OSX Based iPods In August?

[cmcconkey]

No way, no how. It is not gonna have wifi. There is no reason for it to have wifi. It will not run the web, email or any other net utilities. If you want a device that does all that, it already exists, it's called the iPhone.

The next iPod will have full sized wide screen, multi touch interface, have coverflow, maybe run games, etc. The iPod moniker is always going to be for a media entertainment-only device, not an internet device. End of story.

True the iPhone is out there, but not everyone wants to get the iPhone. There are many people out there that will not ever get the iPhone because of one reason or another, those are the people that are wanting a REAL 6G iPod with all the nice toys that the iPhone has. I will not ever have an iPhone until they get onto a real network (AT&T blows around here) and get some good storage (greater than 60gb). To me the iPhone should be the all around mobility tech device, but it can't be as long as it has small drives and only one one network. This is all my $.02 so I am sure that I will be flamed a little by the iPhone lovers but there will be more out there to agree that the next iPod has to have WIFI to be worth anything in the new world of mobile medai players. If Apple doesn't do it now then they will miss out on the next logical move for media players.

Christopher

 

[JGowan]

In order to keep the thin “nano” form, solid state memory would be used and also increase economies of scale, driving solid-state memory costs down and allowing capacity expansion at the same price point.

I hear what you're saying but I believe that's all down the road in a couple of years when 80GB of solid state will cost significantly lower prices. I just don't think Apple will release a touchscreen iPod with small capacity. The current 80GB ipod that has a standard HD(s) is pretty dang thin, surely thin enough to put into this supposed 6G iPod.

I imagine, we'll see a bigger drive than ever before (120GB) and it'll probably cost $599 for the high end and $499 for a lower model (perhaps 80GB). They'll market it as something slightly different like "iPod AV", while continuing to sell the current form (5.5 Generation). Probably lower the price slightly and bump up capacity on the low one ($199/40GB and $249/80GB). We'll probably see a slight redesign to sweeten the deal and perhaps some sort of software addition or application to help move the masses to buy.

They won't discontinue the click wheel... to many people, the WHEEL IPOD is what the iPod is and they no that some people are just against the touchscreen. I think it will be a long while before they stop selling an iPod with a wheel.

 

[SactoGuy18]

Folks,

I think you're all expecting too much from the replacement for the 5.5G video iPod.

The new video iPod will most likely offer these features:

1) Full-screen 8:5 aspect ratio display, but the player's physical size will be exactly the same as the 5.5G 80 GB iPod to maintain compatibility with current iPod docks.

2) Touchscreen functionality with either Multi-Touch operation or a touchscreen representation of the classic Click Wheel functionality.

3) 60 or 100 GB hard drive storage.

4) NO WiFi or Internet surfing capability. This is, after all, a media player, not a device to access the Internet.

 

[JesterJJZ]

Siliconaddict: "About fracking time. My 60GB iPod Photo is down to 2GB of free space. I've been deleting stuff I know I will never listen to...How the hell did Vanilla Ice get on my iPod?!?!"

He he he, I know the feeling

I'm still on my first gen 10gig...and it's dying.

 

[rwdebes]

Folks,

I think you're all expecting too much from the replacement for the 5.5G video iPod.

The new video iPod will most likely offer these features:

1) Full-screen 8:5 aspect ratio display, but the player's physical size will be exactly the same as the 5.5G 80 GB iPod to maintain compatibility with current iPod docks.

2) Touchscreen functionality with either Multi-Touch operation or a touchscreen representation of the classic Click Wheel functionality.

3) 60 or 100 GB hard drive storage.

4) NO WiFi or Internet surfing capability. This is, after all, a media player, not a device to access the Internet.

\

i think will have the same screen size and specs as the iphone (3.5")
will have coverflow and most feature the iphone have for the ipod.
wil be an iphone with no internet and no phone. ( maybe internet , ipod need to become more than a music player.. if u can get into internet , sales will explode.

I'm still on my first gen 10gig...and it's dying.

wow the first gen ? i sold my 5gb.. when u decide to sell let me know.
i want my first gen back.

 

[lazyrighteye]

Sorry, did't read a single post - which is to say, this has surely been mentioned: but doesn't the Mac + free iPod thing expire in Sept?
Meaning, I can't see Apple announcing a new iPod when they are currently trying to clear inventory. Can I?

 

[bnsmmr]

A few arguments for sticking WiFi/Safari in the next iPod:

At WWDC, Jobs talked about Apple's serious interest in growing Safari marketshare and mindshare. I believe the chart they showed indicated that they envisioned Safari taking up to 20% of the browser market. If you accept this as a near-term strategic priority and goal for Apple, Safari on iPod seems like an obvious and giant next step toward that goal. Adding WiFi/Safari on every high-end ipod sold through this year's holiday season would goose Safari's numbers by year-end.

An iPod-fed rising tide of Safari users would benefit the entire Mac/iPhone platform, because as Safari marketshare grows, more of the web will be cajoled into compatibility or even mobile-Safari-directed content.

- - - - -

I don't see any significant issues of cannibalization or competition between the iPhone and iPod, even if they were identical in all specs except for the phone piece. The phone component (not the internet/WiFi stuff) is the important differentiator, which is why they have keyed-in on "phone" in the name. People who want it all in one device will go iPhone; if the Apple/ATT phone implementation doesn't meet your telephony needs, then the iPod is for you. My guess is that most customers would fall pretty strongly on one side of this fence or the other, so neither product would be stealing users from the other.

- - - - - -

Jobs comments (maybe at the D conference?) regarding iPhone direct access to the iTunes store seem to have shifted toward the coy, "one never knows" kind of answers. I bet this is coming and this is another direct, revenue-generating reason to build WiFi into the next gen iPod.

- - - - - - -

WiFi is in the PlayStation and a growing number of other portable devices. Apple needs to stay ahead. And since it's in the iPhone, it's already developed...

 

[dontwalkhand]

Folks,

I think you're all expecting too much from the replacement for the 5.5G video iPod.

The new video iPod will most likely offer these features:

1) Full-screen 8:5 aspect ratio display, but the player's physical size will be exactly the same as the 5.5G 80 GB iPod to maintain compatibility with current iPod docks.

2) Touchscreen functionality with either Multi-Touch operation or a touchscreen representation of the classic Click Wheel functionality.

3) 60 or 100 GB hard drive storage.

4) NO WiFi or Internet surfing capability. This is, after all, a media player, not a device to access the Internet.

I agree with all of this except #4. Look at the PSP, PS3, and Wii its a gaming device, not a device to access the internet...yet it still has a browser. I would love a browser in my iPod, and for people against it, just turn off Wifi and don't use it.

 

[Marx55]

I only hope one thing, because then and only then we will buy thousands of new iPods for our University:

MAKE THE NEW IPOD A FULL HANDHELD COMPUTER BASED ON OS X.

When I say a full cmputer, I mean it. No restrictions for which applications can we run on it. No restrictions to use it for Keynote or PowerPoint presentations, as now can be used any Mac.

WE DO NOT WANT TO USE IT AS A MUSIC PLAYER. WE WANT TO USE IT AS A HANDHELD COMPUTER. LIKE THE LAST GENERATION PDAs OR SMARTPHONES (but withot phone, that is fine for us).

Is Apple listening?

 

[pjarvi]

I need an iPod with 120GB storage. My collection is already at 81GB which makes the 80GB too small to be worthwhile. Otherwise, I'm going to have to buy 3 iPods, one each for movies, TV Shows, and music/podcasts/audiobooks.

I'm holding off until the end of August regardless.

I could care less about having a touch screen. I prefer the raised buttons of the Shuffle, as it is. More storage would be best.

 

[jouster]

...Secondly, I was a little surprised Apple agreed to a 5 year exclusive contract with at&t. Releasing a WiFi iPod would be a way around this.....

I would be very surprised if this would be permitted under the terms of the AT&T agreement. It's way too obvious for either party not to have thought of it.

 

[rob@robburns.co]

This is the equivalent of finding a general purpose chip on an Apple motherboard that supports PS/2 keyboards and mice (there probably is one, Apple's hardware these days uses very standard parts), and assuming that this means the next version of Mac OS X will "enable" PS/2 input device support. Well, how are you going to plug them in? ;-)

Don't worry, Apple will do a software update so that you can plugin your PS/2 device.

 

[rob@robburns.co]

I don't see any significant issues of cannibalization or competition between the iPhone and iPod, even if they were identical in all specs except for the phone piece. The phone component (not the internet/WiFi stuff) is the important differentiator, which is why they have keyed-in on "phone" in the name. People who want it all in one device will go iPhone; if the Apple/ATT phone implementation doesn't meet your telephony needs, then the iPod is for you. My guess is that most customers would fall pretty strongly on one side of this fence or the other, so neither product would be stealing users from the other.

I'm not sure where the fears of cannibalization come from. At the iPhone announcement, Jobs compared the portable media player market to the cellular phone market. It was 100s times larger. So hurting phone sales by providing a full-featured iPod shouldn't be that great of a concern.

As for the argument others have made that this is a media device and not an internet device: well you can get media from the internet.

 

[tarjan]

The only reason for it to have osx is for it to have networking support. Anything else would probably be a waste of resources, memory and power.

My bet is networking will be for it to be a hard drive storage system used with your iphone. Then you can bring your music and video library with you, while keeping the iphone nice and slim.

 

[johnmcboston]

2) Touchscreen functionality with either Multi-Touch operation or a touchscreen representation of the classic Click Wheel functionality.

We have a video touch screen movie watching device. It's called an iphone.

I don't want to have to take my music ipod out of my pocket to look at controls every time I want to change volume or skip a song. i can do this with a click wheel. if we went all iphone-like touch-screen, it would make using the player a nightmare...

I'm not sure people who have video ipods used them for video as much as music...

 

[cmcconkey]

We have a video touch screen movie watching device. It's called an iphone.

I don't want to have to take my music ipod out of my pocket to look at controls every time I want to change volume or skip a song. i can do this with a click wheel. if we went all iphone-like touch-screen, it would make using the player a nightmare...

I'm not sure people who have video ipods used them for video as much as music...

I don't use mine much for video because the screen is so dang small. I could see me watching a lot more video if I had a nice wide screen version of the iPod. When I travel I would like to have something to do other than listen to music, it is nice to have music but to have the ability to watch a movie or catch up on a tv show while I am in a plane (and not have to get out my PB) would be so very nice.

Christopher

 

[emotion]

Flawed article but it makes a few interesting points Re: iPods


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/12/kewney_iphone_magic/

From the article:

"And the small, incremental step was not the phone. That's typical Steve Jobs magic - "Watch my fingers carefully!" says the stage magician. What he's really doing is something entirely different...he's re-designing the iPod user interface.
If Apple had announced that it was abandoning the spin-wheel for the iPod, and had just launched iNew iPod there's a real chance it would have gone down like New Coke did. People understand the iPod. They can scroll through their songs with their hands in their pockets, or while running or in the dark. Why change?"

 

[peharri]

The only reason for it to have osx is for it to have networking support. Anything else would probably be a waste of resources, memory and power.

My bet is networking will be for it to be a hard drive storage system used with your iphone. Then you can bring your music and video library with you, while keeping the iphone nice and slim.

Standardizing on one platform helps with compatibility and maintainability, and can probably help cut costs enough to nullify the impact of slightly more expensive hardware.

Remember, that Quicktime framework that's required for iTunes to play a downloaded movie needs porting to any device the same movie needs to be played upon. Right now, that's Windows, recent iPods, and OS X. Eliminate custom-OS iPods from that collection, and you only have two platforms you need to support.

The expensive hardware is arguably necessary anyway, anything incapable of running NEXTSTEP (for that is what OS X is, when it comes down to it) is probably not capable of showing a movie encoded using a modern codec at a reasonable resolution in real time. "Mac" OS X's apparent high hardware requirements are more to do with Quartz than anything particularly taxing at lower levels.

 

[peharri]

We have a video touch screen movie watching device. It's called an iphone.

I don't want to have to take my music ipod out of my pocket to look at controls every time I want to change volume or skip a song. i can do this with a click wheel. if we went all iphone-like touch-screen, it would make using the player a nightmare...

Good point. I wonder, actually, given that the iPhone is supposed to be "the best iPod evah!(tm - SJ)" how they've dealt with that very issue on the phone.

One of my reasons for feeling that iPhone is not a panacea is the whole "Have to look at it to operate it" aspect. People are raving about how easy and intuitive the device is, but I'm not getting an idea of how useful it is in contexts where you can't really/don't want to look at the thing. Given it's a phone and a music player, and those, actually, are probably the primary functions people wanted out of an iPhone before Jobs demonstrated iSafari, I'd be curious to know how well it works.

(Strikes me that there might be a space for voice control here, if Apple ever gets around to supporting that. Touch the function button on your BT headset and say "Next", "Previous", "Call Home", etc. Not as responsive as direct touch, but the avoidance of fumbling around in your pocket may compensate for that.)

 

[cmcconkey]

People are raving about how easy and intuitive the device is, but I'm not getting an idea of how useful it is in contexts where you can't really/don't want to look at the thing. Given it's a phone and a music player, and those, actually, are probably the primary functions people wanted out of an iPhone before Jobs demonstrated iSafari, I'd be curious to know how well it works.

(Strikes me that there might be a space for voice control here, if Apple ever gets around to supporting that. Touch the function button on your BT headset and say "Next", "Previous", "Call Home", etc. Not as responsive as direct touch, but the avoidance of fumbling around in your pocket may compensate for that.)

There could be a click wheel put onto the other side, in my opinion not a good idea. Or set up a "gesture" that would mimic the click wheel.

Christopher

 

[rob@robburns.co]

Standardizing on one platform helps with compatibility and maintainability, and can probably help cut costs enough to nullify the impact of slightly more expensive hardware.

...

Right now, that's Windows, recent iPods, and OS X. Eliminate custom-OS iPods from that collection, and you only have two platforms you need to support.

Certainly one platform would be good if there were not other concerns. And that is that this platform relies on costly components right now. I think that means the current iPod platform will not go away for a while (and while Apple may bring a phone out on that platform too). After all, the new iPhone platform is not going to come below the $500 + price for a while. With the classic iPod platform Apple can continue to advertise "iPods (and maybe iPhones too) from $99".

The expensive hardware is arguably necessary anyway, anything incapable of running NEXTSTEP (for that is what OS X is, when it comes down to it) is probably not capable of showing a movie encoded using a modern codec at a reasonable resolution in real time. "Mac" OS X's apparent high hardware requirements are more to do with Quartz than anything particularly taxing at lower levels.

I don't imagine Quartz on its own is that much more processor intensive than Display PostScript (from the OpenStep days). In some ways its probably less processor intensive. However, we're asking our computers to do more with CoreImage, CoreVideo, CoreAnimation (coming soon), fluid Multitoch animation, etc. That's where the processing power needs come from.

 

[JohnnyQuest]

What I want and what I think I'm gonna get.

Want:
- 3.5 inch wide screen
- Not chrome, metal.
- OS X like iPhone
- Wifi (even though it won't happen)
- Video out
- Built in iTunes Store
- Touchscreen

Realistically:
- 3.5 inch wide screen
- metal
- watered down OS X
- Video Out
- Touchscreen

 

[pocketrockets]

About half of you don't understand that the BTS promotion doesn't have to end for Apple to announce new iPods. The new iPods won't qualify for the rebate, yet students and educators will still buy the old one because its free! Exact same thing happened last year.

I predict that the new iPod WILL have OS X and wifi capability because Jobs himself hinted at that. Most devices like PSP, Wii, and even Nintendo DS, etc already have wifi also. Apple has no reason to put that off especially in something as popular as an iPod.

Furthermore, all models will have the same software, etc. It has ALWAYS been that way. As per usual, capacity will be the only determinant in price.

 

[lazyrighteye]

I don't use mine much for video because the screen is so dang small. I could see me watching a lot more video if I had a nice wide screen version of the iPod. When I travel I would like to have something to do other than listen to music, it is nice to have music but to have the ability to watch a movie or catch up on a tv show while I am in a plane (and not have to get out my PB) would be so very nice.

Christopher

I just flew on my 1st business trip with my iPhone.
Glorious.

In the airport: emailed some pix I took with the built-in camera, did some txting, fielded a couple of phone calls, entered a few new events in iCal based on the phone calls, snapped a couple more pix, checked the weather in my destination city, kept up-to-geek with macrumors... all while listening to music.
On the plane: more music and then a movie. Then a slide show, just for kicks.

And the best part?
I didn't have to take out my MacBook Pro, once (ok, besides the security check point).

Thank you Apple.

 

[SactoGuy18]

I don't want to have to take my music ipod out of my pocket to look at controls every time I want to change volume or skip a song. i can do this with a click wheel. if we went all iphone-like touch-screen, it would make using the player a nightmare...

Funny you mention that because a recent article posted here on MacRumors talks about an Apple patent for an iPod video with a touchscreen on one side and the classic Click Wheel on the other side.