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Video iPod Oct 12?
Petey_Alchemist writes "Apple Insider is reporting that Apple will release a video iPod on October 12th, possibly in conjunction with the announcement of Apple's fourth quarter results.
From the article 'Although details are scarce, sources who claim to have seen the new iPod describe it as being similar to Apple's 60GB iPod photo player, but several millimeters thinner.
The device reportedly sports a smaller click-wheel akin to that of the iPod nano's, making way for a larger, higher-resolution color display that extends further down the face of the device.' "
Let's just hope this screen resists scratches much better than the nano. At least you do not have to look at the nano to enjoy listening to it...
Video is not portable in any successful manner. Cell phone providers can't get people interested; portable mini-LCD DVD players spend more time on family room shelves than in-use.
Music videos? Does MTV even play them anymore? Who watches videos?
My impression is that Apple is trying to make the market viable, yet the iPod's popularity rode on years of MP3 success from Napster-on. Who trades videos over P2P or buys video DVDs from Borders, Wal-Mart or Amazon?
Is it a workaround from the RIAA? Doubtful. Is it attempting to fill up the hole in a dwindling music video market? Unlikely. Is it a feature that will get a huge initial "ooh toy" interest that will never get used after the first few weeks?
I can't see why this is needed unless Apple foresees video Podcasts from independent video "bloggers" or DIY TV show sites, but even that is a stretch.
The iPod coasted on the coattails of a huge market without a user friendly portable player. Video iPod is trying to invent a market boom.
Would a larger screen on an iPod-sized device really make it any easier to watch video on it? No matter how you design things, it's a tiny tiny display.
Say you make it taller than it is wide and rotate it ninety degrees to view video. Then you're 2" tall, but still only about 2.7" wide, giving you a whopping 3.3" diagonal, up from 2.5" on the current iPod.
Video out support is good, but you're pushing that tiny hard drive pretty hard whether you're driving the iPod's screen or not. Apple would have to do some very impressive tricks with the battery life to make a video iPod practical.
From everything I've been reading, video support on the current iPod is just a firmware upgrade away. But I'm not convinced it's something users are going to be able to use well, even if it is just restricted to music videos.
Hopefully AppleInsider's barking up the wrong tree.
All I can say is if this is true, it better play more video container and codec combinations then Quicktime Player does otherwise it will be terribly limited. Unlike a Mac running OS X, users would not be able to trivially add codecs or install programs like VLC or MPlayer on an iPod as they are forced to do on a Mac in order to watch most "modern" commonly used codecs and container formats.
I watched 2 movies on my iPaq on a flight from LA to Paris. It was actually very nice. I have only 1 GB of storage, but that fits 2 divx movies perfectly.
I doubt that Apple will support divx, using H.264 instead. My question, who has compared these formats in a 500 MB size limit? Will Apple give you a utility to convert your DVDs? (probably not). Also, the question of battery life is important. An SD card doesn't spin inside. That hard drive on the iPod is going to burn a lot of battery power, and get hot to the touch.
The video iPod is inevitable. My questions are mainly to how we will fill them without an Apple Movie Store. I would expect the release of this iPod to coincide with the release of a movie store.
if this doesn't have video out, I don't see the point. I don't want to watch any show or clip of a show on my ipod. I am sure there are a lot of other people who are the same.
but,
if it did have vdeo out of some sort, it would be really attractive. I would buy a show through apple (h264 would be awsome), load it onto an ipod and play it on a tv at my convience, hd output of some sort would be a plus.
The invitation picture piques my interest, though. I don't think it'll be a video iPod, but I think movies are involved bdsed on the red curtain.
The "AirPort Express" device is probably not for the iPod, but rather like the Express, a video-out system for Macs, allowing you to play your movies to your TV without having them near each other... Hasn't this constantly been the intention of Apple - the "digital hub" without all the wires?
I wonder if/hope it will support a remote control, so you can control your on-computer content in the other room from the TV.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Quote:
No PowerBook revision?
Sources are also reporting that the pending Power Mac revision will be the last Mac upgrade of the calendar year. Contrary to other reports, Apple's PowerBook line, last revised in February with only incremental upgrades, will likely not see an upgrade before Macworld Expo San Francisco in January 2006, at the earliest.
personally, i think it's going to be the rebranding of the itms from 'itunes music store' to the new media store.
they'll sell movies, etc. no new device for watching on tv yet. no new video ipod yet. you need a base of people who use the service that really WANT a remote way to move their media around first. how many people (outside the slashdot community) would even HAVE movies to put on an vipod now?
The red curtain is meaningless. Read the fine print: The event is being hosted at a theater.
What, with no native programs to run on it?
I wrote yesterday that processor upgrades are also very likely for this event for two reasons:
The future is in beta
Most people who buy the nano/mini/shuffle etc are people who place fashion over utility, the amount of songs the device can hold is nearly inconsequential, or at most second place. If they're content with at most 2gb of storage, they wont put on a fit over a new device with more space, if they're slow to adopt new trends (eg digital music, assuming they have small libraries to match their small player) then they wouldn't have video to put on a video ipod anyway. Apple is opening up a new market, not pissing on its existing one.
Close, but no banana. Why limit it to G5 owners? An H.264 decoder chip costs under $10. They could quite easily build the decoder logic into the Airport Express Base Station, and allow even G3-class machine to stream the video with almost no CPU load. Combine this with a remote control and an iTunes-like interface so you don't have to go to your computer to press pause, and you might well have a winner.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"....and possibly we'll see a new high-end Nano (6 or 8G?), with some price adjustments across the board."
No way. Apple would not release a higher capacity Nano only weeks after releasing the existing versions. It would piss everyone with a 2 or 4 gig version off so bad they'd be ripping the metal off the front of their local Apple Stores demanding free upgrades!
the posters who complain about the usefulness of such devices don't have children. i recently traveled with children to SF. i had ripped some kids videos (They Might Be Giant's "Here come the giants") to my treo 650. now you can argue about how illegal that is, but it kept my kids occupied. now, would you like a screaming 2 year old sitting behind your plane seat, or one watching video? there is definitely a place for this device.
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
"...you don't know Apple too well. They will always come out with an update of your product less than a month after you purchased it"
Isn't invention great. And you fail to mention the real reason it makes so many people feeling a little jealous... it's the fact that Apple has been doing this for many years. They will upgrade their line when they feel it's right, while keeping the price of the relative product the same. They've been doing this on the computer side for a very long time.
Seeing an upgrade to your product (upgrades are good, trust me, my original 5 GB iPod wouldn't cut it today, sorry) that is exactly the same price as the one you just bought a month ago is what get's ya. But, Apple knows the balance tips towards keeping the prices constantly in certain ranges while not being afraid of investigating upgrades due to new technology. We as consumers tend to like that much more than don't like the jealousy thing... you picked the time to buy, and the purchase should have been an accepted agreement. Meaning, it was worth it to you to pay what you did for that device at that time, so go with that, or you will never own an xxxxxx.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
Seriously, why would someone buy one of these? Its not like you are going to be watching video while working out at the gym, jogging, or walking down the street. Thats why the old portable TV Watchman was a failure, and the portable cassette Walkman was a success. You can multitask while listening to your iPod - not while watching a little video screen.
"and think secret is saying the exact opposite: no vIpod, it's powermac and powerbook updates."
And ThinkSecret seems to think there's a large margin on the iPod Nano, which there is not.
ThinkSecret seems to think that an iPod Video model would rob sales of the iPod Nano despite the fact that the Video model would be at the high price range ($500+) of all iPods, whereas the Nano is not.
This event is a media special event. It makes no sense to invite the media if it is merely an annoucement and last hurrah of the PowerBooks and PowerMacs before the Intel switch.
Most likely, the event will start with a speed bump/dual core announcement for the PowerBooks and PowerMacs. The "one last thing" - and the main event of the presentation - would be the iPod Video, along with the iMovie/iVideo/iWhatever Video store debut. You gotta think about it like the last presentation; the rather mundane Motorola ROKR shown off (well, actually, iTunes 5.0 first), and then the major announcement of the iPod Nano saved for last.
We must all remember that we are in the final stretches before the holiday season. Apple needs to remind consumers that Apple is still hot this holiday season, and thus an iPod Video would serve this well.
Then again, same goes for a G5 powered and HD capable Mac Mini, while they are at it. But I doubt that is meant to be for now.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
How about the ridiculously long time it takes to encode to H.264, even on mid-range hardware ?
I thought about that...a good Christmas season for Apple would translate into good *first* quarter results for them, so the Company will look good coming in and going out of their fiscal year. Basically they can say..."hey, it's only the first quarter of our fiscal year and look how good we're doing already!"
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Don't they host most such events in theaters? I mean, they need someplace big with lots of seats and a stage for such announcements. Isn't a theater (and not the movie kind) the obvious place to host such a thing?
I think a previous post I've made still applies to this situation, and I'll reiterate the key points: Every time Apple hints they are about to make an announcement, the media always tells the public that it is undoubtedly going to be a video iPod.. And every single time they have been wrong. Does this mean that this announcement is not a video iPod? No. I merely point out that screaming "OMG TEH VIDEO IPOD IS HERE!" every time apple prepares for an announcement is stupid.
If your only measure of utility is data storage capacity, then you might be correct. I'm guessing there are some other measures though.
Personally, I bought a Nano for jogging. It's very light and much less likely to have vibration related issues than a hard drive based mp3 player. I had almost bought a shuffle for the same reason instead, but luckily waited until the Nano came out. I generally jog in sweat pants, with an old t-shirt and a heavily worn cap on, so fashion is not exactly high on my list.
I can imagine a time in the not-to-distant future when I will be walking down the street without any kind of entertainment or communication devices in tow and these kids will be pointing and staring at me for not having a "rich multimedia experience" or whatever. The idea of not having multiple electronic devices attached to my every orifice and appendage will be inconceivable to them. One of them might just concur that I was using my time thinking of stuff like people did in the "old days". Yeah, I can do long division with a pencil and paper too! Just what *is* this perceived need for entertainment and communication every moment of your waking life? Whatever happened to solitude and reflection and pondering over things? No time for that now!