This means nothing
People seem to be missing several points:
1. This is not a new product, but an upgrade of an existing product. Apparently (if you go to the company's web site) they've had at least one older generation of this device. The announcement is about them now offering 500MB of additional storage space over the previous generation. This announcenemt is not about a new product that would revolutionalize a mini-iPod in form factor or in capacity.
2. Thier claims to the contrary, this "storage element" is simply a miniature hard disk. Sure it doesn't have caching and advanced predictive reads and such, but then neither did the MFM and RLL drives in the 80s and they were still hard drives. A hard disk/drive is an enclosed rigid spinning disk accessed with movable read/write heads.
3. This thing is SLOW. Sure it's small and low power, but it only has a 4.5MB/s average transfer rate. You're talking about a miniumum of 8 minutes to fill the thing with music. With such a small capacity, its very concievable that the users would completely swap out the music on the thing on a regular basis, unlike the iPods where you can just keep everything on it all the time (well, most people can). Compare that with the 22MB/s of the original 5GB iPod's drive that I can fill in about 4 minutes. The drives in the newer(20 & 40GB) iPods are even faster.
4. Back to the power thing. The 2GB version is stated to draw 75mW, that's ~262mA at 3.3V. That's about half that 500mA power draw of the 5GB drive in my iPod, but then it's also less than half the capacity. And, really, the drive is a rather small part of the power draw in an iPod, the drive only spins up every 20-30 minutes. The CPU and amplifiers are the major power hogs.
5. This drive does not use a standard interface, it requires a special controller. Given Apple's drive for open standards in their products, I don't see this thing getting in to an iPod. Yea, the iPod is a sealed consumer device, but I think Steve would stick to his pricipals on this one.
People seem to be missing several points:
1. This is not a new product, but an upgrade of an existing product. Apparently (if you go to the company's web site) they've had at least one older generation of this device. The announcement is about them now offering 500MB of additional storage space over the previous generation. This announcenemt is not about a new product that would revolutionalize a mini-iPod in form factor or in capacity.
2. Thier claims to the contrary, this "storage element" is simply a miniature hard disk. Sure it doesn't have caching and advanced predictive reads and such, but then neither did the MFM and RLL drives in the 80s and they were still hard drives. A hard disk/drive is an enclosed rigid spinning disk accessed with movable read/write heads.
3. This thing is SLOW. Sure it's small and low power, but it only has a 4.5MB/s average transfer rate. You're talking about a miniumum of 8 minutes to fill the thing with music. With such a small capacity, its very concievable that the users would completely swap out the music on the thing on a regular basis, unlike the iPods where you can just keep everything on it all the time (well, most people can). Compare that with the 22MB/s of the original 5GB iPod's drive that I can fill in about 4 minutes. The drives in the newer(20 & 40GB) iPods are even faster.
4. Back to the power thing. The 2GB version is stated to draw 75mW, that's ~262mA at 3.3V. That's about half that 500mA power draw of the 5GB drive in my iPod, but then it's also less than half the capacity. And, really, the drive is a rather small part of the power draw in an iPod, the drive only spins up every 20-30 minutes. The CPU and amplifiers are the major power hogs.
5. This drive does not use a standard interface, it requires a special controller. Given Apple's drive for open standards in their products, I don't see this thing getting in to an iPod. Yea, the iPod is a sealed consumer device, but I think Steve would stick to his pricipals on this one.