iPod AV User Interface Thoughts

Hello everyone, I was thinking the other day "how the heck is the new ipod (if it is as ALL those wonderful pictures show) gonna work without a clickwheel or buttons? and what about all that space that ISN'T used if there was a wheel? wouldn't that waste battery? wouldn't that be really hard to change things without looking?" and a few other things like that..

But the thing that really caught my mind was the menu set up. I believe that apple will take the current "Columns View" from the Finder in OS X. the image should help exlain what i mean, but it is a little slopped together, so i will explain it a little more.

I cannot for the life of me think of a good way for them to include the wheel without it being a "Real" wheel and not just virtual. Now i know a lot of people will argue this cause the wheel is freaking awesome. You must understand i love the wheel myself, but i cannot see a touchscreen ipod having the wheel.

It is my belief that the new ipod will not have a wheel, it will instead be more like a palm pilot type setup where you just press on the screen where you want to go next (and where you want to go BACK to).

This image is flawed because i don't have enough resources to make it perfect, but the general idea should do fine. the main problem is it shows it going from "music" to the "now playing" thing, that is not how i think it will be, it will instead have the menu directly before "now playing" such as "Mac Rumors Playlist" and then the list of all your other songs in that playlist shown at the same time, your current song would be highlighted. The reason this would work good is because you could pick a different song in that playlist without ever having to click "the Menu" button on your wheel that isn't there, instead if you needed to go back you would press the "back" box in the top left corner (i forgot to put this in the image, sorry!).

So my main point is apple will be taking one great idea from OS X and putting it into use in the ipod MORE than it currently is.



-The Dulcimer-

P.S. Of course the new ipod would probably have the "videos" menu at the top of the main menu

 

I agree with you 100%, my best guess is that you would just touch the part of the menu you want to go to next. Hopefully this helps




It sucks and i hope apple has better ideas than me, but i just see this whole "Virtual" wheel as being flawed beyond apple using it.

-The Dulcimer-

UPDATE: and i do see what you mean by One-Handed being a requirement. Because it would be like going from using your hands to using your feet if you made it a two handed operation.