iPod Encoding?

[Soire]

Comparing Games and Tunes:
Apple has sold 3+ million iPods into the market (since late 2001)...whoopee! Well, Sony has sold over 20 million Playstations and Nintendo has sold a similar number of GameBoy Advance (hand-held) consoles (also since 2001). In fact, in Nov. 2002, Nintendo sold 1.5 million units in a single month and have outsold the iPod overall by approximately 7 to 1. Sony plans to sell 3 million PSP's in a single quarter during the upcoming 2004 Christmas season.

Beyond Sony's initial PSP projection and likely high-volume, competing music-only devices, what do you think the penetration of a hand-held PSP will be with a color display, that will also, no doubt, be able to link to Sony's music store and play color music videos? Oh...and by the way, the Universal Media Disc (UMD) format implemented in the PSP is probably going to become the standard for unifying games and multi-media (music, music videos). What about the cross-marketing potential of such a device?

Wow. Those are some enlightening figures. I may not agree with all your conclusions, and feel that Apple has already established its' own niche for the iPod, but that's some good research.

It's almost to the point of writing a thesis sometimes on these posts. (And of course I stay far from anything so intelligent- see above post) Good work ya'll.

 

[iMeowbot]

Ok I am new to all this posting but just what if the iPod was bluetooth enabled (not sure if that would work that great) but it would be cool. Just think about .... off to dream land ... you get in your car and your car responds to you ' Welcome Jason how are you doing I see you brought your ipod would you like me to throw down some tunes for you' or you walk in to your house and you stereo says to you ' Welcome Back Jason, kick off your shoes and let me roll a few hits your way' or even you walk to your computer and it says to you 'Whats up fool, you here again? sweeeet, lets play so hard phat beats yo!' and this is all just walking around with your new 8th generation iPod.... dreaming is fun .

The current Bluetooth standard isn't quite up to doing the job well, but that doesn't mean it will always be that way of course.

A dock in the car works out really well for now, especially since it handles the all-important charging. But what I'd really like to see (and I know this is wishful thinking, given audio manufacturers' addiction to proprietary interfaces) is some kind of universal connector with remote control and power that would let you plug in anyone's portable audio thingy into the front of your home or car stereo.

 

[jbembe]

Maybe the iPod can display album covers as it plays music.

As far as user interface goes, I think it would be quite excellent to be capable of scrolling through artists/albums by cover art instead of just lists of names. Scrolling a list of names becomes tedious and I often can't think of anything I'm really interested in at the moment so I listen to my whole iPod on random until I hit an artist/album I want to isolate. One thing about the CDs is that I can easily flip through everything and see the album that interests me at the time. Scrolling through my collection by album art would be AWESOME!

 

[tjanuranus]

I think it would be cool if apple could partner up with some automobile companies. Would be cool if all new cars came with a built in HD. You could bring your ipod into your car and just wireless transfew songs onto your cars HD. This would ellimate the need for cd's or players. like 500 gig HD built in or something like that. the ability to put a few hundred thousand songs into your cars internal memory i don't think is a bad idea. and if apple partnered with a company like mercede's or some high end company first, maybe it would catch on to the low end companies. the could innovate a brand new technology that could change every person who drives a cars lives. of course it would be nice to have voice recognition, and a remote. I saw this special on voice recognition technology in cars. Was really impressive. I think it could be done alot sooner than people think.

 

[swissmann]

Apple better hurry up with the updates and make sure that they are plentiful. Fairly often an article will pop up saying something about an iPod killer and list the advantages it has over the iPod. I know the interface isn't as elegant, etc. But people will buy them anyway. The iPod was so successful in my mind because it was way ahead of it's time and its form. The form still rocks but it doesn't seem to be way ahead of its time anymore. Update it so that it will be. I personally won't buy one until it is a lot more like a Pocket PC or it has at least 4 GB of storage and is less than $100. (I know I'll be waiting a while.)

 

[minstryoffunk]

do you think it took nearly 10 years for GameBoy to go colour? Game Gear, Atari Lynx - they were all much better technically but no-one wanted them because they only had an hour of battery life.

but GameBoy has gone colour and the battery size has gone down (4 to 2). the technology is here, so it shouldn't be that much of an issue

 

[ericdano]

The current Bluetooth standard isn't quite up to doing the job well, but that doesn't mean it will always be that way of course.

Did we forget about Apple getting Wireless Firewire off the ground? That would blow bluetooth away

 

[cgc]

Isn't "good looks" reason enough to add color screens? If a average consumer goes in a store and sees a color screen, I'm sure that person will be more impressed than a black & white screen. Apple is likely to add more built-in games in the future. Might as well make them color games. Maybe the iPod can display album covers as it plays music.

I don't think it will drain the battery as much as you fear. The only thing that might bother an average consumer is the added price. But if Apple can find a cheap, reliable vendor, I'd say go for it.

No, good looks is not reason enough to justify the price increase. Like a previous poster said it would lower the already unimpressive battery life. If features for the sake of features were the only aspect of selling iPods, add a bottle opener, GPS, WWVB sync, solar powering, electic motor, etc, etc.

 

[voodoofish]

Isn't "good looks" reason enough to add color screens? If a average consumer goes in a store and sees a color screen, I'm sure that person will be more impressed than a black & white screen. Apple is likely to add more built-in games in the future. Might as well make them color games. Maybe the iPod can display album covers as it plays music.

I don't think it will drain the battery as much as you fear. The only thing that might bother an average consumer is the added price. But if Apple can find a cheap, reliable vendor, I'd say go for it.

I don't actually like the way colour screens look, the pixels are more obvious than with black and white screens, and if they put the menu system in colour is would look tacky.

 

[JFreak]

i'd be happy if the four buttons of the third generation ipods went away. regular ipod size with mini ipod controls, that's the way to go.

and please, no colour screen until it can be done right. anyone had a first generation colour screen cell phone (a sonyericsson t68i for example)? the display is so dark it can only be read in a dark room, and the display response is so slow you need to be really patient to not throw it to the wall every day.

i'd be glad if the ipod were able to STORE iphoto library. isync could take a backup of it on the fly, at the same time it synchronizes the rest of the data. that would be huge for the people like me who only have a digital camera and store the ORIGINAL photos as files on a hard drive. no negatives, and if the hard drive dies, bye bye photos.

i don't want a video out for the ipod. it's one more connector and would make the beauty uglier. for the same reason i don't want an analog audio input. that (the looks), and because ipods stands for all-digital lifestyle and i would be dissatisfied if the ipod had analog audio input. or analog fm radio - i hope if ipod ever has a radio it would be the new digital version.

 

[Penman]

I've never been an advocate for a device "that does everything". The iPod is primarily a music player - that's its purpose, and so it does that very well. People get one so they can escape and listen to their favourite tunes on the move, maybe while doing something else. As soon as you add more and more things it becomes a jack of all trades and a master of none.

For instance, the all-in-one set-top-box has never really happened. And prior to PS2 and Xbox release, everyone was talking about how people were going to do their knitting on a PS2. In reality, some people watch the odd DVD on them but most just play games. And most people have a better quality, dedicated DVD player so they watch movies on that instead of the PS2.

I like Nintendo's philosophy, and it's similar to Apples. The GameCube was designed just for games. It may not be the number one console, but it certainly does what it says it does very well. Just like the iPod is in its chosen field.

Another example is my phone. My one can make calls and I like it because it's small. I don't care for playing games on it because I have a Game Boy for that. The Game Boy is infinitely better at playing games than the best phones so I can use that. And my phone is smaller and has more battery life because of it. After all, I don't want to play games absolutely wherever I go so I don't need to take it everywhere on my phone.

If the iPod had all these new complicated features, a colour screen, and had an in-built DVD player it would have to be bigger. This would then compromise its ability to be a small and best-of-field music player (including less battery life). Most of the time you don't want to watch a movie - and, as Jobs said himself, there's no substitute to headphones with video - you're stuck with a tiny and low quality screen.

Therefore I don't expect the new iPods to be very different to the current. Maybe video out capabilities (why not?), and maybe a face redesign (similar to the iPod mini and ironically the 2nd generation iPod) and higher capacities. As soon as you start putting on touch screens and stylus pens or colour monitors and flash card sockets, it becomes one of those useless jack of all trades but master of none things and suddenly you've lost the reason to own an iPod in the first place. Remember, escapism.

Er... good point(s) but Nintendo are being eaten alive by Sony and Microsoft. They are no longer the company to follow.

To your earlier point - they took a long time with the GameBoy color because of price. Apple's not in that boat.

Currently Apple have the most expensive player with the worst battery life (overall in real terms). They are more successful than they truly deserve in the US because most people are ignorant of other options (for now - wait until Sony start marketing). You could argue the iPod's the best solution ergonomically.

I want a 4G now but Apple CAN increase battery life AND include a color screen. Many others have done so and Apple has the budget. They're just slow - it's silly to pretend that the iPod's battery life and limitations are imposed by technological constraints. Many other manufacturers are proving that's not true right now.

Come on Apple don't convince, compete!

 

[rmac1979]

Two Things

I agree with the people saying that there should be a compact flash input....on at least one of the iPods. It really would sell a lot of people; digital cameras have really taken off over the past year or two.

Does anyone remember the patent Apple got (or applied for, can't remember) for a portable device that had a screen whose orientation could be changed? Seems that this would mean a 4:3, 3:2 or maybe even 16:10 (assuming video playback) ratio. Could be great for viewing photos. Would also make use of the added room needed for a compact flash reader (assuming it would make the iPod a little longer).

Being able to put longer text files on the iPod as well as a more elegant way from Apple to do so would be great. Maybe let it handle XHTML (alredy handles a basic XML format). There's a lot of great free material on Project Gutenberg that would be great to read on a slightly larger screen. Has anyone tried this on the current iPods? There is supposed to be size limitations, but apparently some have gotten around them. I'd love to sit back to read a good book and put on my soundtrack playlist anywhere I am....

 

[Maxx Power]

I'm not getting another iPod

Not getting an iPod or anything from apple again until apple clears up their act.

this is what i said to the people at http://www.tellonapple.org/, they are mostly previous apple retailers who are sick and tired of being stifled and stiffed by apple.

"I found your website through a link from http://www.hardocp.com, and i can't agree with you more on the fact that Apple is doing inmoral and unethical business conducts. I have an interesting story to share with you, which I also shared with Perry Longinotti, a journalist for http://www.theinquirer.net who recently wrote an article on apple product quality. He agreed with me on my findings and said he has plenty more "evidence" and people to support my claims if he decides to do an article on my topic.

My particular experience is this, I purchased an iPod 2nd generation 10 gigabyte about a year back. And recently, it has, in the midst of operating, stopped to communicate with the computer, Mac or PC. I've tried all methods of diagnosis, forcing it to firewire mode, nothing works. So, i went in search of Apple repairs, only to find out that to repair an iPod, disregarding what the problem is, would cost 350+ dollars Canadian, and you can see this straight from their website under support section for iPod. That is 50 dollars shy of the new 15 GB iPods!! How inefficient does a company have to be if the repair charges are as high as the retail price of an object ? And good luck replacing those internal batteries, because if you opt to have Apple replace them, it's 100 dollars US, plus shipping. Other websites are selling these batteries new for less than half the price, provided you know how to connect two sockets. I won't accept that Apple stiffs customers like this, because they monopolize in the iPod business and Mac OS X operating computers, they can charge you an arm and a leg to have your machine fixed, what else can you do ? I know corporations are inmoral, unethical externalizing machines built to milk everyone of their money and not be responsible for any of their actions since the corporate citizen is entitled to much more than what real citizens are entitled to under law. But if you purchased a Ford vehicle, and everytime you had to get an oil change, new filters, engine repairs, new tires or replace the windshield, you need to go back to Ford, and that they charge as much as a new vehicle would cost, or tells you to get an entirely new car, they Will not sell another vehicle. And imagine that everytime there was a firmware upgrade to your vehicle, you had to pay 129 dollars US for it. That is just outrageous. Just to put this in perspective, Apple is trying everything it can to become a monopoly and even before they captured 5 percent of the market, they are starting to bully people around. They recently patented the iPod "interface", so that no one can design something in anyway similar. What's next ? Patent the keyboard system ? How about the numeric phone dial pad on every phone ? How far does a corporation like Apple have to go to make a profit, and how much profit ? Isn't that private jet Steve Jobs owns which is worth millions if not billions enough ?!

TellOnApple, I like to see Apple learn from its mistakes and ressurect itself from the prickly cactus image of itself into a shiny apple again."

and they replied:
"
wow!

Really nicely put. I remember when the iPod was announced, I looked at the battery situation on it from the eyes of an experienced Apple Laptop user. They say 10 hours, we know that generally means 5 hours. After use that means 2 hours or less. I called Apple to get pricing on replacing the batteries and they quoted me $270. I simply could not believe paying $500 for a unit and then getting charged $270 for a battery. Completely ridiculous. Monopolistic is being kind. They can overprice products so they are not worth fixing, they can sell you extended contracts they consistently fail to properly enter or not enter at all.

I don't know what I can do to help you, but am always willing to try. After all the years I have spent on hold helping customers of MACadam/Apple Computer, I'm not going to stop now.


Thanks again for your note


Tom Santos "

 

[greg75]

In any case, the PortalPlayer chip already does plenty that the iPod doesn't support--like WMA (and Ogg Vorbis?) playback and CD burning.

Incorrect. The PortalPlayer chip doesn't support any particular format. It has no hardware decoding of audio formats. Decoding is done in software.

 

[mfacey]

First off, I wish people would stop contemplating an Apple PDA. PDA's are dead. Smart-phones are the future. Why would you buy a PDA that can do everything except for calling when you can buy a smart phone that can do absolutely EVERYTHING. Then we come to the point that Apple doesn't know how to make phones, so they won't do that. Even Sony couldn't do it, so they merged with Ericsson so they could still keep their names on the phones.
So unless Apple is going to take a major risk by stepping into a highly saturated and matured market it ain't gonna happen.

Another thing, why are so many people saying that apple is making such huge mistakes doing business? Are these the same experts that said the ipod mini was WAY too expensive and would never sell? Apple isn't stupid. Nuff said.

I really don't know what apple will do with the 4G ipod, but I'm sure of one thing: it'll be better than ever, because that is what apple is best at.

 

[BrianKonarsMac]

Frankly, I'd be happy if they just dropped the prices on the 3rd gen iPods (and the iPod mini) $50 across the board and called it a day, so I could stop taking flak for being a "rich bitch" every time I suggest the iPod to someone.

Argh.

--Cless

agreed, i hate the looks i get from some people down in the city, obviously disgusted with how much i've spent on computer gadgets. but im a nerd .

 

[elo]

My view may be contrarian here, but I believe I'm right:

The iPod has been a huge hit not only because it was first to market, but because it had a single purpose and did it really well. To the extent that Apple has subsequently added features, it has done so in a way that doesn't detract from the device's simplicity and elegance. That's why the iPod is viewed as a great device for people who love music, and other competing devices are largely viewed as geek toys.

The success of the iPod mini has shown further that people want something that sounds great, feels good in their hand, and operates without fuss. As soon as you start adding too much extra stuff, the iPod becomes something else.

A compact flash slot should be completely out of the question. A slot that large, even if it could be added without increasing the size of the unit, would be contrary to the device's aesthetic. If you want that, buy a geek toy, not an iPod. A built-in microphone would come closer, but would only be useful for those that wanted low-fidelity recordings (e.g. of lectures). A better choice, and one that retains the iPod's aesthetic, is a simple line in. That way, those who wanted to could plug a high quality microphone in and record, possibly as AAC or Lossless files. (That would be consistent with the article.) Others could still use a tiny attachment if all they wanted was a lo-fi voice recording. An output for photographs or stored video is also possible, but this could be done via the dock connector and appropriate cables.

Expect an aluminium body and a click wheel, per the mini. A rechargable battery is also possible, as long as Apple feels that it can do it without messing up the back of the device with seams. Any feature that fundamentally shifts the device's focus or disturbs its minimalist aesthetic simply will not be present.

And people will buy them like hotcakes. Comparison with the Sony Playstation Portable is silly. The device is *much* larger and heavier than the iPod and practically screams geek. People (that is, the people who would be caught dead with such a thing) will use it for some of their tunes, of course, but it will not become the stand-alone music player of choice among the crowd that would consider an iPod. In short, the PSP plays to a demographic with limited overlap to the iPod's.

Apple knows what it's doing.

elo

 

[Xenious]

There is no practial use of color screens, aside from photo viewing. Movies would take too much battery. and the resolution would be too poor fro photos. if the battery life is eight hours now, it would be three with the color screen. If battery life is a strong issue now, think of a 4 hour battery! NO SALES! I say, go with better encoding!!
~Nate13

Not that is _useful_ per say, but I want a color screen that shows the album cover in color. What better encoding do we need? Are you wanting to use the ipod as an mp3 rip-er?

Besides album art display I can't think of anything that the iPod really needs. A line out on the ipod itself might be nice (so I don't need a dock to plug into a stereo). Maybe something to improve the sound some. Custom multi band EQ settings. That's all I can think of offhand.
-jim

 

[JGowan]

Save your allowance

... I'd be happy if they dropped the prices ... so I could stop taking flak for being a "rich bitch"

Tell them to save up for the IPOD. Not everyone just opens their wallet and buys stuff. Lots of things need to be saved for. "Some things are worth waiting for."

 

[SWC]

One thing I would love to see is some kind of wireless rendezvous support. So if im at a buddys house who doesnt have firewire or whatnot and has a wireless network setup itunes will pickup the ipod and let me play the songs I have. Or when im at work I can wirelessly stream my music through my mac since we arent allowed to copy the music files to it plug in external devices.

 

[Lepton]

iPod A/V

Use an OLED display. Full color, needs no backlight thus lower power than a display with one, and most important, extremely thin.

Add home on iPod. Place your entire home directory on an iPod to make it portable. In particular, your music, photos, and movies are now on your iPod. Plug the iPod into a computer with FireWire and all your stuff is availabel on that computer.

Add software so you can plug the FireWire into a CAMCORDER. You can now record from the camera onto the iPod, play a camcorder tape into the iPod for archiving, play DV video on the iPod into the camcorder to move it to tape.

Add software to let you preview this DV video that's in the iPod on the iPod display.

Add software to decode MPEG4 and possibly other QuickTime encoded video so all the videos on your home Movies folder can play on the iPod screen, or into a camcorder.

Add video out hardware so in addition to plugging iPod to a camcorder, you can plug it to a TV set. Now you can play videos on the iPod on any TV.

Add software to display the imaged in your home Pictures folder on the iPod screen. Add software to show slideshows of these pictures. Now you can play picture slideshows on TV, onto a camcorder tape, or on the iPod screen.

Add software to display album covers art on the iPod screen or TV.

Add audio in for a microphone or analog stereo audio.

NOW you have a very nice pocket media center. And this all will not take a large amount of extra hardware, space, or cost, and no big inventions required. This is the way I see iPod going. Soon.

 

[SWC]

Use an OLED display. Full color, needs no backlight thus lower power than a display with one, and most important, extremely thin.

Add home on iPod. Place your entire home directory on an iPod to make it portable. In particular, your music, photos, and movies are now on your iPod. Plug the iPod into a computer with FireWire and all your stuff is availabel on that computer.

Add software so you can plug the FireWire into a CAMCORDER. You can now record from the camera onto the iPod, play a camcorder tape into the iPod for archiving, play DV video on the iPod into the camcorder to move it to tape.

Add software to let you preview this DV video that's in the iPod on the iPod display.

Add software to decode MPEG4 and possibly other QuickTime encoded video so all the videos on your home Movies folder can play on the iPod screen, or into a camcorder.

Add video out hardware so in addition to plugging iPod to a camcorder, you can plug it to a TV set. Now you can play videos on the iPod on any TV.

Add software to display the imaged in your home Pictures folder on the iPod screen. Add software to show slideshows of these pictures. Now you can play picture slideshows on TV, onto a camcorder tape, or on the iPod screen.

Add software to display album covers art on the iPod screen or TV.

Add audio in for a microphone or analog stereo audio.

NOW you have a very nice pocket media center. And this all will not take a large amount of extra hardware, space, or cost, and no big inventions required. This is the way I see iPod going. Soon.

recording dv footage to an ipod will not happen anytime soon as it takes 10 gigs of space for 45 minutes of dv footage so for an hour and a half of footage shot youd waste half of the current 40 gig model, I would much rather spend $4 on a tape for an hour and have a backup of it if my computer exer crashes.

 

[tny]

My iPod is a year old. I've already used it for 2 hours on this charge, and there's at least 3 hours left. There's plenty of "unethical" talk here, but no comparisons. How much do they charge for replacing the battery on the Archos, for instance?

 

[nsb3000]

Are we getting a step closer to color LCD displays?
PDA's went colour, mobile phones went colour, it's about time the ipod went colour.

I think the ipod will go color someday, but not for a couple of years, until battery life has been increased to the point of being a non-issue. It would be useful, for example to see album artwork, but it is really just a gimmicky feature. Of course most of the new features being proposed are pretty gimmicky.

Baring some blow-your-socks-off new feature (which I would not put past apple), the main thinks apple can do to make the ipod are:

-Make it smaller
-Make its hard-drive larger
-make it cheaper
-Make its battery last longer

These are the main bread and butter features, and everything else is just icing.

 

[nsb3000]

The current Bluetooth standard isn't quite up to doing the job well, but that doesn't mean it will always be that way of course.

A dock in the car works out really well for now, especially since it handles the all-important charging. But what I'd really like to see (and I know this is wishful thinking, given audio manufacturers' addiction to proprietary interfaces) is some kind of universal connector with remote control and power that would let you plug in anyone's portable audio thingy into the front of your home or car stereo.

Ya, that would be great, but it is never going to happen, thanks to the nature of capitalism!