Apple to usher in era of Mac OS X-based iPods - Page 3

Ars is saying that the iPods will be announced at a special event on Sept. 5th.

It's a plausible date. And Apple does do Wednesday announcements on weeks where Monday or Tuesday is taken for some reason.

Does Ars have a track record on this sort of thing? I don't remember them doing many Apple rumors.

The thing I don't like about specific dates is that even if it was a real date intended, it's still subject to change. If they plan for something, it seems to be tentative, it could change it for any reason at any point up until the invitations are mailed. They might even change it just to make the site leaking the story look bad.

I agree with that statement. Also why do people think just because the software on the iPods will be OS X based that it will somehow offer more features? It's all BS hype, all ipods need software to run just because this one is based on OS X doesn't mean its going to be apparent to the end user.

It just makes it easier for Apple if all their products are based on the same software platform

I don't use the calendar on my iPod because I can't enter item from the iPod itself. Instead, I carry the iPod, a piece of crap Palm, and a phone. Sheesh. While I am not yet convinced about the iPhone + ATT, I'd spring for an iPod with embedded OSX, then pray for some crucial apps to be ported so that the iPod becomes a mini-tablet compute. drool.

I'm sure the interface designers can come up with something. How is the ipod implemented on the iphone? Is it significantly worse than a standalone ipod because of the touchscreen and is it such a pain for iphone users?


I'm sure they'd like to have some nice photos on it to as they would on a mobile phone. The nano is absolutely pointless for even photos or album art. A screen double the size probably wouldn't be. It also gives people who can't afford the iphone access to some really intuitive and fun device interaction. It could almost be considered ipod version 2, when the ipod came out, everybody was into making MP3 players and they are very popular now but a touch screen MP3 player would be the next level and suddenly everybody else's offering looks obsolete.


I don't see why not. The ipod uses a touch wheel for volume control, all you'd be doing is moving up and down as opposed to around, which logically makes more sense.


Orientation shouldn't be a problem if there is a home button on the device.

With regards to OS X on the ipod, wouldn't that have the added benefit of being able to manage your collection from your ipod? I feel the ipod is a bit too limited because what happens if you are a regular ipod user and want to delete a song but you want to maintain that change in your itunes library. You can't reverse sync to your computer so how do you remember which albums you want to get rid of when you get back home?

On the ipod, I want to be able to delete songs and then have that modification show up in itunes. At the moment, I take an external drive to work and I keep my actual itunes library on it and that way whether at home or work, I can maintain the same collection. I'd like this in the car but I don't want to get an ipod where I can't change the collection otherwise I'll just forget.

My best guess for the 2007 iPods:



Left, true video iPod; right, 6G iPod. I think this will be in addition to a revised nano, not a replacement.

Sorry, but the thing on the right looks ugly.

Just going by the rumors which may not be true.

Is the right hand one supposed to be the same width as today's 5g ipod (just shorter)? or wider (how much wider?).

Something the same width, a little shorter, and as thin as a Nano would be very cool.

That's what the rumors suggest so that's how I made it. Same 2.4" width as 5.5G iPod but only 3 inches high. Same .26 thickness as the nano. It would be very lightweight compared with the 5.5G iPod and would have longer battery life. Can play games and movies. Uses flash memory. Fits nicely in the palm of your hand.

The video iPod on the left would be the same size as the existing iPod: 2.4" W x 4.1" H. My guess is it'll have WiFi and Bluetooth but won't have a camera and may not have a volume control on the side, though I show it still there. Uses a HDD.

kormac .... Matsu ... where are you?! ....

I. It's not "Mac OS". "Mac OS" died an ignominious death ten years ago. Long overdue.
II. It's called "OS X' in the iPhone and for a very good reason: the iPhone isn't a "Mac".
III. The iPod isn't a "Mac" either.
IV. The "Mac" is buried along with its old OS so better move on.

Hope you like this version better:

Personally I hope the rumors are wrong and the new video iPod looks much more like an iPhone rather than the old iPods. Frankly the iPods look a bit dated now to me. The iPhone design is so much more attractive IMO. My 2 cents.

Point 1 isn't totally correct, OS X is the tenth Mac OS, it's not strongly related but it's still related, even if it has no underlying code from the previous generations. Part 4 is almost totally incorrect. While on the iPhone, it is called just "OS X", but even Apple calls their computer OS "Mac OS X" on their own web site.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/
http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/

That's pretty nice. The previous version didn't look right to me, the Zune method of rotating the screen would look better in my opinion than your first mockup.

What shape are your guys' pockets? There's no way I'm putting a big square device in mine. It looks completely stupid. The video ipods are bad enough with the wider screen they have and they aren't that comfortable to hold with one hand. The Zune idea as someone said would be better, a smaller wheel at the bottom and then a tall screen. A wide screen is useless for going through a menu system.

Well the mock up isn't any wider. just shorter.

All I'm going to say at this point is "don't go demanding it if you haven't tried it first". I don't think you have a clue how annoying your proposed interface would actually be.

After five minutes of trying out such a device in the store, I'd immediately decide to go buy something else.

How does that figure? Do you think it is going to run a complete, unmodified version of iTunes? Do you seriously think that iTunes interface could possibly be useful on a handheld device?

A hypothetical OS X-based iPod will still be running a special iPod-only application for playing and manipulating your music. The feature list will be a function of that application, not of the OS it runs on.

I'm confused; Perhaps it's simply semantics but iPods have always run OS X (or perhaps Darwin -- at what point do you determine whether you are running Darwin with a paired down set of OS X libraries or running a minimalist version of OS X?). If Quartz is the dividing line then it's legitimate to say that the iPod hasn't been running OS X but I'm not sure I buy that logic. Pico is not the OS on the iPods (never has been); However, Apple has licensed the graphics libraries and UI controls from Pico and, at least up to now, have been using them on the iPod (they have a very small foot print). Except for this, however, the iPod has always been running Apple's own BSD based Unixish environment better known as OS X (or Darwin, see above).

Also, there was a gratuitous slam of the Mac OS that I feel the need to address; There is no simple way you can parse out the merit of an OS like the Mac OS; It was built around a foundation of 68000 assembly and pascal on a hardware archetecture that directed virtually all instruction to a single chip. These became real issues as Apple strove to move forward with the computing architecture. That being said the paradigms and architectures Apple developed to evolve the Mac OS were almost unanimously: more efficient, more elegant, and more robust than what is now delivered in OS X. But here again it is difficult to make direct comparrisons because the technologies have not remained static: You can't really compare QuickDraw GX to Quartz extreme, to do so would be unfair to QuickDraw GX because the technology could not have been written to anticipate the advances in OpenGL and hardware video acceleration. The alternative, comparing what QuickDraw GX might have become if it had not been abandoned is unfair to Quartz and ignores the political realities that forced Apple to abandon some very impressive technologies. In the sense that Apple would not have been given the opportunity to prosper if it didn't fall more in step with the rest of the industry, therefore there is no sense crying over what could not be preserved; I acknowledge the point: It would be despising the good for want of the perfect to lament technologies that may never have had a chance to succeed because Apple had become isolated and vulnerable to the dictates of more powerful entities. With OS X, Apple has bought it self a second chance and has made amazing inroads; In my book, however, it remains to be seen whether the Apple that has emerged from this is of any real benefit to me or whether it is, potentially, a more dangerous version of Microsoft; Subversive because of the customer centric reputation it has built up over the decades while really it may be just as dediceated to enslaving the customer. (note how iphoto and the most recent version of iWeb have each been modified to make it more difficult to use anything but Apple tools once you start using them).

No, the iPods do not run OS X or Darwin (and to answer your question, it would seem that some sort of proprietary Apple GUI is the necessary dividing line before a darwin-based OS can be called OS X).

The iPods run an embedded OS that has nothing to do with OS X.

Just like all the iphone users you mean?


The feature of the OS would be maintaining a library as the itunes under OS X does. It doesn't have to run the same itunes interface.


But the screen will be tiny if it's the same width as an iphone. The current ipod video is wider. If it was just a shorter ipod video then all that's happening is making the wheel smaller and making a difficult decision about what to do with the internals. I'd hate to see the nano go this shape because as other people have said, it's not very attractive. A tall screen but thin is much better.

Yup. I agree.

To me, the current iPhone screen is the minimum acceptable size for a handheld device. I say that as someone who has used a video iPod quite extensively for video. I used to think it was cool, but after the iPhone, no way....

.........

Not gonna happen. FireWire hiccuped and stalled so badly it's relegated to a "Still gotta have it but that's not the future." status. For drives, eSATA is the route forward: for peripherals USB 2, USB 3 while technically inferior (or theoretically inferior) is the only game in town. FireWire was supposed at this point to have a wireless 400Mb incarnation and a 3200Mb wired version. Ain't gonna happen.

Apple have close to zero employees working on FireWire: it's sad to say that it'll go away, but we said that the floppy, the serial port... (the widespread use of FireWire 400 on VC's will keep it around for a few years, as it's just a chip and space for a connector). The iPod is leading the trend on this.

Now, tell me why you need FireWire on your iPod?