8 & 10 GB iPod Nanos Rumored

koweja writes "The UK based technology magazine T3 is predicting that Apple will release larger iPod Nanos in the near future. From the article, "Munster's reasoning is that, as the touchscreen iPod will likely not now appear until next year, Apple needs to launch something eye-catching in time for the lucrative run-up to Christmas - and bigger capacity nanos fit the bill nicely." Granted it's an almost completely unsubstantiated prediction from somebody outside of Apple, but it is what a lot of people have been asking for since the original Nanos came out."

Comments

Here is Why...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get a 4GB USB thumb drive for $100 (or get four 512MB and one 2GB bundled together for $108). The current crop of MicroDrives (CompactFlash-compatible miniature hard drives) of similar capacity runs even less.

If a normal consumer can buy these things on the retail market today, Apple really needs to get its act together and start increasing capacity on its lower end or it is going to lose that market to these cheap drives and the simple add-ons that allow playback of music.

It has been done already

[Kryptonian Jor-El]

Hackaday.com recently had an article about converting a 4 GB iPod nano to an 8 GB. Apparently apple only uses 1 flash chip in the Nano to make up the entire 4 GBs, but in fact it has a second spot on the board to attach a second 4 GB flash chip. It wouold be pretty cool to have an 8 GB iPod Nano though. http://ipod.hackaday.com/entry/1234000233073484/

Re:It has been done already

[TubeSteak]

I saw the original article a while ago.

What I hadn't known is that the people at hackaday said that: "The legitimacy of this hack is yet to be confirmed.

It'd be cool if it was true, but the firmware might not be able to handle the extra space.

Re:Nanos were made to have smaller capacity

[teslar]

Nanos were made to have smaller capacity because Apple weren't selling a good balance of Minis and normal iPods.

I'd say the capacity of the Nano has more to do with the flash memory than with any marketing goals. Flash memory is expensive and doesn't come in large-capacity flavours. Once it becomes cheaper and comes in higher capacities, you can bet that there will be higher-capacity Nanos out.

if they increase the storage capacity it gives people less incentive to buy a more expensive regular iPod.

Precisley. Which is why the regular iPods will be phased out, save perhaps for some large-screen video iPod. After all, why would I want a hard disk based mp3 player if I can have a solid state one with the same capacity for the same price? Hard disk players are going to die out, it's inevitable. Regular iPods won't be an exception.

Re:The reason I havent bought is the small size

[RemovableBait]

the so-called 6 gb mini doesn't really hold 6 gb, it's slightly smaller (it reports 5.6 gb on the About screen).

.
The drive does have a capacity of 6GB. The 0.4GB discrepancy is due to two factors:

• The formatted capacity of any drive will be slightly less.
• Hardware manufacturers consider 1GB to be 1,000,000,000B; whereas, the software considers 1GB to be 1,073,741,824B.

So saying the mini holds 6GB is not incorrect at all.

Re:Is it even physically possible?

[Hatechall]

I believe the largest (single) commercial chips nowadays are owned by Sandisk (6GB), to be used for their up and coming beauty: The Sansa 270.

I assume Samsung has a few tricks up their short term sleeve as well though.

Re:nano replaced mini

[BenjyD]

Modded 5 insightful? The battery life on the 2G minis was very good, around 15-18hrs (more than the full iPods at the time IIRC). The nano's battery life seems a little shorter, around 10-14hrs.

Re:Nanos were made to have smaller capacity

[MonoSynth]

Have you ever wondered why the new 30GB and 60GB iPods are so thin compared to the previous generations? That's because they already use perpendicular recording.....

Re:In Other News

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you meant to say Apple upgrades their operating system.

Windows XP - October 25, 2001

In roughly that same time frame...
OS X - March 2001
OS X 10.1 - September 2001
OS X 10.2 - August 2002
OS X 10.3 - October 2003
OS X 10.4 - April 2005

Not sure which versions of OS X were free upgrades, I assume most were.

Re:In Other News

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not point upgrades in the sense that Windows 3.11 is a point upgrade to Windows 3.1. It's more like a Windows 95 to Windows 98 difference.

The product name is "Mac OS X", and the version is 4. That gives you 10.4. So when version 5 of OS X comes out, it'll be called OS X.5.

There are major additions to functionality, generally the OS runs much faster on the same hardware, and the under the hood stuff gets better.

You can get the security updates for free, they're like the minor versions. So 10.4.1 was the first set of bugfixes and updates.

Re: In Other News

[KURAAKU Deibiddo]

No, the firewall didn't come until SP2. It was part of Microsoft's attempts to claim that they focused on security.

Re: In Other News

[Vasey]

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxp pro/maintain/sp2netwk.mspx "Prior to Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows XP shipped with Internet Connection Firewall disabled by default. The user either needed to run a wizard or navigate through the Network Connections folder to manually enable Windows Firewall. This experience proved too difficult for many users, and resulted in many computers not having any firewall protection." It's not a big deal really but seems to me that I'm right.