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Photo iPod -- Apple's first misguided idea in a while.

L

lem0nayde

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 26, 2002
171
0
NYC
I love Apple, I love the iPod, I even like the idea of a color iPod screen. But, I just don't think that portable photos are the NEXT BIG THING.

I mean, how unexciting is it to show your photos to people on a tiny screen? Sure, you can hook it up to a TV, but are you really going to carry that cord around with you? Most digital cameras allow you to do that anyway, so you can just show them from there (and take pictures while you are at it.) An are you really going to sit around gawking at your music-accompanied iPod slideshow all day?

Now, if the iPod had the ability to download photos from your camera - that would be something else. I'd love to have a portable harddrive when I am out shooting, and the ability to review what I save to the harddrive (even in RAW camera format.) Sure, I know what you are going to say -- I can buy the Belkin Media reader and download photos to my iPod. I have it, and let me tell you it is horribly slow and worthless for anyone that takes a lot of photos (takes about 40minutes to download a 1GB card.) Plus, the iPod doesn't have RAW camera file support.

I just feel that Apple is harping on the iPod too much. It's insanely popular, and making them buttloads of money -- but what happens once everyone has one? Apple doesn't seem to have any other nifty devices up it's sleeve. It doesn't even seem to care that much about it's machines anymore. I haven't even seen one iMac G5 poster around the city (New York) whereas you can't throw a stone without hitting an iPod poster.

Don't even get me started on the completely odd U2 iPod. Are there really that many people that want a U2 signed iPod? Maybe there are...seems very odd to me. I guess we'll have to wait and see how it sells.

In summary:

Photo iPod -- nifty screen, lack of useful functionality (aside from the iPod's normal functionality.)

iPod in general -- in danger of severe overexposure and possibly all-your-eggs-in-one-basket syndrome.

Apple's state of invention -- give us something NEW NEW NEW. There are so many wheels for you to reinvent, let's see that Apple magic applied elsewhere.

That's all from me.
Joe
 
I think you might be oversimplfying the issue here. How many times did we hear about, "nobody is going to want to take their entire music collection with them?" I think that we have shown that there were a large group of people that did and then others realized the potential afterwards.

The iPod has always been about the early adopters. Then after enough buzz got generated around it, the general public wanted in. There will be a mraket for the iPod Photo, just like there was a market for the iPod.

Sure its not as polished as we would like, but the idea has to start somewhere. I think this is merely the first step. After it is demostrated that a market exists they will add more features and functionality. This is a test. The great thing is that they should be able to upgrade the 1st gen to the later features unless those feature require different hardware. As long as its a firmware issue, then they can bring all the early adopters along for the ride.

As for the Media readers, I am sure they will improve over time as well. The latest edition from Belkin is supposedly still slow, but faster than the first. The technology will improve, features will be added. I really think its too early to say that they are missing boat. Maybe we are all missing the point.
 
well, U2 selling 120 million songs must mean a great fan base. It is an image thing as well. It projects a real rock and roll image and people see U2 backing the iPod and its music system then they think to themselves "this must be THE system to play music on!" so when they decide to buy an MP3 player it will probably be an iPod...most likely a reg. iPod, but an iPod none the less.

As far as the iPod Photo goes- again, I think there is a market for it and a nice product. I don't think it is a killer product mostly due to the price, but the fact that it has color (I like mostly for calendar viewing) and a longer battery life it will appeal to many of those with huge libraries of music.

The way I see it being used eventually would be a smaller version where you don't carry all your pictures around, but you are able to carry around a few iPhoto albums around to show friends and family. I would love to have an iPod to carry 40 or so pics of my children around in my pocket to show people when they ask about my kids.

That being said, I would like to see PDA qualities added so I can have one device to enter calendar dates and listen to music. give me that and I will buy one in a second.

Currently don't own an iPod, but wanting to get one sometime soon.
 
I agree.

The iPod is a great success for Apple, but it's time to be looking at other things now, and to push their computing products in the market place. EVERYONE (ok most) in the UK will be able to tell you what an iPod is, you ask what a Power Mac G5, or an iMac G5 is, and they will just look at you in a confused manner.

As for the Photo iPod, as you say, if it could download your pics from you camera it would be great, but as it is, it's pretty pointless IMO. Same goes for the U2 iPod, it's ugly as hell, red & black!? What are they thinking!?!
 
stoid said:
I'm wondering if the Photo iPod is the pre-cursor to a future video capable iPod that will allow that same video hook up to playback videos on your TV.
Click to expand...

OH YEAH!!!...to borrow a phrase from the Duffman :)

2006 will be the year of the vidPod.
 
stoid said:
I'm wondering if the Photo iPod is the pre-cursor to a future video capable iPod that will allow that same video hook up to playback videos on your TV.
Click to expand...

I think it is, but as Steve said in the speech about it there is no content out there yet really for a mass market video iPod. so it makes sense that this is the next step as there IS lots of digital photo content out there- but i would also agree that most probably don't wan't all their pictures with them on the run.
 
edesignuk said:
EVERYONE (ok most) in the UK will be able to tell you what an iPod is, you ask what a Power Mac G5, or an iMac G5 is, and they will just look at you in a confused manor.
Click to expand...

[dorky]what if you're in a bemused pub instead of a confused manor? do you have to go to a confused manor before they can look at you or are there special exceptions that can be made? :p sorry, couldn't resist.[/dorky]
 
themadchemist said:
[dorky]what if you're in a bemused pub instead of a confused manor? do you have to go to a confused manor before they can look at you or are there special exceptions that can be made? :p sorry, couldn't resist.[/dorky]
Click to expand...
LOL, well spotted, rather good typo don't you think :D
 
People my parents' age love to tote photos to show people. They love to see them, too. Imagine that their photos are on the computer and with a little extra work, they create a slideshow which gets transferred to their iPod and they can show the relatives easily.

It's a whole new group of people who don't really listen to music but want to share their memories. It'll take a while before most of them will part with that much money, but as prices of colour LCDs drop, I'm sure we'll see more interested people.
 
stoid said:
I'm wondering if the Photo iPod is the pre-cursor to a future video capable iPod that will allow that same video hook up to playback videos on your TV.
Click to expand...

How about a portable dvrPod, where the iPod is actually used to record TV programs (new cable boxes are now required to be firewire enabled) and you can subsequently display them on your iPod or on your Mac/PC as well as the TV?
 
edesignuk said:
I agree.

The iPod is a great success for Apple, but it's time to be looking at other things now, and to push their computing products in the market place. EVERYONE (ok most) in the UK will be able to tell you what an iPod is, you ask what a Power Mac G5, or an iMac G5 is, and they will just look at you in a confused manner.

As for the Photo iPod, as you say, if it could download your pics from you camera it would be great, but as it is, it's pretty pointless IMO. Same goes for the U2 iPod, it's ugly as hell, red & black!? What are they thinking!?!
Click to expand...
Same crazy garbage they were thinking when they made the imac look like a pod. sorry edesignuk but gag. I cant stand pods and sure wouldnt want a computer to mimmick it. plus there are lots of ways to move media these days.
 
kgarner said:
I think you might be oversimplfying the issue here. How many times did we hear about, "nobody is going to want to take their entire music collection with them?"
Click to expand...


Uh. never, i heard the opposite. thats why they created it. but the original poster does have a point, though i think. the new ipod, what its real use is storing photos not viewing them. your camera can do that. ideally the photo i pod should really just have an usb to usb, or FW to FW, connection directly to the camera to extract the photos out of the camera into the ipod. this step will evolve the ipod, in the distant future, to an all in one pda, pvp, mp3 player.
 
PhotoPod :) ... it's nice, plenty nice when you want to have a look at your pics... come on apple, I'm waiting the shipment confirmation.
 
Before this news, I always thought the iPod should be about music - put simply this is what it's meant to do. Better not to be a jack of all trades but master of none, etc...

However, from a novely point of view, it would be nice to be able to glance at a colour screen (notice the half Mac OS X-style and font change from Chicago to Lucida Grande) and look at album art. It would be nice to watch some of your memories while sitting on a train or whatever, along to the sound of your music. But these are novelty features. And I would never pay that price for that novelty. And novelty is all these features are. I can barely afford the entry level iPod but I still don't mind this because, given a couple of years, prices will go down and capacities and features up.

stoid said:
I'm wondering if the Photo iPod is the pre-cursor to a future video capable iPod that will allow that same video hook up to playback videos on your TV.
Click to expand...
Steve Jobbs has said before and he clearly states again in this keynote that this will never happen because people don't have the content. But, of course, markets do change.
 
Heh, I was waiting for one of these threads.

Remember how the original iPod was a bad idea because it was too expensive? Nobody really used MP3 players anyway.

Remember how the iPod mini was a bad idea because it was more than the flash based players, and for $50 more you could get 20GB?

Remember how ITMS was a bad idea because nobody would pay for music when they could download it for free?

Need I go on?
 
lem0nayde said:
Now, if the iPod had the ability to download photos from your camera - that would be something else. I'd love to have a portable harddrive when I am out shooting, and the ability to review what I save to the harddrive (even in RAW camera format.) Sure, I know what you are going to say -- I can buy the Belkin Media reader and download photos to my iPod. I have it, and let me tell you it is horribly slow and worthless for anyone that takes a lot of photos (takes about 40minutes to download a 1GB card.) Plus, the iPod doesn't have RAW camera file support...
Click to expand...

I agree. Someone pointed out in another thread that the iPod doesn't let you upload music while you are out and about either. Well, that's true, but unlike music, there are millions of digital cameras out there, all creating content on the fly and all quickly running out of room on their tiny flash cards for the hundreds of nice big files they are creating.

There is no equivalent consumer device driven market for creating music on the fly and needing to store it away, although some muso's and djs might disagree.

The point is, other devices are doing all this right now, and they do mp3s as well, and many are a similar size and battery life to the iPod, while admittedly nowhere near as cool.

It's a missed opportunity, all it would have taken at a minimum is just some software to at least allow any uploaded images (even only jpgs) from the cruddy belkin device to be turned into thumbnails and then become accessible to the photo browser. Dozens of other devices can do this now. The iPod processor has the horsepower to do it.

That one feature would have satisfied most photographers in the short term, until a better card reader comes along, and that one feature would have encouraged other developers to make a better/faster/smaller reader.
 
stcanard said:
Heh, I was waiting for one of these threads.

Remember how the original iPod was a bad idea because it was too expensive? Nobody really used MP3 players anyway.

Remember how the iPod mini was a bad idea because it was more than the flash based players, and for $50 more you could get 20GB?

Remember how ITMS was a bad idea because nobody would pay for music when they could download it for free?

Need I go on?
Click to expand...
Good valid points my friend. I'm sure we'll see iPod Photo go on to sell very well.
 
johnnyjibbs said:
Good valid points my friend. I'm sure we'll see iPod Photo go on to sell very well.
Click to expand...

only time will tell- but i agree- good points! we'll see :)
 
personally i wouldn't want all my photos on my ipod but i love the color screen and the ability to show album artwork and whatnot.

what i'm hopping is for apple to upgrade all the iPods to a color screen. (i mean the new iPod is called the iPod PHOTO) could we see iPod Video with a wide screen on the back? i mean i sounds like that this version will continue towards photos while the regualar iPod will attack music and maybe more will be added to the Photopod to make it easier to use with a digitial camera.

i mean it just sounds like this is a totally new product and the regualar iPods are still are yet to be updated.....
 
edesignuk said:
As for the Photo iPod, as you say, if it could download your pics from you camera it would be great, but as it is, it's pretty pointless IMO.
Click to expand...

I'm taking a wait-and-see attitude on that one. Just because it's not there right now, doesn't mean it's not going to show up in a future firmware update (well we can always wish...). After all the iPod transfer is already two way with song counts and ratings, so the basic infrastructure is there.

As for target markets, I know a lot of people who are holding off buying digital cameras because there's no really easy way to show the photos; they don't want to have everybody troop up to the computer room to show off the vacation photos, there's no really easy way to bring the wedding photo album with them when they visit friends & family, etc. This effectively removes those barriers. I wouldn't be surprised to see digital camera + iPod photo combination deals in the future. If a combination knocks $50 off the total price, all of a sudden it's a lot closer to a basic iPod in cost.

Other people (like me) might see it as an efficient way of keeping backups of your digital photos, wich the added bonus that you can actually show people the photos too!

Of course if you're a professional photographer it's not going to make much sense since those issues are already dealt with in better ways.
 
mashinhead said:
ideally the photo i pod should really just have an usb to usb, or FW to FW, connection directly to the camera to extract the photos out of the camera into the ipod. this step will evolve the ipod, in the distant future, to an all in one pda, pvp, mp3 player.
Click to expand...


Well I can see this being done with a firmwear update, as well as a product currently available being made as a usb version

What I am talking about is that firewire contverter that some 3rd party company makes, it is basically a 6 pin firewire adapter. If they were to make this as a USB adapter (as the ipod recognises usb in that same plug)
The only thing that would need to be done is make the iPod be able to download picture directly from the camera without the media reader (is this possible right now, in theory?)

Sorry if this doesnt make sense, it does in my mind anyway.
 
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