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."
What has Apple done for the Linux community other than not being Microsoft?
Ummmm ... if you don't like them, them why are you tired of them? I hate them too, but I'm not tired of them, because I don't use them.
There are lots of good alternatives to the iPod. I picked up an iPaq 1945 and it does everything I would want a PC in my pocket to do!
;)
* mp3 player using an open source player. I've mapped it's startup to a hardware key that also allows me to turn off the screen and lock the buttons while it's playing. This particular player also allows me to change the skin so I even installed an iPOD skin just so I could mock the sheep who all bought one. And it supports shoutcast streams as well.
* A decent video player. I can shrink DVD movies down so that 2 fit on a 256 MB SD - CARD. DiVX support isn't there yet but that's just a matter of time. I can play WMV, RealPlayer, AVI, MPEG 1 and 2 which covers the better part of my collection.
* internet connectivity - all I need is a WiFi connection or with bluetooth I can use a GPRS phone and connect via dialup to the net. From there I can read email, surf and even listen to shoutcast streams.
* above all that I also have some cool RTS and arcade shooters, word and excel, GPS if I wanted it, camera if I wanted it and my appointment and contact book.
All that for $200 CDN! Not to shabby! And best yet, if I want to write an app for it, the tools to write stuff for it are FREE!
And you can even install Linux on it...