Wireless iPod Headphones (Bluetooth)?

[appleface]

time

this isn't a profound statement, but it's only a matter of time before apple includes built-in wireless capabilities into the ipods.

 

[Eniregnat]

I really don't know what the purpos of wirelss headphones is today, with the players being so small. I would be more intrested in "Wriless FireWire" as rumord. Even if it was only at FW1 speed.

 

[mattraehl]

A) Why would anyone want to be able to sync their iPod with BT? You have to plug the thing in somewhere to charge it anyways, so it might as well be into the computer, where you can sync it as well.
B) BT headphones are not appealing to me at all. Something else with batteries. No thank you. But I guess if you wanted to clip your iPod to your shoe, BT headphones could come in handy.
C) BT integration with car stereos seems like a neat idea, but this would require, well, buying a car stereo with BT. The stereos would probably be pricey, but at least you could have the "best of both worlds" in terms of sound quality, and being able to let people in the back seat DJ.

 

[pianoman181]

While wireless bluetooth headphones would be cool. I don't really see it happening. Here's why:

1) audio must be converted from digital format (aac, mp3 what have you) to a form of streaming digital audio.
2) streamed audio must be decoded at the headphones
3) from there, the decoded analog signal must be amplified to headphone level

That's a lot of electronics in the headphones themselves. They will be expensive. Furthermore, I can't imagine the battery life would be all that wonderful.

 

[SeaFox]

Cambridge Silicon Radio, a wireless technology group, has approached Apple with the offer to install its microchips into future iPods.

Doesn't this just reek of despiration on the company's part?

"Hey, we think you should use our parts in your next iPod revision..."

"Wow, really. Every other company we know of feels like we should use their parts too!"

I mean, like Apple can't figure out to put bluetooth in an iPod on it's own, and doesn't already have a supplier of bluetooth parts for Macs they may want to do more business with. To just have this company come out of the blue with this just looks like they really want a piece of the iPod pie bad.

 

[beatle888]

I dont see this happening in any major capacity. Maybe on the high-end models exclusively.

The little white wires are a major part of how Apple markets the iPod.

because apple highlights the wires in its ipod commercial means that they should ignore more advancements...in order to keep the integrity of their marketing efforts?

that sounds backwords to me. hmm lets stay in the dark ages because our flagship product is always shown with wires.

 

[SeaFox]

If you remember that USB2 is 480Mbps and wireless networking is 54Mbps you can see why it's just plain stupid using Bluetooth for anything other than as a control interface or low bandwidth streaming of audio.

USB2 is not 480Mbps, that's the burst transfer rate, not the sustained transfer rate. People just site that number because it makes it appear USB2 is faster than Firewire.

Same with the 54Mbps 802.11g network. That's the theoretical top speed of the radio equipment, nobody will ever get a connection that fast. Actual connection speeds are 20-25Mbps, it even says so in the official spec.

Apple's Airtunes btw sends Apple lossless coded audio to the Airport Express box. It uses a lot of bandwidth it need not use if the source was 128Kbps AAC originally but I guess they didn't want to stick in an AAC/WMA/MP3 etc decoder in there.

That would have been a good idea for non-DRMed songs. A REALLY good idea The reason it uses an encrypted AL stream is so the airport express doesn't have to be authorized and deauthorized like a computer to play iTMS purchases.

 

[bit density]

Imagine a smart battery

That lasted 14 hours. That I could recharge at night easily, that could be recharged in my card while I was using it. That weighed less than 8 quarters. That had active memory. A color screen that should how long the battery life was. And it stored say 1000 songs, and my photos and I could play games with it. That I could plug in any haedphones that I wanted into it, and it would automatically hook up to my music collection.

Now that would be kick ass...

 

[MacRumoron]

I want wireless earbuds

Not wireless headphones because i want to put on the wireless earbuds in class with a hood on so i don't have to listen to my teacher

 

[BWhaler]

People, people, people.

See this for what it is: a slimy sales ploy to get Apple's competitors interested in their technology.

Nothing more, nothing less.

How do I know?

1. No vendor of Apple, especially a small one, discusses things like this. In the cases of mistakes, Jobs cracks down on the vendor brutally hard. See ATI for an example.

2. All they said is they tried to sell Apple. That means nothing more than one person in a 13,000 person company took a meeting with them. So what.

3. If they were in conversations with Apple, they wouldn't say anything at the risk of losing the business or inviting in their competitors. So clearly the Apple lead is dead.

So, why disclose this?

Because Apple is a dead sales lead for them. But the best way to get Sony, Microsoft, Creative, etc., to pay attention to them is to leak a rumor that Apple may use their technology.

-
Now, don't get me wrong. I think BT in an iPod is inevitable. But this leak proves nothing.

 

[w_parietti22]

Knowing me... I would lose one side.

 

[quigleybc]

Now if they can just figure out a way to allow me to change tracks or playlists by just thinking about it they may be on to something.

I agree, this would be a great way to use my new esp powers..

 

[bretm]

One- Size, it would be quite large to fit everything (battery, antenae, the bud itself)
Two- My earbuds fall out of my ears quite often...
Three- High chance of loosing them/easily stolen

Three is related to two and two is prevented by one. Therefore suck hard = no.

 

[bretm]

You mean like how Samsung came to Apple and told them they'd cut the price on their flash rom chips if Apple signed a deal with them. Let's see, where did that lead... oh, yeah, Apple ditched it's most popular product and designed a completely new one around the proposal given to them by Samsung. Yeah, coming to Apple with an idea is pointless.

Doesn't this just reek of despiration on the company's part?

"Hey, we think you should use our parts in your next iPod revision..."

"Wow, really. Every other company we know of feels like we should use their parts too!"

I mean, like Apple can't figure out to put bluetooth in an iPod on it's own, and doesn't already have a supplier of bluetooth parts for Macs they may want to do more business with. To just have this company come out of the blue with this just looks like they really want a piece of the iPod pie bad.

 

[Peel]

While wireless bluetooth headphones would be cool. I don't really see it happening. Here's why:

1) audio must be converted from digital format (aac, mp3 what have you) to a form of streaming digital audio.
2) streamed audio must be decoded at the headphones
3) from there, the decoded analog signal must be amplified to headphone level

That's a lot of electronics in the headphones themselves. They will be expensive. Furthermore, I can't imagine the battery life would be all that wonderful.

This isn't any different than what my Jabra BT earpiece for my BT cellphone does, except that the cellphone earpiece includes a mic, and is for one ear only. The Jabra has a rechargable battery, with charging stand, and gets approx 5 or 6 hours of talk time (supposedly 125 hr on standby) - hard to tell really, since I don't talk on the phone for more than 1/2 hour at a time, and usually less than 5 minutes.

Only drawback there is that the Jabra unit doesn't have very good aesthetics, which is something that the Apple headphones certainly would.

 

[nbs2]

A) Why would anyone want to be able to sync their iPod with BT? You have to plug the thing in somewhere to charge it anyways, so it might as well be into the computer, where you can sync it as well.
B) BT headphones are not appealing to me at all. Something else with batteries. No thank you. But I guess if you wanted to clip your iPod to your shoe, BT headphones could come in handy.
C) BT integration with car stereos seems like a neat idea, but this would require, well, buying a car stereo with BT. The stereos would probably be pricey, but at least you could have the "best of both worlds" in terms of sound quality, and being able to let people in the back seat DJ.

A) I wouldn't mind being able to make a minor daily sync via BT. I don't buy music every day. I get the free songs every week, but that purchases come less often. For syncing playlists, contact/schedule, and other minutae, it wouldn't be so bad. I keep my iPod in my bedroom - my wife and I use it as an alarm - and charge it via the dock (plugged into the wall). Right now I don't sync it that often b/c I have disk mode enabled (I should uncheck that box), and don't always have time in the morning (when I like to sync) to fish out a cable to plug it in.
B) Can't argue there - I don't know how I feel.
C) I wire directly b/c I use the Belkin Auto Kit to charge and have a direct connection to the aux input on the rear of my stereo. I think Belkin would come up with a BT tape (and Auto Kit) adapter for people to not need a BT stereo.

 

[aswitcher]

This has to happen, BT earphones are the one thing that I feel is really missing from my iPod - bloody wires always get tangled, controller is always out of easy off/on etc. Plus phone rings need to stuff around,

I can see the dancing silhouttes now, with phrases like "unwired" "music on air" "no strings" etc

I really hope they allow you to bond two BT devices (or more) at the same time so two people or two BT receivers at home can get the same iPods music. Make that three to four if they are smart and allow the heads phones to also answer your mobile phone (pausing your music etc).

 

[cxny]

Pointless Idea (to add to 6000 other iPod accessories)

By the time you add a battery, receiver and controls why not just engineer
an iPod-headphone (you heard it here first!) - basically a Shuffle integrated into a pair of cans? Actually I was going to zip-tie my son's Shuffle to a huge pair of Sony DJ headphones for a laugh!

 

[Kobushi]

Now if they can just figure out a way to allow me to change tracks or playlists by just thinking about it they may be on to something.

I dunno, haven't you ever had a really crappy song stuck in your head. You could be in perpetual replay of the "Dallas" themesong forever!

 

[Kobushi]

One- Size, it would be quite large to fit everything (battery, antenae, the bud itself)
Two- My earbuds fall out of my ears quite often...
Three- High chance of loosing them/easily stolen

1. not necessarily. You can have some tiny batteries these days. Look at modern hearing aids, some aren't even noticed.

2. Chances are, that's because of the weight of the cord bouncing up and down and pulling them out of your ear. With wireless that shouldn't be a problem.

3. Yeah, but that's true of lots of things. At least these will be stuck in your ear unlike car keys, the remote, your missing left socks......

 

[Kobushi]

This has to happen, BT earphones are the one thing that I feel is really missing from my iPod - bloody wires always get tangled, controller is always out of easy off/on etc. Plus phone rings need to stuff around,

I can see the dancing silhouttes now, with phrases like "unwired" "music on air" "no strings" etc

I agree, it'd be pretty sweet if ipod went BT. Even cooler would be if they (comforatbly) looped over the back of your ear (like glasses) leaving some room for a couple control buttons like volume and skip/back

 

[bloogersnigen]

Cool, thanks for the insight. As I stated in my above post, I was pretty sure this was the case, but wasn't aware of the specifics.

Although, Apple may decide to somehow bypass this functionality to offer a new version of the iPod Shuffle - not only do you not know what you'll be listening to next, it may not even be coming from your own iPod!

Remember life is random

 

[Tha_Sylent1]

How will people know im cool if they cant see my white ipod headphones cord?

I think Logitech already has some BT headphones out. This doesnt seem real appealing to me.

Coolness comes from within and not without grasshopper...

 

[iMeowbot]

Three- High chance of loosing them/easily stolen

Ewww. Stealing someone else's headphones would be like stealing someone's dentures, especially if they're the in-ear doodads.

 

[mo0805]

if apple does include bluetooth on the ipod, i doubt it will be for wireless headphones. i personally don't see the point of that. bluetooth uses too much battery life to be used constantly. it just wouldn't be practical. i think that if bluetooth is included in an ipod, it will be for data transfer, and maybe streaming music to the computer speakers. or even farther down the line, streaming audio to a stereo with bluetooth? slideshow to a television with bluetooth? who knows. but wireless headphones? i doubt it.