How about a 120GB (hard drive) widescreen video iPod for $350 and a 16GB flash widescreen video iPod for $250? People with larger music libraries would, of course, get the 120GB, and people with smaller libraries could get the 16GB flash one and enjoy the battery life and speed benefits. Not sure what would happen with the nano product line, though.
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iPod Apple to abandon next gen HDD based iPod...
- Thread starter davidjearly
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I believe that the current iPod hard drives are essentially hybrid drives (meaning, hard drive plus a large flash read-ahead cache). That's why you get significantly better battery life if you don't skip past songs when playing. Note that they aren't "integrated" hybrid drives, but the concept is essentially the same.
The Nano would get cheaper.
You are correct. The iPod typically has 32 MB of cache to store read ahead. There is 64 MB on the higher end models.
Playlists are cached ahead and lead to greater battery life. You'll notice that when a 5/5.5G model plays a video the hard drive is only active when you start to play the video or you skip around it. It's cached otherwise.
I just can't see this happening within the next 2 years. Eventually? Of course, but right now doing it would be foolish and cost-prohibitive.
It's not flash, it's some sort of RAM. The difference is kinda of petty, except that I believe flash memory is much cheaper per MB than RAM is, which is why there's only a few megs of cache (32/64 as mentioned) as opposed to gigs.
Where do you go / what do you do that requires you to have music with you, period?
It's not about "requires". It's about "desires". A primary draw of the full-size iPod has always been that you can put all of your music on it, and play any song you fancy at any time you fancy to hear it.
Personally, I could get by with 32GB of iPod today, as I'm doing just fine with 40GB and my music library is stable at about 26-30 GB. But if I get a new iPod, I want to start watching videos on it too when stuck places, and for that my wife's 60GB is barely adequate. Granted, video isn't to the point of "have everything with you at all times", but I'd like a decent collection of vid-casts and shows to choose from, especially when a good portion of those will be skipped over because I didn't like them.
Could I live with a 32GB device? Sure. It'd just be a lot more up-front work, a lot more often that I'm stuck with nothing good to watch, and in general would make me a significantly less happy customer.
I still don't understand. Will your iPod spontaneously combust when new ones come out?
Odds are that if they do drop in capacity for a few months (which is an almost certainly not-gonna-happen, at least to the 80GB), they'll exceed that capacity within a year. Remember the nano?
Moreover, you're not locked into anything with FairPlay that you haven't been for decades, and you can't really call it "lock in" when you opened the door and put yourself in the room. I'm still locked into LPs and 45's by your reasoning.
IF this is true, I see it as a business move by Apple. Before now, the draw for a new iPod has been storage increases. Sure, along the way, we've had the addition of color screens that did photos, some cosmetic changes and with the 5Gen, we now can play video. But what has been constant has been the increasing hard drive.
Now, Apple has touchscreen and all that goes with that. Very cool. But if you offer it as 100GB or "just" an 80GB drive, people who own are going to feel pretty satisfied and not very likely to buy newer ones in the future. With 100GB, most people would say, "hey, I've got all the iPod I need for quite a while". Apple does not want this:
Offering lower FLASH DRIVE-based iPods at smaller than desirable sizes is really the only feasible thing as Flash Memory is so expensive now BUT it is also a way of NOT offering the ULTIMATE IPOD which would cannibalize Apple's next offering in a player with more memory.
Apple can tout:
• Thinner than ever
• Bigger screen (I'm hoping)
• Touch Screen with Cover Flow
• Faster access with no waiting or stalling
• No moving parts: player will last longer
• Improved battery life
• Oh... yeah... only 32GB
The iPod is getting so cool -- and now with the TRUE VIDEO IPOD® coming out inevitably, Apple will need some way to keep them waiting for the next big thing... in this case, it's space (again), except this time it's of a different variety. The type that actually will benefit everyone in the long run, make money for Apple and prolong the life of iPods made with it.
My guess is that when (or if) these are released, the next version of iTunes will allow the user to easily set up multiple iPod Playlists. Not a Playlist of songs but a Playlist of Songs, Videos, Games, Notes & Photos. This way, a person can come home and sync the iPod and completely rewrite over the entire iPod and replace with an content for a new mood of content for the next day. Writing to flash multiple times won't hurt the memory like writing and re-writing to a normal hard drive would. But, Apple has to have a way to have this be simple and easy to do so that people aren't dissapointed in having to manually select through 200GB worth of music, photos, games and videos to find 25GB worth of NEW stuff everytime. Creating multiple "iPod Playlists" at one sitting would make subsequent syncs painless and thus an enjoyable experience.
Now, Apple has touchscreen and all that goes with that. Very cool. But if you offer it as 100GB or "just" an 80GB drive, people who own are going to feel pretty satisfied and not very likely to buy newer ones in the future. With 100GB, most people would say, "hey, I've got all the iPod I need for quite a while". Apple does not want this:
Offering lower FLASH DRIVE-based iPods at smaller than desirable sizes is really the only feasible thing as Flash Memory is so expensive now BUT it is also a way of NOT offering the ULTIMATE IPOD which would cannibalize Apple's next offering in a player with more memory.
Apple can tout:
• Thinner than ever
• Bigger screen (I'm hoping)
• Touch Screen with Cover Flow
• Faster access with no waiting or stalling
• No moving parts: player will last longer
• Improved battery life
• Oh... yeah... only 32GB
The iPod is getting so cool -- and now with the TRUE VIDEO IPOD® coming out inevitably, Apple will need some way to keep them waiting for the next big thing... in this case, it's space (again), except this time it's of a different variety. The type that actually will benefit everyone in the long run, make money for Apple and prolong the life of iPods made with it.
My guess is that when (or if) these are released, the next version of iTunes will allow the user to easily set up multiple iPod Playlists. Not a Playlist of songs but a Playlist of Songs, Videos, Games, Notes & Photos. This way, a person can come home and sync the iPod and completely rewrite over the entire iPod and replace with an content for a new mood of content for the next day. Writing to flash multiple times won't hurt the memory like writing and re-writing to a normal hard drive would. But, Apple has to have a way to have this be simple and easy to do so that people aren't dissapointed in having to manually select through 200GB worth of music, photos, games and videos to find 25GB worth of NEW stuff everytime. Creating multiple "iPod Playlists" at one sitting would make subsequent syncs painless and thus an enjoyable experience.
Umm no. Both LP's and 45's can be output without sound degradation. The same can't be said of burning to CD then reripping to nonDRM AAC.
The core reason that I went with Apple and the iPod at the time was it was the only 60GB PMP on the market, which was the only thing that could fit my collection. (48GB, I think, at the time.) Well that and iTunes.
With 4-5GB of space and shrinking I'm going to need to replace it in the coming year unless I want to start carrying around subsets of my collection. Which I don't. I purchased the iPod with the intent of having my entire collection at my fingertips. I spend about 5 hours in my car every day. I want to be able to pull up something at the spur of the moment. My iPod is my jukebox. I don't want to think about what music to bring along. I just want it all with me.
EDIT: Then again if this does get announced I can quick pick up an 80GB iPod which should last me a couple years. By that time hopefully flash density should surpass the ability to do 80GB....hmmm
I'm sorry if you can't see this but moving backwards on disk space is not only a bad idea its critically stupid. Who has ever heard of people needing less space when they decide to upgrade? I don't know about you but when I go out and buy a new hard drive I'm not looking at its cache size or spindle speed as the primary factor when I'm buying a new hard drive. Similarly I know of only two people that upgraded based on the iPod's video playback abilities. Everyone else that I know, about 15 people out of about 28 ipod users, of did it because: A. Their battery was dieing and they would rather spend the money on a new device. B. they are running out of space and need a larger drive. C. the device died out of warrantee. A and C are born out of necessity. B is the real reason why many people upgrade.
My only real choice is to try and find out if HYMN still is working on iTunes7. Yah its a breach of license with Apple and iTMS but frankly if they do pull such a stunt I frankly wouldn't give a crap about their licensing.
As for walking into the room. I did so with the assumption that Apple and the iPod would grow with my needs. This is not growing. Its not even stagnating. I mean seriously 2 years to go from 60GB to 80GB to a theoretical 64GB. . . That deserves a big 'o Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
But again this is all speculation and I understand that but if it happens....
thankfully I only have a few hundred iTMS tracks. So if Apple does pull this crap I can flip em the bird and leave.EDIT: Hmm. What I COULD do is wait for an announcement, if this does occur I could then pick up an 80GB iPod before its discontinued. That would last me a few years. By the time I'm ready to upgrade hopefully SSR density would be good enough to surpass 80GB. Hmm. Not a perfect solution. But it would work.
Hell just put those in a Video iPod and use the rest of the space for battery so it has a longer battery.
Also the hybrid thing is a good idea. Videos would probably the best thing to put on flash, since they have the largest data rate for watching. Especially since you usually only have to stir up the disck per song, since the cache holds about 1 song I believe. So, video would be helped a lot from Flash in terms of battery, but music less so. I say 4gb plus 30GB HD is nice. Or 8GB with 80. I dont know if 8 is enough for videos but... for now it has to do. I mean the price for 8GB is the same as a 30GB HD so....
Actually, each time you play a record, you degrade the quality. Moreover, all of the sub-$200 turntables suck, which means I'm locked into a narrow band of supported hardware of sufficient quality. The point is that time causes things to change, and customers move on and adapt. We all discard sizable investments and move on. I'm not crying over cassette tapes, and I'm not stealing every album I bought on tape, because that's not the way it works.
And it worked at the time. You can't expect future products to scale with your future needs precisely; nothing in the future is guaranteed. Grumbling about selling off all your Apple products because the capacity didn't increase is going a bit overboard.
Well, I do look at those statistics, because I already have enough persistent storage for archival data (in the terabytes), and the key issue now is increasing disk performance. "Moving backwards" is not critically stupid if it allows for other possibilities which are more important in the grand scheme of things--3-4 times the battery life, a substantially larger display and more powerful SOC capable of more advanced features (Coverflow on the iPod, wifi access, etc.). These features are a great deal more important to most users than simply increasing capacity. I don't give a crap about video, either.
That said, it's inconceivable that they would kill off the high-capacity iPod entirely if they were to introduce this hypothetical product. You'll get you 100 or 120GB iPod one day, but maybe the rest of us think that 15,000 songs in our pocket is way beyond overkill already and wouldn't it be nice if music playback lasted 40 hours instead of 14? Wouldn't CoverFlow be a nice way to scroll through hundreds of albums? 64GB in something with barely more surface area than a floppy disk--just six or seven years ago, we were amazed at 10GB hard drives. Three years ago, you could barely get 60GB in a notebook. If 80GB stays the biggest iPod for a while, you'd be hard pressed to find something less sad.
That's just utterly ridiculous. You're contemplating throwing a tantrum and violating valid terms because there's a chance they might not come out with a bigger iPod. If that isn't the epitome of spoiled, I don't know what is.
That was because back then those flash-players had maybe 128MB of RAM in 'em.
That doesn't explain why there the larger drives are so much more expensive. Under that logic, ALL flash chips would be super expensive, not just 32 GB. Plus, someone said they go for $2499. I could understand if 32 GB cost a lot more do it being harder to make since they're new, but not just b/c everyone wants a profit. I'm just surprised that they're so much more expensive than lower capacity flash chips, regardless of reason.
Here's my prediction (take it for what it's worth).
Apple will start transitioning the iPod line to Flash starting some time this year. They'll wait until their costs for flash fall to roughly $5/GB.
At this point, the Shuffle & Nano will drop in price, creating a continuous $50 price gap from the 1GB Shuffle to the 8GB Nano. The 30GB iPod 5.5G will become the 32GB iPod 6G, and the iPod 6G will have 2 HDD-based models at 80GB and 120GB.
It's possible that an early price point may allow them to introduce a 16GB Nano, but I don't expect it.
At this point, the line-up will look something like this:
$49 iPod Shuffle 1GB [flash]
$99 iPod Nano 2GB [flash]
$149 iPod Nano 4GB [flash]
$199 iPod Nano 8GB [flash]
$249 iPod (6G) 32GB [flash]
$299 iPod (6G) 80GB [hdd]
$399 iPod (6G) 120GB [hdd]
$499 iPhone 8GB [flash]
$599 iPhone 16GB [flash]
I figure the iPod 6G will essentially be the iPhone without phone features.
Notice the price-point spread matches their current spread.
Apple will start transitioning the iPod line to Flash starting some time this year. They'll wait until their costs for flash fall to roughly $5/GB.
At this point, the Shuffle & Nano will drop in price, creating a continuous $50 price gap from the 1GB Shuffle to the 8GB Nano. The 30GB iPod 5.5G will become the 32GB iPod 6G, and the iPod 6G will have 2 HDD-based models at 80GB and 120GB.
It's possible that an early price point may allow them to introduce a 16GB Nano, but I don't expect it.
At this point, the line-up will look something like this:
$49 iPod Shuffle 1GB [flash]
$99 iPod Nano 2GB [flash]
$149 iPod Nano 4GB [flash]
$199 iPod Nano 8GB [flash]
$249 iPod (6G) 32GB [flash]
$299 iPod (6G) 80GB [hdd]
$399 iPod (6G) 120GB [hdd]
$499 iPhone 8GB [flash]
$599 iPhone 16GB [flash]
I figure the iPod 6G will essentially be the iPhone without phone features.
Notice the price-point spread matches their current spread.
Here's why larger flash drives are so much more expensive...
Smaller flash drives use a single flash chip, and therefore can use much simpler controller hardware.
Larger flash drives use multiple top-end chips, boosting their cost and requiring more complex controller hardware to map 2, 4, 8, 16, or even 32 flash chips as a single contiguous memory space. It's kind of like adding a RAID card to the flash drive.
Essentially, up to the point where the flash drive becomes larger than the largest flash chip, the prices scale linearly. Once you break that point, the price curve starts to go up because of the added complexity & parts cost.
Of course, there's also the point at which so few people are interested in flash drives of that size that you don't get the same economies of scale any more, so the price point takes yet another jump.
If Samsung can currently sell 8Gb (Giga-bit) flash chips to Apple for $10 apiece (as I've seen claimed through several threads), and they've just announced 16Gb flash chips, then flash costs are about to take another dip.
I'd say if they could do 8Gb (1GB) at $10/chip, they'll probably be able to manage 16Gb (2GB) at $15-$17/chip, dropping the cost to $7.5-8.5/GB. That starts to make more uses of flash economical.
As for why disk-drives don't follow the same price curve, it's pretty simple. The physical materials cost of a 10 GB drive don't *significantly* differ from the physical materials cost of a 500 GB drive. You save a bit by reducing the platter count, but the shell, motors, etc. end up costing about the same, and those make up the bulk of the materials cost. The biggest difference between a high capacity disk and a lower capacity disk are the controller cards mounted to the drive. The biggest difference between high capacity flash and lower capacity flash is the number of flash chips.
In short, disk drives will always be less expensive than flash drives, even when flash drives are less expensive than disk drives. (Yes, I meant exactly what I said.) The high-end of disk drives will always be less expensive than the high-end of flash drives because doubling the storage of a flash drive doubles the component price, while doubling the storage of a disk drive adds some fraction to the component price.
That's what I thought. I'm just surprised all the extra cards (plus profit, etc.) cost that much more.
No they don't. Partially due to market forces and largely due to density and manufacturing process (and defect rate), prices are not linear. Even just isolating defect rate, capacity increases on the same process result in exponential error rates.
Just imagine a hypothetical product composed of five cells. If the error rate is 1 per 1000 cells, the finished product will have close to a 1 in overall 1000 error rate. Products with 100 such cells are likely to have a much higher total an error rate on the order of 10 per 1000, which increases per-unit cost.
Once you break that point, the price curve starts to go up because of the added complexity & parts cost.
Of course, there's also the point at which so few people are interested in flash drives of that size that you don't get the same economies of scale any more, so the price point takes yet another jump.
Market forces and higher density capacities are too complex to explain briefly, but they also contribute to higher prices per unit.
Yes, but the reason that's true is not the difference in material goods, but rather maturity of the technology. The modern hard drive has been around for 20 years (there's no real difference between SCSI/IDE/SATA in the drive itself), and the technology has matured considerably. When some new product replaces our current understanding of the hard drive (holographic or some other form of optical storage, for example), flash technology will be far cheaper. The major force driving flash prices down are maturity and volume. There's only been a huge market for it in the past decade. Five years from now, what we're paying now will seem absurd.
Price per byte has to drop over time absent any sweeping changes to access speed or some other feature that can seize importance. If they cut access times by a factor of 10 over hard drives, but price per byte triples, there might still be a market for it even if most people still use magnetic hard drives.
FTFY.
If I want to go somewhere else because Apple isn't providing what I want I shouldn't loose my music because of their DRM scheme.
In an ideal world, absolutely. But if I buy an American car, I'll need English tools to work on it, and my wheels and tires won't fit because the bolt offsets and sizes will be different. The leaf cover won't fit, and I'll probably need different oil and air filters, not to mention different oil.FTFY.
If you want to stop buying something and buy something else because you don't like the current offerings, that's fine. But the reality is that you knew when you bought the music that it only worked with iPods. There were no intimations or offerings to the contrary. You knew that if you decided to get rid of your iPod, you'd be limited to listening to that music on audio CDs and on iTunes.
I bought a set of blades for my food processor two weeks ago. They will only work in Cuisinart food processors. I also bought a Black and Decker food processor yesterday because it was available for an unbeatable price and I couldn't resist having a second one around. The $75 I spent on those blades doesn't lock me into Cuisinart, because I chose to buy them knowing that they only worked in a handful of Cuisinart appliances. Lock in implies deliberate force and no choice. You always had the option not to use iTMS for your iPod, but you chose not to exercise it. Now you can choose to use something else.
Once upon a time, "reasons that make a change more difficult or less desirable" were called things to consider or and went under a little column called "cons." I guess now if I have a kid, that little rugrat will be guilty of locking me into a minivan? If I buy a DVD player, I suppose I'm locked into DVDs even if I want get the VHS because it's cheap. If I buy brown shoelaces, I'm locked in to brown shoes. Wow, suddenly nothing's my fault, even if I knew the consequences all along. I like it.
In my humble opinion...
...Until someone comes up with a huge leap forward in flash memory technology, don't expect Apple to offer an all-flash memory iPod with more than 16 GB when Apple does their hardware "refresh" of the iPod this coming fall.
I think Apple will offer this iPod lineup by fall 2007:
Shuffle: 1 GB at lower cost, new 2 GB model
nano: 2 GB dropped, 4 and 8 GB models drop in price, new 16 GB model arrives at same cost as current 8 GB model
"Regular" iPod: new model derived from iPhone (e.g., 16:10 aspect ratio full screen, touchscreen controls) in 80 or 120 GB hard disk storage capacities.
By 2009, when flash memory technologies are vastly improved, Apple will finally drop the hard disk for storage on their "video" iPods and offer them with either 60 GB (low end), 100 GB (midrange) and 150 GB (high end) flash memory storage.
...Until someone comes up with a huge leap forward in flash memory technology, don't expect Apple to offer an all-flash memory iPod with more than 16 GB when Apple does their hardware "refresh" of the iPod this coming fall.
I think Apple will offer this iPod lineup by fall 2007:
Shuffle: 1 GB at lower cost, new 2 GB model
nano: 2 GB dropped, 4 and 8 GB models drop in price, new 16 GB model arrives at same cost as current 8 GB model
"Regular" iPod: new model derived from iPhone (e.g., 16:10 aspect ratio full screen, touchscreen controls) in 80 or 120 GB hard disk storage capacities.
By 2009, when flash memory technologies are vastly improved, Apple will finally drop the hard disk for storage on their "video" iPods and offer them with either 60 GB (low end), 100 GB (midrange) and 150 GB (high end) flash memory storage.
same here. i haven't gotten a regular sized ipod because they are so fragile and i drop stuff a lot. (dropped my cell phone about 4000 times.) i want a nano but i don't listen to music that much so i want something that plays video's and movies.
I Definitely Hope Not...
I very much doubt this will happen, at least any time soon. First of all, it would be prohibitively expensive. But mostly, I see the disadvantages far outweighing the advantages. Space on the iPod would have to decrease dramatically, at least for the next year or two. Considering I've almost completely filled my 60GB 5G, there's no way I would spend $450 on an iPod that holds half as much as my $400 iPod does. Mainly, though, I just don't see any real advantages to large-capacity flash-based memory versus an HD-based memory, except in the nano and shuffle. The current size of the iPod, even in the 60/80GB form factor, is just about perfect. It feels good in the hand without being too large to store in a pocket. Any smaller and they will become quite fragile without any real space-saving advantages over the current model.
In my opinion, the ideal next generation iPod would be a "stripped-down" iPhone, if you will. I'm talking about an iPod of about the same size and appearance as the iPhone, but with all internal space devoted to music, video, battery, and bluetooth (a definite must for the 6G). Keep the iPhone's "virtual iPod" widescreen interface as standard, increase storage capacity (100-120GB), add bluetooth and replace the shiny back cover of the current and previous models with whatever it is they used on the iPhone. (From what I can tell, it looks much less scratch-able.)
Apple really does need to spend some time on the durability of their products' surfaces, though. You can't even touch an iPod without scratching that soft resin.
I very much doubt this will happen, at least any time soon. First of all, it would be prohibitively expensive. But mostly, I see the disadvantages far outweighing the advantages. Space on the iPod would have to decrease dramatically, at least for the next year or two. Considering I've almost completely filled my 60GB 5G, there's no way I would spend $450 on an iPod that holds half as much as my $400 iPod does. Mainly, though, I just don't see any real advantages to large-capacity flash-based memory versus an HD-based memory, except in the nano and shuffle. The current size of the iPod, even in the 60/80GB form factor, is just about perfect. It feels good in the hand without being too large to store in a pocket. Any smaller and they will become quite fragile without any real space-saving advantages over the current model.
In my opinion, the ideal next generation iPod would be a "stripped-down" iPhone, if you will. I'm talking about an iPod of about the same size and appearance as the iPhone, but with all internal space devoted to music, video, battery, and bluetooth (a definite must for the 6G). Keep the iPhone's "virtual iPod" widescreen interface as standard, increase storage capacity (100-120GB), add bluetooth and replace the shiny back cover of the current and previous models with whatever it is they used on the iPhone. (From what I can tell, it looks much less scratch-able.)
Apple really does need to spend some time on the durability of their products' surfaces, though. You can't even touch an iPod without scratching that soft resin.
They should continue going in more than one direction.
Assume that some people will want to watch movies - on the iPOD and on high definition TVs. Make the disk drive big and fast to copy movies onto the iPOD.
Assume that some people will want to show off photos. Add iPhoto type organization ability or sub folders of sub folders so someone can fins a particular portfolio.
Assume some people will want to use the iPOD only for listening. Make it quick and easy to load and unload playlists and albums. e.g. to grab the Christmas playlist and play it with songs in random order - but easily switch to the Rock playlist and play its songs in random order.
Is the USB limiting transfer speed?
Find a legal way of storing our complete playlists on different computers.
Assume that some people will want to watch movies - on the iPOD and on high definition TVs. Make the disk drive big and fast to copy movies onto the iPOD.
Assume that some people will want to show off photos. Add iPhoto type organization ability or sub folders of sub folders so someone can fins a particular portfolio.
Assume some people will want to use the iPOD only for listening. Make it quick and easy to load and unload playlists and albums. e.g. to grab the Christmas playlist and play it with songs in random order - but easily switch to the Rock playlist and play its songs in random order.
Is the USB limiting transfer speed?
Find a legal way of storing our complete playlists on different computers.