Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Can't they just use a HDD instead? It'll be a bit thicker, but I doubt that people would care. I would personally be fine if it was as thick as the 80GB iPod classic (but I doubt it would be that thick)

I can't speak for anyone else, but there's no way in hell I'd buy an HDD based iPod Touch. Lower reliability, lower battery life, slower access times. No thanks.
 
for the iPod touch, yes. for the iPod classic, not it the near future

It is definitely clear that the Classic is the 'end of the road' for Apple hard drive based players, at least to me.

We might see one more revision of the Classic that will keep it on the market through early 2009.... after that I expect that Apple (and many other companies) will only produce flash based portable players. They get drastically better battery life, are more reliable, and are (more or less) shockproof.

If Moore's Law holds up and we don't see rampant inflation in the economy, then we should be seeing at least 64GB flash based iPods in 2009 for what we are now paying for the 16GB.
 
It is definitely clear that the Classic is the 'end of the road' for Apple hard drive based players, at least to me.

We might see one more revision of the Classic that will keep it on the market through early 2009.... after that I expect that Apple (and many other companies) will only produce flash based portable players. They get drastically better battery life, are more reliable, and are (more or less) shockproof.

If Moore's Law holds up and we don't see rampant inflation in the economy, then we should be seeing at least 64GB flash based iPods in 2009 for what we are now paying for the 16GB.

there is no way this is the end of the road for HDD based iPods. you show where in the next 5 years you will be able to produce 160g flash at a low cost to put in an iPod, by the time the touch has 64gb, the iPod classic will have over two days of battery and at least a few gigabyte hard drive. flash is much more efficient, but it costs way to much right now, apple will not replace a 160gig hard drive iPod classic with a 64gig touch, not going to happen, they would be working backwards memorywise
 
there is no way this is the end of the road for HDD based iPods. you show where in the next 5 years you will be able to produce 160g flash at a low cost to put in an iPod, by the time the touch has 64gb, the iPod classic will have over two days of battery and at least a few gigabyte hard drive. flash is much more efficient, but it costs way to much right now, apple will not replace a 160gig hard drive iPod classic with a 64gig touch, not going to happen, they would be working backwards memorywise


Did I say it was the end of the road? What I said was that the Classic and any further refinements to it do represent the end of the road for hard drive based ipods.

You are making BOLD predictions about flash prices in five years. Do you know how much flash memory cost 5 years ago? 32MB memory cards for digital cameras sold for one hundred bucks. Maybe you've never heard of Moore's Law? Try to educate yourself, you look like a fool.

As much as you dislike believing it, Apple tends to precede the industry by a year or two on these things. Hard drives are also going to be disappearing as the OS installation partition on many laptops within 12-24 months. The OS will be installed on a 32GB flash disk for excellent battery time and super fast bootup resume behavior.... for those that require more than 32GB of storage they can add a secondary hard disk.

Networks, VPNs, file servers, etc, are slowly rendering the need for massive storage in portable devices redundant.

I've been working in the technology industry for a loooong time and am fairly good at predicting these things. I remember when the 20GB iPod came out and I pointed out that they would have 40GB within 6-12 months. I got heckled pretty good by people that either claimed 40GB was impractical for a portable hard disc, or that 40GB was more than anybody could ever use.

I'm firmly convinced that the Classic is the end of the road for hard drive based ipods. Flash will double or more than double every 12-18 months on the iPod touch. It really won't take long for it to get into large capacities that will satisfy MOST users. For those that want 1TB, they will probably continue to increase storage capacity on the Classic until it is discontinued at some point in the next 2 years or so.

Additionally wireless access, etc, will make it seem foolish to carry massive amounts of stuff to sort through, especially when you can access it from your home system over a wireless network, etc.
 
It's not just a cable to do this, it's a ton of software engineering as well. Not to mention that the number of people who are going to carry two devices around are probably too small for Apple to make it worthwhile.


I don't know about a 'ton' really.

The Classic already has the ability to act as a disk drive. And the Touch already has the ability to accept data via it's input port.

It would take having the two devices 'pair' themselves, making sure that they both belong to the same person, which means that they were last synced on the same PC. Both devices already have THIS software, too, which you can verify by trying to sync any iPod on a different PC than usual. It will show you a message asking about it.

The user would select a video on the Classic screen and use an option to move it out to the other device. THIS part would be new, but I can't say how complex it would be to code.

Oh, and they'd also have to provide a way to delete stuff off the iTouch without needing to hook it to your PC's iTunes...but Apple is already going to need to provide this if they open up the option to purchase items via WiFi, since you can't buy new items if your iTouch is already full.
 
I don't know about a 'ton' really.

The Classic already has the ability to act as a disk drive. And the Touch already has the ability to accept data via it's input port.

It would take having the two devices 'pair' themselves, making sure that they both belong to the same person, which means that they were last synced on the same PC. Both devices already have THIS software, too, which you can verify by trying to sync any iPod on a different PC than usual. It will show you a message asking about it.

The user would select a video on the Classic screen and use an option to move it out to the other device. THIS part would be new, but I can't say how complex it would be to code.

Oh, and they'd also have to provide a way to delete stuff off the iTouch without needing to hook it to your PC's iTunes...but Apple is already going to need to provide this if they open up the option to purchase items via WiFi, since you can't buy new items if your iTouch is already full.


I think we will see ipod touch devices in higher memory configurations long before we see a hacked up solution where you piggy back one ipod on top of another one.
 
I think we will see ipod touch devices in higher memory configurations long before we see a hacked up solution where you piggy back one ipod on top of another one.

Could be. I do think that they need to do something about the problem that you need to dock to your PC in order to change the device content. This problem is, admittedly, exacerbated by the paltry capacity of the iTouch. 16gb might be considered a lot if you are storing only music files, but for a device that is clearly intended as a portable video viewer, 16gb just doesn't cut it.

64gb might do it, but idiots like me (grin) will still be carrying two iPods around because I have a LOT of music and I love to listen to it on the road. If I'm traveling, I'm a long way from the PC I need to use for syncing/adding content.
 
Could be. I do think that they need to do something about the problem that you need to dock to your PC in order to change the device content. This problem is, admittedly, exacerbated by the paltry capacity of the iTouch. 16gb might be considered a lot if you are storing only music files, but for a device that is clearly intended as a portable video viewer, 16gb just doesn't cut it.

64gb might do it, but idiots like me (grin) will still be carrying two iPods around because I have a LOT of music and I love to listen to it on the road. If I'm traveling, I'm a long way from the PC I need to use for syncing/adding content.


I think we will see synch via wi-fi sooner or later. This will allow people to change content 'on the fly' as long as they can get access through the internet to their home machine.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.