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Handheld WiFi?

broken_keyboard said:
When you stand next to another iPod user, their playlist appears on your iPod. Just like iTunes finds other iTunes using Rendevous, iPod finds other iPod.
Click to expand...

Assuming that you would be allowed to turn this option off....when would anyone use it? Because it would eat up battery (although it says "low power") there would be no reason for me to leave it on. Why would I? So that some random stranger can listen to my songs? Unless I am feel especially generous one day, I don't think I'd want to sacrifice my battery life for someone else's benefit.

I like WiFI for other uses in the iPod, but I doubt that this implementation would be useful (although 200 GB of Music is interesting....)
 
Freg3000 said:
it would eat up battery (although it says "low power") there would be no reason for me to leave it on. Why would I? So that some random stranger can listen to my songs? Unless I am feel especially generous one day, I don't think I'd want to sacrifice my battery life for someone else's benefit.
Click to expand...

I think iPod IV will have a much better battery... or else :p
 
dongmin said:
uh, no. Those are two different things. FW is 400 Mbps and up. This is 54 Mbps. 802.11g is not gonna magically give you more bandwidth by mixing the standards.
Click to expand...

Actually he is talking about the wireless standard for firewire that just got approved a while ago. It will be firewire type speeds but without the wires so it will be significantly faster than wifi and suitable for transferring music than wifi. 400mb/s compared to 54mb/s, wifi might be suitable for other things like browsing and online catalog of music and being able to purchase a song or album then when in range of a computer with wireless firewire capabilities it would transfer it and you wouldn't even know.
 
can't happen...

broken_keyboard said:
When you stand next to another iPod user, their playlist appears on your iPod. Just like iTunes finds other iTunes using Rendevous, iPod finds other iPod.
Click to expand...

nice idea. but DRM will stop this typre of "sharing".

it could be for wireless headphones, simple syncing, maybe send your emails to he i-pod if you're in a rush, and read them on the bus on the way to work.
 
appleface said:
i think i speak for many when i say this:
bring on the faster, smaller, less wired hardware!
Click to expand...

you have a point there. i for one would like to have my midi keyboard, scanner and printer all wireless. that's because now I have to have them in specific places. with this wifi stuff I could have them anywhere i want them to be.

...though here again just a plain wifi system would be enough because the appliances listen to ac/dc.
 
I think the problem with having the iPod auto sync is that each time ou come into contact wit ha mac it would do just taht so if you were at a friends you'd kill all your data. Wait, just had a though i'm sure they could impliment some way of having the iPod only autp sync with a certain computer os something. Giving it a tag so only iTunes with the proper tag could auto sync.
 
broken_keyboard said:
When you stand next to another iPod user, their playlist appears on your iPod. Just like iTunes finds other iTunes using Rendevous, iPod finds other iPod.
Click to expand...

that. sounds. so. cool! this is actually what i've kinda wanted.. to be able to check out what someone else is listening.. and just not by asking, because then i'd probably get a somewhat useless answer like "pretty much everything..".

this would be a pretty cool feature. i can see it in my eyes: as i listen to my favorite track my ipod gives me a beep to let me know another ipod's in reach. i check out the list and it's all britney spears. the next thing is i'll go to the little girl listening to her crappy music and slap her on face.

WHAT?! it wasn't supposed to go that way.. hmm i might be a child molested even though I don't know it. just like MJ. NOT. anyway it'd be cool.
 
Freg3000 said:
Assuming that there you would be allowed to turn this option off....when would anyone use it? Because it would eat up battery (although it says "low power") there would be no reason for me to leave it on. Why would I? So that some random stranger can listen to my songs? Unless I am feel especially generous one day, I don't think I'd want to sacrifice my battery life for someone else's benefit.
Click to expand...

Wow, you take a selfish view of the world! :rolleyes:

I think lots of people would use it. I live on College campus, and nobody has to share there music, let alone share it with out a password, but many, many people do, because everyone benefits. I have found lots of great music by listing to other peoples playlists...taking this feature to the ipod would make it all that much cooler. I am sure lots of people would use it, despite the potential drain the battery.
 
If done right WIFI can work in the iPod...if done right. You need software\firmware with the iPod that is smart. Similar to how Intel's mobile CPU's can dynamically scale their frequency depending on if its using external power and how much load is on it. Likewise a WIFI adapter needs to be smart enough to stream audio only on demand similar to how the iPod caches a certain amount of music to RAM from the hard drive before it plays. In this case it would cache the same amount to RAM but instead of nabbing it from the HD it could do the same from a iPod WIFI connection. The WIFI card would go to sleep and wake up only once every few 5,10,15,30 seconds or so, sniff the air looking for the system that was previously connected to it who wants more music. The only time you'd have full tilt WIFI on is when powered with external power. That or my manually setting it to "always on" on the iPod.
As for what functionality this could provide. Use your imagination. Streaming audio to remote satellite speakers. Imagine in a party situation you have 3 or 4 sets of speakers all playing the same music from around the room? How about remote access to the iTMS? You pop into a Starbucks or some other WIFI enabled place, whip out your iPod and start browsing the store via a browser type interface like the one found on iTunes. Or how about streaming pictures to an outside video source? Hmm how about a Keynote plugin that resides on your iPod to allow you to play Keynote speeches off your iPod via WIFI? Keep the iPod in your hand and simply hit the action button to move to the next slide or use the scroll wheel to move around your presentation.

Finally as for battery life. Even some of the worst battery life on PDA's equipped with 802.11B get around 2 hours off of a single charge and some of the best get around 4 or more hours. Note that this is always on activity. If Apple plays it smart I can see 5-6 hours on a charge. But again that is with WIFI enabled. By default it would stay asleep until called on to stream something.

Again its do-able if done right.
 
I think it would be a great idea if you could access the iTunes store from your iPod and dl music on the go and when ever you connect to your computer it would put it into your iTunes.
 
jwhitnah said:
It's just a silly idea.
Click to expand...

Better be careful. That's the same attitude that Palm took with sound and color when the first Pocket PC came out. At the time they had a 90% market lockup. Last I heard they are in a dead heat with the various PPC OEMs now.

Never say a tech is silly or useless. Just because you, or I don't have the imagination to use such a tech in a unique way doesn't mean Apple can't blow us all away with something spectacular.

*shrugs* then again lately Apple hasn’t been doing anything revolutionary more evolutionary then anything else.
 
how do you figure?

The Cheat said:
iPod + WiFi = pointless
Click to expand...

i have to disagree... i for one welcome the idea of having an iPod integrated into my wireless network. Where I could access my ENTIRE iTunes library from out in my living room or even while i'm out in my yard. All it would take is a simple browser configuration.

~Scott
 
nsb3000 said:
Wow, you take a selfish view of the world! :rolleyes:

I think lots of people would use it. I live on College campus, and nobody has to share there music, let alone share it with out a password, but many, many people do, because everyone benefits. I have found lots of great music by listing to other peoples playlists...taking this feature to the ipod would make it all that much cooler. I am sure lots of people would use it, despite the potential drain the battery.
Click to expand...

Yeah I know it is a little selfish.....but I only would take this point of view when there are pretty significant negative impacts on me.

I let iTunes share my music because it does nothing to hurt me, and people can enjoy themselves while the listen to my music. There is no battery life for iTunes to be using up on my desktop, and my Internet connection is up and running anyway, so why not.

But with the iPod's biggest drawback seeming to be battery life, it's a different story.
 
neonart said:
802.11g is still nowhere near the iPod Firewire transfer rates. It will be ok for contacts and getting one or two songs- but try to move GB's and you'll be there a while!
Click to expand...

And who cares? Seriously. I don't understand why people are so hung up over speeds. When you first sync your iPod to iTunes it would be when you remove it from the packaging. That fist initial sync is going to take a while. (Understatement in my case since I have 38GBs of songs.) After that 802.11G is more then fast enough to handle syncing. Sure if you are talking a DIVX 700MB movie file that you want to lug around with you on your iPod that would take about 15 minutes to transfer but let’s be serious here. The iPod's primary use IS music. Anything above that is gravy.
 
broken_keyboard said:
When you stand next to another iPod user, their playlist appears on your iPod. Just like iTunes finds other iTunes using Rendevous, iPod finds other iPod.
Click to expand...

People do this today with headphones, aka jacking. Seen on mass transit, etc. OK, so wireless has fewer of the sexual overtones which might be the whole point anyway...
 
SiliconAddict said:
And who cares? Seriously. I don't understand why people are so hung up over speeds. When you first sync your iPod to iTunes it would be when you remove it from the packaging. That fist initial sync is going to take a while. (Understatement in my case since I have 38GBs of songs.) After that 802.11G is more then fast enough to handle syncing. Sure if you are talking a DIVX 700MB movie file that you want to lug around with you on your iPod that would take about 15 minutes to transfer but let’s be serious here. The iPod's primary use IS music. Anything above that is gravy.
Click to expand...


If you have 38GB of music you surely rip quite a few at a time. Say you ripped 4 or 5 CD's the last couple of days and want to pop them in an iPod before you go out the door tomorrow morning. You want to do it at WiFi speed or at Firewire speed?

Ex: Try to transfer some 45 or 60 songs via Airport from one machine to another. Then try to transfer those songs to an iPod via 1394. You'll figure out the way you'd like to be doing it most of the time real quick.

So WiFi is cool, but not a replacement for Firewire unless that new wireless Firewire really works well.
 
d.f said:
nice idea. but DRM will stop this typre of "sharing".

it could be for wireless headphones, simple syncing, maybe send your emails to he i-pod if you're in a rush, and read them on the bus on the way to work.
Click to expand...

This might be feasible for proximity-based connections. After all, a pair of speakers allows this type of "sharing". FairPlay sucks, but it's still clear that it's the best Apple could do for the consumer given the situation; they're on our side.
 
wireless firewire

802.11G is indeed 54Mb/sec

Firewire as we know it 400 and 800 respectively.

Perhaps wireless firewire uses the same protocols as its faster established parents, but instead operates on 54.. OR Apple has some inovating trick up its sleeve.

As for practicality, 802.11G speed is still fast enough for a few songs
faster than my internet connection, thus faster than buying a song.... I have no complaints....
 
How Much Juice?

The press release keeps calling it low-power but doesn't provide specs. The pertinent question is whether this chipset uses less power than a bluetooth chipset. If the answer is Yes, I'd expect to see many of the Bluetooth protocols reworked to communicate over 802.11 in the near future. Then we can have real Bluetooth headphones for the iPod and such.

Of course, since they don't provide numbers the answer is probably, 'no'.
 
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