iPod i think they should cancel the hard drive...

https://jobs.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Employment.woa

go get 'em, tiger.

Video takes up a lot of space.

sam10685 said:

i think they should stop using a hard drive for the storage in the regular iPod and go to using flash memory like in the nano... just, a lot of it. what do u think?

Click to expand...

wow, 60 gigs of flash would be awfully expensive, and probably take up more space.

Flash memory is still WAY too expensive to put 30 or 60 GB in an iPod (probably not enough room for all the chips either). I suppose the nice thing is that you could RAID the chips inside and use a FW800 port to sync your iPod at a sick speed. 🙂

strider42 said:

wow, 60 gigs of flash would be awfully expensive, and probably take up more space.

Click to expand...

This is the key. I'm sure they would if they could.

An 8 GB flash drive is about $400. Take away the USB connection and other unnecessary parts, and factor in a bulk discount, Apple might able to get 8GB of flash for $300? Ok, $200 is probably way out of the question, but let's go with that.

30 GB iPods needs almost 4 cards.

4 times $200 is $800.

$800 + everything else you need to make an iPod = $1000?

Who is going to pay that much for an iPod. I know these are estimates (and probably poor estimates at that, they are more like guesses), but I hope you get the point.

x86isslow said:

https://jobs.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Employment.woa

go get 'em, tiger.

Click to expand...

hahaha!!!! Laugh? I nearly peed my pants! 😀

grapes911 said:

This is the key. I'm sure they would if they could.

An 8 GB flash drive is about $400. Take away the USB connection and other unnecessary parts, and factor in a bulk discount, Apple might able to get 8GB of flash for $300? Ok, $200 is probably way out of the question, but let's go with that.

30 GB iPods needs almost 4 cards.

4 times $200 is $800.

$800 + everything else you need to make an iPod = $1000?

Who is going to pay that much for an iPod. I know these are estimates (and probably poor estimates at that, they are more like guesses), but I hope you get the point.

Click to expand...

grapes ain't sour. This is a pretty good estimate/explanation.

Basically, cost is what it boils down to. If they had to, they could cram a bunch of chips into an iPod size; but the cost is the killer. Right now, the cheapest $/GB flash I can find is a Sandisk 4 GB CompactFlash module for $140. That's $35 per gigabyte. Even if we assume Apple could get a 75% bulk discount (REALLY unlikely, but hey, we want ridiculously low prices, and Apple has gotten amazing deals on their hard drives and flash before,) that's still $8.75 per gigabyte, or $262.50 for 30 GB. Since a 30 GB iPod now retails for $299, that leaves only $36.50 for the rest of the iPod's bits; without making a profit, and not including assembly, advertising, etc. And for a 60 GB iPod, the memory alone would cost $26 MORE than the retail price of the current 60 GB iPod.

That's not even taking size into consideration. (Although Sony just announced an 8 GB Memory Stick Duo, 10 of which is smaller than a single 1.8" hard drive, so it might actually be possible to reduce the size of the iPod by moving to flash.)

A 1.8" drive is 70 mm x 54 mm x 7 mm, 46 g, for a total volume of 26,460 mm^3; a Memory Stick Duo is 20 mm x 31 mm x 1.6 mm, 2 g, for a total volume of 992 mm^3, times 10 is 9,920 mm^3, 20 g, still significantly smaller than the 1.8" drive.