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iPod II?

Re: iPhoto and iPod

Originally posted by aasmund
I think definitely they will make an iPhoto version which you can connect to your digital camera so that you can store your images when on a trip...
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I think that it would be great to download my pictures directly from my digital camera into my iPod! I get tired of replacing flash cards all the time....and I always seem to fill them up right before the "great shot" is present. I would be pleased with simple storage...I could even live without seeing them on screen (which would need a much better res for that anyway).

Another possible hint that the iPod be a 'changin is the fact that Apple has lowered the price of engraving on the Pods to $20...down from $49. This promotion runs till Jan. 7 (Macworld). Now, cheap engraving will not make me run out and buy a new Pod, but for some it may just make the perfect Holiday gift and help clear out Apple's inventory.
 
WOW - GREAT IDEA! RECORDABLE IPOD

I hope they consider this, this is a great idea - very useful.



Hey G4Scott, I share your same dream brother. Have you seen this?
http://www.nomadworld.com/products/Jukebox3

Background: I record a lot of live, stereo audio via my iBook/500 (in conjunction with a Roland UA-30, Peak LE (48 kHz) or Pro Tools Free (44.1 kHz), and a S/PDIF cable, usually receiving my digi stereo signal via a Tascam DA-P1). A typical recording session consists of about 2, 1.5 hour sets of music. This rig runs pretty well, but there are some real problem areas, namely battery life.
In OS 9.2.2, I can only get about 3 hours per battery. I have never once seen the bait-and-switch "5 hour battery life" claim from Apple's slickery marketing folks. Not even close (I can just barily watch a full length DVD). Regardless, I can safely get one set per battery, simply switching batteries at the set break. No biggie.
But in 10.2.2, I have yet to see even a 1.5 hour battery life (yes, these are processor intensive tasks, OS X runs hotter, asking the G3 chip to run X is asking for trouble, blah, blah, blah). This is very problematic when in the field (unable to run X in the field - bummer), and just not acceptable.

Ok, all of that was to set up: A live audio recording cohort uses a Jukebox 3 (see above link). He generally connects to the RCA OUT of my Roland UA-30, and records directly to uncompressed .wav files. Very sick. Very portable. Very cool. He then has the options of taking the recording back to his PC and either dumping it in and burning an audio disc, or converting the .wav file > mp3. He also has, out of the box, 11 hours of record time - with an extra slot for an additional 11 hour battery! Nuts!
While the Jukebox is larger than the iPod (a tad smaller than a portable CD player, which is still very portable), feature for feature it whips the iPod.

As an owner of the original 5G iPod (which I still enjoy daily), I have hoped Apple would release a record enabled iPod.
With Apple's acquisition of Logic, surely a 2 track recording iApp is on the way (iMix I'll call it), integrating seamlessly with iTunes and iMovie - with the eventual holy grail multi track audio app (Mix Master Pro I'll call it) that works in tandem with Final Cut Pro (whoa, if this were to become a reality, ANYTHING created for film or audio, on ANY level [pro/novice] would be done on Macs - woo hoo!).

Now with all of that said, surely iMix could be incorporated into the iPod, in addition to either an audio IN port (requiring a complete hardware redesign, which seems costly and unlikely), or some slick firewire dongle that would connect the iPod's firewire port to (ideally for maintaining a digi signal, and avoiding a software based A/D converter) a S/PDIF or optical connection, or even RCA or 1/8" connections (software based A/D converter required). Even at only 8 hour battery life, that's still better than 1.5 on my iBook.

I think this baby would be a hit, on many different levels, in many different applications, to many differnt people.

Big, fat, grin.



Last edited by lazyrighteye on 11-12-2002 at 05:20 PM
 
They didn't say that it would also have a back light. The Game Boy Advance has a color screen and no back light.
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And as much as I love my GBA, it SUCKS when you have anything but the best light. I threw in an AfterBurner (www.tritonlabs.com), and while it sucks baterries a BIT quicker, I can play anytime anyWHERE regardless of lighting conditions. w00t! =D
 
iPod meets TiVo

I like the idea of the iPod as a mini recorder, where you will be able to download TV shows and movies that you have recorded in your hard drive. That technology is definitely worth the $500 or more that an iPod is priced around. There is really no need to have a color screen unless you can view pictures or mpegs on an iPod. I can't wait.
 
Re: Re: Re: viewing movies, think about it!

Originally posted by MacBandit

Why would a color screen use more battery? They didn't say that it would also have a back light. The Game Boy Advance has a color screen and no back light.
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I was talking more about the backlight draining the battery.
And regarding the GBA's screen, can you honestly tell me you would want to watch a movie on such a terrible, unlight screen such as that?
What it would need is a screen more the quality of the old Sega GameGear, which if you remember took loads of batteries which died instantly!
 
Battery life when watching movies

Another reason that watching movies will suck down iPod battery life: Even with the tiny display and a compact compression algorithm like MPEG4, movies require a much higher bitrate than music. This means that the hard drive will have to spend a lot more time spinning.
 
As far as the timeframe is concerned, I'm skeptical. However, I definitely see Apple introducing a color model that will permit iPhoto integration so you may display photos on the iPod screen.

I would also anticipate the next models (and perhaps the current ones will be capable of this) to incorporate iSynch and iCal coordination. Down the road I see Apple introducing Bluetooth into the iPod as well.

All interesting speculation, and backlighting/batter use/size issues aside, I think these are pretty logical 'roadmaps' we can expect over the next 12-18 months.

Of course, this looks more and more like the fabled Apple PDA or "iWalk" or "iPhone" are coming down the pipe. I don't think Apple will ever release these products on their own, but I will put good money on Apple developing the technology and design for Sony/Ericcson/Panasonic products down the road.
 
Right Path

You might be onto something tgrudke. As foocha pointed out earlier, the iPod name leads me to believe that apple is going to find as many ways to interact the iPod with the iApps as possible.

Also their have been rumors concerning bluetooth integration into the computers to go along with bluetooth support in the os. it's just possible that in 2 years time his royal Jobsness will declare cables dead like he did the CRT. bluetooth in everything, and a unique device like the iPod to wrap everything together will make Macs that much more appealing.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: viewing movies, think about it!

Originally posted by RBMaraman


It's just like a videocamera. It you use the color LCD screen, you lose a ton of the battery life. if you use the black and white viewfinder, you keep the battery at a much higher charge. Color screens use much more battery power, mainly because a higher power source is required to convert an image to color. The gameboy advance is different because it pulls its power source from Duracell type batteries that function differently than lithium-ion batteries. This is really a coincidence, because in my film class today, we talked about battery life of screens in black and white and color.
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Quite correct, although the LCD screen vs viewfinder difference is not quite the same thing (the main power consumption differences are due to the amount of backlighting required for the viewfinder vs 2.5" screen; viewfinders tend to be grayscale because it is easier/cheaper to make a small grayscale LCD than a small color LCD due to the fact that a color LCD has triple the number of picture elements for any resolution as the grayscale).

In a Color LCD there are three times as many little sub-pixels as there are in a similar-resolution B/W LCD. Each sub-pixel takes a certain amount of energy and supporting circuitry to maintain its state; three independant elements in a certain area take more energy than one larger element covering the entire area. Not to mention the fact that these are multiple-state sub-pixels instead of single-state on/off sub-pixels (assuming you want more than an 8-color screen); multiple-state pixels consume more power than simple on/off pixels.

Now, for a laptop monitor, the case more of us will be familiar with, the energy required by the screen pixels is completely drowned out by the energy required to keep the backlight running, so you don't see an appreciable difference between a color TFT and a grayscale screen (note: grayscales tend to use a different technology than color screens, so the power requirements do differ, but if using the same technology the differences are minor).

Without the backlight power, the difference between a reflective-lighted black and white and full-color screen is significant.

The question is: how much of the iPod's current power consumption goes to the screen? I would think, without hard numbers, that the passive screen would take much less energy than spinning up the HD or even processing the MP3's. In this case, even a full-color passive screen would not increase the power consumption enough to have a noticeable effect on overall battery life.

Of course, if you went to a color backlit screen, you are talking a relatively huge power drain compared to the B/W screen today. That would, I suspect, chop 25-50% off the overall battery life (basing this on the fact that a large laptop screen uses the same amount of power as a P3-Mobile chip; the screen size on the iPod is much smaller, but the little CPU should also take up much less power than a P3-M).
 
Originally posted by arn
not sure the point of a color screen....

arn
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One possibility for a color screen that no one has mentioned is some sort of camera attachment that fits on to the top of the ipod and plugs into the firewire port. It could have both still and webcam capabilities.... It sounds far out but a few major cell phone manufactures, Motorola among them, are doing the exact same thing with their new and existing phones.

20gigs of pic storage, 4-hour battery life in stand alone camera mode, and a $200 price tag would make something like that pretty hot.

F.M.

P.S. I have a 10gig solid-state scroll ipod and the latest firmware really does throw battery life off. This is a major bug that needs to be addressed by apple as soon as possible.
 
Re: Battery life when watching movies

Originally posted by Somebody
Another reason that watching movies will suck down iPod battery life: Even with the tiny display and a compact compression algorithm like MPEG4, movies require a much higher bitrate than music. This means that the hard drive will have to spend a lot more time spinning.
Click to expand...

If they were going to have it for playing movies it would be easy enough to shove in 64 MB or 128MB of solid state memory
 
I think it would be fairly easy to implement a color screen and camera on to the iPod, think about it, Phones and even the GBA has this, why not the iPod.

This would be a great marketing move on Apple's part, those camera doggles are apparently great sellers threw out Japan and Apple seems to be really moving for that share of the market, and it would ward off the me too mp3 players that was mentioned before are just now coming out.

This would also be a definite cool factor esp. w/ it syncing up to iPhoto, and you know how Apple loves the cool factor, battery withstanding. The only question is, how would it work with the Windows version?
 
Camera?

Before the iPod gets a camera of its own, shouldn't it get a usb connector so it can be used to store images from existing cameras? I mean this seems to be a no-brainer. And don't start with the firewire is better than usb so usb sucks rant either. I agree. Firewire is better than usb. But almost all consumer digital cameras use usb, therefore...
 
Re: Re: iPhoto

Originally posted by dukestreet
I imagine you could even see word documents, email, pdf files....its all a matter of what they do with the iPod OS.

I'm still a little sceptical at this point.

D
Click to expand...


yea but it would be hell to view a word
document on an ipod.
 
My question is:
Will it have support for ogg-vorbis now that an integer based decoder is available?
 
Originally posted by Foocha
I have always thought that it was significant that Apple chose to call this line "iPod" a generic name rather than "iPlayer" a music specific name...
Click to expand...

iPod - sounds like Bipod - Seems like just a witty take on 'Walkman'. :D
 
Re: Camera?

Originally posted by wrylachlan
Before the iPod gets a camera of its own, shouldn't it get a usb connector so it can be used to store images from existing cameras? I mean this seems to be a no-brainer. And don't start with the firewire is better than usb so usb sucks rant either. I agree. Firewire is better than usb. But almost all consumer digital cameras use usb, therefore...
Click to expand...
But what would be the point? Wether or not FireWire is better than USB is irrelevent (which it is!), the point is why do you say it would need USB just because other digital cameras do? It has FireWire as do all Macs and a quickly growing amount of PC's, I just don't understand your thinking :confused:
If it has FireWire it doesn't need USB.
...not that I believe for one minite that the iPod would ever be made into a digital camera anyway.
 
I've read that the Gameboy Advance will be getting a backlit screen next year. Makes me wonder if they have improved the current battery life or if they are changing battery types, hopefully rechargable.

As for a color iPod, I'm kind of in between. I would like to see the iPod as a device for all the iApps, but I'm not sure we'll see a color screen, at least not yet. The color screen would drain the battery faster, and the screen would probably need to be bigger to be very useful. But I think 2 of the big selling points for the iPod is it's small size and good battery life. Adding a bigger and/or color screen would probably affect both of those.

However, I would like to have a device for outputing movies and photos too that I could easily hook up to a TV and show family or friends. Streaming movies or songs to a TV or stereo using Bluetooth could be very nice.

I think this is all just a restart to the old iWalk/Apple PDA rumors, and am not expecting anything.

You have to think about the usefulness of it. Now if you take the highend iPods to color screens and keep the 10 gig at black and white, it could provide for some variety, but who is going to buy a color iPod, especially since they would probably be in the $600 range? iPods appeal to the general audience, and I think the only people that will spend the money on an iPod for movies and photos would be the big time "gadget people", and not the iPods core target audience.

DrGruv1:
I am of the same mind about an audio app. I generally use Peak with FCP, but would really like to see an audio app from Apple that could seamlessly integrate with Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro (when using surround sound). The big application for audio is Pro Tools, and while it would be foolish for Apple to try and compete, an audio app made for use with Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro could work. If you want higher end and more advanced audio or major hardware, go to Pro Tools.

-Nate
 
Re: Is the battery on the iPod user-replaceable?

Originally posted by cubist
No rechargable batteries last forever.:( There are a lot of dead palm IIIs and palm Vs out there.:(
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Well... you should be able to get a new battery for your ipod online somewhere. Buy it if you sure it is the battery and not the firewire port that malfunctions sometimes. (wich i think is the problem on my ipod).
It's not THAT difficult to open up the ipod and change the battery yourself.
Actually...I'm going to try it myself if it stops playing after the 4th song for the 20th time this week.
 
Re: Re: Camera?

Originally posted by edesignuk

But what would be the point? Wether or not FireWire is better than USB is irrelevent (which it is!), the point is why do you say it would need USB just because other digital cameras do? It has FireWire as do all Macs and a quickly growing amount of PC's, I just don't understand your thinking :confused:
If it has FireWire it doesn't need USB.
...not that I believe for one minite that the iPod would ever be made into a digital camera anyway.
Click to expand...

You didn't get my point at all. Not to connect to the iMac. The iPod already has firewire for that. I'm talking about connecting your iPod to your camera in the field to offload photos. If I'm on a vacation to mexico I can easily fill my camera's memory. Which means I either need to bring multiple memory cards or a laptop to offload the pics and take more. But if I could bring along an iPod with usb and the right software... do you see where I'm going with this?

And with a color screen on the iPod you could manage the photos in the field, deleting the ones you hate, maybe even keywording them for iPhoto as you go (of course this would require some form of text entry on an iPod which I think is doubtful.)
 
a color screen would be cool, i guess. but i'd much rather see a nice little price drop by maybe a hundred dollars or so. i want an iPod, but $400 (10 gig) is just so much money.
 
Re: Re: Re: Camera?

Originally posted by wrylachlan


You didn't get my point at all. Not to connect to the iMac. The iPod already has firewire for that. I'm talking about connecting your iPod to your camera in the field to offload photos. If I'm on a vacation to mexico I can easily fill my camera's memory. Which means I either need to bring multiple memory cards or a laptop to offload the pics and take more. But if I could bring along an iPod with usb and the right software... do you see where I'm going with this?

And with a color screen on the iPod you could manage the photos in the field, deleting the ones you hate, maybe even keywording them for iPhoto as you go (of course this would require some form of text entry on an iPod which I think is doubtful.)
Click to expand...
Sorry, now I see what you mean....got the wrong end of the stick :rolleyes:
 
ipod

A fuel cell powered pod or laptop first out of the gate by Apple would be truly innovative. Maybe then enough power wouuld be available to have a headset that you watched a movie in-like the Sony one.
 
iPod as photo storage

If a future iPod can do photo storage/display, Apple would have a hit on their hands if it provided some form of compatibility for memory (CF/SD/etc) cards. An external adapter is fine; some adapters are FW already.

Some of the larger pro digital cameras need more storage than the 1GB cards out there now. I'd love to remove my 1GB card from my Canon 11MP SLR (the one I have in my dreams), upload the photos into my iPod for storage, then reuse the card in the camera.

Such devices already exist, but are single-purpose thus aren't as justifiable as a multipurpose iPod.
 
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