Handicapping the 6th Generation iPod

An anonymous reader writes "It's that time of the year again, when Apple rumors bloom with the fall foliage and the press is inundated with hype and wishful thinking. MP3 Newswire has a reasonably sober article addressing 17 of those rumors, even giving odds on the validity of each. From the article: 'It is the peripheral manufacturers that now have a heavy sway on what features the iPod will add to its 6th generation. The peripheral market has done more to cement Apple's proprietary technology as a standard than Apple itself, adding to the iPod's dominance. Mr. Jobs will not upset that balance without good reason and Apple's recent deal with Creative to make iPod peripherals shows he wants to feed it further. But the iPod needs something new to keep it fresh and ahead of the competition.'"

Comments

Re:Well

[NexFlamma]

IANAAE (I Am Not An Apple Engineer), but I imagine that adding such a feature would inherently add some amount of extra work to their schedule (and thusly to the cost of the unit itself). Why would Apple want to add a feature that is only important to an extremely small minority, that may add quite a bit to the overall cost of either the R&D or the unit itself?

Re:it needs a phone

[Robaato]

For what it's worth, in Japan the major mobile phone companies (DoCoMo, Vodafone/Softbank, AU) have promoted music-player phones since January or so. My current phone (DoCoMo N702iD) even plays AAC. The latest DoCoMo line of phones uses the fact that they all have music player software as their main selling point in advertising.

However, the ads specifically mention their WMA compatibility, so maybe Apple might be missing the boat in this market.

(and, of course, one of the phones is ATRAC compatible. Care to guess which manufacturer makes that one?)

iNewton

[ptomblin]

I bought a Treo so I wouldn't have to carry a phone AND a PDA AND an iPod everywhere I go - now I'm down to Treo + iPod. If Apple would make a combined iPod + PDA + phone, I would buy it in a minute. The Newton had features that the rest of the PDA community still can't hold a candle to - why don't they dust those designs off and have another look at them?

Hey, and if they could put a spot on the back for credit cards and money, I could leave my wallet at home too! :-)