6G iPod & Apple's Future

belsin_gordon writes "CNET rounds up what we're going to get from the next iPod and where Apple is heading as a company and as a business juggernaut. [They have the] 100GB widescreen video iPods, Wi-Fi-enabled iPods capable of on-the-fly movie downloads over the air, unlimited downloads from iTunes for a flat fee and the UK finally getting its content-hungry hands on movie downloads. Apple has dropped the 'Computer' from its company name, and is making significant advances into the media-distribution business. It's bringing video to everyone everywhere with iTunes movies and now Apple TV, and the rumours and speculation we've discussed promote the theory that Apple is setting itself up as a major player in the media-distribution industry."

Comments

Totally Random Comment #102903

[Moggyboy]

As a part-time musician and full-time IT professional, it took me all of 20 minutes playing around with Apple's GarageBand application before deciding to convert. This is an application that has made good on the promise that all these software companies have been promising for the last 15 years - to make creative and business pursuits easier.

End Random Comment.

Re:Totally Random Comment #102903

[carpe_noctem]

Which product did they buy and rebrand?

I really hope you're not referring to logic, because that's a totally different animal...

Re:Totally Random Comment #102903

[mobby_6kl]

Thank you. Your check is on its way.

Regards, Apple PR department.

Re:Totally Random Comment #102903

[Afecks]

Someone hasn't tried Reason.

http://www.farsipraise.net/blog/uploaded_images/ga rageband-723027.jpg

vs.

http://namm.harmony-central.com/Musikmesse02/Conte nt/Propellerhead/PR/Reason-2-front-large.jpg

Even better, runs on both Windows and Mac.

Re:Totally Random Comment #102903

[Moggyboy]

Actually I have tried Reason, and found it didn't have the synthesizer and using-keyboard-as-piano capabilities of Garageband - well at least the demo didn't. I found using Garageband just on a G4, I could make up a track in 30 minutes that would require me to use my guitars, basses and electronic drum kit when I was on my PC at home, and I haven't found another program for PC that has anywhere near that functionality.

But I respect your opinion anyway.

Re:Totally Random Comment #102903

[shotgunsaint]

As I own and use both of these programs, I feel obliged to comment. Reason, while it is more powerful for the beat and loop creation part of music production, is not a one-stop shop for recording professionals. Adding any kind of live instrument is completely beyond Reason's capabilities. It is a midi sequencer, drum machine, and pseudo-synthesizer. That is all. Garageband is a great program for quickie recordings that sound decent when they're mixed. However, the software instruments included with the program fall completely flat. The sounds and loops included with garageband are very boring and one-dimensional, and not at all suitable for any professional output. However, combining the two can make a very powerful studio that enables you to work very, very efficiently.

Re:Totally Random Comment #102903

[keytohwy]

It was a ground-up application created by Apple by the Logic team after the acquisition.

suure

[thesupermikey]

As totally hot as a wide screen ipod (more hopefully a phoneless iphone) makes me. I'll believe it when i see it.

Rumors are only that, rumors, and we have been hearing these same rumors for months (if not years now).

ml

Re:suure

[MikeBabcock]

And a new version of the Newton OS to run on the iPhone with full third party app functionality and and and ...

Yeah, I doubt it too.

Re:suure

[kchrist]

I think a widescreen, iPhone-style iPod is inevitable. Remember how much attention was given to multimedia -- photos, music, movies -- during the iPhone demo? I don't think there's any way Apple won't release an iPod based on this design. Probably not anytime soon, granted; probably not until the iPhone has been on the market for a while, but I'm sure it's coming. I'd put money on it. They'd be stupid not to do it.

Re:suure

[mrjackson2000]

we wont see a wide screen ipod yet, Apple will want to sell iPhones first, i guestimate a year before the first widescreen ipod. i do belive the ipod will get the 100gb hd at this time though.

Music subscriptions

[Albanach]

I presume by 'unlimited downloads' they mean music subscriptions a la napster, rhapsody etc.

I've always wondered why Apple have been slow to enter that market, but to do so now without opening up their DRM is surely asking for trouble. Real have been trying to get access to the iPod market for years. Apple have tried to stop them at every opportunity. If they now try and copy that distribution method, while refusing to allow anyone else the opportunity leaves them more open than ever to charges of anti competitive behaviour, especially in the EU.

Of course it could also be an indication that Apple are about to open up their DRM? That would be great news for Real and Napster, but could be terminal for the smaller manufacturers of 'mp3' players.

Re:Music subscriptions

[ceoyoyo]

Of all of them, that's the rumor I think is least likely. The subscription music services aren't doing such hot business, certainly not compared to iTunes and the other services where you purchase tracks. The article uses the example of renting movies, but I think they fail to realize that music is different. Most movies you watch you have little desire to see regularly. For those few you do, you buy the DVD. BUT, most music people buy they DO want to hear regularly, so most people prefer to buy it outright, rather than rent.

Re:Music subscriptions

[LKM]

Of course it could also be an indication that Apple are about to open up their DRM?

No. Jobs has pretty much ruled out that option. Apple wants no DRM on music, and they will not license FairPlay.

Re:Music subscriptions

[nine-times]

I always thought that Apple stayed out of the subscription model and refused to open their DRM for roughly the same reason: they have no faith in DRM, even their own.

They assume that their DRM will likely be cracked, and will only be cracked sooner if other people know exactly how it works. Further, if you have a subscription model, then it basically means unlimited access to music that you can keep forever for a low monthly fee-- no content holders are going to like that idea.

Re:Music subscriptions

[lurch_mojoff]

I've always wondered why Apple have been slow to enter that market, but to do so now without opening up their DRM is surely asking for trouble. Real have been trying to get access to the iPod market for years. Apple have tried to stop them at every opportunity. If they now try and copy that distribution method, while refusing to allow anyone else the opportunity leaves them more open than ever to charges of anti competitive behaviour, especially in the EU.

Why would Apple get in trouble if they decide to offer a FairPlay protected subscription service without licensing the DRM to others? With subscription services you do not buy anything, you just rent it. If you have, say, an iPod and use "iTunes Subscribe" and then at some point decide to ditch the iPod and get a Zune, you just cancel your subscription wit Apple and get one from Zune marketplace (or whatever).

The whole issue with closed DRM (or DRM in general) and anti-competitiveness was that you seemingly bought music, but in fact you could not play it back on players outside a certain brand.

Re:Music subscriptions

[Rude Turnip]

The subscription services are a good way to try before you buy. Urge is only 10 bucks a month to do this. And any time I really want to keep something, I'll burn the album to a CD for backup, which will prompt me to make a purchase from the service. Then I rip it back my HD as an MP3 for my iPod. The best part is that if both my hard drive and CD backup DIAF, Urge will let me re-download my stuff.

Re:Music subscriptions

[AndersOSU]

Further, if you have a subscription model, then it basically means unlimited access to music that you can keep forever for a low monthly fee-- no content holders are going to like that idea.

Which is really stupid. Unlimited downloads that I could keep forever and burn as I see fir for a low monthly fee would likely do it for me, and the many other people who's music buying habit has tapered off. If I could pay ~$20/month for unlimited downloads that would be about $15 more per month than the music industry is currently getting from me. I know I'm not exactly the bellwether for the music indusrty, but maybe their problem is they're asking the wrong question. Namely they ask why the people who buy music aren't buying more, rather than why the people who aren't buying aren't buying, or even why the people who stopped buying stopped buying.

If such a model were to magic its way into existence Apple would be happy because I'd have to buy a bigger iPod.

Re:Music subscriptions

[nine-times]

If such a model were to magic its way into existence Apple would be happy because I'd have to buy a bigger iPod.

Right, well, of course Apple has no direct financial interest in making music distribution profitable for content owners, but they have an indirect interest because they need agreements from those content owners, or else they'll be in a heap of legal trouble for copyright infringement.

The problem is, as you say, you're only spending $5 a month and they could get $20-- which labels should theoretically be happy about. However, there are lots of people who are spending $50 a month or more, and $20 a month for unlimited (perminent) downloads cuts into those profits. Plus, you have to consider all the people who aren't really interested in new music. If I had free downloads for a month, I'd probably download everything by people like Dylan, the Beatles, etc. and then drop the service.

I'm not saying I wouldn't like that, but I do think the music industry can probably get a little more money out of me through other means. Personally, I'd probably end up spending more money if I could get albums from iTunes for $4.99. I mean, at that price, I'd probably buy more than twice the number of albums I buy now.

Re:Music subscriptions

[radish]

no content holders are going to like that idea
Well that obviously isn't the case given the number of subscription services which already exist, typically based on MS-DRM. Why Apple aren't doing it is a matter of debate - my guess is that they simply don't feel a need to as they already sell plenty using the traditional pay-per-track model. If your average customer is spending anything close to the proposed monthly subscription fee already you'd be crazy to offer them an all-you-can-eat.

Re:Music subscriptions

[nine-times]

Well that obviously isn't the case given the number of subscription services which already exist, typically based on MS-DRM.

Apparently you misunderstand what I'm saying. Content owners will certainly not like "subscription models" once the DRM is cracked. They only like subscription models which entail the content expiring when the subscription expires. Subscription models which allow users to keep the content are not available.

Re:Music subscriptions

[gig]

> Well that obviously isn't the case given the number of subscription services which already exist, typically based on MS-DRM

Those services barely exist, and have no customers. They are not even on the level of the 8-track tape, they are less than a footnote in the history of recorded audio. Another attempt at subscription radio that failed miserably like all others.

There is this massive hubris in the tech industry in which someone like Bill Gates thinks that because music is digital and PC crapware is digital therefore Bill Gates knows something about music. He does not. People were recording, selling, buying, collecting, mixing music way before Bill Gates started building typewriters.

Nobody has ever made any money selling subscription content except maybe HBO and they have to generate a lot of original content to get this done. They have to have exclusive stuff that is not available anywhere else. People keep re-upping their HBO subscriptions to see the next season of the Sopranos when it is fresh. XM and Sirius have original content but they are trying to merge because the market for subscription audio is so small. And they are streaming dozens of channels to you in real-time by satellite, still people don't want to pay for radio.

Where are you going to find the music artists who want to have all of their music be exclusive downloads at the Zune store? It is to laugh. And Microsoft is not even competent in their core business, where they have almost zero consumer customers, and have demonstrated their incompetence in music and audio at least twice with PlaysForSure and Zune, not to mention Windows Media. With Windows Media they copied MP3 so precisely that they infringed patents and had to pay billions and the irony is that MP3 was 10 years obsolete at that time, they should have licensed AAC like EVERYBODY ELSE IN THE WORLD and they would have had better audio quality, better compatibility, and it would have been much cheaper for their users, and they wouldn't have had to go to court yet again because they copied someone else's technology. So they are not just seen as incompetent in the music industry, but also as bozos. And nobody in music and audio needs them one bit.

Unlimited?

[giorgiofr]

unlimited downloads from iTunes for a flat fee I hope they know what they're getting themselves into. And I bet that pretty soon we'll see some restrictions and limits on how much you can actually download.

Re:Unlimited?

[Eddi3]

Might you say, then, that all-you-can-eat buffets could not exist (at a profit)?

Re:Unlimited?

[Tim_F]

The summary is very misleading. If you actually go in and read the article it is talking about a subscription service. You won't get to keep what you download.

Re:Unlimited?

[cyphercell]

YUUUCK! This might work for movies which IMHO have very little replay value, but music is timeless, and this is disgusting.

Re:Unlimited?

[StarvingSE]

Bad analogy. There is a very real limit on how much you can eat in one sitting (let's call it stomach capacity). Therefore, the buffet restaurant knows, on average, how many plates of food each customer will eat and how to price accordingly.

iTunes, on the other hand, does not have the same restriction. You are pretty much limited to your hard drive capacity, which gets cheaper by the month. You could theoretically just have your computer download their entire catalogue without some kind of restriction on a monthly flat rate.

Re:Unlimited?

[Doctor-Optimal]

All-you-can-eat buffets rarely have top quality food.

Re:Unlimited?

[KDan]

You obviously have not met that common animal called the Starving Student. It lives mostly around universities and is capable of eating many stomach capacities' worth of food in a single sitting. In fact, you could say that strange beast's stomach capacity goes up as the meal price goes down.

Daniel

Re:Unlimited?

[clickclickdrone]

>There is a very real limit on how much you can eat in one sitting
You haven't met my friends C & D. I suspect they digest at the same rate they eat. I've certainly seen them eat 3-4 large pizzas each at an all-you-can-eat place and at a Chinese one of them had 24 crispy duck rolls.

Re:Unlimited?

[guruevi]

Doesn't matter, you can't listen to them all at the same time (well you could, but it would be kakafonie of sounds) and I think you would have restrictions as towards use in commercial environments (DJ's, bars) and as for distribution through P2P: if it costs you $10/month to get a fast, free download of any music without any risk whatsoever, I think I would take that instead of the slow BT search-and-wait game which might get you caught/cut off if they do simple fingerprinting for example.

Re:Unlimited?

[owlnation]

Not necessarily. You're thinking microeconomics. Go macro. Yes, some individuals will download huge amounts of material, but others will only download a little.

Likely, there will be a huge rush of downloading at the beginning of a subscription which will tail off after a few months. There's only so many bands that the average user likes, and the wonderful world of the RIAA produces fairly bland material these days. So once you've got all your fave tunes, you'll only be picking up the odd song or album in any given month.

In all likelihood it will balance out - I'm sure that's how they will have modeled it. That said, there will likely be restrictions to some degree. After all, without that there'd be nothing to stop a school class getting together, designating one person the account holder and sharing the music between them.

Re:Unlimited?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"This might work for movies which IMHO have very little replay value, but music is timeless, and this is disgusting."

Depends on how you look at it. I'm a Rhapsody subscriber, have been for years. I've had a LOT of music come and go. (i.e. not all music is 'timeless'.) In the mean time, I don't have to store music on my machine, and if I really really wanna keep a song (and it happens sometimes) I just purchase it. The subscription service is really useful for finding new music without having to succumb to the 'open your mouth and close your eyes' business model. It's also good for people like me to that listen to music from mutiple computers. (like my machine at work...) It isn't a one-size-fits-all service, but it has its place. I didn't think I'd go for it, but now that I have it, I can't help but wonder what took Apple so frickin long.

Re:Unlimited?

[Gilmoure]

You might remember HD209458b as a 'hot Jupiter' that boils under the glow of its very nearby star.

I'm Troy McClure HD209458b. You might remember me from such extra-solar planets as a 'hot Jupiter' that boils under the glow of its very nearby star.

Re:Unlimited?

[linguizic]

The animal that you speak of is more ravenous here in the Southeastern portion of the United States, where appetites in general are as large as their patriotic fervor. In my small college town I've seen many buffets start up and shut down after about a year or so. Interestingly enough, the only buffets that have managed to stay open are the Chinese restaurants. That really says something about the business model(i.e. only hire easily exploitable young relatives) of Chinese restaurants. Either that or the xenophobia of Southerners.

Re:Unlimited?

[jcgf]

I've certainly seen them eat 3-4 large pizzas each at an all-you-can-eat place

how big were the large pizzas diameter wise?

Re:Unlimited?

[clickclickdrone]

Pizza Hut Large - designed to feed 2-4 people according to their website. 14inch maybe?

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they're fscking expensive. If they'd release decent and expandable $500-$1000 machines, they could probably crush Microsoft in just a few years.

Before you say get a Mac Mini, please re-read the "expandable" part. I don't want to have my desk covered with external hard drives and cd drives.

& Where is MS?

[BoRegardless]

I thought MS was "making significant advances into the media-distribution business".

You know, tens of billions in the bank along with the valuable media properties like MSNBC, Media Center, Zune, DRM heaven, et al.

Why

[CastrTroy]

Why are people buying up iPods in droves when things like the Creative Zen Vision, Archos, and Cowon have had widescreen players for a while. I have a shuffle, and I hate how they try to add all this complex junk that I don't need. I just want it to show up as a thumb drive, drop songs on it from explorer, in any directories I choose, and have it play the music. I don't understand why they have to make everything more complicated. It seems to me that apple is just trying to tie everyone to their media distribution. I'd much rather have something that wasn't tied to the company selling the content, because I think we'd have much better products.

Re:Why

[stratjakt]

It seems to me that apple is just trying to tie everyone to their media distribution.

Well, duh.. Of course they are.

You don't just buy an iPod, you buy your very own iTunes franchise, set up in your pocket.

I think that's actually part of the appeal. Buying an iPod gets you "into the club", so to speak, where any other media player doesn't. People just dont realize the "club" is simply "apple consumers".

Re:Why

[rabbit994]

For Majority of people who run Windows or Mac OS X, iPods are braindead to use. Plug into computer, let iTunes replicate all the playlist and music over along with any TV Shows you have downloaded. Unplug, walk around with those white headphones and look chill. Why would you find dragging and dropping from explorer easier? Something tells me Apple Engineering and Marketing Departments know their main audience better.

Re:Why

[MrMickS]

I just want it to show up as a thumb drive, drop songs on it from explorer, in any directories I choose, and have it play the music

That's fine for someone that's computer savvy and wants to spend the time doing that. There is a problem with that for the general population though. It requires you, the human, having to be trained to do something that the computer could do for you. If you want to do that fine, the majority of people just want to be able to stick XYZ bands songs onto the player and don't give a stuff how its organised.

I used to be anal about how things were organised. I've now adopted the don't give a stuff attitude. I just want to be able to get to things easily, I don't want to have to spend time organising a filing system.

Re:Why

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are people buying up iPods in droves when things like the Creative Zen Vision, Archos, and Cowon have had widescreen players for a while.

1) No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

2) ??????

3) Profit!!!

Re:Why

[kisrael]

Just got an 8 gig Nano.
I'm in the club, but if I'd rather user old fashioned headphones instead of the white buds, am I out of the club?

Re:Why

[pq]

I just want it to show up as a thumb drive, drop songs on it from explorer, in any directories I choose, and have it play the music. I don't understand why they have to make everything more complicated.

Well, good for you. There are a variety of other players out there, as you point out yourself, and you are welcome to them. Apple seems to be targeting the market segment that does want their music player to organize their music and keep track of things (import date, play counts, skip counts, last played, rating, etc) for them. Based on Apple's market share, compared to the rest of the market combined, it looks like they have a better idea of what will sell than you do. But feel free to vote with your wallet.

Re:Why

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay! More anti-ipod FUD!

Is starting iTunes and then dragging and dropping files unto your ipod of choice really all that complex? Most people would say: no.

Yes, every geek wants to control exactly where every file goes. But once you get over yourself and realize that you can make playlists (with drag and drop none-the-less) to simulate your "utlimate directory of ultimate tunes" and still be able to do other things like sort by album,artist,genre etc. without chewing up your battery life you start to appreciate a slightly more modern interface.

Ipods are quite capable, despite what you believe, of surviving without ever purchasing things from iTMS. CD rips, your favorite illegal, quasi-legal, or legal mp3 sources can all be used to feed your ipod.

Re:Why

[p0tat03]

That's something I never quite got, the iPod hate. A friend of mine recently introduced me to his Cowon D2, which is a very slick piece of hardware: 52h battery life on music, 10h on video, smaller than an iPod and has a touch screen to boot. Why wasn't I sold immediately?

Because it meant the endless tedium of synchronizing my music with the god-awful "drag into Explorer" (or in my case, "drag into Finder") interface. The whole explorer drag-drop thing was fine when our music players were

The D2 also promised great things like album covers and even lyrics (which actually is a sweet feature), but both of which required you to maintain your own music library with their proprietary software - a bit of an attempt at cloning iTunes, except the software wasn't nearly slick enough to take over as my primary media player app - which would mean I'd still have to maintain two parallel libraries.

I keep explaining this to people: the secret of iPod's success is not only its marketing, but that it rolls the entire experience together from end to end. You play your music, download your music, play your videos, download your videos all from the same spot. The software provides all the features you need - album covers for example, and it also syncs automatically with your portable player. Slick.

I enjoy the end-to-end experience so much that even a clearly superior piece of hardware like the Cowon D2 has not converted me.

Re:Why

[CastrTroy]

The problem is that if you want to use anything but iTunes to load up your content, then it becomes very difficult. Especially when iTunes is such a terrible program. Here's a bug. Enable fast user switching on windows. Start up iTunes on one user, transfer some songs to one ipod, then exit it completely. Then start up iTunes on another user, using switch user, so the other user doesn't log out. Try transfering songs to the second users ipod. It doesn't work. You have to completely log out the other user to transfer songs to the other ipod. This is just stupid, because I'm only using MP3s, and it shouldn't be that hard, there's no DRM to enforce. Just put the songs on there.

Re:Why

[maxume]

Why does making it work with iTunes preclude it showing up as a storage volume?

Re:Why

[Hijacked Public]

Why would you find dragging and dropping from explorer easier?

l33tn355. If iTunes had a verbose startup screen no one here would be complaining.

Re:Why

[CastrTroy]

Where Apple fails though, is that once something in that chain breaks, the whole system breaks down. You can use Cowon's software, but you don't have to, and when you don't, you may lose a couple features, like album covers, but it you can still put music/videos on it. Have you ever tried tranfering music to your iPod without using iTunes?

Re:Why

[p0tat03]

Theoretically true, but when's the last time iTunes failed on you? For me, never. I see it like a manual/automatic shift thing. Some people prefer to drive stick, because it gives them more control. For some of these people they truly need/prefer this level of control, others are just flaunting their ability to drive stick (Slashdot demographic anyone?). Some of us prefer to drive auto, because our point is to get to the destination, and the whole bit about driving there is rather irrelevant to us.

Re:Why

[mrbooze]

Here's a bug. Enable fast user switching on windows Wow. Windows *still* hasn't removed that bug?

Re:Why

[rabbit994]

Since on Windows, iTunes doesn't do the transfer as much as it communicates with low level service call "iPod Service" to facilitate the transfer. I imagine something in Fast User Switching is fouling up this service and iTunes communication with it. I agree that it should work properly but it won't. Still for 99% of people, iTunes is both easy to use, easy to maintain and syncs with iPod without issue.

Re:Why

[pq]

Why does making it work with iTunes preclude it showing up as a storage volume?

It does not. Every ipod can be used in disk mode, should you so choose.

Re:Why

[CastrTroy]

But to the person using itunes, it doesn't matter how the music shows up on the iPod. It doesn't need to be laid out in a bunch of randomly named directories, with randomly named files, and only play songs that are put in some database file. It doesn't need to be that way, because it's transparent to the end user. So why not make it easier for those of use who don't want to use iTunes? Because it has failed them.

Re:Why

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a Mac user, and you'll find very few Mac users who hate iTunes. I think the reason is that iTunes on the Mac is a reasonably well-behaved Mac app, but I guess iTunes on Windows is sort of Mac-ish too. Windows users are looking for something different, with skins and a dozen different visualizer plugins and all that.

Re:Why

[CastrTroy]

No it's iTunes. It says there's another using still using iTunes and to log them out before it will even mount the iPod under iTunes. Nothing to do with windows specifically, Althouh, Maybe I should just try restaring the iPod service, that might fix the problem, and would be a whole lot less useless than logging the other user out completely.

Re:Why

[igb]

The huge advantage that Apple's model has is building the metadata database on the source computer. In the Apple model, the on-device menu of music is built on a fast computer with oodles of RAM and a fast disk, from a database containing all the information. For iTunes users, when you import a track into iTunes, the metadata goes into iTunes as well. When you sync the music onto the iPod, the last move it to construct the byte-image of iTuneDB and copy that to the device. That contains all the metadata, so when the time comes to display menus and titles it's all in one place. If, like me, you have home-brew software based on gnuPOD, you can for entertainment create tracks which have one set of metadata in iTuneDB and another in the ID3 tags: the ID3 tags are completely ignored. My homebrew solution uses a MySQL database for the same purpose.

In the ``drag and drop'' model, the device has to build that database itself, presumably by reading the ID3 tags. That's a nightmare. To build it incrementally is incredibly hard. To build it from scratch every time involves reading the tags out of potentially tens of thousands of files, grinding it into a database of some sort and writing it to disk. On a ~100MHz low-power CPU with a small amount of RAM, out of either flash or a slow microdisk. That'll take forever. And the moment you say ``ah, but there's this application you can run on the host computer'' then you're back essentially with the iTunes model. And that's before we consider the living hell that is parsing ID3 tags consistently, writing to FAT32 filesystems safely and all the rest of the tasks an iPod doesn't have to do.

ian

Re:Why

[ceoyoyo]

I used to have all my music nicely organized in directories (okay, it was a mess), and ditto with thousands of digital photos.

For a while I told iTunes to just link to the music. Then one day I just let it organize it all. MUCH nicer.

Same with the photos when I bought Aperture. Both programs give you the option to organize things yourself, but trying it both ways you quickly realize what a pain it is doing it by hand.

Re:Why

[ceoyoyo]

It does show up as a storage volume. You can drop anything you want onto it. BUT, mp3s you drop on won't play, because they need their metadata added to the iPod's database. Why? So the iPod can do all its fast scrolling, instant on and organize by this or that or the other thing tricks. For me it's more than worth it.

Re:Why

[IwarkChocobos]

Yeah, it's called Winamp. Not to mention there are ways to make it "explorer" or "finder" drag n drop like. The way its set up by default is just to make it easier. There are plenty of ways around it.

Re:Why

[Kjella]

"Why does making it work with iTunes preclude it showing up as a storage volume?"
It does not. Every ipod can be used in disk mode, should you so choose.

If you go to that page, the first thing it says is that it doesn't work with the iPod functionality at all. It's just a way to embed a thumbdrive/external HDD, but you can't actually use it for anything but dead storage.

Re:Why

[maxume]

Sort of. I would describe that as the empty part of the storage inside the ipod showing up, not the ipod. And I understand that iTunes writes file information to a database so that the ipod doesn't have to work as hard, but I'm not real convinced it was for purely technical reasons(go ahead and call me a cynic).

I guess there is this thing:

http://www.floola.com/modules/wiwimod/index.php?pa ge=WiwiHome

Re:Why

[Optikschmoptik]

l33tn355. If iTunes had a verbose startup screen no one here would be complaining.

Verbose or not, iTunes takes way too long to start up. It's a little annoying to wait through three minutes of HD thrashing to update and sync a three-minute podcast episode.

There are 'l33t' solutions, like gtkpod, gpodder and floola that try to bring back the quick drag-and-drop functionality without requiring a great big library sync every time.

Also, it really doesn't seem necessary to make the iPod file system so opaque. For all Apple's touted simplicity on the surface, what's with the underlying maze of randomly-named and randomly-placed folders and and media files? How does that make anything easier?

Re:Why

[norminator]

Why does making it work with iTunes preclude it showing up as a storage volume?

It doesn't. You can have your iPod show up as a storage volume. That's an option. You still can't copy songs to it and have them play on the iPod, but you can get other files on and off the iPod, and you can copy your whole library back off of your iPod.

Some applications, like Floola let you copy songs and videos to and from your iPod without using iTunes (under Win/Mac/Linux), so you're really only tied into iTunes if you want to buy and transfer songs and videos from the iTunes store.

Re:Why

[ParadoxDruid]

Have you ever tried tranfering music to your iPod without using iTunes?

Yes, I have, in fact. I regularly transfer music to my iPod from Amarok, and it works flawlessly. Next question!

Re:Why

[maxume]

I'm pretty sure they could have made it work both ways, with the itunes 'experience' being better but the other way actually working, without even creating all that much confusion.

Re:Why

[norminator]

There are other apps that can transfer music and video to the iPod. I like Floola which can run on Windows, Mac and Linux, and you can keep the binaries on the iPod itself in disk mode, so I can easily copy whatever I want to and from my iPod, from any computer. It will also update the podcasts on the iPod directly (as opposed to iTunes, which updates the podcasts in your library on the computer, then syncs with the iPod to update it).

Re:Why

[nine-times]

Also, it really doesn't seem necessary to make the iPod file system so opaque. For all Apple's touted simplicity on the surface, what's with the underlying maze of randomly-named and randomly-placed folders and and media files? How does that make anything easier?

iPods didn't start out with the opaque file system. Originally, Apple made no attempt to prevent users from transferring songs back and forth between the iPod and your computer. Then the content owners (record labels) complained that the iPod encouraged piracy and threatened to sue. This was before the iTMS. In order to appease the record labels, Apple put the music files in hidden directories with random names, and changed iTunes so that you couldn't copy music from your iPod to your library.

So that's what's "with" that.

Re:Why

[MrMickS]

Because for the vast majority of users iTunes works. Providing a single method of putting media onto the iPod reduces support costs. All that is needed is to make sure that iTunes can populate the iPod. If there is a problem its either with the iPod not reading the database file from iTunes, in which case reset it and reload, or there is a problem with iTunes.

If you go down the model of allowing drag/drop then the player has to do more work. That require additional software on the player to handle this. That takes up more space and makes the firmware more complex. It also means that some content (iTunes loaded) will be available straight away whereas other won't be until it has been indexed. This dilutes the experience and adds complexity. When dealing with consumer devices complexity is the enemy. The KISS principle is heavily at work here.

Re:Why

[virgil_disgr4ce]

If walking around Williamsburg is any way to judge, wearing big-ass headphones is the new micro-club. But I'd prefer anything to those shitty-ass white buds.

Re:Why

[CastrTroy]

I tried floola. It takes at least half an hour to fill up my 512 MB Shuffle. Do other users experience similar problems, or is it just me?

Re:Why

[p0tat03]

Mod parent up. This is incredibly true and immediately visible on my Xbox 360. Sometimes I connect my iPod to it, and it takes *forever* for the device to reconstruct the library on the Xbox interface. The speediness and responsiveness of the iPod is at least partially due to the fact that the system has a highly device-optimized database that's guaranteed to be there.

Re:Why

[Echnin]

Why would you want do? I don't. 100 million other people don't want to either. 3 people on Slashdot do. Fine, they can buy a Cowon or Creative or whatever. Apple is doing something right at least.

That said, this article annoys me. I'm getting an 80 GB iPod next week (father making business trip to the US, and I'll use the chance to get him to pick up one for 2/3 of what it would cost me here...). Here's hoping the widescreen rumors are false. :P Don't care much about the wireless though - what's the use for that anyway?

Re:Why

[OldeTimeGeek]

Because for most people, its far easier for to use Music->Playlists->Classical or Music->Playlists->Baroque or Music->Artist->Bach rather than /Classical if they want to hear all of their songs (assuming all of their Classical music is stored there) and /Classical/Baroque when they want to listen to their Baroque collection (again, all of their Baroque music has to be in that directory for this to work) or /Classical/Baroque/Bach if they just want to listen to Bach. Since iTunes tracks location, they just have to know what they want rather than where it is.

It's not totally automatic, as users have to create the playlists and they will have to decide which playlist(s) to assign their stuff to, but once done, they never have to worry how the songs are logically organized within the file structure.

Re:Why

[maxume]

That's because they built it that way though. They weren't running into physical laws or anything(I can see where it was simpler/cheaper to take the route they took, I just don't like it).

Re:Why

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"Apple seems to be targeting the market segment that does want their music player to organize their music and keep track of things (import date, play counts, skip counts, last played, rating, etc) for them."

That doesn't preclude his suggestion. Rhapsody/Sansa users have this functionality.

"Based on Apple's market share, compared to the rest of the market combined, it looks like they have a better idea of what will sell than you do."

Would I be invoking a variant of Godwin's Law if I pointed in Windows' general direction and asked you to repeat that?

Re:Why

[Maserati]

Sounds like you aren't using a USB 2.0 port. 8 mbit in contention with mouse and keyboard sounds about right for a half hour for 512MB. How do non-iPod USB drives perform on that port.

Re:Why

[CastrTroy]

Nope, iTunes has no problem using that same port which is USB 2.0. Neither does Amarok. It's real USB 2.0. I'm pretty sure it's a floola specific problem.

Re:Why

[MyGirlFriendsBroken]

am I out of the club?

No way, but you have just reduced your risk of getting mugged. Certainly in London nothing says I have a lot of expensive electronics which is easy to fence than those white buds. Admittedly though as the iPod becomes more prevalent I expect it is becoming less of an issue

Re:Why

[Anonymous Coward]

You keep on explaining the iPod's methodology of success to people? It's just a music player, why don't you get a life?

Re:Why

[alanoneil]

Actually, in order to optimise hard drive seek times on the iPod (seek time == battery wasted) it uses a highly efficient tree structure. The database in the iPod OS makes sure that when you choose a playlist, the iPod knows exactly which sectors to load into RAM, and therefore you increase battery life and decrease possible damage (iPod user jogging while listening == possible HD crash during heavy seek)

Re:Why

[kisrael]

yeah I remember hearing that story a few years ago.

here in Boston the buds are pretty ubiquitous.

Re:Why

[cayenne8]

Go take a look at the Grado website, and click on the headphone link at the top.

I got a pair of the SR 80's after doing some research.

MAN...these things sound good and are reasonable in price.

Re:Why

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly! Thank you. Of all the pro/con comments about the iPod I've only ever heard a few that really nail the "iTunes integration" on the head - most think it's about shiny buttons, but noooooo....

For instance, all the playlist organization and track information and access to music is not only on the iPod and in iTunes - get the right connector and car stereo, and it's right there safely where I can access it while driving (rather than looking at some small device sitting on the seat or in my hand).

Re:Why

[Gilmoure]

But I'd prefer anything to those shitty-ass white buds.

Ah, that's where you're supposed to wear them.

Re:Why

[j.sanchez1]

I've been using Sharepod for 2 years now. I have NEVER used iTunes to put music on my iPod. Sharepod allows you to copy music to and from your iPod, create playlists and it runs off of your iPod so that you have it with you wherever you are.

Re:Why

[3choTh1s]

Apple seems to be targeting the market segment that does want their music player to organize their music and keep track of things (import date, play counts, skip counts, last played, rating, etc) for them. Based on Apple's market share, compared to the rest of the market combined, it looks like they have a better idea of what will sell than you do.

That's a dumb argument. They should have targeted everyone not just those who do their bidding. They could have easily done both. Control everything if you give your soul to iTunes, but let you take over if you want to do things yourself.

Just because it has a huge market share doesn't mean that the product is any good or even the best thing for any given person. I really do like my iPod but I know if Rio stayed in the game and evolved their product line my money would be theirs.

Re:Why

[Anonymous Coward]

make it 4 - but rockbox takes care of that fine for me

Re:Why

[MojoStan]

A friend of mine recently introduced me to his Cowon D2, which is a very slick piece of hardware: 52h battery life on music, 10h on video, smaller than an iPod and has a touch screen to boot. Why wasn't I sold immediately?

Because it meant the endless tedium of synchronizing my music with the god-awful "drag into Explorer" (or in my case, "drag into Finder") interface.

"Drag into Explorer" (a Windows term) is not necessary since the Cowon D2 is a PlaysForSure device. Therefore, in addition to Cowon's proprietary Windows application, the D2 can be syched with Windows Media Player 11. OS X and Linux users, unfortunately, only have "drag files" support for now (the D2 was introduced last month).

The D2 also promised great things like album covers and even lyrics (which actually is a sweet feature), but both of which required you to maintain your own music library with their proprietary software - a bit of an attempt at cloning iTunes Windows Media Player, which can be used with the D2, has had album cover views for years. That annoying Windows "journalist" Paul Thurrott claims that Apple ripped off Windows Media Player 11 for their album cover views.

I keep explaining this to people: the secret of iPod's success is not only its marketing, but that it rolls the entire experience together from end to end. You play your music, download your music, play your videos, download your videos all from the same spot. The software provides all the features you need - album covers for example, and it also syncs automatically with your portable player. Slick. This can supposedly be done with any PlaysForSure device, like the Cowon D2, and Windows Media Player 11. Sure, it took a while for Windows Media Player to catch up with all this integration. It also beat iTunes for some features (e.g. album covers, video support). The only real advantage I can see for iTunes is its dual platform support (Windows and Mac).

Re:Why

[gig]

Ha ha ha that was funny because you are using Windows yet you are complaining about bugs.

Re:Why

[gig]

If you want to drop media files on an icon and they go directly on your iPod you can do that very easily with iPod + iTunes if you are using a Mac.

iTunes on the Mac is scriptable, its functionality is exposed as programmatic objects. If your iPod is called "iPod" and you make a playlist in iTunes called "iPod Playlist" and set your iPod to sync whatever is on that playlist, then you can use this AppleScript to add files to your iPod:

on open theFiles
tell application "iTunes"
repeat with theFile in theFiles
add theFile to playlist "iPod Playlist"
end repeat
update "iPod"
end tell
end open

(Paste the above script into Script Editor and Save as an application. Drop files on your new application to add them to your iPod. Repeat.)

You can also add files directly to the iPod using "device playlist" but it is probably not necessary.

The above is a top-of-the-head simple example. You could easily add to it to deal with a full iPod, to remove the oldest items from the playlist in that case or whatever. The point is that you don't have to work with iTunes in the way that everyone else does, its functionality can be used as a library for your AppleScript applications.

This is a good place to start for iTunes scripting:

http://dougscripts.com/itunes/

One burden of being a Mac user is watching Windows users always doing things the hard way.

wi-fi hangup

[sluke]

It seems to me that apple will resist having wi-fi in the ipod because it would break their grip on the interface to the ipod. They have a great revenue stream with all of the third party gadgets that connect to the dock connector and if they gave the ipod a meaningful wi-fi connection, it would be a lot easier to make such additions without paying a licensing fee to apple. It would be nice though...

Re:wi-fi hangup

[CrackedButter]

It will surely drive innovation where ipod skins are concerned!

Re:wi-fi hangup

[jellomizer]

Well most of the devices I have seen are just external speakers. I have a clock where a iPod Mini is hooked up to and it has a nice set of speakers on it so we play the iPod threw the clock. Wi-Fi wont effect that market much because it also doubles as an iPod charger. As do most of the 3rd party stuff. Other think like Radio Tuners, would probably still be best designed if hooked up via real connectors. Other devices hook up just to the Headphone jack (this has been standardized for many years) Wi-Fi will not stifle the 3rd party market that much nor will Apple loose licening revenue for 3rd party apps.

Re:wi-fi hangup

[zlogic]

They can always create an encrypted/copyrighted/patented/DRM'ed/whatever protocol (not WiFi, but another layer) and sell specs to hardware manufacturers, just like they're doing now with the dock.

Re:wi-fi hangup

[Anonymous Coward]

we play the iPod threw the clock.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha, oh shit, that's a good one. I mean, cause damn.

Re:wi-fi hangup

[jdogs60]

I always figured the lack of wifi had more to do with battery life than anything else, personally.

Re:wi-fi hangup

[gig]

> It seems to me that apple will resist having wi-fi in the ipod because it would break their grip on the interface to the ipod

No. Wi-Fi "n" is how you stream stuff from your Mac or iPod or iPhone to your AppleTV. Right now you can stream content from Macs or PC's but iPhone and Wi-Fi iPod will follow.

Wi-Fi is not going to be so much to replace the USB connection, because in the first place that is primarily the iPod's charger, the data connection piggybacks on there, and also the USB data connection is 4-8 times faster than Wi-Fi "n" under ideal conditions and the content files are getting bigger, not smaller. For loading your iPod or iPhone with media and charging its battery you will still be better with USB. However, when you drop by a friend's place and they have a 50 inch TV with AppleTV and you want to show them a 5 minute clip off your 100 GB iPod, then you will simply stream it over Wi-Fi that is exactly what you want.

> They have a great revenue stream with all of the third party gadgets that connect to the dock connector and if they gave
> the ipod a meaningful wi-fi connection, it would be a lot easier to make such additions without paying a licensing fee to apple

The problem with this argument is that it does not hold technical water. The reason that iPod dock accessories are done through Apple is that 100% of the related software is distributed by Apple as part of the iPod's core software package. When you update your iPod to its newest firmware you are also getting the latest version of Nike iPod Sport Kit software and the latest voice recording software, even if you don't have matching iPod dock hardware. The reason for this is so that you or any iPod user can buy a Nike iPod Sport Kit and there is no CD/DVD or software installer in there, you can plug it on and use it right away, or loan it to a friend, or borrow one from a friend, there is no IT overhead to using iPod dock accessories.

If you get your head out of the PC market and into consumer audio then it is easy to see that the above is a technical feature way over and above any opportunity Apple might have for licensing fees. It is just not acceptable to ship stuff "some assembly required" in the consumer market.

None of this is confirmed!

[StarkinProgram]

This is all a bunch of what-ifs! We don't know if Apple is doing any of this, just that they could.

Portable Video

[Nerdfest]

For many of the same features being described in the future video iPods, check out the Archos 704. It's got the wifi, the browser, the big touch screen, the USB ports, etc. Personally, I think it's a bit big, but the features are amazing. Soem competition to keep Apple on their toes is nice to see too.

Re:Portable Video

[CastrTroy]

Archos seems to have a nice line up of players. I don't see why they aren't more popular. They are defintely better than the current offering of video iPods. There's also a couple other companies like Cowon and Creative that have pretty good offerings. My guess is that not a lot of people see much of a need for a portable video player, as you can't watch TV while doing something else. But the iPod is marketed as an audio player first, with the ability to play movies, which to most people seems like a much better idea.

Re:Portable Video

[escay]

Personally, I think it's a bit big That's it right there. For portable devices, size does matter. On a quick comparison from the archos and apple websites:
Player - Weight - Size
Arch704 - 22oz - 7"x5"x0.8"
iPhone - 4.8oz - 4.5"x2.5"x0.5".

The primary drawback of archos players has always been size and weight - which also happens to be the primary requirement for these devices. if it does not satisfy this preliminary constraint, it does not matter what amazing features the archos provides.

Re:Portable Video

[tlhIngan]

Archos seems to have a nice line up of players. I don't see why they aren't more popular. They are defintely better than the current offering of video iPods. There's also a couple other companies like Cowon and Creative that have pretty good offerings. My guess is that not a lot of people see much of a need for a portable video player, as you can't watch TV while doing something else. But the iPod is marketed as an audio player first, with the ability to play movies, which to most people seems like a much better idea.

Probably because of several factors.

1) User interface. Until the 604WiFi was out, the UI has steadily deteriorated since the AV300 series (I have an AV420, which was probably the last model before they messed up the UI). These models had simplistic interfaces - you had a 5 way navigator, a back button, and three "soft" keys. And still could do everything. Now they took the same UI, and remapped everything differently - the softkeys now access some sub-menu thingy on the edge of the screen, settings are hidden either along the top bar or the edge buttons, and you still havigate the main icons via the 5 way navigator (+back). Exiting menus and going back doesn't quite seem so easy anymore. The iPod interface hasn't changed much the past 5 years - you use "Menu" for back, center ro select, wheel to choose... with the only things really braeking this are the iPod games you can buy off iTunes.

2) Button placement - The AV300/400 had simple intuitive placement. The new 400/500/600/700 series put all the buttons in rectangular areas along the edge, with left and right doing different things. Not only are they hard to press, but the button layout makes you go WTF as they all feel alike.

3) Size - Even the 404 is still very much bigger than an iPod... The only thing the 704 is missing is well... the DVD drive.

4) Possibly DRM - if you record anything with Macrovision encoded in the signal, the Archos AV400 onwards put DRM on the video so only that unit can play it back. It also regenerates Macrovision on the TV-out. I'm not sure if the current ones store the video in the protection partition these days (since the disk is partitioned for both Windows Media DRM and general disk storage.

Of these, I think #1 and #3 are the reason the Archos haven't really taken off - even after 5 minutes of playing with it I can't confidently say I can easily make my way around it. (I suppose the default wallpapers don't help by making it impossible to read...).

Re:Portable Video

[Mex]

Archos' players are usually big and clunky when compared to the iPod. I still have an ARchos Jukebox 20gig (when ipods had something like 5gigs, I don't remember the exact number), and even tho it had a lot of cool features the iPod didn't (thanks to Rockbox), it was UGLY.

Re:Portable Video

[chrism238]

Too big, I think. It's the Nokia N800 that you should consider.

Re:Portable Video

[vistic]

Your sig: "If your car is going at the speed of light, what happens when you turn on the headlights?"

You can not travel *at* the speed of light. And speed is relative.

I don't feel like doing the math, but as I recall from modern physics class... if you're standing still (i.e. you are the frame of reference) and you see a space ship traveling at 0.8*c, and then a ship undocks from that ship and travels forward (from *that* ships frame of reference) at 0.8*c... then from *your* frame of reference, the new ship is traveling at something like 0.95*c... not at 0.8*c + 0.8*c = 1.6*c. The relativistic effects don't work by simple addition.

Even if your car were going really near the speed of light, and you turn on the headlights... from your frame of reference the light still shoots forward at the speed of light. The speed of light limit is a speed limit for two things relative to each other... you always need some frame of reference.

Appley says...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the juggernaut, bitch!

Moron

[MCSEBear]

Let's See:

1. iTunes Subscription Service
How many times does Steve have to say that people prefer to own their music. How many different subscription services have to loose bucket loads of money before the media stops pretending apple needs subscription services just because they don't have one? If this was such a great fucking idea, then why didn't Naptster or Yahoo or one of the others make a big profit doing it?? Very lame, Crave.

2) UK iTunes Movie Downloads
Wouldn't Apple wait for the EU regulators to force the music companies to allow one EU wide Music Store before they open a country specific Movie store? I mena, really Crave.

3) Widescreen video iPod
Hey, one I agree with, although pretty damn obvious since the introduction of the iPhone.

4) Wi-Fi enabled video iPod
Hmmm... Zune has proven what a big draw a Wi-Fi enabled music player is. Those things are just flying off the shelves! Well maybe it's more their shitty DRM mania at Microsoft than something wrong with Wi-Fi. Still, how hard is it to drop your iPod in a dock to charge and sync it. We know how to share mp3's without Wi-Fi. Ever heard of a DVD burner??

5) Flash-based video iPod

6) The 100GB video iPod
Now that would be big enough to hold some serious porn. If the battery held out you'd even have time to let your buddies borrow it and have some fun too. Heck, you could even choose to carry around some actual music and some normal photos of the family too.

That would be two out of six that predictions that make some sort of sense. But only the two really obvious ones. After the iPhone demo, how bright do you have to be to know that it was also the 'future' iPod demo? How bright do you have to be to see a larger hard drive and think that Apple may use it for a video iPod hard drive? Crave... As prognosticators... You suck!

Re:Moron

[MCSEBear]

Hey, the comment system ate my comment on the flash video iPod.

Not enough room for porn. Lame.

Re:Moron

[Lars T.]

2) UK iTunes Movie Downloads
Wouldn't Apple wait for the EU regulators to force the music companies to allow one EU wide Music Store before they open a country specific Movie store? I mena, really Crave.
But Apple has already said they would sell Videos in the European stores.

Sixfold *Apple* rumours?

[Heian-794]

TFA does indeed have six rumors about Apple, but they're all related to the iPod.

Call me a stickler for accuracy, but "sixfold Apple rumour round-up" implies six different rumours (tidbits, what-have-you) about various things related to Apple. If all six were connected to the iPod, as all six do indeed turn out to be, a more meaningful headline would have bee "Apple iPod rumour round-up" or something similar -- the Slashdot summary title improves on it at least.

There are several other reasons to be excited about Apple -- possible super-thin/light MacBooks, a new revision for the iMac, and of course the now-delayed Leopard. Updates on those much-anticipated items would also have been appreciated.

And the British media don't get it

[Flying pig]

There was an extremely feeble sketch on a supposedly humorous BBC program last Friday (I won't dignify it by naming it) which purported to be Steve Jobs meeting Bill Gates. While their wives are removed by studs for extra-curricular activities, Jobs works Steve up to orgasm by describing the hardware of the next Mac.

Whoever at the BBC approved it obviously hasn't got a clue about what Jobs and Apple are about (or, probably, Gates). Wildly extrapolating, if a media company like the BBC seems to have few people who know what Apple is about nowadays, how far does the blindness extend? Right up until Jobs and Branson jointly attend the funeral of the conventional media industry, I guess.

Re:And the British media don't get it

[CmdrGravy]

I'm not sure how far you can get using Harry "loadsamoney" Enfield as an indicator of the understanding the entire British media have of Apple !

Maybe the same distance you'd get using Kevin & Perry Go Large ! as the definitive guide to the Ibiza club scene except that's probably more accurate.

6 Gig?

[CrazyTalk]

My iPod already has 8 Gigabytes, and is one of the smaller ones. Ohhh, you mean 6th generation. Wonder who else read this wrong.

Re:6 Gig?

[Bob54321]

I though they must mean the nano but there is already bigger ones out there... I really had no idea there had been that many iPod generations. Those things breed like rabbits!

Re:6 Gig?

[virgil_disgr4ce]

Yeah, that's how I read it at first, too ^_^

Not the biggest apple fan

[prelelat]

I'm not the biggest apple fan but thats because I like to piss people off on a regular basis and apple cult people seem to be a good target. I've always thought that the iPod hasn't made any huge improvements over the years since it released the original iPod. It was always good and if someone gave me one I would probably keep it. But I never really had something from apple peak my interest as much as the announced 100GB widescreen video iPod. 100GB in a video player, this sounds fantastic, but then I remember such thing as quality of screen and if it will play all the files that a creative zen vision and I've seen archos and they kill anything for apple video out right now. The screens that apple picks are not quite the best thing, and they don't come with tv-out like other players(I believe you can purchase one for the ipod video). On that note I never believed that that ipod video was a pmp it just seemed to be an add on to make people buy the next round of iPods and get into videos. I will say that if it does have a nice big quality screen like the archos or the iriver or the zen vision, I might have to consider it. 100GB is pretty kick ass, and I assume it won't be 1000 dollars to boot.

On that note it seems that apple does things in baby steps I mean they went through like 6 ipods to get to the current version and they could have added most of those features in the second version. They want to keep selling iPods so I don't know if it will be as good as I imagine.

Re:Not the biggest apple fan

[Anonymous Coward]

Video iPods all have tv out. Its the headphone jack, you just have to switch around two of the plugs when using a regular cord.

Re:Not the biggest apple fan

[gig]

The iPod video that has been selling for US$349 for like a year now has an 80 GB disk in it. I know 100 GB sounds like a lot more, but it is not really. The 100 GB model will likely also be US$349. All iPod video have a video out, and there are a lot of accessories you can do it however you like.

> I've always thought that the iPod hasn't made any huge improvements over the years since it released the original iPod.

I had the first one, and also the 2G when it came out, and then the 2G lasted for four years of every day use, so I only recently retired it for a 2G iPod nano. It was a huge change. Everything is improved in every way.

The nano has about the same storage (8 GB instead of 10 GB) but it has no moving parts, its battery lasts about twice as long, it has a color screen, the controls are better (all on one control), it has a CD-quality voice recorder instead of AM-quality, it has way more accessories, and it is about 20% of the size and weight. The nano is also the cheapest iPod I ever had, it is $50 cheaper than 2G iPod and $150 cheaper than the original iPod. And it shows photos also which it will get out of iPhoto automatically.

Re:Not the biggest apple fan

[prelelat]

fair enough, but I bought my creative zen vision for about $400 american(not exactly sure on the exchage I'm Canadian I paid about 500 and I had to pay to get it imported when it first came out) not long after that the iPod video came out. I was disappointed until I seen the size of the screen, it was like they took an iPod and put video on it... hence the ipod video name. I guess what I'm saying is, I hope they have a PMP version of an iPod cause that is what I'm waiting for. The screen on the current iPod video kind of sucks, and they haven't really done much to improve it since its release. I know the iPhone is suppose to have a very nice screen but I don't want to be watching shows or movies on a screen that suffers from constant finger prints.

Now just to comment on your tv-out thing I thought I implied that it did have TV-Out capability on the iPod, it just doesn't come with it as far as I know.

Maybe I'm waiting for an iPMP to be released so I can get the benifits of an iPod as well as those of my current PMP(bigger screen, good resolution). I was just hoping the new iPod video would be it.

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[0100010001010011]

If BMW started releasing some cars in the $20,000 price range they could totally crush Toyota and GM.

MS saw this coming in the 90's when they ordered

[alfredo]

Apple to "Knife the baby." Of course they were talking about QuickTime. MS knew Apple was going to do an end run around them, but they had that pesky DoJ case against them and couldn't crush Apple like they wanted to. In the end Ashcroft gave MS all they wanted and more (as punishment), but it was too late. Apple had out maneuvered them. Even Ashcroft couldn't protect MS from Apple. (MS was a contributor to Ashcroft's losing congressional campaign*)

They knew Apple wasn't going after the bean counter business. Apple was heading to the living rooms, and MS could not compete against the axis of evil: Jobs, Ives, TBWA Chait-Day.

It has been fun watching this unfold. That's is what made me a fan of this company. Sometimes it is how you play the game, and Apple played it well.

* He lost to a dead man.

I want subscription

[TheNinjaroach]

1. iTunes Subscription Service How many times does Steve have to say that people prefer to own their music. How many different subscription services have to loose bucket loads of money before the media stops pretending apple needs subscription services just because they don't have one? If this was such a great fucking idea, then why didn't Naptster or Yahoo or one of the others make a big profit doing it?? Very lame, Crave.
Napster never got my business because I can't load their DRM format onto my iPod. Apple got my iPod business because I like their straight-forward, no-nonsense methods of organizing and synching.

I absolutely refuse to buy a single track from the iTunes Store. Steve can talk all he wants about our desires to "own" our music, but I don't own the music if it's crippled with DRM. On the other hand, I would pay a significant amount of money per month to "rent" unlimited iTunes songs. In this case I am willing to submit to DRM because there's no confusion about the fact I do not own any of the songs. I will happily enjoy hours upon hours of DRMed protected content that I do not own. And I will happily purchase music from iTunes if they switched to this method -- or anyone else for that matter if their tunes played on my device.

Until music is rented as "All I can eat" I will continue to own my music in the form of CDs, ripping them to my format of choice for my player of choice.

Re:I want subscription

[gnasher719]

'' Until music is rented as "All I can eat" I will continue to own my music in the form of CDs, ripping them to my format of choice for my player of choice. ''

I would just say that if music is rented and expires once you stop paying, "all you can eat" is quite pointless. Let me correct that: "All you can download" is pointless. "All you can listen to" should be easy.

if sony was smart...

[insanius]

they would re-work the psp. shrink it down a little, add another analog on the right, and either dump the umd drive entirely for a hd or start selling psps with a big memory stick in the box(>=4gig). with a decent d/l service, it would be everything that apple is trying to turn the ipod into and more with the addition of running ps2 quality games on a screen that is far superior!

i'll probably get modded a troll for this as i was last week for questioning the crazy demand for the wii even though the games are seriously lacking, but i feel it has to be said...for the $, the ipod is currently pretty low on the list of good buys as far as mp3 players go. i believe apple has been lucky to be able ride the ipod wave as long as it has. and unless they open the iphone up, it is going to fail miserably.

my $200 sanyo phone has a gig hdd in it with 8+ hours of play time, a 2 mega pixel camera, unlimited ev-d0 net access, and o yea, i can call people on it too!

imho, apple has got to push a little more than this to maintain their dominance. or just keep charming the masses with their stale commercials...i guess that works too...

Re:if sony was smart...

[Anonymous Coward]

they would re-work the psp. shrink it down a little, add another analog on the right, and either dump the umd drive entirely for a hd or start selling psps with a big memory stick in the box(>=4gig). with a decent d/l service, it would be everything that apple is trying to turn the ipod into and more with the addition of running ps2 quality games on a screen that is far superior!

... and they would install rootkit when you connect it to your computer and sell games with a new DRM which is incompatible with the hardware, making the customers unable to play a game they bought and making them wait for a firmware upgrade. This is the Sony Way(TM).

i'll probably get modded a troll for this as i was last week for questioning the crazy demand for the wii even though the games are seriously lacking, but i feel it has to be said...for the $, the ipod is currently pretty low on the list of good buys as far as mp3 players go. i believe apple has been lucky to be able ride the ipod wave as long as it has. and unless they open the iphone up, it is going to fail miserably.

my $200 sanyo phone has a gig hdd in it with 8+ hours of play time, a 2 mega pixel camera, unlimited ev-d0 net access, and o yea, i can call people on it too!

imho, apple has got to push a little more than this to maintain their dominance. or just keep charming the masses with their stale commercials...i guess that works too...

Have you caught featuritis? If you want to be honest, iPod historically has been beaten over and over by other players when you have a feature comparison checklist. Remember "No wireless? Less space than a Nomad? Lame". It doesn't have an FM radio, for god's sake. Its success does not lie in the superior number of features nor advertising (though it does help a lot). It's in how the product was designed and packaged. Apple will have to push more to extend their dominance, but they are not in a hurry. After all, other competitors still don't get it and try to beat them with a brute force of feature list.

Mostly "duh."

[sootman]

1. iTunes Subscription Service - unlikely. Has been discussed ad nauseum. Some people love subscription services, most don't. Look at the numbers. Plus, Apple likes things simple. They wouldn't want to sell music two ways. Plus subscriptions = more complexity and more DRM. Apple's already making a killing. Why double their efforts for 5-10% more sales?

2) UK iTunes Movie Downloads - duh. Eventually, all services will reach all major countries.

3) Widescreen video iPod - duh. But don't look for it until 6-12 months after the iPhone debuts--not "right around the corner." Anyone who thinks Apple would release a cheap widescreen iPod before the iPhone and let it cannibalize iPhone sales hasn't been watching Apple very long or very closely. Release the expensive, limited product first, let everyone fret and moan and bitch online, watch them sell like mad anyway, add one requested feature, lower the price a bit, lather, rinse, repeat.

4) Wi-Fi enabled video iPod - duh. Might be another year or two, though. It's not that Apple is resting on their laurals, they're just pacing themselves. Apple obviously has the capability to release a widescreen, touchscreen, flash-based, movie-playing iPod with wireless that connects to the iTunes store and syncs wirelessly tomorrow--but then what would they do for the next few years?

5) Flash-based video iPod - possible, but not likely (flash is still much more expensive) and there's not much point--which I think they know, because their whole comment is about how video iPods are better matched with traditional drives. WTF?!?

6) The 100GB video iPod - duh. iPods have gone from 5 GB to 10 to 15 to 20 to 30 to 40 to 60 to 80. And CNet.uk is predicting 100 GB will be next? Wow, they've got a bunch of fucking geniuses working there. Let me be the first to predict that at some point in the future, Apple will release a 120 GB iPod. Possibly followed by a 150 or 160. You heard it here first!!!!!11oneone

Re:Mostly "duh."

[JWW]

3) Widescreen video iPod - duh. But don't look for it until 6-12 months after the iPhone debuts--not "right around the corner." Anyone who thinks Apple would release a cheap widescreen iPod before the iPhone and let it cannibalize iPhone sales hasn't been watching Apple very long or very closely. Release the expensive, limited product first, let everyone fret and moan and bitch online, watch them sell like mad anyway, add one requested feature, lower the price a bit, lather, rinse, repeat.

I'd have to say that they can't wait 6-12 months on this one. Apples sales of iPods will be _dismal_ next holiday season if there isn't a new iPod out there buy October. The nano is too new to get a real substantive update before the holidays, so the top line model is where the buzz will have to be at. I think the widescreen (iPhone like) iPod will show up sometime between July and October, or Apples going to face new like "iPod sales down 30%" next Christmas, and they really won't want that.

Oh and yes, I am definitely waiting until the new video iPod is out before I buy a new one (can't get an iPhone, no Cingular ... err AT&T service where I live).

Re:Mostly "duh."

[mblase]

The 100GB video iPod - duh. iPods have gone from 5 GB to 10 to 15 to 20 to 30 to 40 to 60 to 80. And CNet.uk is predicting 100 GB will be next?

Hmm. Let:
n(0) = n(1) = 5 (GB) Then:
10 = n(2) = 2 * n(0) and
15 = n(3) = 3 * n(0).
Likewise,
20 = n(4) = 2 * n(2) and
30 = n(5) = 3 * n(2).
Continuing,
40 = n(6) = 2 * n(4) and
60 = n(7) = 3 * n(4),
while
80 = n(8) = 2 * n(6).

Generally, n(k) = 2 * n(k-2) for even values of k and 3 * n(k-3) for odd values of k.

So mathematically, Apple needs to release a n(9) = 3 * n(6) = 120 GB iPod next (followed by 160 GB and, wow, 240 GB) and skip the 100 GB iPod altogether.

Re:Mostly "duh."

[sootman]

Wow, very mathy. :-) I think it's simpler--they started with 5 GB increments, then went to 10 GB increments, then 20 GB increments, which is where they are now and where I think they'll stay for two more iterations.

Re:Mostly "duh."

[gig]

The iPhone was billed as a combination of phone, Internet communicator, and widescreen video iPod. It's a phone with a piece of the Mac and a piece of the iPod in it. The catch is that it's a piece of the next-generation Mac and next-generation iPod. It is OS X Leopard with zooming UI and iPod with widescreen and Wi-Fi.

I think you will see iPhone in June and then after that the entire Mac and iPod lines will be transformed to be more iPhone-like as quickly as Apple can possibly do it.

The iPhone does not have a hardware discount ... they could sell it unlocked for $499/$599 so you can feel free to extrapolate what they would have to adjust to make a $399 iPod video with 100 GB disk in there. It is too easy but it can wait until October.

morose

[Anonymous Coward]

old and busted: Apple iPod (ALL flavors)

Steve Jobs can kiss my butt

Development - Liberation

[catxk]

Reading the comments here and elsewhere, as well as seeing what is happening in the content industry and what is about to happen, I feel great relief that it seems to be a fact that development, here exampled by Apple, inevitably leads to the opening of standards and devices, through for example wifi and DRM free EMI music.

This is an obvious trend, which I believe and hope will open the eyes of consumers, resulting in increased pressure to open up the movie industry as well. Not least since Apple is a mayor player in both fields.

Who knows, maybe even RIAA will seize and desist one day.

Ipod wifi...

[Mockylock]

Jobs talked so much smack on the Zune's WiFi capability, that I doubt he'd throw wifi into an iPod that would have a stronger functionality and actually keep your battery from discharging on power-up. Granted, I wouldn't put it past Apple to innovate something clever as they've always done. But, if Apple went to WiFi, I'm quite certain Microsoft would enable a more complex access as well.

Why haven't they already(ms)? Nobody has WiFi yet, why up the ante 2 full steps when nobody else even uses it at all? I'm sure that WiFi enabled (network/internet connectivity) iPods and Zunes would not only waste batteries in wholesale fashion, but they would also be pretty iffy when talking about security. Granted, movies and music being hacked into aren't a huge ordeal... but having millions of iPods roaming around with WiFi would have to be a pretty decent target for some type of exploitation. There are tons of other wifi-enabled objects floating around, yes.. But, I'm sure the platform they're running on is a bit more complex than a handheld jukebox.

More power to them if they can pull it off... if they can, MS will follow as they always do.

As for iTunes... screw iTunes and everything around it. I own an iPod Video, 20G iPod, nano and a zune. Once I grabbed the zune, I realized how much of a pain the iPods were... resetting, getting it to recognize, having to erase all my music when I installed a new OS or go to a new PC... clearing out all my music in any error, and starting over... every month. And the only thing they had over the zune was the click wheel... and that wasn't even a plus when you didn't lock it and put it in your pocket. Again, Apple is innovative and I dig 'em for throwing out great products... but, there are too many other products that have more features and have better and more reliable interfaces to work with than the iPod and iTunes nowadays. Now, it's just people buying a name as a status symbol. The ipod is now cliche.

Re:Ipod wifi...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a tip for you. Turn off the auto-sync and you can keep the data on your ipod when you hook it up to iTunes that doesn't have your songs on it.

Re:Ipod wifi...

[Anonymous Coward]

More power to them if they can pull it off... if they can, MS will follow as they always do.

MS has done one hell of a lot more with wifi than Apple has. Who's really the follower here? You must be completely off of your nut to act like this would be an Apple "innovation" if it ever comes to being, not that it's really all that much of an innovation at all.

Re:Ipod wifi...

[Mockylock]

You got me wrong on a lot of parts... I meant that Apple is an innovator in terms that they had some pretty innovative products in the past. Some tools in OSX, ipod features before anyone else did.... things like that. But, I still don't care for it as much as my Zune.

As for Microsoft following, they're going in the right direction with the Zune and it's features. How anyone can argue that it's not superior to the iPod is blasphemy. I'm just saying they'll follow, because they've been fairly careful about steps they're taking at the moment. I think the WiFi connection they've used in the zune wasn't exactly to just transfer songs, but more along the lines of getting the product out... showing a proof of concept and waiting for someone else to up the ante before they unlock the already existant potential that the zune carries. It wasn't a flame against Microsoft or the Zune in any way... it was more along the lines of MS saying, "here's wifi for ya... once you match it, all we have to do is unlock it."

I used to like the iPod, but there's no way I'd buy another one after using the zune.

Re:Ipod wifi...

[paulkchen]

How anyone can argue that it's not superior to the iPod is blasphemy.

One piece of blasphemy coming right up!

I only have OS X machines. How exactly is the Zune going to be superior to an iPod?

Re:Ipod wifi...

[tanguyr]

Jobs talked so much smack on the Zune's WiFi capability, that I doubt he'd throw wifi into an iPod that would have a stronger functionality and actually keep your battery from discharging on power-up.

You mean like he "talked so much smack" about the Intel processors a couple of years back?

Re:Ipod wifi...

[Mockylock]

Point well taken. But, what percentage of iPod users actually have Macs?

Re:Ipod wifi...

[gig]

All of Apple's products have Wi-Fi "n" in them right now except for iPod. Note the iPhone is essentially an iPod with Wi-Fi.

A key feature of AppleTV is you can stream video to it over Wi-Fi. Hard to imagine that the next iPod video doesn't have Wi-Fi "n" in it for exactly this reason. The Wi-Fi is not for syncing if you examine that for a moment it is foolish. You need power anyway, and USB is multiple times faster, and the content files are getting bigger, not smaller, as quality is improved (iTunes audio just doubled in size recently, video has already doubled in size once since it was added).

Getting audio and video from an arbitrary iPod to arbitrary TV/speakers in real-time is the reason to have Wi-Fi in an iPod. Even if you plug it into power for a two-hour movie it is still convenient not to have to make AV connections, especially when there are like 5 different kinds. For hours of music playback or for one TV show or a 5 minute video clip you want iPod and AppleTV to talk to each other easily.

> when I installed a new OS or go to a new PC

Now I see what is making iTunes so hard for you to use.

Re:Ipod wifi...

[Mockylock]

Yeah. I should go buy a $3500 pig that's proprietary, doesn't play games and won't continue to be made in 2 years, just so I can run POS iTunes for another media player that only has a click wheel as it's major selling point. Maybe I should buy 2, add some arrogance and try to look like a herion addict as the Mac commercial implies. Then, I'll definitely be making the right decision.

Before any more comments are made in comparison, please recognize that I work on Linux, Windows and Mac OS each day. They've all got their good points and bad, but the mac doesn't seem to be able to harness the power of 2 processors and water cooling very well.. making it comparable to Vista when being considered a pig.

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[644bd346996]

Not all that many people care about expandability. Only the hardcore gamers and geeks who buy the latest-and-greatest cpus and graphics chips really have a use for the kind of expandability that you seem to want.

Most people don't know how or don't feel secure swapping their own cpu or graphics card. Even for those who do, it is hard to justify taking out and throwing away a perfectly functional cpu just because it is too old. It doesn't make economic sense. Just like people who buy a new car every other year.

The current Macs all have room to expand the RAM, and they can be bought with hard drives that are large enough for any normal consumer. As for the optical drives, the burners in Macs can write to any format that will be mainstream for the next several years.

To put it simply: for the vast majority of the computer market, the benefits of having a small and quiet computer completely outweigh the downside of not being able to expand it with pcie cards or extra hard drives.

Not understanding the practicality

[UnknowingFool]

It's nice to want things, but to me, it didn't seem that the author understood why things are the way they are. A lot of the article seems to dispel how difficult changes could be technically or practically.

1. iTunes Subscription Service
...
Music companies love these rental services, because they continually receive money without actually letting anyone do much with the music they buy. Why shouldn't iTunes offer a similar service? Well, maybe it will. It would certainly be a less agonising use for the DRM Apple is stripping from its library of tracks.

Yes the media companies would love this, but there are far greater technical barriers to this than the current system. To do this, Apple would have to develop a different way of securing and authenticating the files. Roughlydrafted went into detail how FairPlay works and why there is no subscription service. Besides technical reasons, Apple has always argued against it on principle as it was anti-consumer.

2) UK iTunes Movie Downloads
iTunes users in the US have had access to a mountain of downloadable TV shows and movies since 2005, but why hasn't the UK? It's no secret that British consumers pay through the nose for media, so why aren't we having our love of moving pictures exploited too?

The main reasons are purely legal which translate into technical reasons. They don't have permission from the content providers. Groups like MPAA has always tried to maintain strict control of all aspects of release from time and location. DVD, HD-DVD, and BlueRay all have region encoding for a reason. FairPlay would have to match that. Now Apple has to devise a way to separate out all users based on location at the file level so that certain movies do not play for the users until the local release date. That makes things a lot more complicated for FairPlay. So the easiest solution is to limit purchases only to American users.

3) Widescreen video iPod
With our imminent access to movie downloads, Apple TV's recent availability and the iPhone's widescreen video talents, surely the ultra-desirable widescreen iPod should be right around the corner? All that video content being pushed and pulled around is just crying out for a better portable medium to enjoy it on and Apple knows how much everyone wants just such a device.

The iPhone is Apple's first attempt at a widescreen. I would expect newer generations of iPods to do the same as Apple works out the kinks.

4) Wi-Fi enabled video iPod
Microsoft's Zune has Wi-Fi, but it's hopeless beyond hysterical. Give the iPod Wi-Fi capabilities, coupled with on-demand video and the phenomenally successful iTunes Store, and you'll find yourself with the most capable portable media device ever created.

I suspect the main reason why no company has done it before MS was that it wasn't practical. They could have released wifi iPod but there would be a drastic difference in transfer rates. You and I might understand that 802.11g takes 10x as long as FireWire or USB2.0, but the average consumer might not and would hate it. "It takes hours to transfer my small collection. This sucks!" 802.11n is on the horizon. When that is in place, you will probably see a wifi iPod.

5) Flash-based video iPod
We've previously discussed the possibility of an all-flash video iPod before, but no further rumours or leaks have arisen since. Flash memory is significantly faster than the good old hard disk, but at a significant cost increase. We think Apple is going to focus on video this year, and video requires vast quantities of storage more than it needs flash read speeds. We expect a larger-capacity iPod long before any kind of all-flash version. Which brings us neatly to...

Th

Re:Not understanding the practicality

[MyGirlFriendsBroken]

The main reasons are purely legal which translate into technical reasons. They don't have permission from the content providers. Groups like MPAA has always tried to maintain strict control of all aspects of release from time and location. DVD, HD-DVD, and BlueRay all have region encoding for a reason. FairPlay would have to match that. Now Apple has to devise a way to separate out all users based on location at the file level so that certain movies do not play for the users until the local release date. That makes things a lot more complicated for FairPlay. So the easiest solution is to limit purchases only to American users.

This issue is already solved, it applies the same to audio. Firstly, iTMS downloads are tied to a user. Secondly, the user it tied to a location and therefore a store, I understand this is done using the billing details of your payment card. So to solve the time issue all Apple has to do is to just make sure they release content into each store at the right time, like I guess they must do with some of the music already.

But you are right, the reason this hasn't happened yet is legal and content rights, it's just the same with the xBox video store, but the technical issues are solved

Re:Not understanding the practicality

[gnasher719]

'' Yes the media companies would love this, but there are far greater technical barriers to this than the current system. To do this, Apple would have to develop a different way of securing and authenticating the files. Roughlydrafted went into detail how FairPlay works and why there is no subscription service. Besides technical reasons, Apple has always argued against it on principle as it was anti-consumer. ''

Well, roughlydrafted is (1) the ultimate Mac fanboy, and (2) not at all stupid and often has good arguments. Being a fanboy, they will surely have found very good arguments why Apple cannot support a subscription (rental) service for iTunes & iPod. Doesn't mean they are right, though. However, one thing with Steve Jobs is that he doesn't care one bit what he said yesterday. He will go on and on and on how bad subscription is until the day Apple introduces it, and then everything is different. Of course it is actually possible that subscription is really no good and Apple will never introduce it...

The biggest problem that existing subscription services have is that they don't work with the iPod. That is 80% of the possible market gone. Apple won't have that problem. The situation for Apple is different: The money they would make with subscriptions is negligible for them, and they would lose some music sales as well. What counts for them is: How many iPods do we sell more?

I think someone at Apple has a spreadsheet with a calculation of expected profit of introducing subscription service, taking into account all the risks and the problem that it would be very hard to cancel such a service if it doesn't work well. And that spreadsheet is updated every quarter, and if the end result is sufficiently positive then we'll get subscriptions.

It also seems that companies like EMI start figuring out that what really matters is how much money they make; how many illegal copies are made doesn't matter. Their new strategy on iTMS is going to help selling complete albums, and I'd think a combination of subscription + rebate on purchases would also drive sales really well.

Re:Not understanding the practicality

[sl3xd]

Groups like MPAA has always tried to maintain strict control of all aspects of release from time and location. DVD, HD-DVD, and BlueRay all have region encoding for a reason.

You're almost right.

HD DVD does not have region encoding. This is actually one of the reason some studios chose to support Blu-ray exclusively -- the studio demands region encoding, and HD DVD doesn't allow it.

The lack of region encoding (and less restrictive DRM in general) is why I choose to vote with my wallet for HD DVD instead of Blu-ray.

Re:Not understanding the practicality

[Anonymous Coward]

The lack of region encoding (and less restrictive DRM in general) is why I choose to vote with my wallet for HD DVD instead of Blu-ray.

Uggh. Why settle for the lesser of two evils when there is a cheaper option that doesn't feed the beast at all - piracy. Yo ho ho and a download of HD! Me loves my 20mbps FIOS....

Re:Not understanding the practicality

[gig]

> 802.11n is on the horizon. When that is in place, you will probably see a wifi iPod.

Every Apple product already has Wi-Fi "n" except the iPod. It is in all the computers, base stations, routers, AppleTV, and iPhone.

The thing with Wi-Fi "n" is that it is the first video-ready Wi-Fi. Lesser Wi-Fi is fine for audio but useless for video.

Wi-Fi "n" will start in iPod video and trickle to all iPods, even shuffle eventually. This is because if you are 150 meters from an AppleTV you are a TV/radio station for that AppleTV. You can stream audio video in real-time to that AppleTV. You can stop by a friend's place and share a TV show with no DRM issues, you can show a 30 second commercial your company just developed on the client's 50 inch screen without leaving a copy behind. For all the reasons it makes sense to be able to do this with Mac + AppleTV today you want to do it with iPod tomorrow.

Syncing is not what Wi-Fi is for. USB is 400 kbps while even the newest Wi-Fi "n" is only 100 kbps under the most ideal of conditions. Further, iTunes Store has already doubled the file size of both their audio and video once and it will double again in the future. Finally, you also charge the battery and perform maintenance with the wired connection, it is solving a lot of problems for us that we don't even know we have.

Re:Not understanding the practicality

[gig]

I don't think the different-countries issue is technical at all. Especially not with Apple, who always try to make just one product for the whole world. Rather it is a legal issue.

I live in the U.S. now but lived in Canada in the past. Canadians are always complaining about having to wait 6 months or a year for something to cross the border and Canada is as similar to the U.S. as you are going to find. However Canada is actually another country. It has its own laws and traditions and institutions and if you transplant your iTunes Store from California to B.C. you have to make sure you that 20% of the content in your store is by Canadian artists or producers - there are special rules for what qualifies - and that is just the first of 100 things I can think of that are different, off the top of my head.

In other words, when it opens up in your country, it may be called iTunes Store but it is unique to your country or region. The lawyers that are involved with this ... it boggles the mind.

Re:Not understanding the practicality

[gig]

The arguments against music subscriptions on Roughly Drafted seemed to me to be based on the past history of music subscription services, and not on anything to do with Apple, fanboy or otherwise.

I know lots of people with iPods but I don't know anybody who has every joined a music subscription service. XM and Sirius are having trouble making that work and they send the content to you wirelessly by satellite in dozens of simultaneous streams. Even there, people are having trouble paying $12 per month for radio. HBO has to do lots of exclusive content to make their subscription work and they are unique in that they started early in cable.

Re:Not understanding the practicality

[UnknowingFool]

While it is true that many Apple products are using 802.11n now, that is only true within the last 6 months. Before then no Apple product used it as many wireless manufacturers themselves had just released products. As for syncing, more technical people will realize this about a wifi iPod and try to limit transfers. Average consumers (which the iPod was designed for) won't know or can't be bothered by technicalities. Some iPod owners I know don't even know the capacity of their iPod. All they know is that it plays when they want it to and they recharge it when the battery gets low.

Re:wi-fi hangup - battery saving!

[eggstone]

Well, I don't think apple don't include wi-fi in the iPod is because of the third party gadgets. In fact, if they found third party gadget is making money, they try to make them too! such as apple's own ipod cases, well, ipod hifi, if you count it as an ipod accessory. The main reason for no include wi-fi is because it trains the battery! Currently, the playback of a video iPod for movies is about 3.5 hours (if I remember correctly), if they include wifi, which use batteries for search wireless network, I doubt how long it can last. Even worse, if you want to download a movie from iTunes using iPod through wireless network, I doubt you'll have enough battery for downloading a full-length movie and play it without charging, well, I guess that's the limit of current iPod battery. Conclusion, unless they found new ways to save energy, no wireless.

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[DJCacophony]

Archos already has Wi-Fi enabled players, Widescreen players, 160GB HDD players, Touchscreen players, Camcorder players, and all the accessories you can think of, including a DVR station, a helmet camcorder, and an FM radio.
They can play back MPEG-2, .PS, .VOB, H.264, and AAC.

Archos is the real mp3 player pioneer, they paved the way for large hard drive mp3 players with their Jukebox Multimedia. If you want any of the features mentioned in this article, you don't have to wait for the next iPod, because Archos has had them for a while now.

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[mattatwork]

Because they're fscking expensive. If they'd release decent and expandable $500-$1000 machines, they could probably crush Microsoft in just a few years.
They wouldn't crush Microsoft...lowering the prices on their hardware would put pressure on other PC makers like Dell and Sony.... Microsoft just takes advantage of the monopoly they have over the PC market. MS is the only company that will licence to them and has the OS most people think they have to have to run a computer. A good part of MS's profit is almost guaranteed from the income from licencing XP, Vista or whatever version of Windows that is out. In the long run, selling sub-$1000 machines has hurt PC companies like Dell and Gateway...so why would Apple want to kill its own business?

These things are supposed to be reviewed

[Flying pig]

By executives and also by lawyers looking for libel or defamation. (IANAL but if I were Jobs and had it brought to my attention I'd certainly pay Carter-Ruck to send a nasty letter.) None of them seem to have noticed. If they had, they might just have had the wit to substitute Michael Dell for Jobs (Dell is a recognised brand in the UK), which would have been more accurate. Conclusion: BBC execs and lawyers don't actually know who Jobs is or what he is doing. Nor does Enfield or his scriptwriters. I bet you they know who Rupert Murdoch is. Or Richard Branson.

Re:These things are supposed to be reviewed

[CmdrGravy]

Are you familiar with much British TV ?

Re:These things are supposed to be reviewed

[NDPTAL85]

What part of comedy and parody do you not understand? You don't have to be accurate when you are making fun of people, in fact being INACCURATE is the entire point. Thus libel and defamation do not apply here.

Re:These things are supposed to be reviewed

[SirMeliot]

I was listening to a review of this show on the radio and one of the criticisms levelled was that the characters in this series were less immediately familiar to both Enfield and the audience. Because of this they were much less funny than the likes of Loadsamoney and Stavros. Everyone knew somebody like one of those two. In fact IIRC Stavros was based on Enfield's local shop keeper.

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[dfghjk]

You've apparently never owned a BMW.

CR says BMW among most UNreliable cars

[Anonymous Coward]

Those who buy Honda, Toyota, don't want UNreliable.

Re:CR says BMW among most UNreliable cars

[ssstraub]

I know this is a troll, but CR does not say that... They probably ranked the 7-series that way, but not the brand as a whole. The 3-series is usually held in very high regard by CR.

What I would love to see...

[bhunachchicken]

Just one thing and that is plugin support for extensions and add ons. It means that people could easily write things like cross faders, support for additional codecs, etc. There could be official unoffical community website for getting hold of these plugins, providing users with source code, etc. to minimise the chances of malicious code.

Of course, there are probably some major security risks around stuff like that... But it would still be cool.

Re:What I would love to see...

[gig]

> Just one thing and that is plugin support for extensions and add ons. It means that people could easily write things like cross faders,
> support for additional codecs, etc.

This exists one level down from iTunes, in OS X.

You can add codecs through QuickTime. Once you add a codec to QuickTime it is available in all of your applications from both Apple and third-parties, both playback and authoring apps.

The plug-in format for audio processing is called "Audio Units" ... it is part of CoreAudio. OS X ships with about 10 Audio Units, things like EQ and such. There are hundreds of third-party Audio Units, some are free, some are commercial. There are various plug-in hosts, you can pipe your iTunes output through there easily. These are professional tools, the highest quality.

> Of course, there are probably some major security risks around stuff like that... But it would still be cool.

Not if you build it in the right way, which Apple has obviously done because it's working great for audio and video content creators, these are the reasons why people buy Macs, to get this stuff.

Bluetooth

[Cainjustcain]

All I want from Apple is bluetooth headphones.

Re:Bluetooth

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen. A video player sucks when tethered to a headphone cord. Sure, if you're going to do nothing but watch video only while sitting in a chair and holding the player in your hand, a corded video player is fine.

However, I currently watch movies on my HP iPaQ, using Bluetooth stereo headphones. I can take it to the gym and watch video while on the treadmill, placing the video player on the treadmill's book rest, the headphones on my head, and no wire in between the two to risk my arm movements snagging and sending my video player flying. Likewise, I can put the video player on the shelf above my kitchen sink and watch movies while doing dishes, cooking, and moving all around the kitchen. That isn't possible with corded headphones and video.

I don't need Bluetooth stereo headphones on a Nano, that would just be a gimmick (and make me have to worry about shorter battery life on my headphones vs. my audio player). I don't even need Bluetooth on an iPod video that I just want to use to bring a large collection of audio into my car, which is going to stay right near my head unit anyway.

But, for anything but the most limited video watching (e.g. while sitting down), any iPod will be incomplete until it's capable of A2DP Bluetooth to connect up with cordless stereo Bluetooth headphones -- and hopefully the CPU power/battery consumption specs of that iPod will be able to handle A2DP along with whatever snazzy interface animation, touchscreen features, etc. will be bundled into that device.

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[The Great Pretender]

But Archos don't have 'status' appeal. Sad isn't it that conforming looks sell more. It's sort of the same feeling of despair for the population that I had when a friend, who's a clothing buyer for a main street store, pointed out that the store had the next two years of fashion trends already planned out, in general. Sheep

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[minus_273]

archos does not have the slick UI and the easy sync. It also does not have a legal content source. Where are you going to get movies from? Not everyone has the time to rip and reencode a DVD.

Speed improvements

[norminator]

On the main Floola page I linked to above, if you scroll down to the "Latest Changes" section, the first item is "huge copy speedup", so it sounds like they've fixed whatever was giving you grief in the latest version... hopefully.

Wi not Bluetooth?

[argent]

Why would they use the relatively high powered Wifi instead of the low power Bluetooth for this kind of short-range wireless?

Re:Wi not Bluetooth?

[dafing]

BT is a heck of a lot slower. Really really slow. Sure Bluetooth 2.0 (which i dont use) is faster , but compared to oh say, the new N standard, I mean, its not going to work. Its like those cameras that have bluetooth, "wireless photos!" you say , and it takes 20-30 minutes to send the photos, which have to be in range and preferably not moving about, for what would take 20 seconds through USB. I think all cameras should do wireless something, its very easy and cheap to put in, i hear the PS3 has both BT and WIFI added in for about a buck a piece, and looks good on the features list. Taking one photo from outside the house, having it sync onto the computer and email to the address you selected on your cameras contact list, thats all very do-able and i think useful, all while you sit out in the sun.

Re:Wi not Bluetooth?

[argent]

The PS3 is plugged into AC, the power requirements for radio are pretty much irrelevant.

Bluetooth 1.2 is up to 700 kbps, 2.0 up to 3 Mbps. That's faster than my Internet connection, and I don't consider that an unreasonable time to transfer a song... we're still talking on the order of 20 seconds even at the lower rate... and it's certainly fast enough to stream music and video (I'm thinking of something like a wireless iPod that streamed music from your iTunes library like Apple TV does). The power requirements for Bluetooth are a fraction of Wifi... and at short range (a meter or less) it drops even lower.

Bluetooth isn't a replacement for ethernet, it's a replacement for USB 1.1.

Re:Wi not Bluetooth?

[dafing]

Right oh, have you actually used Bluetooth? I have it on my V3 and laptop through a usb bluetooth interface. Let me tell you, it sucks. I can have speeds up to like, 20KB only for a short time, and they drop pretty fast. Its fine for the Bluetooth headset I use but overall , for me, its very very slow. The PS3 can also cure cancer, according to its specs remember (PS im all for the PS3 btw). Just because it "can" doesnt mean it "will". They are trying to sell you on their product.

If BT is sooooooooo good, a silver bullet, then why doesnt everything use it? Hmm? How come everything you own doesnt use BT? The PSP should be ideal for a BT addition, but it doesnt have it! What gives?

The replacement for USB 1.1 WAS USB 2.0! Its like that "record players with a laser so that they dont wear out. And smaller grooves, pits if you will. And the records should be smaller and more shiny!", we have that, its called the CD! (and then DVD, Blu-Ray...)

Good luck with getting BT on everything.

Re:Wi not Bluetooth?

[argent]

Right oh, have you actually used Bluetooth?

Yes.

How come everything you own doesnt use BT?

Because most of the things I own aren't suited to Bluetooth. For example, my pool doesn't use bluetooth *or* wifi, it uses pipes laid under the ground. My air conditioner uses ducts. My mailbox uses my two feet.

Currently I'm using bluetooth keyboards and mice. I had to change phones when I left my last job, and my current phone doesn't use bluetooth, but that's not because it's bad... it's because I had to pick a phone out of a pretty restricted set of phones.

If BT is sooooooooo good, a silver bullet, then why doesnt everything use it?

Because it's not a silver bullet, it's a tool with a specific application domain - moderate speed, short range, connection-oriented. A "wireless USB".

For devices that high a high power usage (like the iPod with its hard drive), a wired sync/charging connection is still necessary. Some kind of inductive power scheme would obviate that, but if you're close enough for inductive charging you would use the same connection for syncing - it's more efficient, lower overhead, and since it's inherently short range it's more secure.

Your wireless link on your iPod would be more for streaming music and "localcasting".

The replacement for USB 1.1 WAS USB 2.0!

USB 2.0 is not a replacement for USB 1.1. USB 2.0 is an extension of USB 1.1 into a new domain. USB 1.1 is still used in the domain where it's appropriate: an awful lot of "USB 2.0" devices are actually USB 1.1, since USB 2.0 is forwards and backwards compatible with USB 1.1 and the USB standards org decided to allow people to sell USB 1.1 devices as "USB 2.0 full speed", and real USB 2.0 devices get the moniker "USB 2.0 hi-speed".

I'm talking about replacing a cabled connection with a wireless one. Wifi is a "cable-free" replacement for Ethernet and maybe firewire. That's in the USB 2.0 (the real one, USB 2.0 "hi-speed", the one they came up with to compete with firewire) domain. Bluetooth is a "cable-free" replacement for ADB, USB 1.1, PS/2, and direct serial links... in the USB 1.1 (AKA USB 2.0 "low-speed" and "full-speed") domain.

Re:Wi not Bluetooth?

[dafing]

You know I only replied to your message because I was trying to help. I dont want to argue back and forth about BT and whatever. Soon enough, Wireless USB is coming out and thats your problem over. So you would say that the cd rom is an "extension" of the floppy drive, which is an extension of magnetic core memory which is an extension of....

Re:Wi not Bluetooth?

[argent]

I'm sorry, but if you were "just trying to help" then you were reading a version of my message from a bizarro universe. I didn't say that Bluetooth was the ultimate solution for everything, I just said that it seemed to me that it was a better fit for what you'd likely be using wireless on an iPod for, and I gave some examples.

I dont want to argue back and forth about BT and whatever.

You know, it sure looks like that's exactly what you want to do. When you throw out deliberate misinterpretations like "So you would say that the cd rom is an "extension" of the floppy drive [...]" they can't be interpreted as anything but a deliberate attempt to pick a fight.

Re:Wi not Bluetooth?

[dafing]

One last reply from me, "Bluetooth isn't a replacement for ethernet, it's a replacement for USB 1.1." you started all this discussion, asking, an open question, for "why dont we use bluetooth for networking since it uses less power than wifi" to which i responded that it was so much slower as you will see, just HELPING YOU since you had a question that nobody had bothered replying to. I dont think anyone else has replied to it yet, take from that what you will.

I dont use Slashdot to make new enemies. I dont give helpful advice to an unanswered question to start fights. Thats not fun for me. If you still think BT is better than wifi for short range networking, then ill let you keep bringing up your question, you can petition to Apple or Microsoft or Dell or whoever you want. And if everything faster, and newer gets taken away and we ditch them completely for something older, and slower- which does use less power -with worse performance then im willing to say "ok argent, im wrong." Thats not hard for me to do. Good luck with your life argent.

Re:Wi not Bluetooth?

[argent]

*sigh*

Look, fellow, "it's slower" isn't an answer. I know it's slower. That goes hand in hand with it being lower power.

"It's too slow for X, Y, and Z, because A, B, and C, and Y and Z are critical" would be an answer, but you don't seem to be able to explain what X, Y, and Z are (your example was transferring photos from a camera, which is kind of irrelevant to the iPod), and your reasons are that I don't know what I'm talking about, that I haven't actually used Bluetooth, that Bluetooth is 30 times slower than it actually is, and that I'm starting an argument.

And, you know... the suggestion that the iPod might get Wifi capability is speculation in the first place. This whole topic is speculation. Why is your speculation that this hypothetical use of Wifi in the iPod (which hasn't actually happened yet) shouldn't be reversed (how? it hasn't happened!) so important that I shouldn't be allowed to question it?

Um, OK, I won't question it again. You're the boss, or something.

Re:Wi not Bluetooth?

[dafing]

BT is a cellphone thing. It takes 1KB contact files and syncs them to your computers contact list. It does not do 10MB mp3s, you cant download a GB torrent through it, although you can use it for all those sorts of things, that would just be stupid and not what its made for. When you're talking about networking, BT is the 100 dollar laptop project, its cool because its quirky but its slow as hell. You wouldnt use it for anything else because it just sucks. Wait till WIMAX or something comes out that hits 100MB a second, with great range, i dont think they will bother with BT then. If its just a power thing, "theres just not enough juice for wifi etc" then why do they keep putting in more features that use the battery like crazy. Im talking about video playback hardware etc, you could have a hundred hour battery life phone if all you wanted was talking. Come to think about it, why dont they use BT instead of the cellphone towers current technologies? Because it would save so much power dont you know! Ill let you ring up your cellphone maker and ask them about that, feel free to take the patent.

I never said you were starting an argument, ill let you look back at our messages if you want a source of my statement there. Christ. I feel sorry for the Indian call center people who have to deal with silly ideas like "BT is the best way to wirelessly do stuff" all day. I've already wished you good luck with your life, and was just hoping you would see the damn light.

Re:Wi not Bluetooth?

[argent]

Why would you be downloading gigabytes or even megabytes of data directly to your iPod over a wireless link? That's not how Apple's ever presented the iPod. It's not a Zune, it's not a laptop. Its a music player that syncs to your computer when you dock it to charge it up.

You don't pick a technology by how cool it is, you pick it by whetehr it solves the problem you're trying to solve. What's the problem that you're trying to solve with wireless on the iPod? You can't tell what technology to use until you've answered that.

It doesn't matter to Apple. They're technology-agnostic. All their computers are ready for Bluetooth, Wifi, USB, or Firewire, and they've started putting IR in as well. If they decided that Wibree or Zigbee was better than Wifi or Bluetooth, they'd use that.

Re:Wi not Bluetooth?

[gig]

> Why would they use the relatively high powered Wifi instead of the low power Bluetooth for this kind of short-range wireless?

Because the one and only useful purpose for Wi-Fi in an iPod is real-time streaming of content to other devices on a Wi-Fi network. Why? Because other devices are likely to include the TV or speakers that the iPod lacks by definition, while at the same time, the other devices on the network might easily lack the content that is stored on your iPod video. This is how it works today with a Mac. Tomorrow it will work this way with iPhone and the day after that iPod.

If you examine Wi-Fi syncing for even like a half hour from a technical perspective it is a non-starter. It is still always going to be better to plug into the dock connector. Even if it takes you a full minute to plug the device in, you will get that time back even if you are only syncing one TV show because the USB will be at least 4x faster. Also the USB provides power and a way to do firmware updates.

Re:Wi not Bluetooth?

[argent]

Because the one and only useful purpose for Wi-Fi in an iPod is real-time streaming of content to other devices on a Wi-Fi network.

That was my thought, indeed. Or rather, streaming content to and from other decices on a short range wireless network. At least that was my first thought, but it was followed immediately by a second... to wit, what devices would it be streaming to?

* Other iPods.
* Other hand-held devices.
* AppleTV.
* Other standalone output devices.
* A laptop or other personal computer.

Streaming to other iPods can be ignored, since they will be using the same system, so there's nothing to pick and choose from.

Streaming to the Zune or PSP doesn't seem to be the kind of thing I would expect Apple to do.

To stream from the iPod to AppleTV, it would need Wifi. AppleTV doesn't have Bluetooth, and IR is too slow.

Other standalone output devices? Well, there are quite a few bluetooth speakers and headsets. No Wifi ones that I know of. I can't think of any video devices.

Laptops or other personal computers? Bluetooth and Wifi are both options. Apple's own computers have both.

The only devices that really depend on one protocol or the other are the standalone bluetooth speakers and headsets, and the AppleTV. And I have to say that getting rid of that annoying white cable would make me interested in going back to the iPod again.

Really, it comes down to whether it makes more sense to be able to stream video to an AppleTV over Wifi instead of over a USB dock plugged into the so-far-unused AppleTV USB port. It's not like docking your iPod next to the AppleTV is a bad idea. AppleTV could even use the iPod playlists directly, just using it as an external hard drive.

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[Guanine]

If they're such a pioneer, why does their product weight over 4.5 times what an iPod does? As has been said in previous comments ... size _does matter_ in portable devices.

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[gnasher719]

'' But Archos don't have 'status' appeal. Sad isn't it that conforming looks sell more. ''

I don't know if it has so much to do with "conforming". The new iPod Shuffle does just look quite nice, and so does the Nano, and the iPhone. The other music stuff from Apple looks acceptable, but there is a lot of stuff out there that I wouldn't want to be seen with. Just my opinion.

And yes, looks count. Buying an iPod because it says "iPod" on the package is stupid. Buying it because you like the way it works or because you trust the brandname isn't stupid. And buying it because it looks good isn't stupid either.

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[DJCacophony]

Because it does more. Besides, if you're so worried about weight, then buy one of Archos' smaller, lighter, more compact players.

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[DJCacophony]

It does have the slick UI, and any sync program will work on it because it mounts as an external hard drive. It accepts any legal content source besides itunes, including the many subscription services out there. As for video, you can record it from any video output on any video device, via component or composite or what have you. What's more, you can also hook it up to a TV and play media back on it at a higher resolution than the screen on the player itself.

It's about time

[dave562]

"...and the rumours and speculation we've discussed promote the theory that Apple is setting itself up as a major player in the media-distribution industry."

Since what seems like the dawn of computer time, Apples have been the choice of "creative professionals" and others involved in media creation. It makes perfect sense for them to continue to build on and extend from that market position. I just hope that now all of the fanbois can realize where Apple fits in the overall computer landscape and stay there, sipping their lattes, staring at their 20+ inch displays and being "creative." =)

How about dropping Apple from the name as well

[Anonymous Coward]

Then close down entirely. Besides all of their overpriced products suck anyways.

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[EdelFactor19]

As off topic as that is.. I dunno if I'd be so quick to say that. If BMW were to start releasing cars in that range there would be a significant quality drop compared to what regular "BMW" is. The purity of the brand is important to them. As an aside I think the target at that price range wouldn't involve GM much, it would probably be Honda/Toyota/Nissan/Volkswagon. In an attempt to grab the loyalty before consumers move on to the respective groups upper brand (Acura / Lexus / Infiniti / Audi). And couldn't the exact same statement be made about Mercedes?

For that matter why doesn't Bentley, Ferrari, Porsche, etc release cheap versions of their cars? Because thats not what they are. BMW's aim is to be a (high performance) luxury vehicle. I tend to doubt if they want to enter that segment of the market which is heavily saturated and would be a much tighter competition for smaller profits.

Why doesn't Breitling and Rolex release less expensive watches? Why is there a Lexus and Toyota? etc. It's a debacle across many industries. Gibson has Epiphone, Fender has fender and squire, PRS makes some 'se' models that suck. Maybe you should tell Patron to start making a 10 dollar handle of tequila to compete with .

All aside even if they did enter that segment I don't think there is any evidence to suggest that they would crush toyota, gm or honda. And considerations of adverse impact on the traditional BMW sales would be intriguing.

what it mainly comes down to I think is maintaining brand image and identity.

Rockbox

[xealot]

It's called Rockbox, and it's an open source OS for media players. It's been ported to most of the popular ones, and some obscure ones. I run it on my Toshiba Gigabeat F40, and I can play any media type except WMA, including MPEG movies now, which was not a feature that Toshiba put on the Gigabeat. There's all sorts of plugins too.
Ever wanted to play Doom on your iPod? Rockbox comes with that too.
http://www.rockbox.org/

Jobs works Steve up???

[DohnJoe]

Jobs works Steve up to orgasm by describing the hardware of the next Mac. you mean Steve Jobs was masturbating to his own next-gen Mac hardware? having seen his presentation of the iphone this sounds quite believable :)

one of those 'it's funny because it's true' sketches I suppose...

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[Toby_Tyke]

When I bought my Archos gmini, it was the cheapest and smallest 20gb player on the market.

Feed the troll (OT but who cares)

[Flying pig]

As T S Eliot observed, the point about parody is that the closer it is to the original the better. In fact, Eliot argued that in order to produce a great parody you had to be able to write better than the original author. A good example is the brilliant parody of John Betjeman that starts "Here I sit, alone and sixty, bald and fat and full of sin..." which causes you to do a double take until you realise that no, it isn't Betjeman. Another good example is the famous literary competition set by the Spectator to write a parody of the start of a Graham Greene novel. Greene entered pseudonymously but didn't win. (And yes, I do have it in my collection.)

You are thinking of burlesque, which is much broader and coarser, in which something is exaggerated or misrepresented for comic effect. For instance, the alternative version of God Save the Queen that starts "God help our boring Queen" is burlesque.

However, your general point is just utterly and obviously wrong. Being inaccurate does not make anything funny, it just makes it irrelevant. There is indeed a form of comedy which consists of reversing everything (and which is presumably connected to the Saturnalia), of which an excellent example is the Onion's accounts clerk who writes about himself as if he was a black gang leader. It is a lot more than inaccuracy, it involves turning things completely upside down. In the case mentioned that would have to involve Gates and Jobs going off to find a few loose woman while their wives discussed operating systems. But otherwise, the principle of comedy is to present things as they are but with a twist. Mr. Bean is funny because he is an adult who not only behaves like a child but has all the worst stereotypical characteristics of the English. The French laugh at him because they recognise the English on holiday, not because he behaves in an un-English way.

Furthermore, I assume you are an American, because I expect, rightly or wrongly, that English people are more knowledgeable about humour, but also because you obviously think American law applies in the UK. It doesn't. The satirical programme "Have I got news for you" goes out a day late because it has to be carefully checked by lawyers. If (as was the case here) you name and identify a person on a programme and then publish defamatory content, you do not have any First Amendment rights because (a) we do not have a Constitution in written form and (b) therefore it has no amendments. If the defamation is inaccurate, be assured that doesn't help your case. And if it is accurate but has no bearing on your fitness to do your job, you may still be stuffed. There are many things wrong with the UK, but at least we have ways of dealing with the likes of Don Imus and Ann Coulter.

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[Anonymous Coward]

That will crush BMW and not Toyota or GM. Have you wonder why in the US we don't get the BMW 1 series? It is all about brand image, luxury and exclusiveness here. Ok, you can go back and party with your Yaris!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_1_Series

More Archos whining

[KH2002]

"Archos is the real mp3 player pioneer, they paved the way for large hard drive mp3 players with their Jukebox Multimedia. If you want any of the features mentioned in this article, you don't have to wait for the next iPod, because Archos has had them for a while now."

Geez. More Archos whining. Archos players -- particularly the early (supposed "pioneering") models, represented everything that was wrong about MP3 players, which Apple fixed with the iPod.

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[Anonymous Coward]

And buying it because it looks good isn't stupid either.

But what your missing is buying overweight/oversized/poor performing crap from sketchy companies is much smarter. I bet you think having a huge Aluminum wing on the back of your FWD econobox doesn't add 200+ hp at the rear wheel either...

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[Neil Hodges]

What's funnier is that a RockBox iPod does the same thing as far as synchronization. It's a whole lot easier to create playlists when one can just write a Perl script on the device, instead of fumbling through some bloated GUI (iTunes).

Plus, I can play music other than AAC/FairPlay, MP3, and Apple Lossless, which is why I installed RockBox. I get the same slick looks yet the greater additional expandability and features for free.

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but you seem to forget how those geeks and hardcore gamers influence the next purchase decision of mere mortals.

Family/Friends/Co-Workers usually have a go-to person who's a geek or hardcore gamer and they usually need a blessing from them before buying. If I don't have a Mac and don't know how to support it, I will tell them "Sure, buy a mac, but don't call me when it hits the fan". Catch my drift?

Please your geeks and people will follow.

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[jacksonj04]

iTunes is a bloated gui? Most command line apps have a more bloated UI!

Okay, not that far, but it's pretty minimalistic. As in, I've never had to click a button to make my iPod sync.

100 GB? Try the whole internet!

[windsurfer619]

What people seem to forget is that it is a royal PAIN to upload music to MP3 players! Sure, it only takes literally a few seconds to transfer a song to a device, but it requires booting up a computer, finding the cables, ripping/buying/*cough*other , and then actually transferring the music over with all the right tags. To me, I find it a pain. And I think because it is the only really viable method of getting the music you want, people stick with it. - There was a revolution in music when people got the tape cassette. People everywhere could record music! Suddenly much more music was available to them. - There was a revolution in music when people got the Walkman. People could listen to music everywhere! - There was a revolution in music with the invention of the MP3 player. Suddenly everyone could listen to their music from anywhere without the hassle of exchanging tapes or external media! There was a demand for space. And it was exponential. Why? Because people can NEVER get enough media! The way I see it, the future is not with the massive disk space, or the super long battery, or the short range wi-fi. I would love to be able to subscribe to something like Rhapsody and listen to ALL the music I wanted, no downloading to devices required, no stupid tagging, no CDs. A set up similar to satellite radio, but where I don't just chose stations, but I can MAKE stations, similar to Pandora or last.fm, and chose the songs I love. How can this be possible? Simple! EDGE networks! EV-DO! Cellular technology has plenty of bandwidth available! Having a device like an Ipod with some limited storage space for buffer/saved tracks and a cellular data connection would be fucking unbelievable. IMHO this seems like not only the next logical step, but the final step in the digital music industry.

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[soundvessel]

Ah, but you seem to forget how those geeks and hardcore gamers influence the next purchase decision of mere mortals. Family/Friends/Co-Workers usually have a go-to person who's a geek or hardcore gamer and they usually need a blessing from them before buying. If I don't have a Mac and don't know how to support it, I will tell them "Sure, buy a mac, but don't call me when it hits the fan". Catch my drift? Please your geeks and people will follow.

That's pretty much the same thing as putting soothing gel on a hemorrhoid. Just as long as you please your asshole, it'll keep doing its job. So, too, that you listen to your asshole geek friend who's too busy being selfish to apply their general knowledge to another system.

Geeks should learn more responsibility.

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[Anonymous Coward]

But who buys Apple computers ? Not that many .

That's what you think.

It's weird how the same hardware is worth less when you load it with Windows. Most computer makers get their asses handed to them by Apple on a regular basis, mostly because of being loaded with that Microsoft crap.

Apple stores

[GWBasic]

Apple's stores are almost like walking into a fancy TV store. If they could get news shows like "The Daily Show" on iTunes as soon as it's broadcast, they'd take over TV.

Leper Engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

What a weird naming scheme Apple has. They just sent this E-Mail to the developers: "You. The Leper engineers. Together at WWDC". Well, yeah. It feels like answering them back "And You, the Syphilitic Planners of Future Evil?".

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all that many people care about expandability. Only the hardcore gamers and geeks who buy the latest-and-greatest cpus and graphics chips really have a use for the kind of expandability that you seem to want...

The current Macs all have room to expand the RAM, and they can be bought with hard drives that are large enough for any normal consumer. As for the optical drives, the burners in Macs can write to any format that will be mainstream for the next several years.

To put it simply: for the vast majority of the computer market, the benefits of having a small and quiet computer completely outweigh the downside of not being able to expand it with pcie cards or extra hard drives.

In two years, tell that to all those iMac and Mac mini owners with a cluttered mess of peripherals connected with USB and Firewall cables: external Blu-Ray drive (which cannot play digitally because the graphics cannot be upgraded to HDCP), external 802.11n final spec, external hard drive, external memory card reader, external TV tuner, etc. What good is a small and quiet (with external power brick) computer if you have all this shit (which can be internal) hanging off of it?

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Woha! Holy trolling batman!

What general knowledge is that you speak of? I'm not a mac guy, and I have been recently exposed to macs (my co-worker is a mac fanatic). All my shortcuts don't work, the system is completely different from a GUI stand point. How on earth would I have known that dragging a CD to the trash can thingie actually ejects it?

I'm assuming you're a mac fanboy. Don't get me wrong about what I said above (yes, same AC). I'm not saying I don't recommend Mac because I don't know it and I'm not willing to apply my "general knowledge" on a mac. I'm saying, I won't know the answers off the top of my head, and especially when it gets into system issues.

Sure, Macs with a terminal are kind of like my favorite server OS (FreeBSD), but I'm not going to waste my time trying to support something I don't have or use on regular bases.

If macs were more affordable back in the day, I may have gotten one and used it. I don't know if the Mac too expensive argument still holds nowadays, I think they're (macbook pros) around the same price as Dell. But why change now?

Anyway, don't get too attached to an OS/company/ISV, they don't get attached to you!

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[minus_273]

does it play legal content though? also do you really think people want to write perl scripts on their ipod? Seriously, i know this is slashdot and all, but you've just taken what is right now the best UI and replaced it with a perl script because you think GUIs are bloated.. good god.

What a shameful piece of p.r. reach-around

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the writer of this "news" story work for Apple?

Slashdot doesn't need to fawn over the company every time there's a small bit of news. Could the editors tone down this masturbatory gushing in future?

We want news, not a circle jerk.

Rockbox can do this.

[nodrog]

I have a 20 Gig Ipod thats about half full. Theres a mix of oggs and mps on it and i use the rockbox firmware. Rockbox has an option to build its own tag database on the the Ipod itself, on mine it takes about 10 minutes and because it happens in the background i don't even notice it.
So i don't think that building the metadata database on the source computer is any kind of advantage for the ipod, its down more to its simple interface and almost a monopoly in the online music business. I'd guess that Jobs' recent cooling towards DRM was at least partly motivated by the fact that it is seen as an unfair trade practice in a few countries, (France and Norway recently adopted this position i think).

Re:MS saw this coming in the 90's when they ordere

[gig]

If only MS had instead done the hard work necessary to create an actual QuickTime competitor, then they would be in a position to actually compete.

All of Microsoft and Real's audio and video tools rely on QuickTime just like everybody else's. There is no content creator side to MS or Real tools. It is just a way to convert your standardized content (e.g. MPEG-4 H.264 AAC) into stuff that only plays on Windows or only streams from Real servers. There is no point to this other than Microsoft and Real exploiting the technical ignorance of their customers for fun and profit.

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[gig]

> they paved the way for large hard drive mp3 players

LARGE is the operative word. Heavy is another word. Hard-to-use is three words.

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[gig]

> It's a whole lot easier to create playlists when one can just write a Perl script on the device, instead of fumbling through some bloated GUI (iTunes).

First, that is only true for Perl coders, and even then it is a pretty sketchy statement.

Second, you can script your iPod with AppleScript on the Mac. iTunes exposes its functionality as objects. There is no need to touch iTunes. You can create and modify playlists both in iTunes and directly on an iPod that is attached also. You can encode and transcode, rip, mix, burn all from outside of iTunes.

Further, because in AppleScript can always say:

tell application "Terminal" to do shell script foo .. you can also script your iPod with Unix scripting. If you want to use Perl or Python that is there also along with Ruby. If you want to use DOM Scripting you can go:

tell application "Safari" to do javascript foo ... there is no shortage of iPod scripting options.

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[gig]

The Mac is one object. It is an integrated system. Mac users don't know about various kinds of optical drive standards and other extraneous uninteresting bullshit. Since 2001 I can put a CD or DVD in my Mac optical drive whether it is blank or not it will just work. If I make a DVD-Video disc it will just work in consumer players. Apple takes care of that shit so that Mac users can focus on being artists and lawyers and Web developers, not IT staff.

Also on the Mac, we do not miss PCI because in the first place, Macs always have a whole range of stuff built-in, and even FireWire goes back to the 20th century, so plugging stuff on when you need it has been the rule. I have a MOTU 896HD FireWire sampler here for many years when I want multichannel audio it is hot plug and go. I have used it on about five Macs including a PowerBook recording a live concert, it beats PCI so many times over it is not funny. Also, standalone devices like this do not steal CPU from your machine like a lot of integrated peripherals.

A lot of the ways that the PC market works are built on these assumptions:

- you have only one personal computer
- you are a full-blown IT nerd
- you have all the fucking time in the world
- you love to do Microsoft's QA for them for free
- you have all the fucking time in the world

These days we have lots of computers, we even have iPods and AppleTV and more is coming. I got no time to fuck with them. I don't want to choose a pencil and pen and then later realize I need white-out, I want to choose a pencil case that has everything in it, in every case, so that I am always ready to work no matter what comes up.

I saw a guy on here the other day arguing that it is wasteful for Apple to put Wi-Fi in all their boxes when some users don't need it. He is missing the point that it is wasteful to take Wi-Fi OUT of some boxes and then put it back in later, all based on the changing needs of users. If you buy a system without Wi-Fi and then a year later pay an IT guy to put Wi-Fi in you have just shot yourself in the fucking foot. You just paid the IT guy more money to install and configure and test that Wi-Fi than it would have cost to just buy a system with Wi-Fi from the start and let the user either use it or not as required over the life of the machine.

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[Pherdnut]

I think you're missing the whole point here. Expandability isn't about tossing aside old parts and replacing them with new ones as an act of hardware elitism. It's so that unlike most modern Apple products, you can upgrade your stuff without throwing the whole silly unit away. I think it's a travesty that you can't even replace iPod batteries. I worked as a configuration guy for the IT department of a major advertising agency for a few years. We worked with mac laptops from Lombards up to the last generation before the new intel MacBooks. Every generation of mac laptop got more and more difficult to tweak and upgrade by yourself. Even just Ram. It went from simply popping the keyboard off to having to pull out the jeweler's screwdriver kit to remove first just an external cover, then an external cover and some plates, and then having to take the entire battery housing apart. Lombards? You could swap the whole damn CPU out of a daughterboard slot after pulling the keyboard and a small metal cover. My girlfriend's Macbook? Screw it. If her RAM goes bad, I'd rather pay Apple than go through the hassle myself after looking through the docs on it. As far as quality is concerned, I'd say we were lucky if we didn't end up eating half of our mac laptops on a lease return compared to sending back 95% of our Dell laptops in reasonable condition. Granted, there is something to be said for the way a creative is going to treat his laptop and the way your average fearful office person will treat theirs but it was a pretty staggering difference nonetheless. And these were only 2-year leases. Why the hate for iPods? They're overpriced. You can buy stuff with dozens more useful features and of much higher quality for half the price of an iPod. Maybe I'm just iChallenged but I never thought iTunes was particularly user friendly and suspect the reason Apple addicts think everything else is so awkward is that they've trained themselves around a broken system in the first place. I used to like Apple a lot and I'm pretty indifferent to the OS battles but I think modern Apple fans are suffering from excess brand loyalty and the fashion statement that the Apple/iPod logos have become. --------- Not all that many people care about expandability. Only the hardcore gamers and geeks who buy the latest-and-greatest cpus and graphics chips really have a use for the kind of expandability that you seem to want. Most people don't know how or don't feel secure swapping their own cpu or graphics card. Even for those who do, it is hard to justify taking out and throwing away a perfectly functional cpu just because it is too old. It doesn't make economic sense. Just like people who buy a new car every other year. The current Macs all have room to expand the RAM, and they can be bought with hard drives that are large enough for any normal consumer. As for the optical drives, the burners in Macs can write to any format that will be mainstream for the next several years. To put it simply: for the vast majority of the computer market, the benefits of having a small and quiet computer completely outweigh the downside of not being able to expand it with pcie cards or extra hard drives.

Re:But who buys Apple computers ?

[Pherdnut]

Yikes... Should have the used the preview button on that one before declaring myself a total slashdot noob. The readable version:

I think you're missing the whole point here. Expandability isn't about tossing aside old parts and replacing them with new ones as an act of hardware elitism. It's so that unlike most modern Apple products, you can upgrade your stuff without throwing the whole silly unit away. I think it's a travesty that you can't even replace iPod batteries.

I worked as a configuration guy for the IT department of a major advertising agency for a few years. We worked with mac laptops from Lombards up to the last generation before the new intel MacBooks. In my experience every generation of mac laptop got more and more difficult to tweak and upgrade by yourself. Even just Ram.

It went from simply popping the keyboard off to having to pull out the jeweler's screwdriver kit to remove first just an external cover, then an external cover and some plates, and then having to take the entire battery housing apart. Lombards? You could swap the whole damn CPU out of a daughterboard slot after pulling the keyboard and a small metal cover.

My girlfriend's Macbook? Screw it. If her RAM goes bad, I'd rather pay Apple than go through the hassle myself after looking through the docs on how to do it.

As far as quality is concerned, I'd say we were lucky if we didn't end up eating half of our mac laptops on a lease return compared to sending back 95% of our Dell laptops in reasonable condition.

Granted, there is something to be said for the way a creative is going to treat his laptop and the way your average fearful office person will treat theirs but it was a pretty staggering difference nonetheless. And these were only 2-year leases.

Why the hate for iPods? They're overpriced. You can buy stuff with dozens more useful features and of much higher quality for half the price of an iPod. Maybe I'm just iChallenged but I never thought iTunes was particularly user friendly and suspect the reason Apple addicts think everything else is so awkward is that they've trained themselves around a broken system in the first place.

I used to like Apple a lot and I'm pretty indifferent to the OS battles but I think modern Apple fans are suffering from excess brand loyalty and the fashion statement that the Apple/iPod logos have become.

---------

Not all that many people care about expandability. Only the hardcore gamers and geeks who buy the latest-and-greatest cpus and graphics chips really have a use for the kind of expandability that you seem to want. Most people don't know how or don't feel secure swapping their own cpu or graphics card. Even for those who do, it is hard to justify taking out and throwing away a perfectly functional cpu just because it is too old. It doesn't make economic sense. Just like people who buy a new car every other year. The current Macs all have room to expand the RAM, and they can be bought with hard drives that are large enough for any normal consumer. As for the optical drives, the burners in Macs can write to any format that will be mainstream for the next several years. To put it simply: for the vast majority of the computer market, the benefits of having a small and quiet computer completely outweigh the downside of not being able to expand it with pcie cards or extra hard drives.

I need to rant! Too bad AppleTV sucks 4 Canadians

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't get me wrong, I love Apple products generally. But why would a usually smart company like Apple sell Apple TV in Canada when you can't buy any content from the Canadian iTunes store!!! Am I nuts! Why isn't the Canadian press pointing this out? Is this only true in Canada?

I guess that if you're a Canadian Apple fanboy, it is a very fancy door stop... :(