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'True' Video iPod Coming Soon
Moby Cock writes "Think Secret is reporting that the true video iPod is slated for announcement soon. It will have a 3.5 inch display and will eschew the mechanical click wheel in favour of a touch screen version. The 5th generation iPod released prior to the holiday season last year is described as a souped up 4G iPod with video capabilities. This new iPod will be the 'true' video iPod. It looks like there is not going to be wireless support. The article hints that the release date could be April 1 which is the 30th anniversary of Apple."
How do they plan on keeping fingerprints off the screen?
Reminder: Apple owns 1/255th of the internet.
This is just getting out of hand. Every few months they are coming out with new ipods just to make people think that the ipod they have now is suddenly obsolete and should be replaced.
the real question is: will it have more than 3 hours playback time so we can actually watch films on it, unlike almost every other portable video player
But I could get stuff off my DirecTiVo onto it I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
If anyone can make a great portable media player, I trust Apple would be the one to do it.
Or we will just get the MacBook, Mac Mini Solo, and a new gizmo that isn't the iPod.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Wait, so you mean Apple has bigger plans for the video store on iTunes? Come on, why is this even news? I mean it's a no brainer that Apple wants you to buy videos from them, and if you're buying their videos you must be using their player right?
Apple is taking advantage of their monopoly position disallowing the playing of itunes purchased music on non iPod players.
.. you have to stick to iPod or lose the ability to transport your music? Plus when your HDD dies .. you cant regain your music.
.. if you are a band and want to sell your music (with DRM) .. you have to do it on the iTunes store .. or your music will not have the protection of DRM if it's to be put on iPods
.. but then you lose the ability to protect your music. I hate DRM as much as the next guy .. but this isnt helping the situation to have Apple doing this.
They're not taking advantage of a monopoly; this has been the case since the Music Store's introduction. As for "abusive monopoly" claims, get back to me when Apple is making deals that punish stores for selling alternatives to iPods, the way Microsoft did with Windows OEMs int he 90s. Consumers can choose any player and any format they want.
This means if you bought music for your iPod
Yes, you can regain your music. Back it up (as iTunes prompts you to) or copy it from the iPod using a third-party utility. Obviously, if you buy music from Apple, it will play on Apple's player. Don't like it? Don't use an iPod or iTunes. You have a choice.
Furthermore, because Fairplay DRM is closed
So don't do it. Just because those are the options doesn't make Apple abusive. Life's tough.
The alternative is DRM free mp3
You don't explain how it's detrimental to the situation or what is so bad about Fairplay DRM to begin with (I forget it's even there, it's so lax in its "restrictions").
"Sufferin' succotash."
Is the buy-use-buy-new cycle going faster and faster? I remember when I was young back in the 80s, and Commodore 64 lasted for years without the need to upgrade. The programmers could always tweak it a little bit and get some more out of the hardware. How many iterations of Apple's iPod do we need? I know this is about a "real video iPod", but why don't they make a quality machine that doesn't need more upgrades for the next coming years? Is it the almighty dollar that they're chasing with these frequent product upgrades? I guess I'm getting old.
Thanks for reading... now, mod me offtopic or something.
ThinkSecret hasn't been right about much of anything lately, so it's pretty clear that their well has been poisoned. The only reason the site stays running is because they can still get ad impressions on remembered glory.
This new story is probably fake; it's based on the notion that the video iPod isn't the "real" video iPod, which is a very strained argument. Apple has been selling videos at the resolution of the 5G iPod for some time, and the proposed device can't compete with existing portable DVD players for the purpose of watching movies. A bigger screen with the same resolution would increase watchability much less than most people think, and it would be too difficult to hold the device. These facts suggest that Apple is not about to start selling feature films, and further, that Apple is not going to start selling some kind of device massively redesigned for the purpose of video.
If this scoop started showing up in a lot of other places, I'd believe it, but nothing exclusive to ThinkSecret has been true for about six months.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
When the video-capable iPod was released, Apple was very clear to position it as the latest and greatest iPod music player, with the added ability to play video. It's an excellent iPod. It plays video very well. If you buy a product and it meets or exceeds your expectations, why should you care if a better version comes out six months later? Welcome to the Computer Age.
Besides, the rumor sites and press pushed it as the "video iPod." Apple never represented video as its primary function. Look at the iPod site. It's an iPod first, and a video player second.
If you're Apple, you're gonna get bashed if you sit on your laurels and don't keep coming out with newer, better, less expensive versions of the iPod. It seems Apple also gets bashed for continually improving their product lineup. Which makes sense, I suppose. I mean, Apple should really take a breather, because nobody wants the option of buying improved iPods, and Apple's competitors certainly need somet time to catch up.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I, for one, am not in the slightest surprised.
It's a rumor on an inconsistent website about a proposed product launch on April 1st.
WTF.
"MY APOCALYPTIC TENOR HAS NOT BEEN DISPELLED!" - T-Rex, qwantz.com
Given how grotty the current ipods become just from handling, I wonder how are they going to handle a screen where you are forced to touch it?
Since the entire screen is the control(s), I don't see how you could possibly use this iPod inside of a protective case.
I hope Apple would use something like this. Otherwise, the screen will be quickly ruined and make the iPod Nano look indestructible in comparison.
Cause this is the proper place for a Newton or Newton emulator to live!
i own an ipod shuffle. i bought it right when the shuffles first went on sale. i bought the shuffle instead of a big ipod because i wanted to save a little money, i was waiting for one single solitary feature: AUDIO THAT DOESN'T SKIP BETWEEN TRACKS.
name the one thing that a record player, an 8-track player, a tape player, and a CD player can all do, but that an iPod can not. that feature is to not have a half a second of silence between tracks. yes, yes, i know that "the MP3 format isn't easily made to fade one track seamlessly into another track" but i don't care if it's easy, it's obviously *possible*, so that fact that it hasn't been done is a travesty.
look: i listen to albums, not songs; and my favorite album is Tool's "Lateralus"; and until i can go from 'Parabol' to 'Parabola' without a moment of silence inbetween, or (worse) having to fade the last half a second of one track into the first half a second of the next track, i won't buy that damn contraption. so you don't like Tool? maybe you like Queen's "News of the World", where 'We Will Rock You' refuses to match up with 'We Are The Champions'.
bah. is this really a ridiculous thing to request? is it really THAT hard? i mean, i figure there is some kind of input stream for the MP3 data; can't that stream be buffered for two seconds, and when the read-ahead algorithm finds the end of the stream, can't it append the stream for the next MP3? here let me answer my own question: yes, it could.
i'd love to have an ipod that does video, and i'd pay five bills to get one, but if it can't even play music right, what good is it?
end rant.
At first it was a mere capacity war, but they've shifted the playing field with the mini, nano, and now video iPods. I know people are often wishing they held out for the next big iPod evolution, but these days these evolutions are occuring so often that waiting simply isn't an option. Competitors are trying to copy the iPod, but by the time they finally make it to the market, their target has morphed from a clunky 20gig iPod to a tiny, polished flash player with a color screen, completely changing the focus for what the market values in a player.
And this is why Apple is so secretive about what it's working on. This element of surprise is what allows it to keep its lead over its competitors. It continues to innovate its product in logical, evolutionary steps while fighting feature bloat. And of course each revision looks even more attractive than the last. Its compeitors are too busy trying to out-do yesterday's news.
The problem is that mainstream news sources pick this up. In general, if one knew that spoilers were only to be found on spoiler websites, then the enthusiasts could get the early scoop, and you could wait to be surprised if you wanted. But you've got banks like Needham & Co. reading Think Secret and spouting it off as their own research.
But maybe Apple spoilers are just so popular that media companies feel they would lose out by not printing rumors. Does(n't) that legitimize the existence of spoiler sites?
That's the shit that feds me up
Apple has a few screws loose if they think coming out with a new iPod product every 6 months is a good thing.
While I am all for innovation, there is also a question of blowing the wad too soon.
With every new Apple release there is always going to be a large percentage of customers that get burned. Because Apple is so secretive you can't make a wise decision on purchasing Apple's products. Buy a product at full price one day (Apple rarely discounts), and the next day Apple comes out with something 4 times faster, or more capacity, or more features, or whatever. Anybody buying the so called 5th gen Video iPod will be sour when Apple releases a better version only 6 months later.
This is going to hurt Apple in the long run because they are developing a reputation of being deceptive, not secretive, forcing customers to pay full price for a product that becomes obsolete the next day. At least if Apple practices slowly discouting product until their next release (like the REST of the technology market does), then it wouldn't be so bad when someone bought what was the state of the art iPod one day for $200 and then it is replaced with a new version at $500. Apple frequently releases new better products CHEAPER then the previous generations that we sold only the day before.
If Apple releases a revamped iPod in April, then I think they have lost touch with their customers and reputation for being a considerate company, instead churning out incremental upgrades on a regular basis, screwing early adopter all for the almighty dollar.
Apple has become Microsoft.
If Apple can't wait until next holiday season to hype up a new Video iPod then I will have lost all respect for them.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Knowing some musicians they told me an interesting observation: They do not care if their stuff is copied, because they tend not to make too much money with it anyways. They rather concentrate on licensing their songs to companies who, for example, want to use them in commercials.
So who helps DRM? It seems it helps the companies who peddle in music, not neccessarily the artist, they rather win by more people listening (or so they tell me).
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
The fact that these patents were filed shows that they are working on this kind of device.
History has shown that the images in Apple's utility patent filings rarely bear direct resemblance to the devices they end up in. (And before the trolls come in: Yes this is legal and normal, as the images are only "one embodiment" of the invention being patented.)
"Gestures for touch sensitive input devices", for instance, could easily be interpreted as applying to the existing touchpads in PowerBooks and MacBooks, which are multipoint devices capable of interpeting gestures. Also the so-called "Chameleon iMac" patent seems in retrospect to describe the PowerBook's illuminated keyboard. And if I remember correctly the iPod's "Click Wheel" is covered by the patent for "Mouse with rotary dial".
I'm just saying that I wouldn't put much faith in the drawings in utility patents. The design patent you cited (which is quite clearly larger than an iPod) is much more convincing, however.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
You sound like a cheapskate fashion elitist who doesn't have a clue as to how the system works.
"What? Saks updates its collection every few months? So I can't buy one outfit today and be able to brag to my friends that I am on top of the fashion world for the next few years? Oh, the horror. I have lost all respect for Saks, that evil inconsiderate Microsoft of a company."
Either accept paying the bill every few months to have the latest fashion, or quit buying fashion in your technology.
What foppery you present us with. Grow up.
My complaint is that if you walk into a shop right now and drop $400 on an ipod, in a couple of months it'll have been superceded.
If you walk into a shop and buy a PS2, PSP, XBOX or any other 'pricey toy', you will get years from it.
Y'know, that's funny, 'cause my 3G iPod, which is 2 1/2 years old now, and (by your logic of counting all iPod lines as the same) probably a dozen generations out of date...and yet, it still works, it still plays all my songs—tell me just how it's been "superseded"?
If you have to have the latest and greatest, then yeah, you're going to have a frustrating time keeping up (especially if you automatically assume that the most recently released iPod is the Best Ever, even if it's the Nano, which is a completely different product line than the full-sized iPod...). On the other hand, if you can hold your manly ego in check for a while, you might realize that if the iPod Nano was good enough for you then, it just might still be good enough for you now...it's not like Apple has magically taken away its features, or activated some kind of failsafe that corrodes away the insides and ages it all 20 years overnight...
Just chill. Unless you're very unlucky, your Nano will not need to be "superseded" for another few years, and for the same money you would be spending on the iPod Video, you can buy the 10G iPod Holo, that plays holographic movies and is controllable by brainwaves ;-)
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
The current video iPods are just pale imitators. This new one is as close to the pure platonic form of a "video iPod" as is possible in the real world.
Clearly.
Darn tootin' it ain't rocket science.
There shouldn't even be an issue.
There's no technical reason, given a tiny bit of buffering, why a player can't have the beginning of the next track ready to play the instant the last track ends - especially when the unit has a "fade" feature. Default should be a 0-second "fade", not a gap interrupting the music.
We're paying hundreds of $$$ for gizmos that are entirely capable of uninterrupted playback, yet track transitions are disturbingly discernable silent gaps.
The whole point is to make it EASY, even TRIVIAL to load music on a player and play in a manner the listener expects. There's no friggin' reason why someone should have to dork around with merging tracks, setting bookmarks, etc. Yes, those duct-tape fixes can be done without much difficulty, but the whole point is fixing something that shouldn't be broken in the first place.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?