Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
Using my superior pattern recognition skills I've deduced that a iPod Pico will be forthcomming.
Right now, the iPod does its "one thing" very well: play music.
Adding radio would be bad for it since that would detract from Apple's goal to have the iTunes store be the center of all Internet audio traffic - whether that be music, books, podcasts, etc. Right now, they may not *host* all of those files - but they are the gatekeeper, and can use it as a sort of Long Tail approach: if they are the way to all online audio, and the only way out is through iTunes or the iPod, then they control the audio future.
As for the video side, the biggest issue is "how to do it right" which Mr. Jobs is right to ask. Video would be good for a minority of iPod users. Would I like to see it? Sure - but again, I'm probably in the minority who, while traveling, don't mind looking at a little screen (right now, I rip my DVD's to my PSP for the 4 hour plane flight - when I'm not reading or playing my DS, or, even more likely, trying to sleep).
Video will take some time, I think. They're building some options into the iTunes store now (movie trailers, music videos, and the like), but distribution is still an issue, even over bandwidth lines.
My own video dream would be a Tivo like device, where I could order movies or TV episodes I've missed (say, $1 an episode or $15 for the whole season). A device in the living room would either do it all for me through a Tivo like system and either store the movies in my local computer system, let me download them to the movie device and upload to my computer later, or burn them to DVD's. (You know - like the Tivo should, if the damn guys would update their OS X software to support 10.4.)
Until then, Apple's got a good thing going, and they don't want to muck it up. I'm sure they could have a video iPod out within 60 days just with some changes in the chipsets (I remember an Ars Techana issue over the kind of chips they use now, and how the new genereration of the same chipset supports video with better power options. For all we know, they're used in the iPod Nanos now, so a firmware/software upgrade would add basic video support).
Perhaps in time the iPod could be used with a special cradle that plugs into the TV so you can take your iMovie made shows over to other people's houses to show off the videos.
But for now, leave the iPod as it is - it does 90% of what I want it to do now, and the other 10% is so specialized I can supply that need myself.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
radio may be dead if you live in the middle of nowhere and get one pop station
but i live in midtown manhattan, so i get unbelievable listening choices over radio... everything from classical to jazz to country to bbc to classic rock to one station that plays reggaeton nonstop all day, would that ever appeal to me
and for such a listener as me, i chose the iRiver IFP-180T simply because it has a radio tuner, and would never buy an iPod, because i can't believe apple wouldn't devote the 50 cents it would cost to put a radio tuner in there
seriously, apple: do cost-benefit analysis of a radio tuner... how much does the circuitry cost? what kind of new listening choices do you receive in return?
seems like a no-brainer to me!
and please, enough with the "radio is dead" refrain: just because you can't get a good station in east bohunk arkansas doesn't mean that those who live in a major city should be denied the 50 cents of added circuitry... besides, you couldn't imagine that even in a rural area a radio tuner might be useful during say, a crisis or disaster when electric is hit?
and it's not even like radio is peripheral to the function of an iPod: listening to music!
if sony could figure that out with the walkman in 1980, why can't apple in 2005?
i seriously do not understand why radio isn't included... and every "in my rural area the local pop station sucks" argument against its inclusion is steamrolled by how little it costs to add the dang thing
radio is NOT dead
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Devices that do video... have not been successful yet. No-one's figured out the right formula.
There's a lot of good reasons why this hasn't taken off. While Apple might be able to get a nicer than average player, they will have a few snags:
1) The existence of MP3 players was preceeded by a number of people having collections of digital music and a need for a way to play them.
2) It's relatively trivial to rip a CD. It's not exactly legal to rip a DVD, and downloadable video is till in it's infancy and has all kinds of DRM issues.
3) In a person's average day, how often do they have an opportunity to watch video on a portable device where there's no better means to do it. That is, in most situations, I could play video on my TV, my desktop, or my laptop with superior quality and no noticeable sacrifice of convenience.
Have you ever tried to put a DVD on your computer. Beyond the fact, that you're violating the DMCA, it takes hours to pull the data off the DVD and then re-encode it in a compressed format. You'd better have a good reason to go through that hassle, and frankly most people don't.
Now if video was built into a device that you already had, it might make sense. But I just don't see any good reason to buy a portable video device for it's own sake.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I'd argue that looking at a market and finding why the existing products suck and create something that doesn't is much more ground braking than beeing the first to launch a sucky version of an obvious idea. It takes huge amounts of skill to repeatedly make such high quality designs as Apple.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
Mine's got a standard S-video out. It plays regular DVDs, has a big enough hard drive to store a lot of video, and the screen is actually big enough to comfortably watch a movie or TV show, plus it supports HD resolutions. I can even set up the S-Video out as a secondary monitor and watch a movie or TV off of it while I work. As far as I'm concerned, it's the ideal portable video device, and that was a significant motivator for me buying it.
I don't see any need for it to be smaller. For any place that I actually want to watch video, a laptop will fit just fine.
The Apple 2 was the only one of these which was fully documented - it came with full schematics and Apple encouraged development using the expansion slots (bus). Apple even provided a source code listing of the monitor ROM (BIOS). It was also the only one of the three which was easily upgradable in memory (just add/change memory chips) and the only one to support color and bit mapped graphics. It was the first to offer a reasonably priced floppy disk drive and to take advantage of a switching power supply. The very first "killer app," Visicalc, was introduced first for the Apple 2.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
People don't give the C64 line (Pet, Vic20, C64, C128) enough credit. I guess it's because Commodore isn't around anymore.
The Pet was useful out of the box - I'm not sure how the Apple II was any better in this regard. And it did hit the shelves months before the Apple II making it the first "real" personal computer available. It *did* support graphics, not just text. Some of the features of the Pet:
- a keyboard with a separate numeric pad (almost completely unheard of at the time, even as an option)
- a 9" integrated Blue and White monitor
- a main board with a powerful new 1Mhz MOS 6502 processor
- lots of room for an additional RAM or Processor board
- 4K of memory
- power supply
- real storage device (cassette tape)
- several expansion ports including an RS232 (serial) port
- ability to handle and create fantastic graphics
- upper and lower case text
- an operating system that was burned onto ROM and loaded on boot
Interestingly enough, the OS was Basic. And it was actually licensed from Microsoft in 1976.
The Pet was considerably cheaper then the Apple II - initially $499 and then $595 when demand outgrew production - versus the $1295 Apple II with 4k of memory. You could buy a Pet (which included the tape drive, etc) PLUS a floppy drive (when released, roughly the same time the floppy was released for the Apple) for less then an Apple II with *no* peripherals.
You could upgrade the Pet with memory chips in a similar fashion to the Apple II, but it was not as "user servicable" as the Apple. But the same process was involved - plop in more chips.
But you're right about one point - the Apple II had color which the Pet did not.
Commodore sold a lot of Pets but they sold an ass-load of Vic-20's and C64's - the C64 was wildly more popular then the Apple 2 ever was. They sold 30 million of them - more then any computer system ever and still. Commodore was the first computer company to do over 1bn in sales - largely due to the Vic20 and C64 sales.
People still use the 64 for a wide range of hobby activities. Demo coders still write for it for fun. Musicians use the unique SID chip for music - either in C64's or you can get a MIDI synth based on the SID from a few companies out there.
I realize that the Apple II was out for a few years before the most popular of the Commodore machines, the C64. But the C64 completely usurped the Apple II. Apple didn't have an answer to it for several years. Nobody did, really.
If Commodore had made better business decisions and gotten new product to market more efficiently, they could have been the "Apple of today." Or maybe even more, since the Amiga was arguably a better system then the Mac - it was technically superior and had a GUI system that was both functional and efficient.
Commodore brought a lot of unique computing ideas to the table.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Claim: a keyboard with a separate numeric pad
Fact: The keyboard was by far the most reviled part of the PET. Commodore was a calculator manufacturer, and the PET keyboard used the same (poor) style key mechanisms as the cheap calculators Commodore produced (aka "chicklet keyboard"). It could include a numeric keypad because the key spacing on the rest of they keyboard was significantly smaller that the norm. Touch typing was extremely difficult, if not impossible.
Claim: lots of room for an additional RAM or Processor board
Fact: Well, there was physical room, but that was it - there was no internal access to the microprocessor bus (all expansion was intended to be external to the unit, so expansion was difficult). The principal means of I/O expansion, via a (non-standard) IEEE-488 bus, was difficult to work with, and resulted in expensive peripherals.
Claim: several expansion ports including an RS232 (serial) port
Fact: The original PET did NOT have an RS232, or even serial, port. At the time, I built quite a few pseudo-RS232 hardware interfaces which allowed one to "bit bang" the parallel "User Port" to talk to a modem.
Claim: ability to handle and create fantastic graphics
Fact: The PET used character graphics, and so was limited to what the ROM provided in this regard. It was better than the TRS-80, however. The best graphical program for the PET was probably "Toker II," and the amazing thing was not the graphics, per se, but just the fact that it could be done on a PET.
Claim: upper and lower case text
Fact: Only when not using graphics. One had a choice of uppercase and graphics, or upper and lower case text. (POKE 59468,14) AIR, something which was uppercase in graphics mode was lowercase in text mode.
Claim: The Pet was considerably cheaper then the Apple II - initially $499 and then $595
Fact: That was the pricing for the 4K model, but good luck finding one. Commodore only shipped a few. At the time, I worked for the largest Commodore retailer east of the Mississippi (NCE Compumart), and only ever saw a handful of 4K PETs. The vast majority of PETs were the $795 8K model.
Claim:You could upgrade the Pet with memory chips in a similar fashion to the Apple II, but it was not as "user servicable" as the Apple. But the same process was involved - plop in more chips.
Fact: Absolutely untrue. The original PET used non standard static RAMs (6550s) available only from MOS Technology (the chip manufacturer which Commodore owned). All RAM was soldered directly to the motherboard, not socketed. On the 4K PETs, Commodore even went so far as to drill through the PC board locations where the additional memory chips might have otherwise been installed in order to prevent user expansion. Apple used industry standard 4K and 16K Dynamic RAMs, which were not only readily available from multiple sources, but significantly less expensive than static RAM. Every Apple 2 could easily be expanded to 48K simply by installing the appropriate chips in the socketed motherboard.
Claim: You could buy a Pet PLUS a floppy drive for less then an Apple II with *no* peripherals.
Wrong. Commodore's first disk drive, the 2040, cost more than the computer itself, originally selling for $1195 - as much as a 16K Apple 2 (1979). It couldn't handle random access files and was unreliable. It was also significantly slower than the competition, including Apple, North Star, and Cromemco (the latter being two popular S-100 disk controllers). The Apple Disk sold for $595, a breakthrough price at the time. To be fair, the 2040 was a dual drive, but that was an extravagance at the time.
The C64 didn't ship until 1982 (5 years after the ones I mentioned!) was basically a toy and wasn't competitive for serious applications. Yes, it sold lots. It was cheap (not inexpensive
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law