super nerdy linux geeks would ever use it so there is no point in putting it in, and its not like you cant not add support to iTunes.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
1. iTunes has a "hidden" component for handling video. 2. The Sony PSP can connect to and use a local network. 3. About a year ago, Jobs talked about Apple & Sony working together on the future of video. The Sony PSP as the "video iPod"? How big of a stretch would it be to load video from a computer running iTunes to a memory stick in a PSP if the capability was more obvious? My PSP will play content from QT 7 and AAC files, but I haven't moved anything to it wirelessly yet. Sony released a ceramic-white PSP in Japan about a week ago. It won't play UMD movies from Region 1, but if you need an idea about how a "video iPod" with a decent screen would look like, you could do worse. If it was an Apple-branded build with no UMD drive & replaced it with a 20G hard drive, I'd consider buying one. http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000997051360/ Just saying, is all...
As many /. readers are "Linux" or "Unix" friendly, remember the KISS method - small, simple, solid, reliable tools.
The iPod is very solid. (Ok, I would like gap-less playback, but that is related to the core reason I have an iPod - to listen to music.)
Now, if only other manufacturers would get on the ball and make a quality product rather than a "checklist" product. It is the attention to detail and the single-minded focus on the task at hand that makes the iPod great.
I find the iPods really cool. However until they support Ogg Vorbis and FLAC I will not buy one. The majority of my music collection is in Vorbis. I'm sure I'm not alone in this situation.