4th Generation iPods?

[mms]

i'm not sure that a color screen would add much value to the iPod - it is a simple, primarily text-based interface that does really well for organizing text notes and showing music tag information
agreed. I would like to get photos on the iPod, but I don't need to view them on the 2 inch screen. What I really wish for is video out so that I could connect it to an external display (like a TV in a hotel room) and view the pics.

keep in mind that other MP3 players have had color screens for years, and their battery life is upwards of 15 hours. granted, the players are much larger and use different batteries, but the impact of a color screen on battery life is overstated.
Those MP3 players last longer because they use flash memory, which take much less energy, in comparison to a hard drive based player like the iPod, which needs to physically spin the hard drive constantly. Also, many of these players are huge and limited in storage space, which is the tradeoff.

[aussiemac86]

If apple does release a new ipod which has a colour screen and is not based totally on music (ie incorporates photo viewing etc.) i think they should also keep a very basic monochrome screen ,music dedicated ipod as well.

I believe that a colour screen ipod with extra functionality would no doubt cost more and/or be larger and/or use more battery power. However there will always be a large group of consumers who simply want the ipod as something to sit in their pocket playing music and will have no need for the extra functionality and not want to pay for something they wont be using.

[~Shard~]

If apple does release a new ipod which has a colour screen and is not based totally on music (ie incorporates photo viewing etc.) i think they should also keep a very basic monochrome screen ,music dedicated ipod as well.

I believe that a colour screen ipod with extra functionality would no doubt cost more and/or be larger and/or use more battery power. However there will always be a large group of consumers who simply want the ipod as something to sit in their pocket playing music and will have no need for the extra functionality and not want to pay for something they wont be using.

I agree. On the one hand, you want to appeal to as many consumers' needs as possible - and many would love a color/video iPod. However, the heart of the iPod and it's main purpose is to act solely as a music player (not saying this focus can't be changed in the future). And as a result, I think the majority of iPod users out there would honestly have no need for a color/video iPod - they just want it for the music (and heck, a 1G iPod probably suits their needs just fine!) Apple needs to advance and evolve the iPod but they have to be careful not to end up throwing on a bunch of bells and whistles that a large chunk of the consumer market is indifferent towards.

[jeffbistrong]

agreed. I would like to get photos on the iPod, but I don't need to view them on the 2 inch screen. What I really wish for is video out so that I could connect it to an external display (like a TV in a hotel room) and view the pics.


Those MP3 players last longer because they use flash memory, which take much less energy, in comparison to a hard drive based player like the iPod, which needs to physically spin the hard drive constantly. Also, many of these players are huge and limited in storage space, which is the tradeoff.


Also those MP3 players are phsyciall much bigger and not as compact as the IPODs. The IPODmini uses flash memory, which might explain the back order on the minis becuase they are having some trouble getting some of the hardware for the devices. All of the MP3 players I know of use the same type of battery, so becuase they are bigger in size like the 2G Ipods, their battery life is longer. Unless Apple is either doing multi-billion dollar research on a ne type of battery, or working with an Extra Terrestrial species from another dimension where batterys last longer, I do not think we are going to see any improvements on the battery life of the IPODs. Maybe they could add a little bit onto the depth of the IPODs and make the case a titanium (to disperse the heat of the batter), that could add a bit onto the battery life of the IPODs.

[wrylachlan]

Also those MP3 players are phsyciall much bigger and not as compact as the IPODs. The IPODmini uses flash memory, :mad: :mad: :mad: when will this BS die? the mini uses a hard drive just like the regular iPod. The Hard Drive is in CF (Compact Flash) format, but it is definitely a HD.

[WILD SPECULATION]Since Jobs was so adamant about the iPod being "about the music stupid" maybe the direction the fourth generation iPod takes might be towards better music quality?

A 1/4" headphones Jack?
Ability to rip DVD audio?
iTMS offering 256Kps DVD audio rips?
[/WILD SPECULATION]

[wrldwzrd89]

:mad: :mad: :mad: when will this BS die? the mini uses a hard drive just like the regular iPod. The Hard Drive is in CF (Compact Flash) format, but it is definitely a HD.

Wrong - there is no such thing as a Compact Flash hard drive. It is simply a miniature hard drive, just like the ones used in laptop computers, only smaller (0.8 inch diameter). The regular iPod uses 1.0 inch diameter miniature hard drives.

[rosalindavenue]

Wrong - there is no such thing as a Compact Flash hard drive. It is simply a miniature hard drive, just like the ones used in laptop computers, only smaller (0.8 inch diameter). The regular iPod uses 1.0 inch diameter miniature hard drives.

He wasn't exactly "Wrong"-- its a hard drive all right, but it is contained in a housing that is visually identical to a compact flash drive and that has the same connector. So it could fairly be called a "compact flash hard drive," sort of.

Turning to the thread topic, I'm sitting here testing the battery on my new 3G ipod-- 5 hours and 12 minutes, so far, on shuffle, without touching it otherwise; looks like it will make the 8 hours I was promised. However, when you do what I like to do and choose songs at random using the ipod itself (as opposed to making a playlist) you get about 3 hours, tops. Spinning the hard drive in any way at all really eats the battery. IMO, they should not add another single feature before they get the battery capacity up.

[X_Entity]

Isn't IBMs micro drive a hard disk in compact flash packaging ?

[Soire]

4th Gen. by WWDC?

Possible, Likely, or a Certainty? Please comment. :)

[johnbro23]

So many people are talking about apple appealing to people who just want music, but some people, like me, would like to have a color ipod and having a long battery life doesnt matter much. What if Apple came out with something like this:

iPod
20GB
Video out
15 hour battery life
Grayscale LCD w/ Backlight
.75 inches thick
$299

iPod
40GB
Video out
15 hour battery life
Grayscale LCD w/ Backlight
.75 inches thick
$399

iPod
60GB
Video out
15 hour battery life
Grayscale LCD w/ Backlight
.75 inches thick
$499

PowerPod
20GB
Video out
Audio In (MP3 Recording Ability)
8 hour battery life
Color LCD Display
Quicktime
.75 inches thick
$399

PowerPod
40GB
Video out
Audio In (MP3 Recording Ability)
8 hour battery life
Color LCD Display
Quicktime
.75 inches thick
$499

That doesnt seem too far fetched in my opinion. I made it a little thicker because of the bigger battery. So what do you think?

[iLilana]

Video Out? Color Screen?

No mention of "Great new long lasting battery" to not piss everyone off about battery life even further?

Seriously, i think they should skip all the color/video stuff until the next revision, give it a superior battery, bigger hard drives, and lower the ipod mini's price.

Just my $.02

seeing as thats all they do when ipod gets updated anyway its likely to be a while before viPods are available. I'm guessing 6th gen. but they really could do this any time. People will buy it and that means me too.

[aswitcher]

So many people are talking about apple appealing to people who just want music, but some people, like me, would like to have a color ipod and having a long battery life doesnt matter much. What if Apple came out with something like this:


That doesnt seem too far fetched in my opinion. I made it a little thicker because of the bigger battery. So what do you think?


Good. Would think colour would be more expensive than you have but it works for me.

[sparks9]

Wrong - there is no such thing as a Compact Flash hard drive. It is simply a miniature hard drive, just like the ones used in laptop computers, only smaller (0.8 inch diameter). The regular iPod uses 1.0 inch diameter miniature hard drives.

LOL wrong yourself.
The regular iPod uses a 1.8" harddrive while the mini uses a 1.0" harddrive.

[wrldwzrd89]

LOL wrong yourself.
The regular iPod uses a 1.8" harddrive while the mini uses a 1.0" harddrive.
OOPS! Guess I need to check my facts before posting. Thanks for catching that.

[tariqali666]

THis is a bit late sorry.
New to the game.
Just wondering:
top end 3rd gen uses 2 20 gig platters,
3rd gen mk1 used 2 15 gig platters
2nd gen used 2 10 gig
1st used 2 5 gig

Would that mean that mid range ipod will be 25 gigs? Is that likely?
Surely we should be looking to toshiba, not apple for HD sizing?
Why would apple restrice HD size?
Would integrating a scroll wheel a.k.a minipod add size?
would that mean that ipod now has "moving parts"?

[ebunton]

serious user interface designers do, and anyone else who is anti-hype. the people that design cell phone interfaces go crazy with color and graphics, and it ends up looking like a TV commercial instead of a communications device. bigger screen? they use bigger fonts, rendering the higher resolution pointless. color capabilities? they use it to make everything cluttered and confusing with falling leaves and dolphin screensavers, instead of using color for its proper UI purpose - adding emphasis and differentiating one thing from another. hi-fi audio chip? they use it to make a ringtone that sounds like a chicken. lo-fi means less intrusive advertising and cheesy visual gimmicks - a text-based Internet was free of Flash ads, after all. i'll take my monochrome old-school Nokia over your Samsung media hell any day.

i'm not sure that a color screen would add much value to the iPod - it is a simple, primarily text-based interface that does really well for organizing text notes and showing music tag information. i would really like an iPod with digital camera connectivity, but it's not necessary to play back color photos on the screen.

keep in mind that other MP3 players have had color screens for years, and their battery life is upwards of 15 hours. granted, the players are much larger and use different batteries, but the impact of a color screen on battery life is overstated.

Well I would dare to say that the iPod is partly driven by hype. And I believe that hype is an extremely important aspect of marketing that should never be overlooked. What is this mac forum all about anywho? Rumors are a hype-incognito.

Edit:
Lets just GET OVER the battery issue. Please, I'm sure that Apple is proficient enough to deal with a colour screen draining more charge than a monocrhome and will appropriately update the batteries. Sounds all very apologist to me.

[jeffbistrong]

[WILD SPECULATION] . . . . . direction the fourth generation iPod takes might be towards better music quality?

[/WILD SPECULATION]


Didn't APPLE develop the new lossless encoder or something like [btw i do not know much about], but it is supposed to be better music quality or something like that and smaller file size? I do not know if that is true or not . . . they need to invest in a better battery

[atomwork]

sounds all good. Now on top of a color LCD display it would be nice to have some PDA functions with is.. GG... then I wouldn't have to look any futhers. Those Palms are ugly as hell but really the only that work with Apple.

Dave

[doogle]

For those who may be interested I have posted all my ipod prototype images at one site:
http://infotyte.adc.rmit.edu.au/ipodtype/

[0s and 1s]

a video out is useless unless the "color screen" plays movies too. Why would you want to store photos on your ipod....and then also look at them on a tv. Big deal.

Tell that to Sony with their latest TVs with memory stick slots for you to view pictures on the television.

[Soire]

Aren't they due for an update? I want one so freakin bad I'm about to buy a 3rd gen. but I really am looking forward to new options, sizes, and battery life. Aargh!! :(

[~Shard~]

Aren't they due for an update? I want one so freakin bad I'm about to buy a 3rd gen. but I really am looking forward to new options, sizes, and battery life. Aargh!! :(

Depends if you consider the iPod mini a true update or not. Although it wasn't an update to the existing iPod line, it was definitely what Apple's "iPod team" was working on at the time, so I don't know if they were also focusing on 4G iPods as well - tough to say.

If those options are realy important to you, then there is nothing you can do but wait. if you really want an iPod though, I would say go out and buy one - you won't be disappointed, trust me! I just bought a nice new 20 Gigger 3 weeks ago and have no regrets. Even if the 4G iPods are announced soon, it won't matter to me, but you have to decide what's important to you. If you're waiting for the sake of waiting, then you'll never be happy and will always be waiting for the next best thing. Sounds like there are specific improvements you have in mind thought that you would like to wait for, so in your case, you have to make a tough decision. :cool:

[manolosf@flslea]

At the last macworld, apple allowed HP to release an HP branded iPod. When will HP return the favor and help apple release an apple branded handheld device? With that much memory and screen size (plus color) seems like it should do a bit more than just music and slideshows. If not a combo product, another handheld device like the PocketPC iPaq devices would look good coming from apple!

[aswitcher]

At the last macworld, apple allowed HP to release an HP branded iPod. When will HP return the favor and help apple release an apple branded handheld device? With that much memory and screen size (plus color) seems like it should do a bit more than just music and slideshows. If not a combo product, another handheld device like the PocketPC iPaq devices would look good coming from apple!


Yep, I have expressed this view before. I think with Palms departure from OSX support they know something is up and so have left it to the third parties to wear the risk of working on synch software. Maybe not WWDC but sometime in the next 12 months I think a new iPod or a new device is likely.

[SyndicateX]

Well considering that iPods already function as a great calendar / address book when you really need it or dont have anything else, I think a 2" color screen would really benefit those 2 options even more! Also, Im not sure on this, but even if its a color screen cant you just turn off the backlight like the current one and have it save much more battery? And if they keep the fonts the same size or slightly bigger and make it so you view it sideways i would love that in actually being able to read more of the song title (some are long and you cant even tell what the song name is!)

Ooh well....lots of reasons for color!

[nesbitt_a]

How about built-in bluetooth enabled wireless docks - or bluetooth enabled iPods. No longer need to plug in wires to updated your iPod. It'll update if its in the bottom of your backpack on the other side of the room!


Andrew

[homerjward]

i havent seen this mentioned yet, but i havent had the time to wade thru 12 pages of posts...no one makes a 50 or 60gb 1.8 inch hdd. that would mean it would automatically have to be bigger. sure, there are 60gb mp3 and mp4 players, but they're HUGE!! if it is going to retain it's ipodian nature and be smooth and small and thin it's frozen at 40gb. however, if money is no issue, they could go to cf memory. there are 8gb cf cards and if they used 6 or 8 of those that's a whole hell of a lot of storage, and it could be about the size of a ipod mini...well maybe not that small but at least as small as the current, plus the battery life would kick ass. and how about different colors on the full size? and plastic and surgical steel instead of anthracite and chrome?? too easily scratched and so forth...all my ideas have probably already been brought up but oh well, i havent read everything, as i've already said. too bad i just got my 1st ipod (15gb 3g) w/ like 400mb fillled lol.
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
real: toshiba satellite 2.4 celeron 30gb 256mb integrated 32mb vram (500)
dream: 15" pobo 1.5 5400rpm 128vram 1 512mb dimm (2700)
cant afford a mac...(see why?)

[Demon]

this sounds fine and dandy, but doesn't SONY already have something like that out?? actually, with a superior touch scroll than the iPod mini...
so sad. pick it up Apple! you've got your supporters!

http://www.vaio.sony.co.jp/Products/VGF-AP1/

[JFreak]

I don't think Ipod G4 and G3 would be much different, because if you look at G3 and G2, they didn't really change much.

they changed the ipod VERY MUCH from G2 to G3, making it WORSE and UGLIER by introducing four buttons outside the wheel. i think (i hope) the G4 ipods will drop the buttons and come back to ipod mini look.

i'm so happy they make minis, because if the G4 ipod still has buttons, i have an option to buy a functional but smaller ipod. though i'd like to have the storage, but those four buttons effectively make me NOT buy it, ever.

(i guess the next ipod will STORE photos, not being able to view it. just store them, making a simple backup from the iphoto library. that is very valuable backup now that the files are THE originals from one's digital photos.)

[mms]

How about built-in bluetooth enabled wireless docks - or bluetooth enabled iPods. No longer need to plug in wires to updated your iPod.
But a dock would still need to be plugged in to charge the iPod, which is one of its functions.

[QUOTE=JFreak]i guess the next ipod will STORE photos, not being able to view it. just store them, making a simple backup from the iphoto library. that is very valuable backup now that the files are THE originals from one's digital photos.[QUOTE]
If it does have the ability to store photos, then I don't think it would be intended as an iPhoto library backup. What I'm wishing for is the ability to view stored photos (from a digital camera, through Belkin's media reader) and video clips using video out to a TV or screen.

[JGowan]

a video out is useless unless the "color screen" plays movies too. Why would you want to store photos on your ipod....and then also look at them on a tv. Big deal.You're an iMoron. Just like iPhoto (I'd imagine), you could create playlists with a certain song. You then could go to ANY of your friends & relatives houses and show them your vacation, wedding, graduation, etc.

Maybe even your porn. :D

It's kick ass. The fact that you could store thousands of photos and share them anywhere is HUGE.

[~Shard~]

You're an iMoron. Just like iPhoto (I'd imagine), you could create playlists with a certain song. You then could go to ANY of your friends & relatives houses and show them your vacation, wedding, graduation, etc.

Maybe even your porn. :D

It's kick ass. The fact that you could store thousands of photos and share them anywhere is HUGE.

iMoron - nice one! :) I'll have to remember that one... :cool:

[Marina]

Well, IMO all those new gadgets are a waste of space...
I mean, the ipods now have games on it and calendar and address options. Who uses that?
And I find THIS a waste of space. But the new generation?
We still have an agenda and a palm and a mobile phone for that haven't we?
Why on earth put such features on a music carrier like ipod? Why on earth would you want to store pictures on an ipod?

It reminds me of the way mobile phones are turning into, with camera and photo possibilities and so. Terrible. God let's keep a phone a phone, not a half-camera... Useless stuff and only put on it to make money fast. I hate these multifunctionality things.

Isn't a 40 GB music carrier not enough as it is? All these nonsense features only take up space and speed (not to mention battery life)

Marina

[mcfudd]

I think new iPods at WWDC are a strong bet.

I would look for a new interface -- iPod mini controls and better screen. You might have greyscale in the lower end models and color in a higher model.

The white/chrome iPod look is over. I would expect something exactly like the mini. A really nice brushed metal look. I am going to go out on a limb here (maybe not) and say the new "larger" iPods will be available in colors too.

S video-out is a strong bet. You could use the same cable Monster already makes for the PowerBook for hooking up to a TV.

I would look for a high end iPod with an 80GB hard drive. They are cheap enough now Apple can still maintain good margins.

Battery life will still be a problem.

Apple PDA. I would love to see that!!! I'll dream for now.

[usersince86]

My 2 cents:

iPod Pro
======
50Gig
color screen
jpg photo capability (w/slideshow feature)
am/fm tuner
16 bit, 44.1KHz voice recorder (mono)
iTunes 5 compatible
iPhoto compatible (available with iLife)
Garage Band compatible (available with iLife)
home-on-iPod
new scroll wheel
ear buds
up to 10 hour battery life
ProDock (see below)

ProDock (also sold separately for 3rd gen. ipods)
======
a/v in/out (stereo)
digital audio in/out
charger
firewire and usb 2 cables

Price: $599. choice of white or black

Yeah, I know... but I can dream, can't I???

:rolleyes: