60GB iPods - Not Soon?

[MacBytes]

Category: Apple Hardware
Link: Joswiak: No 60 GB iPod anytime soon (http://www.macbytes.com/link.php?sid=20040719125432)
Posted on MacBytes.com (http://www.macbytes.com)

Approved by Mudbug

[TylerL]

Rule #1 of being a supplier to Apple:
DON'T PREANNOUNCE THEIR PRODUCTS.

ATI learned that good and well, and now Toshiba's finding out the same thing.
No 60GB iPods until Steve cools down.

[xtbfx]

GRRR.

Why is it the things most people want will not be around "anytime soon."

For example: the G5 PowerBook... "not anytime soon"
Now the 60GB iPod!

Anyway, I was really really hoping for a 60GB iPod, I guess I'll just have to wait.

[azdude]

Hmm... so do I choose not to believe him, and keep waiting, or do I purchase the 40GB?

Ahh, heck. I'm upgrading because my 15gb is getting full... I don't need a 60.

/me places order.

[paulypants]

GRRR.

Why is it the things most people want will not be around "anytime soon."

For example: the G5 PowerBook... "not anytime soon"
Now the 60GB iPod!

Anyway, I was really really hoping for a 60GB iPod, I guess I'll just have to wait.

Yeah! I sent a request to Apple for a Quad 4.0ghz G5 and a 52 inch display and the told me "not anytime soon" WTF? :p

[snahabed]

I am glad they have brought the prices down on the 20 and 40GB models, but I am not going to spend the money on a new iPod until the 60GB comes out, whether that is in 1 month, 6 months, or 2 years.

My big sad old brick of a 2G is still chugging along well enough.

[Lancetx]

They'll be out as soon as Apple has sufficient quantities of the 60GB drives from Toshiba. I'd rather them hold off on announcing it like they're doing today than to do so prematurely and then not have any to sell for the next 2 months.

[Stella]

I'll take Joswiak's word for that...

After the initial G5 release he said "No G5 PB anytime soon".. none arrived... when G4 where refreshed a few months back, again he said "No G5 PB anytime soon"... still none..

Because of this, I'll believe Joswiak when he says no 60Gig iPod soon...

Its not in Apple's interest to release a product after they've just said "this product won't be released anytime soon".. they'll lose face, plus a lot of pissed off customers.

[mainstreetmark]

GRRR.

Why is it the things most people want will not be around "anytime soon."


How do you qualify "most"? I would say less than 50% want a 60G iPod on this forum, and this forum probably has a concentration of such people. I would imagine the general public accounts for a very small portion. After all, the 3G 40G (that's Generation, Gigabyte) iPod wasn't the top iPod seller.

With all that being said, and the existence of a 60G drive of the same form factor as the 40G drive, wouldn't it be a reasonable assumtion to do a drive-ectomy on a 40G iPod to give it the extra 20 gigs? My 40G iPod says "37.2 Gigabytes" which implies there's some noodle in the OS responsible for reading the physical drivespace, rather than just being hardcoded. So, why not drop a 60G into the 40G chasis?

[NinjaMonkey]

I'd buy a 60gig if it had video out. Other than that I'd have no use for 60gigs of music, but I am sure there are people out there that would fill that up. Especially if they were using Apple Lossless to encode their music.

[Sabbath]

There is no reason that both could be true. No 60Gb iPod soon, but Apple could have ordered those 60Gb drives for use in something else. I'm not going to speculate what right now but I'm sure other will be shouting vPod (video iPod) or something pretty soon. Hopefully something more interesting than that from my point of view though.

[xtbfx]

How do you qualify "most"?

Well on Spymac, MacRumors, etc. message boards, there was huge speculation about 60GB iPods and G5 Powerbooks back in the day.

Maybe it was just one person posting multiple times. lol

[mainstreetmark]

Well on Spymac, MacRumors, etc. message boards, there was huge speculation about 60GB iPods and G5 Powerbooks back in the day.

Maybe it was just one person posting multiple times. lol

Well, go walk down the street and ask people what their spymac username is. If I'm right, they'll be like "what the hell is spymac and quit bothering me".

I still think it's a vast minority of iPod owners.

[AmigoMac]

Wasn't that what apple said about a 2 button mouse 20 years ago? :D ...

Not anytime soon... :rolleyes:

[mklos]

There's no reason not to believe him. Why would he lie? Most people don't have a reason to have a 60 GB iPod. The people that have 60+ GB of music either has been collecting music on CDs for a quite a while, or most likely they stole most of their music anyways.

There's no need for video out or anything else like that. The iPod is a simple device designed to do a very simple thing, and thats store/play your music. Its not made to view videos, or look at photos. Sure, Apple has made it so that it can do some other simple things, like store your photos, play audio books, and record voice, but those are simple little things that don't require adding another button, or port which would further complicate the device.

When Joz says not anytime soon then I don't think you'll see it for quite a while. I'd say sometime next year. I'd say this is the last iPod update for this year. Other will think I'm wrong, but they're just hoping that Apple updates them again. In my opinion, Apple spends too much time on it and needs to start focusing back on its main income, which is its computers. He didn't lie about the PowerBook G5 and he didn't lie about some other things either. So there's no reason to even think about doubting him.

[mklos]

There is no reason that both could be true. No 60Gb iPod soon, but Apple could have ordered those 60Gb drives for use in something else. I'm not going to speculate what right now but I'm sure other will be shouting vPod (video iPod) or something pretty soon. Hopefully something more interesting than that from my point of view though.

Well both could be true. Maybe Apple did order those 60GB Toshiba HDDs, but when Toshiba opened its big mouth and said something about it, then maybe Apple canceled that order. So maybe Apple is waiting for another vendor to produce 60GB 1.8" HDDs.

There's no use at all for a Video iPod. The iPod wasn't designed to be a video player. Who in the hell would want to watch a video on a 2" screen, or even a 4, or 6" screen? Certainly not me!

[Loge]

Most people don't have a reason to have a 60 GB iPod. The people that have 60+ GB of music either has been collecting music on CDs for a quite a while, or most likely they stole most of their music anyways.


I agree most people probably don't, it would be a high-end product. But remember that CDs have been out over 20 years and some of us have well over 1000 which would be just great to put on a single device.

[MacRumors]

In this Reuters article (http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=5707511), Apple's vice president of hardware product marketing, Greg Joswiak, played down rumors of a 60GB iPod model.

Joswiak states "We have no plans in regard to announcing 60-gigabyte models, We are trying to create a much more compelling lineup with two models for 20 and 40 gigabytes at extremely compelling prices"

Rumors of a 60GB iPod started with a premature Toshiba announcement (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2004/06/20040602093211.shtml) that Apple had already ordered the 60GB 1.8" drives.

[Grimace]

Right, because Apple needs to pack Wifi for Airtunes in the 60GB flagship model!! :D

And, the Toshiba drives weren't supposed to be showing up in the marketplace until late August or early September. Hmmf...I guess we wait; no big deal.

[ArticulatedArm]

Someone in another thread had a great idea when they said these 60 GB models could be for the new ultra small iMac.

But will they be available in time for the iMac?

[Trowaman]

But then again what's soon. . . ?

I wouldn't call 1 month from now at Paris soon. I'd call that a little ways away. Steve needs "One more thing" anyways.

[mvc]

60gb media player/home on iPod device instead then? The Windows media devices are arriving soon, Apple will eventually respond. Anyway, never trust an announcment by a V.P of anything, all they do is spin.

[AmigoMac]

Someone in another thread had a great idea when they said these 60 GB models could be for the new ultra small iMac.

But will they be available in time for the iMac?

I don't see apple putting those ultra-slow HD's in a mac, no matter if power or i , it's plenty out of sense ... no slower than 7200 rpm in the next iMacs ...

[Dahl]

I don't think it's a bad thing if they focus on other things right now.
Things like making iPods avalible for folks with less $.

An iPod in every home, hand and pocket is what Apple should be going.

[Vagcmyevad]

Maybe Steve had something to do with this?

He probably wasn't happy when Toshiba announced that Apple had ordered the new 60 GB drives...

[BornAgainMac]

Buy two 40 GB ipods, some tape and wrap it around them. Introducing the 80 GB iPod biggy!

[drlunanerd]

Joswiak is messing with my mind here.
I've been waiting so patiently for a 60GB upgrade to my 1G 10 gigger.
I'm desperately trying not to play into his hands and buy a new 4G 40GB!

[noel4r]

very few people have 20GB of music, much less 60GB. the extra space would be use for storage.

[AirUncleP]

July - Buy the 40 there will be no 60

September - Check out the new 60 gig iPod.

[jimthorn]

With the minis in the iPod lineup, Apple doesn't need three standard iPod models to choose from. Plus, they made the iPod appear less expensive, since there is no longer a $499 model.

[bluebull]

Well, assuming that Apple didn't cancel their order, what are they going to use the 60 GB drives for? Are they even fast enough for regular computers? I have no idea.

[appleface]

1) did apple cancel their order from toshiba?
2) does "soon" mean not in august or does "soon" mean not before Christmas?
3) is apple still going to get 60 gig drives from toshiba and put them in a newton or the imac or what's the deal?

[rlreif]

very few people have 20GB of music, much less 60GB. the extra space would be use for storage.

I have 110GB of music and a 2gen 20GB iPod.... I would gladly fill up a 120GB iPod if they could make one... and yes, I do listen to all of it.

[hobbes3113]

Let's hope its sooner rather than later... :)

[drlunanerd]

very few people have 20GB of music, much less 60GB. the extra space would be use for storage.
I don't agree. I have nigh on 50GB of music, as have a few of my peers. I would actually use the majority of the space on a 60GB iPod for music.

Yes, I do know how to use Smart Playlists etc. to manage my iTunes library, but nothing beats just being able to dump the whole lot on to your iPod and stride out knowing it's all there when you want it (not to mention a good backup).

[york2600]

Can someone out there explain to me how you can really need over 40 gigs for music. I have a 15 giger and I don't see how you could really need much more music than this. I'm very into music and honestly every time I get close to the limit I go through and toss some tracks I haven't listened to and probably never will. If you have 40+ gigs of music do you really listen to all of that or are you just collecting music for bragging rights?

[ArticulatedArm]

I don't see apple putting those ultra-slow HD's in a mac, no matter if power or i , it's plenty out of sense ... no slower than 7200 rpm in the next iMacs ...

What is the speed of this 60 GB drive? How do you know the specifications?

[ArticulatedArm]

Can someone out there explain to me how you can really need over 40 gigs for music. I have a 15 giger and I don't see how you could really need much more music than this. I'm very into music and honestly every time I get close to the limit I go through and toss some tracks I haven't listened to and probably never will. If you have 40+ gigs of music do you really listen to all of that or are you just collecting music for bragging rights?

I agree with this. If you are that into music you could just get 2 or more iPods.

[BornAgainMac]

How many people would have over 20 GB of purchased music?

[stcanard]

Completely off topic but ...

Every time I read the name Joswiak connected with Apple I end up with this mental vision of some future gestalt combination of Steve Jobs and Steve Wosniak that have come back from the future to re-invigorate apple.

Surely I'm not the only one?

[stcanard]

How many people would have over 20 GB of purchased music?

How many people also like to use it as a firewire drive?
How many people do I hear complaining they would never use a lossy format?

I think they're serving multiple markets here. Not everyone uses the iPod solely as a repository for MP3 / AAC compressed audio files.

[Freg3000]

I have 110GB of music and a 2gen 20GB iPod.... I would gladly fill up a 120GB iPod if they could make one... and yes, I do listen to all of it.

People always do this and I am always curious as to why. Someone says, "Most people don't need anything more than XX GB,"(which has been demonstrated by a recent analyst survey showing that the 4GB iPod mini was sufficient for most people's collections). In response, you get the needle in the haystack who retorts, "I have 150GB! Hurry Apple!"

They conveniently forget that the first statement included the qualifier "most." Whether Apple is making a 60 GB iPod, I really don't know. But I would say there is very little demand for it, from a purely musical standpoint. Sure, when you want a 60GB iPod, you could care less about what the market's demand is, you want it-that should be demand enough. :)

I think they're serving multiple markets here. Not everyone uses the iPod solely as a repository for MP3 / AAC compressed audio files.

While I certainly cannot prove it, I was say upwards of 95%+ of people do not use it as anything else besides an MP3 player. Like I said, I doubt Apple is on pins and needles waiting to cater to that market.

Anyway, are there 1.8" drives at 7200 rpm? If so, why couldn't these me 7200 rpm and in the new iMac?

[AmigoMac]

What is the speed of this 60 GB drive? How do you know the specifications?

DO NOT expect 7200 / 5400 rpm, 1.8" Hard drives soon... I'm pretty sure those babies run slow enough that you can't feel them while holding it...

Maybe we will see those fast HD's, but after the PB G6 :rolleyes:

[sworthy]

Though I am really hoping apple releases both a remote for airtunes and a 60 gig ipod, I hope they do it in separate packages. I want a remote to detect all of my rendevous shared libraries on my different computers and to merely tell them what to play via airport express. This way I don't have to pay for hard drive and maybe I'd be able to use double a batteries instead, like normal remotes.

My feeling is that when apple releases a 60 gig iPod, they will have at least one other 'big' feature like home on ipod, iphoto or something. There is no reason for video playback, but eventually they'll run out of things to add and mini's hd's will be much bigger. I'll be interested to see where ipods will be in 4 years time.

[kansast]

How many people would have over 20 GB of purchased music?

I easily reached 20GB when I finally decided to rip all my CDs (purchased) and all my LPs into mp3 format a few years back..

Went well beyond 20GB via other means.. friends, family.. ETC....
and who couldn't use the extra room for storage.. backups etc.. carry around a few Garage Band demos etc.. :-)

[aswitcher]

Right, because Apple needs to pack Wifi for Airtunes in the 60GB flagship model!! :D

And, the Toshiba drives weren't supposed to be showing up in the marketplace until late August or early September. Hmmf...I guess we wait; no big deal.


I agree, the 60gig is taking longer because it has new "pro" features which require a different form factor.

WiFi is a good bet with Airport Express, especially now that the power factor has been improved - power is always a key issue for portable devices.

Colour and bigger screen is tempting to think for photo users, especially if it has a usb 2.0 port for direct connection...that would sell a bunch to every prosumer/professional photographer...

[stcanard]

While I certainly cannot prove it, I was say upwards of 95%+ of people do not use it as anything else besides an MP3 player. Like I said, I doubt Apple is on pins and needles waiting to cater to that market.

Ahh, but how many people buy it thinking "cool, I could do <x> with it", then never get around to it?

The real answer of course is that 99% of the market does not need or will never use 60GB, but in the press release game it gives Apple bragging rights over Sony, Dell, Samsung et al and probably has a marginal cost for them since the drive fits in the same form factor.

[gorkonapple]

Someone in another thread had a great idea when they said these 60 GB models could be for the new ultra small iMac.

But will they be available in time for the iMac?



OOOOOO! I was thinking the same thing....in fact....what if they used these in the G5 iMac....not just one.....but 5! :D Raid 5 in a Imac??? :D It could happen! :D I REALLY DOUBT it .....but would that NOT be cool?? Or if not 5 of them, 2 and software mirroring....a geek can dream right?

[ArticulatedArm]

Don't everyone freak out or anything... but maybe a rebirth of the Newton..


Sony Vaio U50 (http://www.notebookreview.com/default.aspx?newsID=1943)

[Bear]

I have a first gen 10 gigger. It's about time to upgrade.

My debate is between the 20 and the 40. The main issue is do I want/need the dock? If I do, the incrememntal cost to get the 40 gigger is worthwhile. If the dock isn't worth it to me, I'll just get the 20 gigger.

And while I do have enough music to make use of the 40 gigger, I can take the time to swap out music when I want a change on the portable. I mean over 10 days of continuous music (on the 20 gigger in the encoding I use) is enough for variety even over a period of a month. And if I'm at home, I have the rest of the music on the Mac or I could even toss the CD on.

[Analog Kid]

I don't agree. I have nigh on 50GB of music, as have a few of my peers. I would actually use the majority of the space on a 60GB iPod for music.

Yes, I do know how to use Smart Playlists etc. to manage my iTunes library, but nothing beats just being able to dump the whole lot on to your iPod and stride out knowing it's all there when you want it (not to mention a good backup).

Yo! Be careful considering your iPod to be a backup! If you handle it right, you can get the music back off the iPod drive, but if your computers music collection goes corrupt (or disappears) and you just use the iPod as designed it will simply transfer the corrupted music to the iPod or delete the files off the iPod that have disappeared from the computer.

[fawlty]

Completely off topic but ...

Every time I read the name Joswiak connected with Apple I end up with this mental vision of some future gestalt combination of Steve Jobs and Steve Wosniak that have come back from the future to re-invigorate apple.

Surely I'm not the only one?

Indeed you are not (http://appleturns.com/scene/?id=3559).

[g.money]

Tiny drives won't be for the iMac (remember they were set to be released in June but were delayed b/c of IBM). The shipment of the 60GB drives is for the powerbook g5...I'm sure of it (optimism, not prophecy).

For those that complain that the drives are too slow, the truth is that they are 4200 rpm drives...the same speed as those in the stock powerbooks right now.

Makes you wonder...with the space saved from new hard drives, they can cram in some more cooling equipment. "I think I can, I think I can"....

[Crikey]

Interesting. If Apple ordered lots of tiny 60GB drives, and they're not going into iPods, then they are going into something else. I agree that these drives are too slow (and too expensive per megabyte) for use in an iMac. I think therefore that there will either be a new iPod-like product that needs a bigger disk (How many times have they said there won't be a video iPod? Maybe they'll call it the iPorn instead ;-) OR they are planning a new ultra-smaller model PowerBook to compete with the Sharp Actius and that new half-inch-thick Sony.

Yeah, that's it.


Crikey

[patmcfar8]

My gawd people, of course the 60 GB HDs are for iPods... they just won't be released until later this summer or fall. End of story.

[mcwinterr]

very few people have 20GB of music, much less 60GB. the extra space would be use for storage.


wrong...i have held out from buying an ipod for this exact reason. apple is making a big mistake if they don't release a larger 60GB version. i have about 50 GB of music, and want a player to load and listen to it all. i also have a 128MB flash player that is perfect for th gym, but i want a place to store all my music...

c'mon apple, i have seriously been waiting for years for a 60GB version...seems like by the time they come out with one, i will need a 80GB!

[stingerman]

It's for the iPalm, which is a handheld running OS X and a larger LCD than the current iPod, more like the T3. You can plug it into the new iMac to synch up and use on the road. Prices start at 499 and it's another $300 for the docking station that includes a Combo drive, firewire and USB2 as well as a GPU to connect to an external LCD.

[sworthy]

Listen people:

Just because *you* have more than 40 gigs of music doesn't mean that more than 10% of the population does. By being on these forums alone you are *not* a typical consumer.

I would *like* a 60 gig version myself, but don't say someone is "wrong" for saying most people don't have that much music... because they don't.

[bumfilter]

I'd say this announcement is just marketing talk for "We are bringing out a 60GB but if we tell you, your just going to hold out from buying that 40GB. Buy the 40GB children, there's nooooo such thing as a 60."

Maybe, maybe not.

[rock6079]

Completely off topic but ...

Every time I read the name Joswiak connected with Apple I end up with this mental vision of some future gestalt combination of Steve Jobs and Steve Wosniak that have come back from the future to re-invigorate apple.

Surely I'm not the only one?

havent read far enough to see if n e one has responded to this, but i second that

edit: haha i see i wasnt, brilliant..

Greg Joswiak-- who, as his name indicates, also holds the enviable position of being the world's first sentient being cloned from the spliced DNA of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. According to Joswiak (can we just call him "Joz"?), Apple is "not planning to introduce any new CPUs at Macworld Tokyo." ......... (http://appleturns.com/scene/?id=3559)

[ArticulatedArm]

Review of mini viao (http://features.engadget.com/entry/7312188118797398/)

http://www.weblogsinc.com/common/images/7673571712512225.JPG?0.7174408802440995

http://www.weblogsinc.com/common/images/7155163416227141.JPG?0.3976211971118695

http://www.weblogsinc.com/common/images/7820483372648027.JPG?0.465760357801826

[swissmann]

I borrowed my sister's 2G 20 GB iPod. She had one song on it that was still in AIFF format and was 7 minutes long. The song kept stopping on me as I assume the hard drive tried to catch up. I would love to see something like the Newton with a 60 GB HD, but would speed be an issue like others have questioned?

As for size I would easily fill well over 60 GB. I only have a small portion of my CD collection in AAC format and it takes up 7 GB. If I converted all of my music to AAC I probably still wouldn't fill more than 40 GB, but I don't like compressed music. I would like to have my music in AIFF format or better. No way 60 GB could handle that!

[croooow]

I have 110GB of music ... and yes, I do listen to all of it.

Wouldn't that take years to actually listen to all of it?

[manu chao]

I don't see apple putting those ultra-slow HD's in a mac, no matter if power or i , it's plenty out of sense ... no slower than 7200 rpm in the next iMacs ...

Put two of them into one computer (ultra-slim laptop) and configure them as RAID and you have something which is probably faster than a 7200rpm drive.

[ArticulatedArm]

Here is an interesting way of looking at it: do you think more people would fork over cash for a super Newton/PDA/ultra-minnie tablet notebook... or a 60 GB iPod?

Here is an article written last month..

DATE: 06/07/2004 PRINT FRIENDLY
HP Considers Handheld PC Comeback


By Tony Cripps

Notebook-style mobile devices based on Microsoft Corp's Windows CE operating system could make a return to the mass-market care of Hewlett-Packard Co.

Speaking with ComputerWire on a recent visit to HP's Office of Strategy and Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, center director Niklas Johnsson said it was possible that HP would re-introduce such a device into its range as a result of changing market forces and the greater ease of adapting Microsoft's latest mobile operating systems to devices of different form factors.

Today, only a few companies still sell Microsoft-powered machines in the same general form factor. These include NEC (MobilePro 900c), Psion Teklogix (NetBook Pro), and little-known Chinese manufacturer Zupera Technology (SmartBook).

In mid-2002, HP introduced its final device based on Microsoft's Handheld PC 2000 platform, the Jornada 728. However, notebook-type mobile devices had already fallen from favor by this time with the rise of more portable tablet-style handhelds from Palm and various Microsoft licensees, most notably Compaq's iPaq range.

However, the tide may now be turning. Psion has reported considerable interest from the corporate market for its NetBook Pro. The Microsoft-based device, essentially an update to its original Symbian-powered Series 7/NetBook device, appears especially popular for mobile CRM, field force and sales force automation applications.

HP, it seems, may now be ready to follow suit. "It is one form factor we are considering," Johnsson told ComputerWire. "There is room in the market for [such devices]."

Microsoft's current Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition supports high resolution, VGA displays in landscape mode with data entry possible using either the touch screen or a Qwerty keyboard. These features remove the form factor limitations that have resulted in Pocket PCs looking very similar while also maintaining application portability.

Wireless connectivity in the form of wireless LAN and Bluetooth also add to the attraction of handheld PC-style devices to mobile workers as does their long battery life relative to notebook PCs.

The last version of Microsoft's embedded software designed specifically for mini-notebook devices (with or without touch screens), known as Microsoft Handheld PC 2000, was based on Windows CE 3.0 and dates back to 2000. Since then, manufacturers wishing to produce notebook-type devices running on embedded Microsoft software have based them on bespoke implementations of Windows CE, compromising application portability and mass-market appeal.

Motorola's forthcoming MPx Pocket PC Phone, which features a full Qwerty keypad in a twin-hinged clamshell design, is a clear indication of how the latest Pocket PC software can accommodate non-traditional PDA thinking.

Mobile phone giant Nokia is also rumored to be investigating the market for sub-notebook style computers based on embedded software. However, recent stories that the company would use its handset-oriented Series 60 version of Symbian OS as the basis for such a machine would appear unlikely given that platform's heritage.

The Series 80 variant designed for its Qwerty-equipped Communicator devices would be a more obvious choice should the rumor prove substantial.

[noel4r]

I have 110GB of music and a 2gen 20GB iPod.... I would gladly fill up a 120GB iPod if they could make one... and yes, I do listen to all of it.

how? how many songs fits in 120GB?

[noel4r]

wrong...i have held out from buying an ipod for this exact reason. apple is making a big mistake if they don't release a larger 60GB version. i have about 50 GB of music, and want a player to load and listen to it all. i also have a 128MB flash player that is perfect for th gym, but i want a place to store all my music...

c'mon apple, i have seriously been waiting for years for a 60GB version...seems like by the time they come out with one, i will need a 80GB!

how can i be wrong? i wrote "very few people have over 20GB of music". you're one of the few...

[mstinnett]

I would like to have my music in AIFF format or better.

What's better than AIFF format? AIFF, IIRC, scales to anything you want. AIFF reproduces a bit-for-bit copy of the CD. Do you consider Vinyl to be better than AIFF? :)

[mstinnett]

Wouldn't that take years to actually listen to all of it?

15,020 songs take 46.4 days and fill 117GB.
Start at the beginning of a month, and halfway through the next one... Although, one could argue that you can't "listen" while sleeping.

[virividox]

ii dont mind the wait im still happy with my 30 although it only has 200 mb left :(

[mstinnett]

July - Buy the 40 there will be no 60

September - Check out the new 60 gig iPod.

GAH!!! Apple! Why must you torture me?!

[mstinnett]

Can someone out there explain to me how you can really need over 40 gigs for music. I have a 15 giger and I don't see how you could really need much more music than this. I'm very into music and honestly every time I get close to the limit I go through and toss some tracks I haven't listened to and probably never will. If you have 40+ gigs of music do you really listen to all of that or are you just collecting music for bragging rights?

I have extremely ecclectic taste. I listen to lots of genres. Most, except for rap. And classical eats up space fast; so do jam bands. I think I have a pretty healthy collection in each of the genres I like the most, and my collection weighs 117GB at the moment.

[BWhaler]

Maybe these are for a new ultra slim and light laptop. Something for the ultra portable market.

Or. maybe Apple was punishing Toshiba for the leak. Wouldn't be the first time.

(Although I doubt this since Apple wants to mop up the supply of these drives)

[mstinnett]

How many people would have over 20 GB of purchased music?

100% of my music is legal. 117GB at the moment.

[rlreif]

[QUOTE=Freg3000]People always do this and I am always curious as to why. Someone says, "Most people don't need anything more than XX GB,"(which has been demonstrated by a recent analyst survey showing that the 4GB iPod mini was sufficient for most people's collections). In response, you get the needle in the haystack who retorts, "I have 150GB! Hurry Apple!"

They conveniently forget that the first statement included the qualifier "most." Whether Apple is making a 60 GB iPod, I really don't know. But I would say there is very little demand for it, from a purely musical standpoint. Sure, when you want a 60GB iPod, you could care less about what the market's demand is, you want it-that should be demand enough. :)

I understand supply and demand just fine... What strikes me is that you believe 40 to be the magic number... where did you get this??? you say that for most people 4 is enough, so you jump to the conclusion that there is demand for 40 but not 60...???... Just about everyone I know has more than 20GB... and a sufficient number have more than 60GB... and it seems that music libraries are growing exponentially these days as everybody gets their music encoded... I no longer rip a single CD

If drives continue to go down in price as capacity goes up what do you care if an ipod has way more space than you need??? the guy who suddenly can autosync his library is thrilled. Nobody loses, you dont care, and he's stoked.... or they can say that this guy over here thinks 40 is enough and 41 is too much so anybody with more can just piss off... reminds me of people who go 70 in a 65 in the fast lane and wont let someone else pass them cause what they do is just right and any faster is absurd...

[X_Ranger]

I have 110GB of music and a 2gen 20GB iPod.... I would gladly fill up a 120GB iPod if they could make one... and yes, I do listen to all of it.

I'm with you, rireif! I have about 41 gigs of music and I listen to all of it. I want a 60 gigger!

[rlreif]

I easily reached 20GB when I finally decided to rip all my CDs (purchased) and all my LPs into mp3 format a few years back..

Went well beyond 20GB via other means.. friends, family.. ETC....
and who couldn't use the extra room for storage.. backups etc.. carry around a few Garage Band demos etc.. :-)

EXACTLY!!!
20GB is only like 300+- CD's in 192kbps MP3.... thats not that much!!
40GB is like 600!!
come on people all my life I have kjnown tons of people with far more music than this either in LP's or whatever

I probably had 40GB worth of cassette tapes when I was in middle school
and I know im not in the minority here

[TiBook1ghz]

I'm glad to see that at least 2-3 people are reading right through this...

Of course the 60GB drives are for the iPod, but

1)They are still about a month away from being available to Apple and/or anyone else

2)They need you to buy the 40GB at $399!

Apple hated that Toshiba revealed the drives were for Apple...they don't want you holding out to buy so they are just going to say, "Oh, nah, theres no such thing as a 60GB iPod right now..."

You'll see the 60gb ipod soon enough.

[iChan]

GRRR.

Why is it the things most people want will not be around "anytime soon."

For example: the G5 PowerBook... "not anytime soon"
Now the 60GB iPod!

Anyway, I was really really hoping for a 60GB iPod, I guess I'll just have to wait.

don't forget the 3Ghz PM.

[iChan]

this race for Gigabytes and gigabytes of storage is a losing race... I'd recommend everyone to get themselves a Mini and an external FW800 HD.

[xtekdiver]

I have 110GB of music and a 2gen 20GB iPod.... I would gladly fill up a 120GB iPod if they could make one... and yes, I do listen to all of it.

According to my calculations 110GB of music with AAC encoding it would take approx. 90 days to listen too all of it without sleep. Allowing yourself 8 hours of sleep you add another 30 days. So it would take you all year, all day, to listen to your entire library 3 times. That's incredible! :eek:

[gwangung]

how can i be wrong? i wrote "very few people have over 20GB of music". you're one of the few...

Consider: there are on the market CD players that have room for 100 CD. ANd have been for some time.

Do the math.

[scibry]

Completely off topic but ...

Every time I read the name Joswiak connected with Apple I end up with this mental vision of some future gestalt combination of Steve Jobs and Steve Wosniak that have come back from the future to re-invigorate apple.

Surely I'm not the only one?

Joswiak made fun of this at his MacWorld NY Keynote last year. He showed a Keynote animation of the two names crashing into each other to form his! :)

[rlreif]

Wouldn't that take years to actually listen to all of it?

actually it is just under 2 months

[iChan]

how? how many songs fits in 120GB?

well, if he rips all his songs at (actual) non-lossy... i.e Aiff... that would be about 180 albums??

apple "non-lossy"- about 375??? could be wrong.

[ifjake]

As for size I would easily fill well over 60 GB. I only have a small portion of my CD collection in AAC format and it takes up 7 GB. If I converted all of my music to AAC I probably still wouldn't fill more than 40 GB, but I don't like compressed music. I would like to have my music in AIFF format or better. No way 60 GB could handle that!

uh someone correct me if i'm wrong but i think AIFF is as good as it gets. why don't you just use apple loseless compression? that's actually the one thing that would cause me to get the bigger drive. while for most songs i find 192 AAC is perfectly fine for casual listening, some of my classical and jazz stuff is just too detailed to settle for less. you can't really critically listen to 10 days of music anyway. i remember when 40 BG used to be "i wish." i'm happy that it's becoming a little more within my means. and i have no qualms about rotating music through the player every now and then if i get bored. i think i'm shooting for getting myself a christmas present.

[zelmo]

...never trust an announcment by a V.P of anything, all they do is spin.

Hey there, I'm a V. P., and sometimes I tell the truth (well my own special version of the truth, anyway). :rolleyes:

[rlreif]

According to my calculations 110GB of music with AAC encoding it would take approx. 90 days to listen too all of it without sleep. Allowing yourself 8 hours of sleep you add another 30 days. So it would take you all year, all day, to listen to your entire library 3 times. That's incredible! :eek:

well I am still a believer in 192 kbps MP3, which makes it 2 months of nonstop play... I realize aac makes for smaller files, and some say it sounds better... they sound the same to me, and I am not going to rencode all that

another thing,... about half of this is live DJ sets... 1 track that is an hour or more long... not including these (which I often go to just one part of to hear a couple minutes, but rarely listen to the whole track) I have about 54GB of music which would be just about the max for a 60GB iPod... Please Apple, I have never been able to use the autosync feature!!!

[mvc]

Hey there, I'm a V. P., and sometimes I tell the truth (well my own special version of the truth, anyway). :rolleyes:

Perhaps I should have said "all they do is spin what the CEO doesn't want to have to say!"

Closer? ;)

[croooow]

15,020 songs take 46.4 days and fill 117GB.
Start at the beginning of a month, and halfway through the next one... Although, one could argue that you can't "listen" while sleeping.

I was thinking 40GB=10,000 songs, so 120GB=30,000 songs. you have them encoded at a higher rate. Still, that's a ton of music!

[Abstract]

They'll be out as soon as Apple has sufficient quantities of the 60GB drives from Toshiba. I'd rather them hold off on announcing it like they're doing today than to do so prematurely and then not have any to sell for the next 2 months.

They didn't buy 350,000+ of these 60GB drives so that they can sell 10,000 60GB iPods. The demand isn't there. They're going to do something else with them. Seriously, there's no way they would sell that many high end iPods, so there's something else in the works. The number of drives Apple is hoarding is enough of a clue towards a new product.

And no, don't say they'll be placed in future PB's or something. They're slower than 4800rpm... much too slow. Even 4800rpm is too slow, and most companies are moving towards slightly faster drives, as this improves performance greatly.

[djpedro]

I will guarantee that a video iPod is not coming out anytime soon. If apple comes out with a video anything, it certainly will not be called an iPod.

Ripping CDs is legal. Buying iTunes AACs is legal. There is currently NO LEGAL AVENUE FOR RIPPING/BUYING DIGITAL VIDEO ENTERTAINMENT.

and i doube that the apple movie store will be opening any time soon. Heck. Apple got enough flack from the music industry before the apple store opened that they were supporting piracy through the iPod.

The Windows Media player are a niche market at best, and I highly doubt that apple will try to "compete" with them. Apple is going for the sweet spot. What are the hottest iPods now? The Mini. How much memory do they have? FOUR GIGABYTES.

Apple goes for the sweet spot of the market, not the fringes. The media players are at best a fringe product. People who buy the iPod mini are not looking for a portable video player.



60gb media player/home on iPod device instead then? The Windows media devices are arriving soon, Apple will eventually respond. Anyway, never trust an announcment by a V.P of anything, all they do is spin.

[devotchka]

I have about 23 gigs of music on my computer - most ripped from my/my family Cds - about a cds worth in iTunes.

As a student in film production and digital photography I would use the rest of the space to transport, transfer, and back up projects.
It would be nice to have a 60 gig iPod... Guess I will settle for the 40 gig as soon as I sell my 15 gig to my girlfriend.

[ccuilla]

Maybe Steve had something to do with this?

He probably wasn't happy when Toshiba announced that Apple had ordered the new 60 GB drives...

Whay does everyone keep saying this? Does everyone think that Steve is an irrational baffoon? Perhaps he was ticked about the leak...but it is highly doubtful they'd cancel an order because of this.

Let's think about this logically:

1. The rumor is false or incorrect.
2. It is true but Apple doesn't have enough supply to begin production and sales (for a 60GB iPod...which seems like a product of dubious value...to the mass market...to me).
3. It is true but Apple has other plans for the 60GB HD.
4. It is true but Steve got pissed like a little 4 year old and cancelled the order.

The first three seem most likely...and 2 of those don't even involve the iPod.

[LaMerVipere]

There is definitely a new apple product around the corner (not iPod) that will use these 60GB drives, I just know it!

[Multimedia]

Rule #1 of being a supplier to Apple:
DON'T PREANNOUNCE THEIR PRODUCTS.

ATI learned that good and well, and now Toshiba's finding out the same thing.
No 60GB iPods until Steve cools down.Steve Will Be Cool As Soon As They Can Ship. I don't believe Apple on this topic. I believe a 60 GB iPod will ship before end of September for $499. I predicted in January that the iPod-mini interface would go to the regular iPod ASAP. The click wheel is the ultimate perfect interface. It can't get better than this. Congrats Apple. And the longer battery life is a plus as well. :p

[Freg3000]

I understand supply and demand just fine... What strikes me is that you believe 40 to be the magic number... where did you get this??? you say that for most people 4 is enough, so you jump to the conclusion that there is demand for 40 but not 60...???... Just about everyone I know has more than 20GB... and a sufficient number have more than 60GB... and it seems that music libraries are growing exponentially these days as everybody gets their music encoded... I no longer rip a single CD

If drives continue to go down in price as capacity goes up what do you care if an ipod has way more space than you need??? the guy who suddenly can autosync his library is thrilled. Nobody loses, you dont care, and he's stoked.... or they can say that this guy over here thinks 40 is enough and 41 is too much so anybody with more can just piss off... reminds me of people who go 70 in a 65 in the fast lane and wont let someone else pass them cause what they do is just right and any faster is absurd...

I'm not making 40 GB a magic number, I never even said the number 40. Heck, for the overwhelming majority of customers the max could be 30 or even 20; for all of us Mac Heads, the number we set our eyes on for the top capacity would have been 50 if Toshiba had leaked that number instead of 60. That's our justification for expecting them-Toshiba's leak.

But this is still my main point-You love music. You have a lot of it. Your friends love music. They have a lot of it. "Just about everyone I know has more than 20GB..." Well, I am sure you enjoy your music (I mean that honestly-no sarcasm) but an incredible amount of people simply do not. Here is the a excerpt from the cNet article highlighting that research report I mentioned earlier:

The online survey found that 90 percent of consumers have no more than 1,000 songs on their PCs

So perhaps Apple doesn't see a market. I mean, why does the 1.8 " hard drive size have to be a limitation? Why can't we use larger hard drives for bigger capacities? Make a 80 GB iPod out of a 2.5" drive? I mean, the are people with 75 GB collections.

But that is simply not the point. Just because you can, and just because it will help a few (note: very few) people with extremely large music collections, doesn't mean Apple should.

With that said, I hope Apple makes a solution for all your music needs. :D

[dguisinger]

I have no idea what the drives are going to be used for, but I do know this:

Everyone expected Apple to increase the size of the iPod even before the Toshiba drive announcement. It was a common expectation that as time went on, the HD sizes would move up.

They have obviously bought way more drives than they would ever sell of a 60GB iPod. So what are they using it for?

iMac? Doubtful, but still possible if absolutely needed
Tablet? Jobs hates tablets
iBook or PowerBook? Possibly if they make one really really small
maybe an Apple digital camera with built in HD, sure would beat those memory stick and CD-ROM cameras. Would it be motion video as well as stills, I dont know.

Thats my bet, Apple has a lot of experience with tiny drives, and they have growing experience with CCD chips (iSight). They may attempt to smack sony pretty hard in the digital camera space.

Back to what I originally said: It was common knoweldge (assumption) that Apple would do a 60GB iPod. Apple wouldn't have been too upset with Toshiba over that mixup, everyone expected it. HOWEVER: Apple was furious, so says ThinkSecret. Think about it: No matter what they are for, they are not for the iPod. No one knows what they are using them for, but we can assess the following:
1) Its a mass production device, as in really really expected to sell
2) Its very hush hush
3) It needs 60GB of disk space, and we dont have many stand alone applications which do!

[Multimedia]

I'll take Joswiak's word for that...

After the initial G5 release he said "No G5 PB anytime soon".. none arrived... when G4 where refreshed a few months back, again he said "No G5 PB anytime soon"... still none..

Because of this, I'll believe Joswiak when he says no 60Gig iPod soon...

Its not in Apple's interest to release a product after they've just said "this product won't be released anytime soon".. they'll lose face, plus a lot of pissed off customers.It's All About The Definition Of Soon. Soon is August. Later is September. :D

[jaison13]

i have 50GB of music but can easily survive with my 2G 20GB ipod. i just load certain playlist on the pod. it works fine. not like it takes hours to alter your ipods content. would like the 60GB to carry large amounts of misuc and my home folder back and forth from work. you honestly can never have enough storage. my lacie 500GB drive is half full.

[itsa]

GRRR.

Why is it the things most people want will not be around "anytime soon."

For example: the G5 PowerBook... "not anytime soon"
Now the 60GB iPod!

Anyway, I was really really hoping for a 60GB iPod, I guess I'll just have to wait.

Add to that G5 2.5GHz desktops! STILL NOT SHIPPING!!!
now not until the top of next month!
And then another 4 to 6 weeks added from the time you order it!

[themacrobaye]

I'm gonna place my bets on Paris for the 60GB iPod... The iMac is great for a product release, but it's not enough for something as big as MacWorld Paris. Also, I think Jos just wants to keep us on our toes. Steve probably ordered the statement, and he knows that he can afford the wait. Most of the people who buy iPods have no where near enough MP3s to fill a 60GB iPod... so sales won't be hurt at all. Hell, I'd like a 60GB drive, but 40GB is enough for me...

And in a few weeks, when the news of the new iPod hits the eBay community and people start to sell their 40GB 3G iPods for like $300, i'll be there. Unless I get a raise and buy the 4G for $100 more :D

[Yvan256]

How do you qualify "most"? I would say less than 50% want a 60G iPod on this forum, and this forum probably has a concentration of such people. I would imagine the general public accounts for a very small portion. After all, the 3G 40G (that's Generation, Gigabyte) iPod wasn't the top iPod seller.

There was a macpoll about "How many songs do you have on your Computer?" The biggest percentages were under 10 000. Only a few people need more than 40GB (less than 10%). And I'm guessing at least half of those are pack-rats who download everything they possibly can. ;)

http://www.macpolls.com/?poll_id=404

With all that being said, and the existence of a 60G drive of the same form factor as the 40G drive, wouldn't it be a reasonable assumtion to do a drive-ectomy on a 40G iPod to give it the extra 20 gigs? My 40G iPod says "37.2 Gigabytes" which implies there's some noodle in the OS responsible for reading the physical drivespace, rather than just being hardcoded. So, why not drop a 60G into the 40G chasis?

Hard disk capacity is calculated with 1kB = 1000 bytes. Most OS use 1KB = 1024 bytes, hence the difference in size.

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

[tny]

Some folks said "most" wouldn't need a 60 GB iPod. One or two said "noone" would need one.

Me, I have 17 GB of music (all of it purchased, none illegal) on my Mac, and a 15 GB iPod. On the other hand, looking at just the stuff I've listened to since January, I could probably get away with an iPod mini: I've only listened to 4.6 GB of stuff once, and 2 GB of stuff more than once.

Still, I'm going to wait on upgrading my iPod until after Paris. Why? Because if a 60 GB is coming out, that's the iPod I want: because I haven't ripped all my CDs yet, and because I'd like a nice 30 GB or so for backup purposes, to keep some video stuff on to shuttle back and forth to work, etc.

[Yvan256]

Completely off topic but ...

Every time I read the name Joswiak connected with Apple I end up with this mental vision of some future gestalt combination of Steve Jobs and Steve Wosniak that have come back from the future to re-invigorate apple.

Surely I'm not the only one?

LOL :D

<slashdot>I, for one, welcome our Joswiak overlord!</slashdot>

[ariza910]

No legal way for ripping Digital video? I have an eyeTV with dozens of shows in mpeg2 format. It was perfectly legal and I would love to have a Video iPod to watch the shows on when traveling.

Remember that the iPod came out in 2001! thats two years before LEGAL music downloads where possible. Yeah you could rip from CDs but give me a break, most people got their music from Napster and Kazza.

The iPod was a Niche product when it first came out, why should the video Pod be any different?

This new video pod could have WiFi allowing for limited web browsing, streaming to Airport Express and purchases from the iTunes music store. Dont forget it can also be a Music Player. It could also be used to store and display pictures which would integrate nicely with iPhoto. That sounds like a great little device doesn’t it?

A video iPod will come out, I am willing to bet on it. and it will be sooner than later.

My guess it will be called PowerPod and come in an aluminum case, the Toshiba 60GB HD, Color screen and 802.11G.

I will guarantee that a video iPod is not coming out anytime soon. If apple comes out with a video anything, it certainly will not be called an iPod.

Ripping CDs is legal. Buying iTunes AACs is legal. There is currently NO LEGAL AVENUE FOR RIPPING/BUYING DIGITAL VIDEO ENTERTAINMENT.

and i doube that the apple movie store will be opening any time soon. Heck. Apple got enough flack from the music industry before the apple store opened that they were supporting piracy through the iPod.

The Windows Media player are a niche market at best, and I highly doubt that apple will try to "compete" with them. Apple is going for the sweet spot. What are the hottest iPods now? The Mini. How much memory do they have? FOUR GIGABYTES.

Apple goes for the sweet spot of the market, not the fringes. The media players are at best a fringe product. People who buy the iPod mini are not looking for a portable video player.

[Multimedia]

Some folks said "most" wouldn't need a 60 GB iPod. One or two said "noone" would need one.

Me, I have 17 GB of music (all of it purchased, none illegal) on my Mac, and a 15 GB iPod. On the other hand, looking at just the stuff I've listened to since January, I could probably get away with an iPod mini: I've only listened to 4.6 GB of stuff once, and 2 GB of stuff more than once.

Still, I'm going to wait on upgrading my iPod until after Paris. Why? Because if a 60 GB is coming out, that's the iPod I want: because I haven't ripped all my CDs yet, and because I'd like a nice 30 GB or so for backup purposes, to keep some video stuff on to shuttle back and forth to work, etc.60 GB Is Only 4 hours Of DV Video. iPods are used for a lot more than just storing and playing music. My 2G 20 is full and I want a 4G 60. I think the click-wheel is an awesome improvement to the interface. I think the click-wheel is the ultimate interface - end of the line. It simply cannot be improved beyond this interface. :p

[Yvan256]

I have 110GB of music and a 2gen 20GB iPod.... I would gladly fill up a 120GB iPod if they could make one... and yes, I do listen to all of it.

Well, 110GB of music, isn't that nice. However, my question is: how many songs is that? Are most of your files encoded at 128kbps?

You may have 110GB of music, but perhaps at 128kbps it's only 50GB... (and that's the bitrate Apple is using to sell the iPods).

[spaceballl]

very few people have 20GB of music, much less 60GB. the extra space would be use for storage.
Many prefer high bitrates.

[må¥å]

For the love of Pete there is not going to be a video pod anytime soon, reasons being is that screen too small, processor takes time to render, battery and alot of other down falls.

Looked at the MS media portable player look like crap the video is slow i mean it would bother me after abit sure it has the intial cool factor after that its a piece of junk stamed to it.

The iPod as a music player suffer battery life what makes you so keen on to it supporting video. People have to stop hopeing for an iMac in an iPod package get a laptop and quite crying here.

Better yet sit infront of Apple HQ with posters and cray we want a video pod....that woudl be rather funny. :D

If I recieve a penny for every video pod cry I would be a billionair. Sad I htink I should start that fund. ;)

[ClimbingTheLog]

I don't think it's a bad thing if they focus on other things right now. Things like making iPods avalible for folks with less $. An iPod in every home, hand and pocket is what Apple should be going.

They're pretty close - they can't keep the $249 iPod in stock. And $249 is sweetspot for most consumers, around the price of a cheap TV, an XBox, an amplifier, what VCR's used to cost, what DVD players used to cost, etc.

Quite frankly, you can't get a hard drive of any size for under sixty bucks, not to mention the smallest on the planet, so by time you add on a screen, a couple CPU's, and a LiIon battery you're well over a hundred bucks, so there's a lower limit to what the iPod can cost in its current form factor. Time will help, but you're never going to get an iPod in a Cheerios box. Well not for another 23 years. But you don't have to - anybody who will ever be able to afford an iPod can now. Let's face it - if you can't save up $250 over a year you're not in the market for a luxury item like an iPod.

[ClimbingTheLog]

OOOOOO! I was thinking the same thing....in fact....what if they used these in the G5 iMac....not just one.....but 5! :D Raid 5 in a Imac??? :D It could happen! :D I REALLY DOUBT it .....but would that NOT be cool?? Or if not 5 of them, 2 and software mirroring....a geek can dream right?

Gorkon, you only need three disks for RAID-5. Otherwise you're right, there will be three mini sixty gig disks in the new iMac. ;)

[Abstract]

There's simply more of a need for people to listen to music while away from home or car than there is to watch video and movies on the move. The portable video market will always be more of a niche market than the portable music market. Its simply less involving.

Does this mean it shouldn't come out? No, of course not. Lots of products are niche products, such as Final Cut Pro. Seriously, not too many people use such programs, and yet they exist. And don't say that lots of people use FCP, because we all know that the geeky people on this board with their 110GB of music and video editing ability aren't the norm. I'd say that I'm pretty much the norm, and even that's stretching it a bit, since most people don't care about the latest tech news, and yet I seem to.
Apple could make a video player using the 60+GB HD's, but then people will complain about their cost and battery life. Imagine storing 4 hours of video on a video device, but having only a 3 hour battery life!


The iPod was a Niche product when it first came out, why should the video Pod be any different?

This new video pod could have WiFi allowing for limited web browsing, streaming to Airport Express and purchases from the iTunes music store. Dont forget it can also be a Music Player. It could also be used to store and display pictures which would integrate nicely with iPhoto. That sounds like a great little device doesn’t it?

[ClimbingTheLog]

Tiny drives won't be for the iMac (remember they were set to be released in June but were delayed b/c of IBM). The shipment of the 60GB drives is for the powerbook g5...I'm sure of it (optimism, not prophecy).

We have heard the new Powerbook will be ridiculously thin, so you might be right.

Still, I've used ridiculously thin Vaios, etc, and they don't use the mini drives, so there must be another way. Unless they have an OLED screen, there's half of the bulk anyhow.

[buddha]

WiFi is a good bet with Airport Express, especially now that the power factor has been improved - power is always a key issue for portable devices.


I'd just like to point out that Airport Express requires that the computer re-encode the music files into apple's lossless codec, which then is transmitted to the Airport Express. Not an expert on this at all, but I would think that the processor requirements of that would be pretty damn ugly in both the power drainage, and the ability of an ipod processor to even do it.

Eh, my probably ignorant voice in the dark. :o

[psgibbs]

Whatever the 60 GB drives are for, I think they will be used in Jobs' "One more thing ... " announcement. What would be cooler - the new Newton (with actual useable storage) or the new Apple digital camera, whatever it is, guaranteed sweetness.

[ArticulatedArm]

For the love of Pete there is not going to be a video pod anytime soon, reasons being is that screen too small, processor takes time to render, battery and alot of other down falls.

Looked at the MS media portable player look like crap the video is slow i mean it would bother me after abit sure it has the intial cool factor after that its a piece of junk stamed to it.

The iPod as a music player suffer battery life what makes you so keen on to it supporting video. People have to stop hopeing for an iMac in an iPod package get a laptop and quite crying here.

Better yet sit infront of Apple HQ with posters and cray we want a video pod....that woudl be rather funny. :D

If I recieve a penny for every video pod cry I would be a billionair. Sad I htink I should start that fund. ;)

OLEDs could solve all of those problems. Who knows when the perfect OLED will show up? Could be any minute now. Companies have been working on them frantically for years.

[notmenotyou]

....Back to what I originally said: It was common knoweldge (assumption) that Apple would do a 60GB iPod. Apple wouldn't have been too upset with Toshiba over that mixup, everyone expected it. HOWEVER: Apple was furious, so says ThinkSecret. Think about it: No matter what they are for, they are not for the iPod. No one knows what they are using them for, but we can assess the following:
1) Its a mass production device, as in really really expected to sell
2) Its very hush hush
3) It needs 60GB of disk space, and we dont have many stand alone applications which do!

could it be for the brand new apple set top box that have a HD recording function? just try to brain storming...

[Abstract]

Considering the speed of these tiny HDD's (ie: slower than 4800rpm), and the fact that the industry is moving towards faster drives (5400 and 7200rpm, since they give so much performance gain), how can you still believe that they're going to be using them in Powerbooks? It would be nice, but they're too slow.

And you're right. Since others have done it without using these super small drives, making smaller notebooks will be done another way.
We have heard the new Powerbook will be ridiculously thin, so you might be right.

Still, I've used ridiculously thin Vaios, etc, and they don't use the mini drives, so there must be another way. Unless they have an OLED screen, there's half of the bulk anyhow.

[må¥å]

OLEDs could solve all of those problems. Who knows when the perfect OLED will show up? Could be any minute now. Companies have been working on them frantically for years.

I read an article about siny delaying the release of an OLED product due to life of the display its been delayed till 2005 so I am guessing same thing with apple then again OLED will drop the price as everyone here keeps bitching about that issue. Second with OLED it will give a decent 2-3 yrs life then I guess since Apple is in the market to make money they will get some more when people are forced to upgrade they OLED iPods to a newer model oh well can still use it as storage.

[sushi]

There is no reason that both could be true. No 60Gb iPod soon, but Apple could have ordered those 60Gb drives for use in something else. I'm not going to speculate what right now but I'm sure other will be shouting vPod (video iPod) or something pretty soon. Hopefully something more interesting than that from my point of view though.
Maybe a smaller laptop like they have here in Japan?

Of course a PDA springs to mind as well.

And a video iPod.

Then again, they could just be for a new iPod and SJ is upset about the announcement by Toshiba and is going to wait a while to announce.

Sushi

[ClimbingTheLog]

They didn't buy 350,000+ of these 60GB drives so that they can sell 10,000 60GB iPods. The demand isn't there. They're going to do something else with them. Seriously, there's no way they would sell that many high end iPods, so there's something else in the works. The number of drives Apple is hoarding is enough of a clue towards a new product.


Clearly they're intended for the iPhone/PDA/VidCam/iPod/802.11g/bluetooth device (the iChat CP) running the software defined radio on the ultra-low power PPC that's been backing up the production line in East Fishkill.

edit: forgot to mention Steve demoing iTunes Music Store over 3G wireless with his Name-That-Tune demo of the new ITMS search-by-lyrics feature.

[Yvan256]

(Sorry for stealing your "one more thing" moment, Steve - but I can see into the future!) :rolleyes:


They have obviously bought way more drives than they would ever sell of a 60GB iPod. So what are they using it for?

Possibly if they make one really really small maybe an Apple digital camera with built in HD, sure would beat those memory stick and CD-ROM cameras. Would it be motion video as well as stills, I dont know.

Thats my bet, Apple has a lot of experience with tiny drives, and they have growing experience with CCD chips (iSight). They may attempt to smack sony pretty hard in the digital camera space.

Presenting: the iCam! Apple's digital video camera, using the same high-quality optics as the iSight. With built-in 60GB hard disk, allowing for 4 hours of DV-quality HD recording! :D

P.S.: funny how "iCam" is "iMac" backwards.

[akw]

I find his statement a little off-putting. I mean Jesus, Greg. We're not morons, we can easily see that your new pricing structure is actually a worse deal for us. Let's take a closer look.

I have the 3rd gen 20GB model ($399 - middle tier iPod when I bought it) which shipped with dock, carrying case, and remote. If I want the 4th gen 20GB model I will pay $299. This time, though, I don't get the dock. I don't get the remote. And I don't get the carrying case. So I add them to my iPod order for $39 a piece. That's an extra $16 over the price of last year's 20GB iPod. Roughly the same specs, for $16 more.

Now that's NOT compelling Greg! Nice working shuffling the shells around though.

[ClimbingTheLog]

I'd just like to point out that Airport Express requires that the computer re-encode the music files into apple's lossless codec, which then is transmitted to the Airport Express. Not an expert on this at all, but I would think that the processor requirements of that would be pretty damn ugly in both the power drainage, and the ability of an ipod processor to even do it.

Lossless compression is the least CPU-intensive compression you can do; it's typically just a substitution/codebook scheme. Here's an overview:

http://www.data-compression.com/lossless.shtml#lz

[vitaboy]

Joswiak states "We have no plans in regard to announcing 60-gigabyte models, We are trying to create a much more compelling lineup with two models for 20 and 40 gigabytes at extremely compelling prices"


So, what this clearly means is that Apple hasn't decided when, where, or how to make the announcement.

If Apple really wasn't going to intro the 60 GB iPod soon, Joswiak would have stated, "We have no plans with regard to the 60-gigabyte iPod." The "announcement" qualifier indicates he's being really sly with his words, which one can infer to mean that there really is a 60 GB iPod.

But it makes sense. By only announcing the 20 and 40 gig units today, everyone is focused on the lower price. Check google news - all the headlines are "Apple lowers price on iPods."

Once the hubub has died down a bit, that's when you introduce the 60 GB unit, to show that you aren't just sitting on your laurels. And you get all the free PR as journalists write about the huge new 60 GB unit.

[sushi]

Presenting: the iCam! Apple's digital video camera, using the same high-quality optics as the iSight. With built-in 60GB hard disk, allowing for 4 hours of DV-quality HD recording!
Interesting idea.

There are HD video cameras coming out soon. Maybe Apple is looking at this market.

Sushi

[Thussy]

I HAVE AN IDEA!

The new 1.8" 60gig Tosh's are for the up and coming Newton TabletBook!

It'll be an inch thick, anodized aluminum, and also convertible into a PowerBook. YES THIS IS IT!

Flipping... I just bought a PowerBOok.. but what i really wanted was a Tablet.

[Yvan256]

I find his statement a little off-putting. I mean Jesus, Greg. We're not morons, we can easily see that your new pricing structure is actually a worse deal for us. Let's take a closer look.

I have the 3rd gen 20GB model ($399 - middle tier iPod when I bought it) which shipped with dock, carrying case, and remote. If I want the 4th gen 20GB model I will pay $299. This time, though, I don't get the dock. I don't get the remote. And I don't get the carrying case. So I add them to my iPod order for $39 a piece. That's an extra $16 over the price of last year's 20GB iPod. Roughly the same specs, for $16 more.

Now that's NOT compelling Greg! Nice working shuffling the shells around though.

Well, if you don't want the remote, case and dock, there's no point in paying for them. And so the new entry model doesn't include them.

Heck, at first I bought the 3rd Gen 20GB exactly because of these items. The next day I returned it and bought the 10GB. At 40$US a piece (about 60$CAN) this makes those items inflate the price +120$US (or +180$CAN), which ain't peanuts.

Imagine the entry price if those items WERE included. Besides, they now include the USB cable (which I had to pay about 40$CAN to get). So in a sense it's about 25-30$US *lower* because of this. ;)

Besides, I prefer the iSkin a lot more than the carrying case Apple is selling.
http://www.iskin.com/

It'd be interesting to know how many people actually have/really use their carrying case/remote/dock. Or even how many resell those items on eBay because they had no choice in getting them to get a bigger HD.

Final point is: it makes the entry model cost a lot less, and the inclusion of the USB cable is a really smart move. I was really pissed to have to buy a 40$CAN USB cable to be able to use my brand-new 350$CAN iPod (the stupid USB cable costs 11% of the price of the iPod? Insane!).

You don't *need* the dock, carrying case or remote. You *need* to be able to connect it to your PC (and a lot of PCs still don't have FireWire).

[rogo]

"They didn't buy 350,000+ of these 60GB drives (for 10,000 iPods)... "

No, in fact no article that was even remotely correctly reported claimed they bought 350,000 60GB drives.

The articles correctly reported (more or less) that Apple buys 350,000 drives each month from Toshiba -- for ALL sizes of iPods.

The 60GB drive is >>not shipping yet<<.

Re-read this article on Cnet (http://news.com.com/New+Toshiba+minidrive+to+pump+up+Apple%27s+iPod%3F/2100-1041_3-5224868.html) and it will be clear.

The drives will ship in September or October. I've no idea what Apple's lead time is, but I'd guess there could be a 60GB iPod out in time for Christmas shopping. But it can't happen sooner.

Seriously, the media is as much to blame as this site, but facts are facts:

* There was no actual comment about Apple buying huge quantities of the 60GB, just that they were a customer for it (which I'm sure is true)
* There is no way a 60GB iPod could be sold right now as there are no manufactured drives for it.

I'd be stunned if one didn't come out soon enough. It's going to carry a higher margin than the 40GB and would be successful enough to sell at least several thousand units per month. Apple knows a little about margin maximization.

[mhouse]

I don't agree. I have nigh on 50GB of music, as have a few of my peers. I would actually use the majority of the space on a 60GB iPod for music.

Yes, I do know how to use Smart Playlists etc. to manage my iTunes library, but nothing beats just being able to dump the whole lot on to your iPod and stride out knowing it's all there when you want it (not to mention a good backup).

He did say 'very few.' While there is a market for 60gb music-only iPod, he is certainly correct in saying that 'very few' people would have this need. Frankly, even the 40gb doesn't sell that well compared to the 20gb and 15gb version.

A recent poll found very few potential digital music player customers who felt they would ever really need more than 1000 songs. Hence the massive success of the iPod mini.

[bighairydoofus]

I love some peoples lack of logic. If apple has that many 60G hard drives on the way, why WOULDN'T they put them in the iPod? Even if they're slated for some other product, there's going to be people that will buy a 60G model (like myself) for any number of reasons. As far as market segments are concerned, how many people are going to buy 30" LCD displays? Not as many people that'll buy 20" models, but apple still released the 30" despite the fact that fewer will be sold.

They have the 60G drives on the way. There IS a market for a 60G iPod, however small in comparison to the lower end ones. They WILL release the 60G eventually.

And me? I have a 30G and use mine for music and language tapes. 90 pimsleur language lessons at 30 minutes a shot uses up a lot of space pretty fast, and that's only one language. My 30G is full, and now it's down to taking stuff off every time I buy new music. I have over a thousand CD's and about twenty feet of LP's, much of which will never come out on CD. I'm in the process of turning my favorite stuff on LP to digital, and that alone would fill a 60G.

I'd also like to have my music at a higher bitrate for better sound quality. Or heck, even lossless compression. When I listen through headphones, I can hear that 128kb doesn't sound all that great, and even doubling it would help. And it'd fill a 60G iPod instantly.

When I bought my iMac, I waited four months before buying an iPod because I was sure that the third generation 'pods were around the corner. I was right and I was happy I waited. I'll be happy I waited when the 60G comes out.

[ClimbingTheLog]

Considering the speed of these tiny HDD's (ie: slower than 4800rpm), and the fact that the industry is moving towards faster drives (5400 and 7200rpm, since they give so much performance gain), how can you still believe that they're going to be using them in Powerbooks? It would be nice, but they're too slow.

"The Industry" runs Windows, which has an ass of VM scheme and it goes into it hard and fast.

I have a 4200RPM drive on my iBook and it performs fine (e.g. capturing video, burning a CD and decoding iTunes simultaneously). I also have a ton of RAM and OS X uses it well.

Sure non-predictable reads are going to be faster on a 5400 in most circumstances, but caches are usually good enough.

[akw]

Well, if you don't want the remote, case and dock, there's no point in paying for them. And so the new entry model doesn't include them.

Heck, at first I bought the 3rd Gen 20GB exactly because of these items. The next day I returned it and bought the 10GB. At 40$US a piece (about 60$CAN) this makes those items inflate the price +120$US (or +180$CAN), which ain't peanuts.

Imagine the entry price if those items WERE included. Besides, they now include the USB cable (which I had to pay about 40$CAN to get). So in a sense it's about 25-30$US *lower* because of this. ;)

Besides, I prefer the iSkin a lot more than the carrying case Apple is selling.
http://www.iskin.com/

It'd be interesting to know how many people actually have/really use their carrying case/remote/dock. Or even how many resell those items on eBay because they had no choice in getting them to get a bigger HD.

Final point is: it makes the entry model cost a lot less, and the inclusion of the USB cable is a really smart move. I was really pissed to have to buy a 40$CAN USB cable to be able to use my brand-new 350$CAN iPod (the stupid USB cable costs 11% of the price of the iPod? Insane!).

You don't *need* the dock, carrying case or remote. You *need* to be able to connect it to your PC (and a lot of PCs still don't have FireWire).


The fact remains that the price has increased over the 3rd gen iPods. I'd like to hear them say that they're offering less for less money. Pretending like we're getting a great deal because we don't have to buy the dock or the case now is insulting. Plus, who the hell priced the case at $39? That's absolutely absurd. They build a product that scratches if you look at it the wrong way and then charge you 40 smacks to protect it. Nice. Maybe I can give them the dock and remote. But the case, no dice.

I guess I'm a sucker though, because my 40GB model is on order. I got a case too. Grand total with tax and shipping: $479 and my right testicle. Guess I'll have to do without the remote cause I'm keeping my left nad so I can have children. Thanks for giving me the option, Apple.

[~Shard~]

I wasn't really expecting the 60 GB iPods anytime soon, so this is no real surprise. Toshiba isn't even releasing/shipping the drives until September, right? So Apple would no doubt need a few months to incorporate it ito the iPod, test it, and all that, before they could actually release the 60 GB iPod.

We all know it's coming, but as with many other things, it's just a question of when! ;)

[Multimedia]

The fact remains that the price has increased over the 3rd gen iPods. I'd like to hear them say that they're offering less for less money. Pretending like we're getting a great deal because we don't have to buy the dock or the case now is insulting. Plus, who the hell priced the case at $39? That's absolutely absurd. They build a product that scratches if you look at it the wrong way and then charge you 40 smacks to protect it. Nice. Maybe I can give them the dock and remote. But the case, no dice.

I guess I'm a sucker though, because my 40GB model is on order. I got a case too. Grand total with tax and shipping: $479 and my right testicle. Guess I'll have to do without the remote cause I'm keeping my left nad so I can have children. Thanks for giving me the option, Apple.The Click-Wheel Is A Major Improvement In The Interface. No matter what new higher price for twice the memory, you cannot dispute that the 4th gen iPods have a WAY better interface than all the previous models. I cannot stress loudly enough how fantastic that click wheel interface is. As soon as I saw it in January on the iPod-mini I knew it would be on this next gen iPod and am now only waiting for the 60 GB model to eclipse my 2nd gen 20. I love my 20 but I have more than 60 GB of MP3 & AAC files to fill up a big one. And I'm Click Wheel Crazy. :p

[Quark]

There is no reason that both could be true. No 60Gb iPod soon, but Apple could have ordered those 60Gb drives for use in something else....

Bingo! We have a winner.

Note that Toshiba never said that they knew exactly what the drives were for, Martyn Williams did however make a speculative statement, not based in fact.

Here's the quote:
Source: http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/06/02/HNappletoshdrive_1.html
Ahead of the launch, Toshiba has been showing the drive to customers and has already received an order from Apple, Lee said. Toshiba is currently shipping 350,000 of the 1.8-inch drives per month to Apple for use in the iPod, which is manufactured by Taiwan's Inventec Corp.
The author of the article (Martyn Williams, IDG News Service), not Lee, was speculating on it going into the iPod and that is what really upset Apple -- and not only that Apple had ordered them.

And Greg was very specific with his wording -- even though it may not seem that obvious. Here's his quote (in reference to the question about 60GB iPod models):
Source:
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=5707511
"We have no plans in regard to announcing 60-gigabyte models," Joswiak said.

This is for the other device, we're getting close to a release. Something with photo management and viewing on a TV -- but very iPod'ish in concept but not necessarily in design.

Take care,
Quark

[akw]

The Click-Wheel Is A Major Improvement In The Interface. No matter what new higher price for twice the memory, you cannot dispute that the 4th gen iPods have a WAY better interface than all the previous models. I cannot stress loudly enough how fantastic that click wheel interface is. As soon as I saw it in January on the iPod-mini I knew it would be on this next gen iPod and am now only waiting for the 60 GB model to eclipse my 2nd gen 20. I love my 20 but I have more than 60 GB of MP3 & AAC files to fill up a big one. And I'm Click Wheel Crazy. :p

My girlfriend has the mini, and I personally prefer the touch method. The click wheel feels prone to breakage in comparison. Maybe the 4th gen iPod's wheel is an improvement on the mini's but either way, I certainly would not call it "A Major Improvement In The Interface". It seems more like a nominal difference in the interface, and it most definitely does not justify an increased price. Besides, I'm still pissed off about having to pay for a case.

[tsaxer]

I was thinking, in response to the "hardly anyone needs 60" vs. "some of us do" debate, would it be so incredibly difficult to have as a special order option a 60 gigger? Yes it would take some extra engineering, but if they could produce them to order (perhaps waiting to have a sufficient amount ordered and then making a production run) then both groups of thought are satisfied. The 60 would not be a part of the routine production, and yet it could be an option for those who would be willing to wait an extra few weeks for one.

Just my two cents, I'm no Steve Jobs :cool:

[Windowlicker]

what if apple ordered those HDs and they're still being supplied? what will they be used for? laptops? don't think so...

there's not much anything I could think them to be used for if not an ipod -- and I don't see a video pod coming out any time soon

[flipperfeet]

As was predictable upon the announcement of the agreement with HP. A shedding of those ugly buttons and a move back towards an interface the SMS generation is more than capable of controlling with their thumb was inevitable. Plus the obvious price drop. But as so many people here are whining about, no 60.

But wait, there is another iPod due this summer... We have even seen its form factor. However what is the incentive to purchase the now dated interface on a premium priced HPod... perhaps a 60GB version?

A fairly extensive search of the HP site shows that there is no news on this product since the announcement of their Digital Music Player in January. Here we are in summer and the product is not shipping. Apple saying they have no plans to ship a 60 does not mean a partner is precluded from doing so. Wouldn't this be an interesting development?

[JFreak]

Put two of them into one computer (ultra-slim laptop) and configure them as RAID and you have something which is probably faster than a 7200rpm drive.

do you have any idea what you're talking about?

yes, raid0 makes things a bit faster, but it also has zero error-tolerance, which means should either drive fail you lose everything. raid0 cannot be reconstructed and having one without backup is even more risky than having a single hard drive that you kick every now and then.

raid1 on the other hand is slower than single drive. while it offers error tolerance, it will take double the time to write anything to the raid array of two drives, and the read performance of a software raid is not optimized either. so you get a backup but will also take a performance hit.

you would have to have a very huge raid array to make many 3600rpm (?) or even 4200rpm drives achieve the speed of a single 7200rpm drive. have you ever wondered why the REAL raid arrays of the server cabinet run 10000rpm or 15000rpm speeds? raid is not used to get more speed. it is used to get more fault tolerance. (yes, it can be optimized for speed, too, but that requires a hardware raid controller.)

[JFreak]

What's better than AIFF format?

the one that has exactly the same quality but uses a smaller file size :)

[JFreak]

this race for Gigabytes and gigabytes of storage is a losing race... I'd recommend everyone to get themselves a Mini and an external FW800 HD.

i second to that, although i broke and changed my mini order to the new 20GB model :) i always hated the 3G buttons and i just could not even think about buying one, so ordering a mini was a no-brainer at the time. but then apple got rid of the ugly buttons and i thought it's not so much more expensive than the mini, and has nicer rounded corners, so i decided to want to be able to take all of my 9GB of music with me instead of maintaining a 4GB playlist to sync with the mini. in addition, i can have a nice portable storage of about two dvd's size, which is nice.

BUT... i did not even think about wanting a bigger model, because - let's face it - as a firewire hard drive those gigabytes are severely overpriced. for 200 euros i can have 250GB of very fast fw800 storage, and putting a 100 euros more to my ipod order would have given me lousy 20GB more and we all know that the ipod hard drive performance cannot even be compared to the 3.5" 7200rpm drives. and i already have one fw400 external 160GB drive, so i only want to be able to carry my music with my ipod. i don't care if it's only half full.

(and i consider myself an audiophile. i cannot say audiophiles want or need the 40GB or 60GB model. no. audiophiles like me buy shure E5 headphones and would always want a little better audio quality out of the little thing. audiophiles are the only people who don't mind the trouble of maintaining old vacuum tube amplifiers and lp players, just to be able to say it sounds better. an audiophile doesn't care about storage that much, so people please just drop that argument.)

[sushi]

I was thinking, in response to the "hardly anyone needs 60" vs. "some of us do" debate, would it be so incredibly difficult to have as a special order option a 60 gigger? Yes it would take some extra engineering, but if they could produce them to order (perhaps waiting to have a sufficient amount ordered and then making a production run) then both groups of thought are satisfied. The 60 would not be a part of the routine production, and yet it could be an option for those who would be willing to wait an extra few weeks for one.

Just my two cents, I'm no Steve Jobs :cool:
Interesting idea!

Made to order through the Apple Store only.

Other than a HD change, not much would be different I would think.

Sushi

[JFreak]

I find his statement a little off-putting. I mean Jesus, Greg. We're not morons, we can easily see that your new pricing structure is actually a worse deal for us. Let's take a closer look.

I have the 3rd gen 20GB model ($399 - middle tier iPod when I bought it) which shipped with dock, carrying case, and remote. If I want the 4th gen 20GB model I will pay $299. This time, though, I don't get the dock. I don't get the remote. And I don't get the carrying case. So I add them to my iPod order for $39 a piece. That's an extra $16 over the price of last year's 20GB iPod. Roughly the same specs, for $16 more.

Now that's NOT compelling Greg! Nice working shuffling the shells around though.

not everyone wants those. it makes sense to sell a lowend product without all gadgets. i myself couldn't care less if i had or didn't had the remote, because i wouldn't be using it anyway. and the dock? please. for a laptop user that is a complete waste of money. the carrying case on the other hand could be useful. i still think that i would keep the ipod in my pocket anyway.

all in all, this just saves me some money not being forced to buy accessories i don't want to use. if you want those, you could easily buy the 40GB model which has those, and i guess the price would still be quite the same that you paid for your 20GB model. you compare gigabytes to gigabytes, but you should be comparing lowend to lowend and middle model to middle model. get it?

and if you think that the pricing has become worse now, just be happy that you bought your ipod at the right time ;) no reason to whine...

[JFreak]

Interesting idea.

There are HD video cameras coming out soon. Maybe Apple is looking at this market.

Sushi

yep. one hour of DV video consumes 13GB of space if i remember correctly, so these 60GB drives could hold enough uncompressed footage. but it remains to be seen if the performance of the drives can keep up... it is not so easy for a hard drive to keep up with a DV stream. has anyone hard facts how many MB/s is required for it?

[b-randomly]

Now I don't know if this has been suggested, but it's what made logical sense to me (and I'm not sure if anybody else noted it in the last six pages -- oh, and it's a bit offtopic):

Maybe the new iPod style and competitive pricing was made for one reason -- to stop the iPod mini craze. I know I just bought the new iPod today (ordered it online with a PowerBook, yay for Cram & Jam) because it was the ClickWheel I wanted without a four week wait. I don't have 4GB of music yet, or would I need it on me all the time.

People are buying the iPod mini for one of a few reasons -- small, the pretty colors, or the ClickWheel. For me it was going to be the ClickWheel, because I loathe the 3rd generation style of touch sensitive buttons. Now, people who were thinking as I do have a competitively-priced option, more easily available, with larger space.

[Trowaman]

yep. one hour of DV video consumes 13GB of space if i remember correctly, so these 60GB drives could hold enough uncompressed footage. but it remains to be seen if the performance of the drives can keep up... it is not so easy for a hard drive to keep up with a DV stream. has anyone hard facts how many MB/s is required for it?

Hard drive based digital video cameras . . .

*slaps forhead*

genius. If the quality is good enough (as in if it could make Canon and their XL-2 and GL-2 look back and wonder what the competition is up too) I'll be first in line for one of these.

[iMeowbot]

They didn't buy 350,000+ of these 60GB drives so that they can sell 10,000 60GB iPods.
That number that has been floating around, 350000, is not the number of 60GB drives sold to Apple. That's the number of 1.8" drives, all sizes, that Toshiba are currently selling to Apple. At Computex, Cindy Lee didn't say how many 60GB drives Apple ordered.

If Apple placed an order itself for drives, it would only be in sample quantities for engineering or R&D. For production quantities, Apple would not be placing the orders, their ODM parter would do that.

[big_boldge]

Mac will need to have a 60GB ipod soon espesially if there to make the rumored video ipod, i mean you wont be able to get much video on a 40GB!
But i'm not to bothered im happy with my 15GB and most people wouldnt be able to fill up a 60GB as that'll be a round 20,000 songs which i dont have and may never have? But it would be nice to see apple stay way ahead of the game and rivals especially as more and more rivals are trying to take over the ipod's crown!

[djdarlek]

I agree most people probably don't, it would be a high-end product. But remember that CDs have been out over 20 years and some of us have well over 1000 which would be just great to put on a single device.

Just had an interesting thought. If you owned 1000 cds, or 10,000... and spent the time importing them into your iPod... what happens if you bin all your CDs? Does this put you in the same bracket as someone who downloads all their music, or are you gaining some strange unseen kudos?

Just a though. I have to admit I do download songs a fair bit, but that doesn't mean to say I haven't spent £1000's on CDs in the past.. although after importing them all onto my 'digital hubs' I gave them all to charity.

[drlunanerd]

Just had an interesting thought. If you owned 1000 cds, or 10,000... and spent the time importing them into your iPod... what happens if you bin all your CDs? Does this put you in the same bracket as someone who downloads all their music, or are you gaining some strange unseen kudos?

Just a though. I have to admit I do download songs a fair bit, but that doesn't mean to say I haven't spent £1000's on CDs in the past.. although after importing them all onto my 'digital hubs' I gave them all to charity.
I hope you've got a concrete backup strategy in place and working. Ditching your original CDs doesn't sound like a great idea to me if you haven't. But nice one for donating them to charity...

[AidenShaw]

I hope you've got a concrete backup strategy in place and working. Ditching your original CDs doesn't sound like a great idea to me if you haven't. But nice one for donating them to charity...

If you give away (or sell) the original CDs after ripping them, you're giving away the right to the music.

You can no longer justify the ripped copy under "fair use" - there are now two copies of the music in use by two different people.

Selling or donating the physical CDs turn the act of ripping into an act of piracy.

[Analog Kid]

So, what this clearly means is that Apple hasn't decided when, where, or how to make the announcement.

If Apple really wasn't going to intro the 60 GB iPod soon, Joswiak would have stated, "We have no plans with regard to the 60-gigabyte iPod." The "announcement" qualifier indicates he's being really sly with his words, which one can infer to mean that there really is a 60 GB iPod.

But it makes sense. By only announcing the 20 and 40 gig units today, everyone is focused on the lower price. Check google news - all the headlines are "Apple lowers price on iPods."

Once the hubub has died down a bit, that's when you introduce the 60 GB unit, to show that you aren't just sitting on your laurels. And you get all the free PR as journalists write about the huge new 60 GB unit.
Yeah, I noticed the same thing. That was a really awkward way of phrasing things-- it does make it sound like he's dancing around the facts. I took it to mean "we've built one, it works, we haven't decided when to take it to market yet".

Personally I'd use the space for storage. Right now I carry two drives around everywhere-- one is the iPod, the other is an 80Gb firewire drive holding a 10GB iMovie project. I'd love to only have to carry one....

[pc_convert?]

Maybe the 60GB drive is for the new G5 iMac in september. If the rumors are true, and the iMac looks similar to the newly announced Displays then maybe Apple need smaller - less heat producing hard drives to fit in casing.

Just a thought...

[SiliconAddict]

***holes.

[SiliconAddict]

ATI learned that good and well, and now Toshiba's finding out the same thing.
No 60GB iPods until Steve cools down.

In which case screw apple. They are more concerned about doing it their way then giving the customers the product they want. Hmmm I can think of another company who acts like this. Headed by someone named Gates and no one likes his company.

Jobs needs to be fired if this is the potential reason for the delay. They deserve to lose the entire music market. What sucks is if someone else does come onto the market with a 60GB music player before Apple I've got to convert all my music again. :( Great just great. Thanks for nothing Jobs.

[djdarlek]

Maybe the 60GB drive is for the new G5 iMac in september. If the rumors are true, and the iMac looks similar to the newly announced Displays then maybe Apple need smaller - less heat producing hard drives to fit in casing.

Just a thought...

u may have hit the nail on the head there... Come september we'll see if you're right :D

[djdarlek]

In which case screw apple. They are more concerned about doing it their way then giving the customers the product they want. Hmmm I can think of another company who acts like this. Headed by someone named Gates and no one likes his company.

Jobs needs to be fired if this is the potential reason for the delay. They deserve to lose the entire music market. What sucks is if someone else does come onto the market with a 60GB music player before Apple I've got to convert all my music again. :( Great just great. Thanks for nothing Jobs.

Calm down! I don't think Steve should be fired, and even if Sony make some ****ty player available for 60gig, it still won't have the iPod interface.

I really don't understand everyone's lust for the biggest HD available, when blatently a 4gig iPod is enough to listen to music for around a month. Aside from the need to backup one's music collection. Or use as a portable HD. But if capacity is such a big deal, why not buy an iPod mini for music and a 160gig firewire HD? Probably get the lot for around the same price as the 60gig iPod would be.

[croooow]

I don't think you guys are thinking of things from the buisness side of it. And if you like Apple I'd think you'd want them to stay in buisness.

I don't think there is a big demand for a 60GB iPod. I'm sure there are lots of people who could use it, but I think they felt that 20 and 40 would sell a lot more and have made an effort to have the supply ready for people to buy them. There doesn't seem to be a shortage like the mini (at least not yet) I think they spent a long time making them getting ready for yesterday.

If you don't like the 20/40 GB ipods then don't buy one. I will be buying a 40GB (I only have 15GB of music)

[centauratlas]

GRRR.

Why is it the things most people want will not be around "anytime soon."
...Anyway, I was really really hoping for a 60GB iPod, I guess I'll just have to wait.

I bought two Airport Expresses. I have a 30GB iPod and won't be buying a new one until I can fit all my music on it (> 60GB). The Airport allows me to use one of the Macs as a big streaming iPod. Yes, i can't go outside a certain range, but my 30GB is good enough for outside that range for now.

Perhaps that is part of their reason - they want people to use AirTunes in place of bigger iPods in a house...

[SiliconAddict]

I really don't understand everyone's lust for the biggest HD available, when blatently a 4gig iPod is enough to listen to music for around a month.


Its not about being able to listen to a day's, week's, or month's worth of music. Its about having your ENTIRE collection on hand. Something a 40GB drive can't do for me.

[~Shard~]

Its not about being able to listen to a day's, week's, or month's worth of music. Its about having your ENTIRE collection on hand. Something a 40GB drive can't do for me.

Yah, but then by that rationale, I would need a 200+ GB iPod to have all my music "on hand"... ;)

I of course realize people use their iPods for different things and have different philosophies about them, but for me, I just need enough music on my iPod to last me through the day, or on a long flight/drive, etc.

[FriarTuck]

Please... nobody give Sandy Berger a 60 gig iPod. Who knows what he'll put on it, and where he'll put it as he leaves the building.

Seriously, though, we're getting to the point where we're going to need "Spring Cleaning"-type software just to keep the iPod organized.

Can't wait for Apple to reveal it's iPod Tivo-beater.

[gopher]

Mac will need to have a 60GB ipod soon espesially if there to make the rumored video ipod, i mean you wont be able to get much video on a 40GB!
But i'm not to bothered im happy with my 15GB and most people wouldnt be able to fill up a 60GB as that'll be a round 20,000 songs which i dont have and may never have? But it would be nice to see apple stay way ahead of the game and rivals especially as more and more rivals are trying to take over the ipod's crown!

Mac is the name of the computer Apple makes. Your statement above shows you don't know the difference between Apple and Macintosh. You might as well have said Beatle is going to have four doors soon, when you should have said Volkswagen is going to have four doors on its Beatle soon (not that it is!). Apple is the company name. Macintosh, with a nickname of Mac is the name of the operating system Apple makes for its Macintosh computers.

[sushi]

yep. one hour of DV video consumes 13GB of space if i remember correctly, so these 60GB drives could hold enough uncompressed footage. but it remains to be seen if the performance of the drives can keep up... it is not so easy for a hard drive to keep up with a DV stream. has anyone hard facts how many MB/s is required for it?
I believe 25Mb per second.

Sushi

[sushi]

***holes.
???

[iMeowbot]

Mac is the name of the computer Apple makes. Your statement above shows you don't know the difference between Apple and Macintosh.
Shhhhh. It's not a bad thing at all if the names are synonymous in the public mind, think about it.

[sushi]

Shhhhh. It's not a bad thing at all if the names are synonymous in the public mind, think about it.
Good point!

Anything that gets more recognition is good for Apple, er. Mac.

Sushi

[JFreak]

I believe 25Mb per second.

...or around 3MB/s - which is not so much. it should be possible even with these tiny drives, i believe. and in addition, there will likely be some kind of a proprietary way of handling the drive, and the contents will likely be stored in contiguous blocks.

let's begin to wait for such a video camera :)

[Trekkie]

There is no reason that both could be true. No 60Gb iPod soon, but Apple could have ordered those 60Gb drives for use in something else. I'm not going to speculate what right now but I'm sure other will be shouting vPod (video iPod) or something pretty soon. Hopefully something more interesting than that from my point of view though.

To support my lossless compression libray I'd need 320GB of storage.

Now *that* would be an iPod. Only 20 lbs! whee.

[jdechko]

60 Gig iPod + Home on Ipod = Great Idea!

[SiliconAddict]

I don't think there is a big demand for a 60GB iPod.

If there isn't a big demand then don't make 100,000 of them. (25K? 50K?) The point is that there IS a demand for them. And if Apple is sitting on this product because they are all pissed and bothered because Tosh announced that THIER product was being used by Apple. That is a BS reason. In the previous cases ATI announced an actual Apple product. OK. So sure. Apple deserves to get pissed. In this case Tosh simple announced that Apple had, or will be purchasing their product. Now call me funny but Tosh isn't being ruled by Apple. They have every damn right to try and make their products look better by saying Apple will be using them. Screw Apple and their dictator like BS.

[Trekkie]

60gb media player/home on iPod device instead then? The Windows media devices are arriving soon, Apple will eventually respond. Anyway, never trust an announcment by a V.P of anything, all they do is spin.

Apple will eventually respond?

What planet are you from? When has Apple 'responded' to the market? They've *created* the market many times, or taken one thing and turned it into a whole new market, but they've never 'responded' to something.

Steve Jobs has said many times that a video iPod device is a waste of time. He still runs the company last I checked and this clamor on this forum for video iPods is by a very few people who have unreasonable expectations.

Until you can project a 36 - 65 " equivalent screen into my eyes a 4" or 6" or hell even 19" screen is totally worthless to me. You also would need to replicate 5.1 surround at a minimum with DD and DTS. Otherwise, it's an expensive toy with no intrinsic value.

That's why iPod is so successful. It does what it does very well. Music is totally different than video. Music you can put in and still function while listening too in most cases. Video is more of an attention grabber and is impossible to enjoy (in current formats) while walking down the street, riding a taxi/bus, in an airplane, etc. You are totally focused on the video and cannot easily notice your surroundings unlike when you do listen to music (in most cases)

On a complete tangent...

I can't remember the sociological term that is applied to this difference just like when someone is on a cell phone, hands free or hands set. I've seen it labeled 'inattention blindness' but the way I heard it was more like 'remote presense' or something like that. For example you could have a group of girls standing outside a school, but if you notice more and more all of them are on their mobile phones talking to other people but the ones around them. It is rather interesting. However if you're like me and >25 I'd recommend not standing around a high school staring at the groups of girls if you're studying this. Some days I wish I was back at college though so I could see how this affects little clicks/groups though. That benefit of being an introverted geek some days is you can watch your surroundings with much more freedom than others.

oh well, i've wandered way off topic from where I started :o

[SiliconAddict]

Yah, but then by that rationale, I would need a 200+ GB iPod to have all my music "on hand"... ;)


True. But we are obviously limited by the technology on hand. If Apple HAS these drives available to them and are holding out on us because Steve is pissed. That, IMHO, isn't a business decision. That is a personal grudge and a possible earmark of someone who isn't totally stable. Steve wants to be pissed. That's fine. You don't possibly screw over the company you are leading because of it.

[iMeowbot]

Anything that gets more recognition is good for Apple, er. Mac.
It's that halo effect Apple keep talking about, and which they believe is beginning to take root. "Mmmmm, iPod good and crunchy. Mac make iPod. Mac good too? Me try Mac. With cheese!"

[croooow]

If there isn't a big demand then don't make 100,000 of them. (25K? 50K?) The point is that there IS a demand for them. And if Apple is sitting on this product because they are all pissed and bothered because Tosh announced that THIER product was being used by Apple. That is a BS reason. In the previous cases ATI announced an actual Apple product. OK. So sure. Apple deserves to get pissed. In this case Tosh simple announced that Apple had, or will be purchasing their product. Now call me funny but Tosh isn't being ruled by Apple. They have every damn right to try and make their products look better by saying Apple will be using them. Screw Apple and their dictator like BS.

It's not a dictatorship. No one is force to sell to Apple or buy from Apple. My point was the wise buisness decision is to make 20/40GB ipods and make enough of them to supply all those who would pay for it. More people will be happy with a $400 40GB iPod than a $500 60GB iPod. Sure you aren't making everyone happy but you can never make EVERYONE happy.

I'm sure toshiba didn't help things with their announcement, but I don't believe Apple is just sitting on the 60GB iPods out of spite. I am sure if they think they could make money that would outweigh any feelings they have toward Toshiba (who probably has already recieved their money)

[Max Miles]

guys, what about putting a 60 GB hard drive into an iPod yourself? Could this be done?

[markayak]

Mac is the name of the computer Apple makes. Your statement above shows you don't know the difference between Apple and Macintosh. You might as well have said Beatle is going to have four doors soon, when you should have said Volkswagen is going to have four doors on its Beatle soon (not that it is!). Apple is the company name. Macintosh, with a nickname of Mac is the name of the operating system Apple makes for its Macintosh computers.

A Beatle is either John, Paul, George or Ringo. They're the only folks who spell it with an A, because a man who came down from the sky on a flaming pie told them to. The car Volkswagen makes is called the Beetle, or actually, the New Beetle.

[morkintosh]

I'd buy a 60gig if it had video out. Other than that I'd have no use for 60gigs of music, but I am sure there are people out there that would fill that up. Especially if they were using Apple Lossless to encode their music.

Maybe, just maybe that is what all those 60gig drive are for ... a new video iPod that is having some production troubles, hence the "not anytime soon comment".

"Can I have a G5 iMac?"
"sure! at WWD, ummmm errr, I mean not any time soon!"

[dschneiter]

I think Apple's iPod marketing is not really "fair play"...

The new models are claimed to come with a hefty price reduction, as they are 100$ cheaper than the previous models. But as some of you might have noticed, the 40 GByte model no longer includes neither a remote control nor a belt clip while the 20 GByte model even lacks the dock.

Ok, the new ones are still cheaper than the old ones, but in Europe the difference is just within the range of 10 to 15 dollars

[Penman]

How many people would have over 20 GB of purchased music?

I have over 350 GB's of purchased music and still buy a few CD's a week. I've never spent a dime buying music online and won't until I can get at least uncompressed CD quality.

I had a 30GB and then a month later the 40GB came out and made me feel stupid. Apple can stay at 40GB in their biggest model only as long as the competition is staying there too. When Tosh bring the drive to market other manufacturers wil ljump on them and Apple will too. I hope. Otherwise I forsee this:

"Yeah, well the Rio's 60GB but the 40GB Apple has equivalent capacity in real terms. You can't compare them. It's the old capacity myth."

[XForge]

Yeah! I sent a request to Apple for a Quad 4.0ghz G5 and a 52 inch display and the told me "not anytime soon" WTF? :p

Hehee, and I sent a request to Apple for them to send me enough money to buy such a thing, still no answer...

[bkopi]

I'd buy a 60gig if it had video out. Other than that I'd have no use for 60gigs of music, but I am sure there are people out there that would fill that up. Especially if they were using Apple Lossless to encode their music.

what is Apple Lossless?

[ccrandall77]

Maybe, just maybe that is what all those 60gig drive are for ... a new video iPod that is having some production troubles, hence the "not anytime soon comment".

I'm also hoping for a vPod with a 60GB capacity. I know a lot of people blow a gasket when mention of a vPod is uttered, but there are a lot of us who would take advantage of such a device if it existed.

In the beginning, I really wanted Apple to come out with a larger color screen so we could view movies on the device. But maybe that's too big of a step for now... although I do use my Zaurus C760 a lot to watch movies and it works great. So, I think those complaining about such a feature have just never taken the time to try it out.

I think the best thing Apple (or a company like Belkin) could do would be to take advantage of the latest PortaPlayer chip in an optional, add-on dock and slip-on sleeve (for portability). This would have video in/out, wifi, bluetooth, etc. integrated into it. That would seem to be the best of both worlds... satisfyng those of us who want more functionality and those that just want an audio player.

While I was disappointed with the G4 iPods, I think it makes the iPod much more competitive against offerings from companies like Creative. Now there's only a $30 difference between the Zen Touch and iPod and the battery life gap is a little closer now.

However, I was hoping that Apple would at least move to the brushed aluminium case with regular, non-pastel colors. I like the way the iPod looks now, but no matter how hard you try, it scratches way too easily and looks worn rather quickly. If they'd done that, I might've been slightly tempted to upgrade even if the feature set remained the same.

[egor]

I've just got one problem with people who have a need for 60g ipods.

I UNDERSTAND there are people out there that have massive music libraries. I understand that you want it to be high quality stuff (not 128kb/s ****). And I realise you don't really want smart playlists or more than one pod cos you want it all on one device, its much cooler.

But just one thing. How the hell do you manage to accumulate so much music? Do you just have bad taste? I mean, ****, I couldn't find 20gb of music I like, and my tastes are rather eclectic. There simply is just too much crap out there and not enough good stuff for me to fathom how this could be so. Now, I understand we all have different tastes, for instance, whoever is reading this might consider my stuff crap, and their's good, but then their idea of quality will be parallel to mine, surely? As in, there is alot of crap around (and they'd consider the stuff I like a part of that).

Well, anyway, if someone can explain this to me, it'd be much appreciated...

[sushi]

Until you can project a 36 - 65 " equivalent screen into my eyes a 4" or 6" or hell even 19" screen is totally worthless to me. You also would need to replicate 5.1 surround at a minimum with DD and DTS. Otherwise, it's an expensive toy with no intrinsic value.
The key part of your arguement is "worthless to me."

Others think differently. Not everyone needs this capability to enjoy video. In fact, some folks enjoy it on screens as small as a cell phone.

Sushi

[sushi]

True. But we are obviously limited by the technology on hand. If Apple HAS these drives available to them and are holding out on us because Steve is pissed. That, IMHO, isn't a business decision. That is a personal grudge and a possible earmark of someone who isn't totally stable. Steve wants to be pissed. That's fine. You don't possibly screw over the company you are leading because of it.
Give it a rest.

First of all, no one on this board knows the complete story.

Second, NDAs are very important. If you violate one, you pay the price. So if Toshiba violated theirs concerning the iPod/60GB HDs, then they are wrong. If so, then SJ has every right to reinforce what the NDA means in whatever method he and the board choose.

Sushi

[jimsowden]

I've just got one problem with people who have a need for 60g ipods.

I UNDERSTAND there are people out there that have massive music libraries. I understand that you want it to be high quality stuff (not 128kb/s ****). And I realise you don't really want smart playlists or more than one pod cos you want it all on one device, its much cooler.

But just one thing. How the hell do you manage to accumulate so much music? Do you just have bad taste? I mean, ****, I couldn't find 20gb of music I like, and my tastes are rather eclectic. There simply is just too much crap out there and not enough good stuff for me to fathom how this could be so. Now, I understand we all have different tastes, for instance, whoever is reading this might consider my stuff crap, and their's good, but then their idea of quality will be parallel to mine, surely? As in, there is alot of crap around (and they'd consider the stuff I like a part of that).

Well, anyway, if someone can explain this to me, it'd be much appreciated...
I have about 800mb of music in my iTunes. I don't have one full CD, because every band puts crappy filler songs that I know I'm never going to listen to. I can't imagine just importing every cd I have and standing listening to it. And in a worthless high codec to boot. Sheesh.

[sushi]

I have about 800mb of music in my iTunes. I don't have one full CD, because every band puts crappy filler songs that I know I'm never going to listen to. I can't imagine just importing every cd I have and standing listening to it. And in a worthless high codec to boot. Sheesh.
No kidding! Totally agree!

I have over 600 CDs. In some cases I copy all of the songs on the CD. However, in most cases most (about 80-85%) of my CDs have only one or two songs that I like.

That is one reason that I like iTMS so much! Only need to DL the songs that I like. So instead of purchasing a whole CD for $10, wasting $9 of it. I just buy one song for 99 cents. Cost effective if you ask me.

...also space effective since I don't need a rediculously big iPod to have all my tunes! :D

Sushi

[egor]

I have about 800mb of music in my iTunes. I don't have one full CD, because every band puts crappy filler songs that I know I'm never going to listen to. I can't imagine just importing every cd I have and standing listening to it. And in a worthless high codec to boot. Sheesh.

Well, I could name some groups you NEED to listen to their albums all the way through, Pink Floyd for example, maybe not 'The Wall' but certain 'Wish You Were Here', and Godspeed You Black Emperor. But thats another matter entirely.

And thanks Sushi and jim, that helps explain alot! I can't fathom having 600 cds... but it hadn't occured to me some people buy whole albums just for a couple of songs (you're bonkers :P ).

[Max Miles]

guys, what about putting a 60 GB hard drive into an iPod yourself? Could this be done? Anybody know?

[bonk]

I'd say this announcement is just marketing talk for "We are bringing out a 60GB but if we tell you, your just going to hold out from buying that 40GB. Buy the 40GB children, there's nooooo such thing as a 60."

Maybe, maybe not.



these are not the droids you're looking for

[iMeowbot]

guys, what about putting a 60 GB hard drive into an iPod yourself? Could this be done? Anybody know?
There really isn't any way to know yet. They won't even begin building the drive until August or September at the earliest. Electrically everything will likely be compatible, but the only way to know if the software is able to cope with the new drive will be to buy one and plug it in. iPod drives are Apple-branded, so there's a very good chance that they contain custom firmware that would be lacking in a Toshiba-branded unit.

[drlunanerd]

guys, what about putting a 60 GB hard drive into an iPod yourself? Could this be done? Anybody know?
60GB 1.8 inch drives are not available now, so this is slightly hypothetical isn't it?

It's probably possible though, assuming physical constraints are not an issue. There has been speculation that the 40GB iPod would have the same dimensions as a hypothetical 60GB model as the drive is purported to be the same physical size (2 platters but higher density). I'd expect some soldering would be required though.

In any case you'll pay way more to buy a 60GB drive than Apple would, so it wouldn't be cost-effective. Much better to buy a 40GB now if you need/want it, then sell it if you can't live without a 60GB model if they ever surface.

[dizastor]

P.S.: funny how "iCam" is "iMac" backwards.

actually iMac backwards is caMi

maybe apple will start making girls clothing.

[Max Miles]

Oh, I presumed Toshiba's announcement meant they had them available.

thanks

[manu chao]

do you have any idea what you're talking about?

yes, raid0 makes things a bit faster, but it also has zero error-tolerance, which means should either drive fail you lose everything. raid0 cannot be reconstructed and having one without backup is even more risky than having a single hard drive that you kick every now and then.

raid1 on the other hand is slower than single drive. while it offers error tolerance, it will take double the time to write anything to the raid array of two drives, and the read performance of a software raid is not optimized either. so you get a backup but will also take a performance hit.

you would have to have a very huge raid array to make many 3600rpm (?) or even 4200rpm drives achieve the speed of a single 7200rpm drive. have you ever wondered why the REAL raid arrays of the server cabinet run 10000rpm or 15000rpm speeds? raid is not used to get more speed. it is used to get more fault tolerance. (yes, it can be optimized for speed, too, but that requires a hardware raid controller.)

I'm glad somebody replied to my post.

I freely admit, I have no first hand experience with any kind of RAID array. But I'm not really sure who is the one of the two of us who does not know what he is talking about.

RAID arrays can, as far as I know, be used for three purposes (and combinations thereof):

- live mirroring (ensuring data integrity when a physical drives fails)
- creating a bigger 'virtual' drive (if you have a lot of data)
- creating a faster drive (e.g. for capturing video at high resolution, or streaming of data)
The first purpose (or combinations including it) is probably what most RAID arrays are used for.

But the last option, a striped array (the second option is also a striped array, to be precise), also is used a lot.

I admit that the risk of data loss essentially doubles (due to a harddrive failure) when you use two drives for a striped array but that does not have to be a show-stopper. What I don't know is whether OS X can boot from a soft RAID if not this could be a deal-breaker since a hardware RAID might be too expensive still.

Here is one example of not-so-serious striped array which clearly shows how this can speed up transfer speeds: http://ohlssonvox.8k.com/fdd_raid.htma
And naturally, if your main aim is speed, as in a server, you start with the fastest drives available and then build a RAID with them (10 000 to 15 000 rpm drives), but in a Powerbook you have to balance speed against size and power consumption.

[ClimbingTheLog]

raid1 on the other hand is slower than single drive. while it offers error tolerance, it will take double the time to write anything to the raid array of two drives, and the read performance of a software raid is not optimized either. so you get a backup but will also take a performance hit.

On most RAID-1 implementations both reads and writes are done in parallel. As such you get an average 50% improvement in first seek on reads and you lose the same amount on writes.

Sustained reads and writes are about the same as an unmirrored drive, plus or minus any overhead of an underpowered controller/bus.

[ericmooreart]

With pod capacities getting so large, how long until they play video files?

Maybe its a hidden feature in this new generation? :rolleyes:

[ccuilla]

True. But we are obviously limited by the technology on hand. If Apple HAS these drives available to them and are holding out on us because Steve is pissed. That, IMHO, isn't a business decision. That is a personal grudge and a possible earmark of someone who isn't totally stable. Steve wants to be pissed. That's fine. You don't possibly screw over the company you are leading because of it.

This is stupid. Apple is not doing what you have suggested. Get over it. Steve is not doing this. There is likely (at least one) a rational explanation for no 60GB iPod right now.

[dizastor]

There is likely (at least one) a rational explanation for no 60GB iPod right now.

It's IBM's Fault.

[dontmatter]

seriously, reconsider your whining-I'm at just over 40 gigs of music, and you know what? the only thing I think would come of having signifigantly more would be that I wouldn't know my music as well. It's already really hard to keep track of. I think after 20 GB (in aac) returns gradually diminish because of the limits of the human brain and time. around 40 gigs is the real point of diminishing returns, where a whole bunch more music hardly makes any difference at all, because you just can't know it all.

Now, here's the qualifier. Sound quality matters, and higher sound quality=less music and bigger drives (unless drives are monsterous). But first apple lossless needs to get actually used (or, apple could allow FLAC, OGG, etc. support). My proposal: come out with 60 and 80 gig drives at the same time as coming out with fairplay protected lossless from the ITMS, and throw that into this new version of copy protected CD's, too. NOW we're talkin'. This will give reason for new ipods until HD space hits the same number of hours in lossless as we currently have in AAC: 100-200GB. Throw in new designs, features, and of course, shrinking the ipod, and you've got yourself a buisness plan for the next five years to keep on top of the market. The mini, then can become the ipod lossless's little AAC cousin. And perhaps a mini-mini, that's more wristwatch sized, could someday take the current mini market place, with less songs and in AAC, but incredible form factor and convienence.

[dontmatter]

Yah, but then by that rationale, I would need a 200+ GB iPod to have all my music "on hand"... ;)

I of course realize people use their iPods for different things and have different philosophies about them, but for me, I just need enough music on my iPod to last me through the day, or on a long flight/drive, etc.

good lord, I hope you're keeping that music in dvd-audio or something. do you even know what is good and what is crap?

More than that, I'd assume you would know, with all of that music, that it isn't about having enough to get you through the day, but having enought to having enough to listen to whatever strikes your fancy, whenever it strikes your fancy.

[matthewwithanm]

How could anybody need more than forty gigs for music? If they don't want it to be compressed, that's how.

[Yvan256]

How could anybody need more than forty gigs for music? If they don't want it to be compressed, that's how.

"40GB ought to be enough for everybody" - Steve Jobs

;)

[X_Ranger]

How could anybody need more than forty gigs for music? If they don't want it to be compressed, that's how.

Currently, I have 41+ GB of music. Most of it Jazz and most of it digitized from LPs. I collected over 1500 LPs and 600 CDs over a period of 20+ years.

Some of the music is very special to me as this music saw me through many phases of my life. Also, some of the albums are very rare.

Playing my music in random mode is a delight in discovering tracks I haven't heard in a while. And then there are tracks that reminds me of special times, special places, and special people.

Yes, I need this music; and yes, I need that 60 GIG iPod.

[uberman42]

Don't everyone freak out or anything... but maybe a rebirth of the Newton..


Sony Vaio U50 (http://www.notebookreview.com/default.aspx?newsID=1943)

I was at the Sony Store in Ginza Japan a few weeks back...was not impressed with the U50 - the screen is too small, the back of the unit was too hot (hot as a Gen1 Albook with the HD continuously spinning), and it was very unintuitive with XP as it's OS (Might as well have been a Vaio). There are some kinks to work out with the design and build quality, but it is good to see that Sony is trying...

[nemaslov]

I would fill it with part of my collection of 4000 CDs and 3000+ LPs.
The iPod is not a just a joggin thing for me. I have an extra dock that I hook up at work on a stereo and at Hotels with Stereos. Everywhere I go I take my music collection along. :eek:

[iMeowbot]

actually iMac backwards is caMi
maybe apple will start making girls clothing.
Not gonna happen. Apple Computer just lost a trademark dispute (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1509&ncid=738&e=12&u=/afp/20040621/tc_afp/china_computers_apple) in China to these people (http://www.appleleather.com/) :D

[~Shard~]

good lord, I hope you're keeping that music in dvd-audio or something. do you even know what is good and what is crap?

More than that, I'd assume you would know, with all of that music, that it isn't about having enough to get you through the day, but having enought to having enough to listen to whatever strikes your fancy, whenever it strikes your fancy.

Heh heh - lots of people have made similar comments like that before and I am no stranger to them! Actually, if I didn't mention it before in this thread, I record the BBC Radio One Essential Mixes every single week, and have every 2-hour show since 1993, save about 10. Those 600 mixes alone, at an average of 200 MB when encoded (if I so chose to encode ALL of them!) I estimate would be 120 GB right there, and that's not even starting to get into my actual personal music collection... ;)

[~Shard~]

How could anybody need more than forty gigs for music? If they don't want it to be compressed, that's how.

Geez, I'd hate to think of how large my colleciton would be if all of my compressed music WASN'T compressed - then my 200+ GB figure form above would be even higher! :cool:

[flipperfeet]

I was at the Sony Store in Ginza Japan a few weeks back...was not impressed with the U50 - the screen is too small, the back of the unit was too hot (hot as a Gen1 Albook with the HD continuously spinning), and it was very unintuitive with XP as it's OS (Might as well have been a Vaio). There are some kinks to work out with the design and build quality, but it is good to see that Sony is trying...

I have to respectfully disagree with you on this. I really do not think Sony IS trying, they certainly have not demonstrated it anywhere else. They have repeated the same mistake over and over, that mistake being proprietary formats in which they end up going it alone. Even their VIAO operating systems are a unique flavor of Windows that make them problematic, their WiFi network drive even used a unique flavor of Linux. This chronic problem even stops Sony equipment from playing nicely with Sony equipment. They can not even seem to settle on a compatible memory card technology for their devices.

The Sony player is not bad looking, the interface interesting, but the data format ensures it is DOA.

[sushi]

these are not the droids you're looking for
These are not the driods I'm looking for. :eek:

[sushi]

I have to respectfully disagree with you on this. I really do not think Sony IS trying, they certainly have not demonstrated it anywhere else. They have repeated the same mistake over and over, that mistake being proprietary formats in which they end up going it alone. Even their VIAO operating systems are a unique flavor of Windows that make them problematic, their WiFi network drive even used a unique flavor of Linux. This chronic problem even stops Sony equipment from playing nicely with Sony equipment. They can not even seem to settle on a compatible memory card technology for their devices.

The Sony player is not bad looking, the interface interesting, but the data format ensures it is DOA.
Yep, Sony has a bad habbit of going proprietary. Sony has some very cool devices, then they hamper them with proprietary standards. Stupid IMHO.

As for the U50/U70, looks questionable to me. Seems like the OQO is a better attempt.

Sushi

[tariqali666]

here's my take on what may happen:

Since it is RUMOURED that 60 gb has started production, and knowing that ipod sales have increased exponentially over the last year, toshiba prob couldn't build enough hard drives to match the projected sales for 4th qurter, typically the highest selling period.

Knowing this apple avoided introduction of the 60gb ipods in september, to avoid any ipod mini debacle. But they needed to introduce something to the market to keep the momentum going, so introduced this mini step.

What I guess and hope will happen is that in Jan/Feb, the 30/60 gigs will be introduced at the equivalent 20/40 gig prices.

I also think that they will increase the hard drive of ipod mini to 6 gigs, as well as changing and introducing new colour schemes.

Heck, since we are postulating, they may increase bit-rate of itunes to 192, maintaning the 1000 song mini/10,000 song ipod.

My 2 cents

[SiliconAddict]

This is stupid. Apple is not doing what you have suggested. Get over it. Steve is not doing this. There is likely (at least one) a rational explanation for no 60GB iPod right now.

Then why is it that ATI got burned when they announced an Apple product? Why is it that everyone gets nervous whenever someone lets some info slip that may pertain to Apple's release plans?
For any other company its stupid. The company comes first. For Apple it’s the result of the control of a company by one man who has a fuse.
If there is a rational explanation I would love to here it. The only two possibilities I can see is a video type ipod being created for the high-end iPod that will be released later. Or manufacturing issues on the drive. The latter seems unlikely since Tosh was the one to announce the drives and the fact that Apple has ordered said drives. Would they make such a high key statement if they were having production issues? I mean that leaves the ball in Apple's court to say Oops sorry. Tosh is having problems and can't get their **** together. No something else is going on. I still think Apple and Jobs are trying to make Tosh sweat over this. Maybe I'm wrong. But the personality of Jobs makes me think I'm right.

[ArticulatedArm]

Currently, I have 41+ GB of music. Most of it Jazz and most of it digitized from LPs. I collected over 1500 LPs and 600 CDs over a period of 20+ years.

Some of the music is very special to me as this music saw me through many phases of my life. Also, some of the albums are very rare.

Playing my music in random mode is a delight in discovering tracks I haven't heard in a while. And then there are tracks that reminds me of special times, special places, and special people.

Yes, I need this music; and yes, I need that 60 GIG iPod.

Do you have 2 Ipods now to carry your entire collection with you?

[stcanard]

If there is a rational explanation I would love to here it.

Well there is that minor issue of the drives not being avaiable until late summer...

But I'm sure that's not it. It must be Steve's temper that's holding it off. I mean, what's something like a little time travel to a company like Apple?

[Penman]

I've just got one problem with people who have a need for 60g ipods.

I UNDERSTAND there are people out there that have massive music libraries. I understand that you want it to be high quality stuff (not 128kb/s ****). And I realise you don't really want smart playlists or more than one pod cos you want it all on one device, its much cooler.

But just one thing. How the hell do you manage to accumulate so much music? Do you just have bad taste? I mean, ****, I couldn't find 20gb of music I like, and my tastes are rather eclectic. There simply is just too much crap out there and not enough good stuff for me to fathom how this could be so. Now, I understand we all have different tastes, for instance, whoever is reading this might consider my stuff crap, and their's good, but then their idea of quality will be parallel to mine, surely? As in, there is alot of crap around (and they'd consider the stuff I like a part of that).

Well, anyway, if someone can explain this to me, it'd be much appreciated...

How to find tons of music you love.

1) Start your collection with Elvis '68 comeback special - a gift on your fourth birthday from your six year old sister (it's not '68 either but the late '70's)
2) Discover Prince and Hip Hop in the early eighties. Seek out Princes influences (Joni Mitchell etc.) and the source of your favorite samples.
3) Have a mother who loves folk and country and a dad who loves jazz and classical
4) Love the radio
5) Ignore prejudice and admit you like great pop music - especially when people who whould have described The Beatles as a boy band were they middle aged in the '60's tell you that Justin Timberlake's never released a great pop song.
6) Buy as many records as you love.

That's what got me to the state I'm in now anyway...

[JoePike]

Then why is it that ATI got burned when they announced an Apple product? Why is it that everyone gets nervous whenever someone lets some info slip that may pertain to Apple's release plans?
For any other company its stupid. The company comes first. For Apple it’s the result of the control of a company by one man who has a fuse.
If there is a rational explanation I would love to here it. The only two possibilities I can see is a video type ipod being created for the high-end iPod that will be released later. Or manufacturing issues on the drive. The latter seems unlikely since Tosh was the one to announce the drives and the fact that Apple has ordered said drives. Would they make such a high key statement if they were having production issues? I mean that leaves the ball in Apple's court to say Oops sorry. Tosh is having problems and can't get their **** together. No something else is going on. I still think Apple and Jobs are trying to make Tosh sweat over this. Maybe I'm wrong. But the personality of Jobs makes me think I'm right.

He may be a bit short tempered, but it's because he has a vision and he wants that vision to come to fruition. The man is better described as a motivated genius than a raging cutthroat business wildman who holds personal grudges like a toddler. He gets a little miffed when somebody rains on his parade and leaks some info, but just like everybody else in the world he likes to be the one in the spotlight when he's got something really cool to show everybody. A 60GB iPod deserves a public announcement in a bonafide black-mock-turtleneck-and-jeans Steve speach, but it's no crucial enough for him to can the whole thing immediately if Toshiba accidentaly wanders on stage. We're talking about Apples new marquis product here, and a whole BUNCH of revenue. Nobody's ego outweighs their appetite for cash, even Mr. Steve Jobs.

-Joe

[rdowns]

True. But we are obviously limited by the technology on hand. If Apple HAS these drives available to them and are holding out on us because Steve is pissed. That, IMHO, isn't a business decision. That is a personal grudge and a possible earmark of someone who isn't totally stable. Steve wants to be pissed. That's fine. You don't possibly screw over the company you are leading because of it.

Lighten up. Your going off on a rumor. As *********g nuts as Jobs is, I don't ever see him doing something like this.

The only fact in this whole thing is that Toshiba said Sept-Oct (IIRC) for these drives to be shipping. If so, then Jobs/Apple were smart to not announce it. Now they can sell a ton of 20 and 40 GB and not end up with pre orders for a product with no revenue to book for the quarter.

[gadg]

For the sake of "let's read into things too much" .... on the dutch apple store, if I buy an iPod, it offers me a list of accesories I can buy with my iPod. All of them have a relation to the iPod, being your usual cases, Griffin, Belkin, etc. stuff.

And at the top of the list .... is the Airport Express. Hmm, could that be a sign of Airport/Airtunes support on the new iPod?

Probably not. The US store doesn't do it. But a guy can wish, can he not?

[iMeowbot]

And at the top of the list .... is the Airport Express. Hmm, could that be a sign of Airport/Airtunes support on the new iPod?
What I can picture appearing is a sleeve that attaches to an iPod much in the same way accessories are added to HP iPaqs. It would plug into the dock connector, contain its own battery, and send the iPod's digital output through an on-board Apple Lossless encoder and out to WiFi. The extra bulk would be okay here (and there wouldn't be much, WiFi already fits into PC Cards with room to spare), this accessory wouldn't be very useful outside the home. If done right, it could support all of 3G, mini and 4G. A firmware modification to support selecting a zeroconf target from the iPod's menu would be needed, but everything else the iPod needs is already there.

[the future]

What I can picture appearing is a sleeve that attaches to an iPod much in the same way accessories are added to HP iPaqs. It would plug into the dock connector, contain its own battery, and send the iPod's digital output through an on-board Apple Lossless encoder and out to WiFi. The extra bulk would be okay here (and there wouldn't be much, WiFi already fits into PC Cards with room to spare), this accessory wouldn't be very useful outside the home. If done right, it could support all of 3G, mini and 4G. A firmware modification to support selecting a zeroconf target from the iPod's menu would be needed, but everything else the iPod needs is already there.

I'll be first in line if/when this is released...

[agentmouthwash]

Why do people have such a hard time accepting the fact that some of us have over 40 gigs of music?

I have over 1000 cds. Even if I compressed them all at 128bits, 40gigs isn't enough.

[Trekkie]

Why do people have such a hard time accepting the fact that some of us have over 40 gigs of music?

I have over 1000 cds. Even if I compressed them all at 128bits, 40gigs isn't enough.

I don't have a hard time accepting that you could have over 40 gigs of music, I know I do. What I was wondering is why someone would need access to all of it at once? Considering that's several weeks of music and all I would wonder why you'd want to spend the money on a 60GB iPod (or bigger) when it first comes out instead of playing some of your more favorite CDs (you know, maybe a week to 10 days worth of music) on a 20 or 40...

That's all I'm thinking, just seems like everyone on these forums likes to bitch about something not releasing vs. buying anything from Apple ever. I'm sure that's not the case, but if you go look at every product release over the last year, there are at least 30% or so of the posts of 'i hate it becuase it doesn't do x' attached to the responses...

[agentmouthwash]

I don't have a hard time accepting that you could have over 40 gigs of music, I know I do. What I was wondering is why someone would need access to all of it at once? Considering that's several weeks of music and all I would wonder why you'd want to spend the money on a 60GB iPod (or bigger) when it first comes out instead of playing some of your more favorite CDs (you know, maybe a week to 10 days worth of music) on a 20 or 40...

That's all I'm thinking, just seems like everyone on these forums likes to bitch about something not releasing vs. buying anything from Apple ever. I'm sure that's not the case, but if you go look at every product release over the last year, there are at least 30% or so of the posts of 'i hate it becuase it doesn't do x' attached to the responses...


Well I currently use a 1st generation 10gb ipod and it's fine for now. I make playlists of what I want to listen to and I just sync those songs. It would be nice to eventually have all my music on my ipod so I can have the ultimate random play/shuffle experience. I'm not bitching about Apple not releasing a 60gb yet. I am not bitching about lack of wifi or video features on the new ipod. I don't care about that stuff.

I just wanted to make a statement that I am an example of somebody having over 40gb of music.

I'll probably update my ipod when the 60gb come out, but I'm not in a hurry. I can wait a few months. My goal is to eventually eleminate all my cds and have all my music with me at all times. And whatever I do need, ill buy from itunes.

[JFreak]

Why do people have such a hard time accepting the fact that some of us have over 40 gigs of music?

no, people don't have hard time accepting that others may have more music than what is in own bookshelf. do you have hard time accepting the fact that nobody can assume all music ever made would fit into an ipod? do you have any idea how much music a radio station has for example? do you think radio stations whine about apple not selling a big enough ipod?

get over it. use whatever you can. there will always be bigger and better, and you will always have chance to grow your music collection beyond the limit of the latest and greatest.

it is as if you would have bought a porsche and complain about not being able to drive it as fast as the car could go, because there are speed limits. sheesh...

[JFreak]

note to myself: don't always make car analogies. stop it here.

[brydeemer]

What about something so simple as an ultra tiny external firewire harddrive? Just put two of those bad boys in a super-slim case and you have a 120 Gig harddrive. Maybe it's that easy.

[agentmouthwash]

no, people don't have hard time accepting that others may have more music than what is in own bookshelf. do you have hard time accepting the fact that nobody can assume all music ever made would fit into an ipod? do you have any idea how much music a radio station has for example? do you think radio stations whine about apple not selling a big enough ipod?

get over it. use whatever you can. there will always be bigger and better, and you will always have chance to grow your music collection beyond the limit of the latest and greatest.

it is as if you would have bought a porsche and complain about not being able to drive it as fast as the car could go, because there are speed limits. sheesh...


what the hell? I didn't complain about anything. I just said that some people have more then 40 gigs of music. Why don't you read before you write?

[brydeemer]

Having read all these posts about who needs more than 40 gigs and who can listen to more than 40 gigs I have a different way of looking at things.

Let's say I fill up my 40 gig iPod. Certainly I'm not listening to every song everyday. So sure I could have a 15 and swap music back and forth every day, but the magic of having all of your music is that if you just happen to be in the mood for something you can queue it up and enjoy it. Or if you are talking amongst friends and somebody says "what was that song sung by the guy?" and you can say "I have that song right here!"

These are the reasons to have more than 15 or 20 gigs of music. I just never know ahead of time what I feel like listening to.

Bry

[iMeowbot]

These are the reasons to have more than 15 or 20 gigs of music. I just never know ahead of time what I feel like listening to.
It would be neat if iTunes could some way have a scheme to make good guesses as to what that music might be. Right now things can be done with last-played, ratings and numbers of listens, but it might be interesting if something like GroupLens (roughly, the same sort of technology that iTMS and Amazon use to recommend other buying choices) could be used to feed in things from the computer's library that might be interesting based on what you've recently listened to.

[edit: a specific application of the GroupLens technolgy itself is eBay's half.com service. The commercial version of the system is sold by Net Perceptions (http://www.netperceptions.com). ]

[Multimedia]

I don't have a hard time accepting that you could have over 40 gigs of music, I know I do. What I was wondering is why someone would need access to all of it at once? Considering that's several weeks of music and all I would wonder why you'd want to spend the money on a 60GB iPod (or bigger) when it first comes out instead of playing some of your more favorite CDs (you know, maybe a week to 10 days worth of music) on a 20 or 40...

That's all I'm thinking, just seems like everyone on these forums likes to bitch about something not releasing vs. buying anything from Apple ever. I'm sure that's not the case, but if you go look at every product release over the last year, there are at least 30% or so of the posts of 'i hate it becuase it doesn't do x' attached to the responses...Because iPods Are For More Than Just Music.

[Multimedia]

Well I currently use a 1st generation 10gb ipod and it's fine for now. I make playlists of what I want to listen to and I just sync those songs. It would be nice to eventually have all my music on my ipod so I can have the ultimate random play/shuffle experience. I'm not bitching about Apple not releasing a 60gb yet. I am not bitching about lack of wifi or video features on the new ipod. I don't care about that stuff.

I just wanted to make a statement that I am an example of somebody having over 40gb of music.

I'll probably update my ipod when the 60gb come out, but I'm not in a hurry. I can wait a few months. My goal is to eventually eleminate all my cds and have all my music with me at all times. And whatever I do need, ill buy from itunes.I'm With You. I need as big an iPod as I can get with the new interface. So I'm waiting for the 60 as well. I have a 2nd Gen 20. The 60 would still not be enough even with the 20 to store all my tunes plus files I want to have on hand.

[JFreak]

what the hell? I didn't complain about anything. I just said that some people have more then 40 gigs of music. Why don't you read before you write?

sorry about that. it just SOUNDED to me as if you were one of those whiners that cannot see that 40GB is plenty. i'm just tired of that and you were the victim. yes, many people have more than that, but one cannot take everything to go...

[Gordon Werner]

yes there is going to be a 60GB version of the iPod ... just it will be HP grey and not white.

[Multimedia]

yes there is going to be a 60GB version of the iPod ... just it will be HP grey and not white.I Expect A White Apple Model Also.

[Meall]

There is many reason you may want a 60gig iPod:

- you encode AAC at 192kbs insted of 128. That mean my 4300 songs (all original albums I have in my restroom) take 30gig, not 7500 song like apple reported at the time of a 30 gig model.
- you may wanna use Apple looseless format to listen on your very expensive stereo system (not a Sony bought with a rebate at WalMart)
- you may wanna use it as a firewire drive also.
- you may...

But you also can buy an iPod mini (or 2!) and transfert parts of your library when needed, and change it when you change your mind of the moment. That is an option I even considered. But sure I'll prefer to have all my music library with me without badering, which is very cool also.

But, for those who are dreaming:

- Apple may release a videoPod, but remember that Steve Jobs said many times last year that it is not a winning market, so I have reason to beleive it won't happen, unless he's playing marketing lies!
- Newton revival, SJ said recently Apple studyed it, but is was dismised, so forget it.
- iPod color with iPhoto library management? maybe. iPod can read your picture at the moment, but not show them. Most Pocket PC can do it and they are use ny many photoprah for that purpose. Knowing that most poeple were angry when Apple sells iPhoto for 49$ (for those not using iMovie, iDVD and GarageBand, that was it), that maybe the use of the 60gig. Manu rumors sites reported that the next gen had such feature, but it did not.
- Sure there is also the possibility that SJ just canceled the 60gig and we can continue to dream...

[Zaty]

One thing seems pretty clear to me: Regardless if Apple will use those 60 GB HDs for the iPod or not, they had to say they didn't plan to release a 60 GB iPod anytime soon in order to make people buy the 40 GB iPod. Secondly, I can see a 60 GB iPod but only if offers additional features such as Home on iPod or iPhoto library capability. I'm pretty sure there are not enough people out there who need 60 gigs just for music. As for Home on iPod, if Apple really is planning to introduce it, they will add this feature in Tiger not in Panther. Even the iPhoto library feature would need a new version of iPhoto - iPhoto 5. Releasing Tiger, iLife 05, 5G iPod and the PB G5 at the same time would create incredible revenues for Apple!

[~Shard~]

One thing seems pretty clear to me: Regardless if Apple will use those 60 GB HDs for the iPod or not, they had to say they didn't plan to release a 60 GB iPod anytime soon in order to make people buy the 40 GB iPod. Secondly, I can see a 60 GB iPod but only if offers additional features such as Home on iPod or iPhoto library capability. I'm pretty sure there are not enough people out there who need 60 gigs just for music. As for Home on iPod, if Apple really is planning to introduce it, they will add this feature in Tiger not in Panther. Even the iPhoto library feature would need a new version of iPhoto - iPhoto 5. Releasing Tiger, iLife 05, 5G iPod and the PB G5 at the same time would create incredible revenues for Apple!

This is a good point. Apple may not simply release the 60 GB iPod and leave it at that. Perhaps the reason they only released the 2 4G models right now and didn't wait for the 60 GB models to be ready and announce them all together is because the 60 GB model will bring some extra functionality to the line, so it won't simply be a matter of buying a 60 GB iPod for the storage abilities, but for increased functionality as well. That way, consumers will actually have to make a choice in which iPod to get based on other factors and not solely their music storage requirements. Steve may be addding some extra sizzle to the steak for the 60 GB iPod - if it's even called an iPod. ("PowerPod", anyone? ;) )

[X_Ranger]

Do you have 2 Ipods now to carry your entire collection with you?

I don't have any iPods now; that's why I'm waiting on that 60 gigger iPod. However, I do have the collection backup on two separate hard drives.

[JGowan]

I don't have a hard time accepting that you could have over 40 gigs of music, I know I do. What I was wondering is why someone would need access to all of it at once?
Laziness, YES! Tedious, NO!
Easy to answer... who in their right mind wants to have to sort through 96GB worth of music (yes, me) in order to find the best 40GB? When you have an ipod that is bigger than your collection, you can just drop the unit in the dock and it's updated. No effort at all.

Otherwise, it's just days of tweeking and fiddling -- and then going back and trying to remember just what you have.

It's just easier when dealing with the volume of music that some of us have. It's not really about needing to have ALL THE MUSIC / ALL THE TIME with you.

Vacations
What about going on Vacations or Business trips? What if you're going to be away from your computer for a very long time and want to have your music with you? There's many scenerios that people can justify in needing 40-60GBs of music with them. Many OPPONENTS of big drives ("why does one need so much music with them?" etc.) need to get a grip. Maybe a 4GB mini will do them. Fine. No ones pointing a finger and saying "Gee, what losers, they only have 4GBs of music". It goes both ways. Quit the nagging about how much space is or isn't needed.

Data Storage and transportation
If the ipod is good enough for Peter Jackson to use to haul the Dailys back and forth during shooting,... then it's good enough for me to use to bring hundreds of MBs worth of Photoshop files or several GBs of Video files that I need to work on at home -- sometimes, we have to bring our work home with us. I used to used a ZIP Drive... then a JAZ drive -- now, I'm covered with the IPOD.

High Encoding
You might think 128 AAC is ok, but what about the folks (me) who like to encode in higher quality? Maybe when the iPod first came out and all one had was 5GBs, 128bit MP3s seemed to be A-ok. But now, when 40GB are to be had, it just seems natural that re-encoding in higher bit rates is the natural thing to do.

[JGowan]

If Apple HAS these drives available to them and are holding out on us because Steve is pissed. That, IMHO, isn't a business decision. That is a personal grudge and a possible earmark of someone who isn't totally stable. Steve wants to be pissed. That's fine. You don't possibly screw over the company you are leading because of it.
What the frick?
This is possibly the dumbest thing I've heard lately. Because of Toshiba's mistep, many people who ordinarily would have bought a 40GB are now waiting because it's obvious that eventually these 60GB drives will be in the ipod. Missed sales, that's what Toshiba has cost Apple. But the masses don't generally follow Apple so closely so now, Apple is just going to maintain "that the 60GB is not in our plans right now".

Steady as she goes...
I totally believe that Apple is simply following their original plan of creating a new unit and only offering it as a 20 and a 40, but at reduced prices. If they had a 60GB unit out at $499, then they couldn't tout "HEY WE REDUCED OUR PRICES"... because the bottom 2 tier ipods (for the longest) have been $299 and $399. It would just be business as usual.

Something's Gotta Give
Also, they're changing their Included Offerings which is saving them money. Honestly, I don't care about the CASE or the REMOTE anyway. I never liked their idea of what a case was and just used the drawstring bag that was included. And the remote went unused on both my 30GB model and my last 40GB model. People are crying foul but I agree that something had to give, especially on this go-around when you're giving a 20GB model for $299. All of the most popular runners-up with the same size (Creative Zen Touch, $269; Rio Karma, $299; and the Dell Digital Jukebox, $279) all go for about the same price and they don't come an expensive docking station.

All Good Things Must Come To An End
We have to understand that, much like the iApps that we loved and used for FREE for so long or the Free Email and webspace that now Apple charges for as ".MAC": you can't have a free ride forever. Cases, remotes, docks... these all cost money. Apple needed to give that stuff away for awhile (a long while at that) in order to put them in the position of being #1. It helped some people make a decision of what to buy when the choice wasn't as clear. Now it's a no-brainer and people want the ipod. Time to cut the cord of the freebees.

The way I look at it, if the competition is selling a 20GB player for about $299, then getting an APPLE IPOD for the same price is a no-brainer--and if I have to spend a little more to get the extras I want, then it's worth it.

[MontgomeryBurns]

What I was wondering is why someone would need access to all of it at once? Considering that's several weeks of music..
This makes no sense. You can't listen to ALL of your music at ONCE regardless of whether you have 100gb or 100mb of music.

Larger sized mp3 players simply allow you to access ANY of it whenever you choose, not ALL of it at one time.

[JGowan]

Listen people:

Just because *you* have more than 40 gigs of music doesn't mean that more than 10% of the population does. By being on these forums alone you are *not* a typical consumer.

I would *like* a 60 gig version myself, but don't say someone is "wrong" for saying most people don't have that much music... because they don't.Most likely, most people don't need a computer any more powerful than the old 600MHz iMac -- that doesn't mean that people don't want something "that more than meets their needs"... maybe they'd like to have something to "grow into". I bought my first Mac in 1995 (a 7100 powermac) and was told of the 500MB Harddrive that came with it: "Oh, that's a lot of space. You'll never use all of that!" We all know how rediculous that is, though at the time, it seemed very reasonable. It was also reasonable for a few hundred megs of ram to set a person back $1500. Fortunately, technology marches on.

Are you really in any position to say what most people have or what their needs are? I think it's fair if you'd like to share YOUR experiences, but I think it's overstepping a bit when you start talking about what "most people" don't need.

When I bought IPOD #1 on November 12, 2001, 5GBs was enough space... but as Music became a more impotant part of my life now that the iPod had opened up a whole new world of portability and ease-of-use, I began aquiring much more Music and Audio Books.

Since then, I have bought hundreds of CDs on Amazon, eBay and Half-Priced Books and re-encoded much of my discs several times, always upping the bitrate. Now that Apple has brought out their lossless encoding, it is only a matter of time before I begin possibly the last time of encoding of my platters to go on my latest player, IPOD #6 (thanks to CompUSA's TAP plan).

I think the fact that Lacie has a 1.6TB drive out now, goes to prove that ONE CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MUCH SPACE.

[JGowan]

According to my calculations 110GB of music with AAC encoding it would take approx. 90 days to listen too all of it without sleep. Allowing yourself 8 hours of sleep you add another 30 days. So it would take you all year, all day, to listen to your entire library 3 times. That's incredible!Yes it is. But consider all of the lonely hours we spent at our lonely little desks without all of our music to listen to before the IPOD? When a person listens to 8-10 hours of music on a daily basis, one can listen to a lot of music in a month's time.

[rogo]

And, again, for the deaf... THE 60GB DRIVE IS NOT OUT YET. THERE CANNOT BE A 60GB IPOD WITHOUT IT.