Great Idea Re: Dock
A GREAT IDEA FOR APPLE
The iPod is not going in the direction of a video player with a radio, that's ridiculous. The iPod is designed for only audio so it should function as your home stereo system, your car audio system, your portable music system and as a recording device.
Apple will release an iPod dock with Bluetooth capabilities. Now it can update changes in the Music Library and you wouldn't have to move the iPod which means it can be hooked to your home stereo system for good. That would give people more freedom for where they can put their iPod.
You could also send commands to the iPod from the computer through iTunes so it could function as a remote and it would work seamlessly with the normal iTunes interface. You would just highlight the iPod in the Source pane and the play button and the other two would now control the iPod. Totally intuitive and a minor update for iTunes. Now the iPod could stay at the stereo the whole time, and a computer in another room can download new songs and keep the play count correct. Plus you could control the audio in another room for example, at a party.
Since the Firewire cable goes through the dock the dock could issue its own commands to the iPod. The iPod does not need to be aware that it's connected to the new dock so it's totally backwards compatible. The new dock would have to get bigger but I'll trust the apple designers to make it look good.
The average user would spend around $50 for the dock and $40 for a Bluetooth adaptor. That's not too much for most people because the adaptor could be used with their cell phones too. Oh yeah this would also mean you could control the iPod via a Bluetooth, radio or infrared remote. The sensor would be integrated into the dock.
The dock would use rechargeable batteries so it could be portable. The dock battery would extend the battery life of an iPod that's plugged in. Think dock equals spare battery; so this idea gets even better. The dock could be the same dimensions as the iPod so when you wanted to take them somewhere they could go back to back held with a nylon strap (on the bottom of the dock, out of view). Totally portable.
Don't think of it as a "pro" dock. People don't have to buy this.
What do you think?
The iPod is not going in the direction of a video player with a radio, that's ridiculous. The iPod is designed for only audio so it should function as your home stereo system, your car audio system, your portable music system and as a recording device.
Apple will release an iPod dock with Bluetooth capabilities. Now it can update changes in the Music Library and you wouldn't have to move the iPod which means it can be hooked to your home stereo system for good. That would give people more freedom for where they can put their iPod.
You could also send commands to the iPod from the computer through iTunes so it could function as a remote and it would work seamlessly with the normal iTunes interface. You would just highlight the iPod in the Source pane and the play button and the other two would now control the iPod. Totally intuitive and a minor update for iTunes. Now the iPod could stay at the stereo the whole time, and a computer in another room can download new songs and keep the play count correct. Plus you could control the audio in another room for example, at a party.
Since the Firewire cable goes through the dock the dock could issue its own commands to the iPod. The iPod does not need to be aware that it's connected to the new dock so it's totally backwards compatible. The new dock would have to get bigger but I'll trust the apple designers to make it look good.
The average user would spend around $50 for the dock and $40 for a Bluetooth adaptor. That's not too much for most people because the adaptor could be used with their cell phones too. Oh yeah this would also mean you could control the iPod via a Bluetooth, radio or infrared remote. The sensor would be integrated into the dock.
The dock would use rechargeable batteries so it could be portable. The dock battery would extend the battery life of an iPod that's plugged in. Think dock equals spare battery; so this idea gets even better. The dock could be the same dimensions as the iPod so when you wanted to take them somewhere they could go back to back held with a nylon strap (on the bottom of the dock, out of view). Totally portable.
Don't think of it as a "pro" dock. People don't have to buy this.
What do you think?
Comments
Originally posted by Francisco_G
Don't think of it as a "pro" dock. People don't have to buy this.
What do you think?
I think it wouldn't work -- or at least it would work very well.
Firewire has a maximum bandwidth of 400 Mbps. Bluetooth maxes out a 1 Mbps -- much, much slower than Firewire, even a lot slower than USB 1.1 (12 Mpbs). Updating your iPod over Bluetooth would be painfully sluggish if you're used to Firewire data rates. If fact, Apple went the Firewire route because they didn't think USB 1.1's 12 Mbps was fast enough.
1 Mbps is still a faster data rate than typical MP3 or AAC files played back in real time -- roughly 8 times faster for 128 Kbps audio files, if you manage to get the top Bluetooth data rate. You'd want to plug your iPod directly into your Mac via Firewire for any major updates, but perhaps Bluetooth could be satisfactory if used in some sort of continuous update mode, where songs are updated one-by-one as they are acquired, deleted, or tags are edited.