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4th Generation iPods?

Gimzotoy said:
Not to sound overly pessimistic... but the iPod's battery life is already on the short side of the spectrum. A color screen and likely faster processor to handle it (and maybe movies?) aren't going to help...

I think I'd prefer a plain brushed-aluminum greyscale iPod with the mini's click-wheel and some sort of bluetooth streaming option. That would be pretty near perfect. I can dream...
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Battery technology can go a long way in over a year. especially since apple probably saw this problem 2 years ago and have probably had a battery company solving this for them.

if they can have it do video and all that jazz and at the least maintain exceed its current battery life then there should be no problems.

Oh yea i like the ipod buttons just the way they are. the mini buttons are sweet but are necessary. It would be sweet if u could connect this to your DVR via firewire and download ur shows. My dvr has firewire although the cable company won't tell me what its for and its seems the deactivated. hehe that would probably not happen seeing as how hollywood would go nuts.
 
This sounds perfect for me. I wanted to get the iPod and the Media Reader. If this has the photo view, that would be absolutely perfect.
 
carbonmotion said:
bs...nobody can fit a video player and a large hardcore battery pack inside an enclosure remotely close in size to the current iPods.
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Well, previous MP3 Players were enormous; when the first gen. iPod came out it was tiny compared to the other choices. Creative already has the "Portable Media Center"... although it's not tiny, it does "fit a video player and large battery pack" (doesn't officially state battery life on website, but I assume it's decent)

Who knows, maybe Apple has a few tricks up their sleeve on this one
 
Gimzotoy said:
Not to sound overly pessimistic... but the iPod's battery life is already on the short side of the spectrum. A color screen and likely faster processor to handle it (and maybe movies?) aren't going to help...
Click to expand...

I bet apple is going to go from back-lit to frontlit like Nintendo did with the Gameboy Advance Sp, the solution let it get 10 hours of battery life off a small li-ion battery and the display still looked great. Now imagine an iPod, supporting about 256 colors (wayyyy less than a gameboy) with no need for any graphics work (just cache & hd stuff) and I think it'll still roll out 8 hours easy.

Lets cross our fingers..I think alternately multi-color backlighting would be a viable option if full color takes up too much battery. Panasonic does that with some of their phones and it looks great.

Edit: Maybe we can look forward to an mini iPod mini in the future?
 
I thought Jobs said he didn't want to do the video on the screen. maybe they just don't play movies, but its color, use the video out for the movies. I dunno. Has anyone seen the iPod mini in person? I'm really curious about that new scroll wheel. God, I'm going to end up getting a third iPod, aren't I? Sigh.
 
Awesome if true...

This is the iPod I've been waiting for. I recently returned from vacation and it was a slight pain figuring out how to best get the photos over to my parent's to show them. Uploading them back to the camera's card was flaky and too slow, plus limited by the size of the card. I ended up putting them on an ipod mini and hooking that to my brother's powerbook. It would have been much simpler to have a video out on the iPod!

I love the mini's control wheel—moving that over is smart. I also love the mini's smudge-free case, though that wasn't mentioned in this rumor.

I'll be first in line to buy one.
 
carletonmusic said:
Why would you want to store photos on your ipod....and then also look at them on a tv. Big deal.
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Obviously someone here can't see over the hill. I can give you one answer right away. You store all your photos on your iPod, then you go on a family vacation to meet relatives. You plug your iPod into a TV then everyone in the family can view your pictures on a big screen large enough even for your visually impaired 90 year old grandmother to see... couple that with iPhoto sideshow technology and you have a monster of a feature.

I've done that a few times with my digital camera and it's not the simplest thing to get rolling. I'm sure Apple can make this a cinch and give it the expected ooohs and ahhhhs as well.
 
Ja Di ksw said:
I thought Jobs said he didn't want to do the video on the screen. maybe they just don't play movies, but its color, use the video out for the movies. I dunno. Has anyone seen the iPod mini in person? I'm really curious about that new scroll wheel. God, I'm going to end up getting a third iPod, aren't I? Sigh.
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lol, same here. I've got two iPods... I dont want to have to get a third.... but oh how I want a third :D

(rather have a PowerBook G5 though.... perhaps next tuesday :D )
 
utilize iLife

Personally I believe that if this rumor is true then Apple is looking towards fully syncronizing the iPods with their iLife software. I mean think how awsome it would be to be able to edit your movie on iMovie, add your own song to it from GarageBand, and then play it on ur iPod or television throught the video out. I feel even though the battery has been a problem in the past the iPod has made Apple a lot of $$ and they will do quite a bit of R & D to solve that problem and make the 4th Gen. Dominate the market even more! :D
 
The perfect professional accessory..

At least for me. It would've let me leave the PowerBook at home on my last trip through Cambodia.

Seriously, if I can take along my camera and an iPod that lets me listen to some music, store some notes, and store my photos in a whopping 50GB of space.. holy cow..

If I go on a trip, my 10GB 2G pod is great.. I never get bored of my 2200 songs (give or take). Hell, my whole collection can fit in 30 GB.

If the new pod has video out, I can take a look at my photos at the end of the day on the TV in the hotel and see which shots I should go out and try again tomorrow. Wonderful!!

Also, take your 4G iPod to friends' houses after family vacations. Your iPhoto slideshow, complete with music from your iTunes playlist will all play out wonderfully through the audio and video outs.

Apple has just reinvented the mind-numbing slide projection evenings of yesteryear.

We'll soon have to understand that the iPod is NOT an MP3 player, it's a personal/portable digital device for all the fun things we do in life that don't require a full computer.

EVENTUALLY, I see it as your portable video player.. not yet.. maybe 6G or 7G.. play your home movies you made on iMovie for your friends without lugging a computer around.

Yeah, I ramble, but this device excites me.. stupid Apple.
 
i don't know what kind of hullcinagin you're smoking, but certainly not the same as mine. Its hella stronger. Look, if apple could do all that and still maintain the same batter life/case size/case weight all the while keeping it in a marketable price range, then they would surely be getting this technology from black military projects. There is simply no consumer grade technology on the horizon for this year and maybe even next that can produce the results described by the rumor. sides, macrumor makes stuff up all the time. when was the last time a really specific rumor came true? like, never!?

Beowulf said:
Well, previous MP3 Players were enormous; when the first gen. iPod came out it was tiny compared to the other choices. Creative already has the "Portable Media Center"... although it's not tiny, it does "fit a video player and large battery pack" (doesn't officially state battery life on website, but I assume it's decent)

Who knows, maybe Apple has a few tricks up their sleeve on this one
Click to expand...
 
first of all

apparently you naysayers have not seen the lyra from RCA or the portable media player from sony. close to the same form factor and plays video and mp3s. my clie can play an entire movie on it's screen without going dead from battery drain.

I also imagine that if you are going to sit still long enough to watch movies from it on your tv, that you surely could manage to plug it in.

I agree that it would be nice to have the CF reader capability built in. It would be nice to use with my canon.

naysayers also obviously have no marketing savvy, and don't realize how large the market is for this (or you are just old) a toy manufacturer is selling this crappy little BW video player that has like a 1.5 inch screen and it is flying off the shelves. Kids and teenagers are gadget lovers and like to sneak things in during school. kids parents pay for iPods. If it still plays music and also has the aforementioned capabilities you don't think it will sell? hmmm... more features in the same form factor, for about the same cash... no way would i buy that!!

also the lcds we use to review footage shot on our dv cams are about the same form factor as an iPod. how nice would that be?

not to mention the upteen thousands of portable tvs sold every year with 2.5 inch screens or less.

damn... open your eyes and minds a little people.

don't make devils advocate a career choice.

the marketing is there trust me. the kids my friend teaches sneak their ps1s into class connected to a 2.5in protable tv so they can play it from their backpack, and they all talk about the rumors here of video iPod.

just my two cents...

PEACE,
technocoy
 
I hope its able to record live audio, ala minidisc. It would be great to record concerts, or a school lecture, anything. That is the only reason why I still have a minidisc. If ipod were able to record audio that would be the ultimate for me.
 
No FM Radio?

Apple really needs to include an FM Radio tuner into the iPod. Many gyms have closed-circuit televisions that you can only listen to by tuning in your portable FM radio into the appropriate FM station. And even people like myself with 12,000 songs in iTunes STILL like listening to the radio on a regular basis. I CERTAINLY hope that Apple adds an FM radio to the 4th generation of the iPod; otherwise, I will yet again not be buying an iPod. Apple hasn't gotten me to buy one yet, and I certainly won't be buying one until an FM radio tuner is added.
 
Apple could implement wireless networking on the iPod and then you could, transfer your iTMS login data into your iPod, and then using the colour LCD, go to the iTMS and buy and download your music to iPod.

Purchase music on the go!
 
paulie said:
Apple has just reinvented the mind-numbing slide projection evenings of yesteryear.
Click to expand...

I think you might be onto something Paulie. My father just mentioned to me the other day how they were going to have a 'slide' party and bring out all their old slides, each couple gets a carousel to show off, and they're all going to dress up like it's the 70's again....

I know at my last Christmas, I had the digicam and at the end of the day would load the pics onto the powerbook, hook it up to the TV, and we would all sit around and watch the slideshow.

Slideshows are coming back - before, everyone used to shoot slide film, it gave the best colour and image, and then everyone could see them on screen. When we moved to 35mm negative film, we just couldnt do that anymore, you have to sit around and look at an album. Now that we've gone digital, the oppotunitiy is there to have slideshows again.

I think this device may be a little early for it's time, if it's aimed at a slideshow market. Give it a few more years, a little more digial camera penetration, with 30-40 year olds being more accustomed to all of today's technology, and they'll love it. I don't think you'll see the under 30 market being the ones to want to show off the slideshow, it's an 'older' (no offense to anyone :D) person's activity in my opinion.
 
leenoble said:
There is no VIDEO iApp which is used for storing/transferring movies so this would have to be forthcoming too. And seriously how many films are you going to fit in 50Gb. Heck even Macs don't come with HDs big enough to store multiple movies in an iApp type library.
This is NOT FOR MOVIES.
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:rolleyes:

Well... it might not be used for the types of movies you're thinking of (films copied from DVD's). But Apple does have this little program called iMovie, and with their "digital lifestyle" I could certainly see them making an iPod where you could store a Quicktime movie that you built using iMovie (or Final Cut Express/Pro).

Then you could go to grandma's house, hook your iPod to her TV and show her the video you made of her granddaughter...
 
I think we could see 50GB models but I'm not sure about other stuff. Then we'd end up with Apple having to develop 4 different software versions (ok so 2 may become obsolete).

This sounds like everything Jobs said they wouldn't do. Colour screens and video out? Battery life?

And why would they go back to the old style button layout? While the doubling up of buttons is cool and it is nice to have consistency between regular and mini iPods, this was done on the mini mainly due to space restrictions. A change to that style on the regular iPod would be like admitting defeat on the 3rd gen button placement, which is bad marketing.

Just my 2p but I say there's some BS to this story.
 
proglife said:
I'll take mine in Powerbook G5 flavor :)

It never gets old, does it?
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i'm holding out for the DUAL G5 iPod myself...

no, this would be GREAT news. my 20GB is full & i've been waiting paitiently for a new rev. two features that i have really wanted have been a color LCD (album art, anyone?) and the new click-wheel (improvement on an already great interface).

bring it...
 
agentmouthwash said:
so who is going to buy a 3g HP ipod when the 4g Apple ipods are available?
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Someone who doesn't have iPhoto and any other associated apps that will use the features of the new iPod. It'll be just like when the iPod first came out, Mac only. I think Apple needs to have a better model available once the HP iPod is released, then they can still look better and have the best thing on the market.

The release of the iPod mini was a way for Apple to advance the current iPod with all new features, while keeping all those happy that just wanted a music device. Reposition the iPod mini into the iPod's place (and continually increase hard drive size) while advancing the features of the iPod - possible with an increase in physical size. I think that keeps everyone happy.
 
Sweet. I just put my 30gb up on eBay. That's what I did last time around the time when they were going to announce the 3g iPods...when I read on Macrumors that they were probably going to be coming out in a week, I sold my 2g when they were still getting top dollar. Then the next week, sure enough...new iPods :)
 
Waiting will have paid off!

Last year (Feb 03) after vacation in San Francisco, I noticed the amount of people riding Muni and Bart with iPods. This year's trip (Feb '04) to SF, showed EVEN more people, a 2x-fold growth, in the number of iPod users. Although I enjoy taking my iBook with me on trips, it can be somewhat unwieldy. I only used it this February to upload my pics from my Canon Powershot G5 and make room on the CF-Card for more pics the following day.

It would be so refreshing not to have to lug my iBook around the airport, exposing it to ignorant security personnel, and theft.

The expected 4G iPod rumor is a breath of fresh air. It would be great to leave the iBook behind, and use the huge 50 gig HD on the iPod to upload pics. Even better, rip 'Alien' and 'Aliens', and possibly "Big Momma's House' DVDs to the iPod, while still having room for my 1000+ mp3 collection. Sounds like a great revision to the iPod line.

I REALLY do hope that Mr. Jobs has in fact been lurking around these forums, and has heard the clamor for AM/FM tuning.

I bought my 2G iPod in March 2003, and was wise to wait until the 4G iPod's introduction to trade up. Will probably sell my current iPod to a good friend for $50-$75, and use that money for the 4G iPod.

This is going to be an interesting year with:
Rev. B PowerMac G5, G5-based PBs, and the 4G iPod.
 
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