I'm not so sure about "milking" the design. There are a few people who really want such large amounts of storage. It's been shown that most people never fill up their smaller capacity models. I don't think Apple feels there is a need to raise the price of these models by enlarging the LCD, and draining more power.
By the end of 2008, if not sometime sooner, they will have a 32GB iTouch. That will satisfy most everyones concerns for storage for a while, until 2009, when it will increase again.
Of course they're "milking" the design, and storage capacity and design are not the same thing. If they were, Apple wouldn't command the market and we'd all be buying whatever the heck Seagate or WD cooked up in a small form factor and calling it an iPod.
Product Development must account for the distribution of R&D costs over the longest timeline possible while maximizing long-term marketing prospects. If Apple pulls a reasonable dollar for a protracted period of time on their HDD design without jeopardizing/destroying the market they expect to retain/gain in the longer term through competition or lost/lack of interest, they would be crazy to jump the market with the next (Touch) iteration of an HDD device.
Milking isn't a technical term, but it's definitely apropos when referring to any company in an industry where they hold market leadership. So when does a company stop milking and start developing and releasing new product? Watch what Apple does, because they tend to do it right. You start with a wide-windowed development and release roadmap and you narrow down the windows as you get closer and learn more about current market conditions.
So again, yes, "milking". And again, separate the whole HDD thing and what you think about your own library from the discussion. Your library, and everyone else's library, is going to dramatically change in size thanks to evolving video technology and a shift to higher quality audio compression algorithms - at least I'd bet you Apple's thinking this.
Mark this thread... HDD form factors aren't going anywhere soon.
You guys can go ahead and make that conclusion. But your article shouldn't say "iSupply believes..." it should say "Based on what iSupply says, AI believes..."
There's nothing wrong with AI giving an opinion. The problem is you're putting your opinion in the mouth of iSupply.
Well, that's the point. They could have quickly taken the touch and dumped in a HD, but it wouldn't have optimal form factor and battery life. They didn't just take the iPhone and rip out the phone, they tweaked the design to make the most of it. Assuming they do a HD version of the touch, it will be the same thing, they'll take the time to get the design right.
Nicely put on both counts. It makes me nervous - regardless of the importance of the article - when an artistic reach like that in this article is made.
BTW, betcha Apple's got it fairly nailed right now and are just waiting to move it to production in time for early '08. Those guys are crafty at timing (read: making us regret purchasing quickly outdated models during the holidays)!
Of course they're "milking" the design, and storage capacity and design are not the same thing. If they were, Apple wouldn't command the market and we'd all be buying whatever the heck Seagate or WD cooked up in a small form factor and calling it an iPod.
Product Development must account for the distribution of R&D costs over the longest timeline possible while maximizing long-term marketing prospects. If Apple pulls a reasonable dollar for a protracted period of time on their HDD design without jeopardizing/destroying the market they expect to retain/gain in the longer term through competition or lost/lack of interest, they would be crazy to jump the market with the next (Touch) iteration of an HDD device.
Milking isn't a technical term, but it's definitely apropos when referring to any company in an industry where they hold market leadership. So when does a company stop milking and start developing and releasing new product? Watch what Apple does, because they tend to do it right. You start with a wide-windowed development and release roadmap and you narrow down the windows as you get closer and learn more about current market conditions.
So again, yes, "milking". And again, separate the whole HDD thing and what you think about your own library from the discussion. Your library, and everyone else's library, is going to dramatically change in size thanks to evolving video technology and a shift to higher quality audio compression algorithms - at least I'd bet you Apple's thinking this.
Mark this thread... HDD form factors aren't going anywhere soon.
I understand the business aspects. I was in that business.
But, "milking" is a pejorative term. Sometimes a design is fine for the purpose, and doesn't need much development, without changing the entire design.
What I think is that Apple has looked at what people want, and decided that they would rather have much more storage, at similar prices, than much more sophisticated machines that were heavier, bulkier, and much more expensive. If these sell well enough, they will have been proven to be correct.
I really don't agree that many people will want to carry their Tv and movie libraries around around with them. Music is different.
When my daughter was 4, she watched the Little Mermaid over and over, she doesn't do that anymore.
I understand the business aspects. I was in that business.
But, "milking" is a pejorative term. Sometimes a design is fine for the purpose, and doesn't need much development, without changing the entire design.
What I think is that Apple has looked at what people want, and decided that they would rather have much more storage, at similar prices, than much more sophisticated machines that were heavier, bulkier, and much more expensive. If these sell well enough, they will have been proven to be correct.
I really don't agree that many people will want to carry their Tv and movie libraries around around with them. Music is different.
When my daughter was 4, she watched the Little Mermaid over and over, she doesn't do that anymore.
I hear you and you might be right. I don't understand portable video enabled by an iPod either, but I'm holding out the possibility that your iPod's going to drive larger screen content the way a TiVO does now, only with the benefit of carrying a much smaller box that will also likely easily connect to the auto multimedia and hospitality multimedia systems of the future. Heck, frankly it would be nice to carry some HD company presentations on there, too.
Sorry about the term 'milking' in the era of "do no evil". I guess I'm a little skeptical and believe (also as a product guy) that particularly market leaders don't have the onus of releasing next generation products as quickly as their corporate muscle will afford despite Apple's consistent record of market leadership. If a 6 month release delay gets you an extra $400 million it gets a little hard to blindly adopt the first to market principle sometimes and easy to overlook the long term risk when there isn't much there at this point.
Flash devices also do have a limited number of times data can be written to it, that limit is far less than hard disks, I'm all for having the option, there is no reason they can't develop both.
IIRC most Flash is rated for something like 100,000 erase/write cycles. (That is, each individual "block" in a Flash device - it's akin to a "sector" on a hard drive - can be erased one hundred thousand times. You typically have to erase the entire block before you can write new data in any previously-used byte within a block.)
So, if you totally fill the entire device, then erase everything, then fill it back up again and repeat, you'd expect to go through 100,000 iterations before you start being in danger of having data loss. (In reality, the number is a little less, because most filesystems have something like a block allocation map or file allocation table which will likely undergo several interim modifications through the process of filling up the device each time. As soon as the blocks currently housing the allocation map die, the entire device becomes unreliable.)
If you never totally fill the drive, and if you only modify a few megabytes at a time, then your effective write lifetime will increase dramatically due to wear-levelling techniques which are employed by most high volume Flash controllers.
In the end, I've heard it suggested that when you compare the electrical lifetime of most high-capacity Flash under typical usage patterns against the mechanical lifetime of hard drives, it's pretty much a wash.
it is inevitable that someday the HDD iPods will dissapear.
it is inevitable that someday all iPods except the shuffle will have a multitouch screen.
However, this will be gradual.
I think next there will be a HDD iPod touch, maybe by holidays '08, especially since apple is pushing video content more and more. But battery life might not be what Apple is targeting yet... that's why it is not out right now.
Then, when flash iPods with 64+ GB of storage can be produced at a reasonable price, the classic will dissapear.
And somewhere down the line there will be an iPod nano touch.
So, yeah HDD iPods will be gone, and the clickwheel will be gone too...
No time to put an HDD in a Touch? How much time would that take?
I'm sure it's more a matter of how much such a device would COST, and how bulky it would be if both the screen and HD got good battery life.
My impression from reading on-line is that current HD-based iPods do some level of buffering in flash to both help with reliabity and power management. I would guess that Apple has not yet implemented this on the version of OS X used by the iPhone/iPod touch platform. Either that or timing of the market showed there was more money to be made from one last iteration of the iPod classic. Or possibly some combination of both if the software is not yet well tested and not quite ready to go.
As an owner of a 160gb, I don't know why they want to kill it off. I love having 160gb. FINALLY an iPod that can store enough video and music to where i CAN SYNC when I want to. Unless they can break 100gb with Flash, I don't see why the hd based players would be replaced. MAYBE they can break 100gb in a year, but I doubt it. Not because of technology but because of costs. We'll see.
HDD capacity to cost ratio will win over SSD capacity to cost ratio for many a year to come. Even if 100GB NAND iPod was cheap, I'd still want a 1TB 1.8" iPod Classic with a 3.5" 600ppi screen that can hold entire seasons of my favorite shows and my music and movie libraries while I travel abroad for long durations. They released the iPod Classic so it doesn't sound liek they are killing it off.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ColeSQ
[Apple] didn't have enough time to roll the Touch interface into the HDD form factor.
I don't think it's possible right now, or for awhile.
? You'd have to increase the thickness for the HDD
? You lose speed due to slower access speeds of the HDD so you have to have a faster more power hungry processor to compensate as well as more RAM
? The battery wold also have to be larger also increasing the thickness
? Sorting 160GB of data will slow down the access times even more..
Even with the latest iPod Classic update to fix the speed issues, the Flash based models are still well ahead of the Classic. As much as I'd like to have an iPhone with 1TB HDD that plays videos for 24 hours straight I don't think my wish will come to fruition anytime soon.
Quote:
Originally Posted by roehlstation
Flash devices also do have a limited number of times data can be written to it, that limit is far less than hard disks, I'm all for having the option, there is no reason they can't develop both.
And our sun is dying, too. We apparently only have 5 billion years left! The write limits are high enough that it will outlast most HDD based drives moving parts.
Question: Is a HD fast enough to run the iPod Touch software?
Wouldn't the HD be spinning all the time and therefore the battery be drained quickly?
Isn't this, together with the higher price of Flash memory, the reason the iPod Classic is now indeed a Classic?
A hard drive is plenty fast to run your computer, isn't it? Should be fine for an iPod. And the HD doesn't have to be spinning all the time, just when it's loading or streaming material. Running the software is usually done mostly from ram anyway, or only swapped when a new app is run (if needed).
My impression from reading on-line is that current HD-based iPods do some level of buffering in flash to both help with reliabity and power management. I would guess that Apple has not yet implemented this on the version of OS X used by the iPhone/iPod touch platform. Either that or timing of the market showed there was more money to be made from one last iteration of the iPod classic. Or possibly some combination of both if the software is not yet well tested and not quite ready to go.
Previous generations of the iPod had used a small general purpose NOR Flash to contain the low-level firmware required to boot the full software from the hard drive or start a USB-assisted firmware restore. They used RAM to buffer the data being pulled in from the hard drive for power-saving purposes.
I hadn't thought to look into the possibility that the iPod Classic did things any differently - personally, I think it'd be a mistake to use Flash for that purpose instead of RAM because it would increase software complexity and introduce additional parts that can potentially wear out, without adding any substantial benefit I can think of over real RAM.
I'd be interested in reading about it, though, if you have a link.
I don't think it's possible right now, or for awhile.
? You'd have to increase the thickness for the HDD
? You lose speed due to slower access speeds of the HDD so you have to have a faster more power hungry processor to compensate as well as more RAM
? The battery wold also have to be larger also increasing the thickness
? Sorting 160GB of data will slow down the access times even more..
None of those don't mean it's not possible, those are just design constraints. They definitely could make one, the question is cost and size. If they made a touch with HD, the expectation would be that size would be similar to classic, not to the flash models.
Also, the speed issues of the HD and the size aren't really relevant. HD is plenty fast to do what an ipod can do, and bigger hard drives aren't going to slow down anything except maybe for file search (which I suspect isn't done that often by most people). A bigger issue than HD speed is probably giving the unit more ram to cache data, things like keeping album covers in memory and full songs.
Thanks for answering, but the HD would be running all the time and drain the battery much faster than a Flash based iPod?
No, because there is as much as 30 seconds worth of delay memory in the machine. The HDD runs much faster than the device needs the information. so the drive can burst it out for a few seconds, then stop.
While Flash based iPods have better battery performance, it's not that much better.
As for the idea of Flash having a limited lifetime as compared to HDD's, that's an interesting question.
It depends on the use.
Five years ago write lifetime was about 10,000 writes. Now, for most Flash, it's about 100,000. Much better. But, that doesn't tell the whole story. There is microcode to move the memory around when writes occur (often, but not always, reads as well). That's supposed to "level" the memory cell use, giving a much greater lifetime. And it can.
But, I think that this is a bit like the printer manufacturers. We age given a number of pages the ink or toner can last, but how many people get that number of pages? Very few. Why is that?
It's because the ink or toner life is based on a 5% coverage. If all you do is print text files, you might come close to that like (as long as you don't print too much in bold or large point sizes.
But, when you print graphics, or especially, photo's, you get a much smaller number of pages, possibly 10% as many. That's because coverage jumps way up.
The same thing is true of Flash. Manufacturers are using fill numbers that may not be realistic. So, how you use the Flash, and how much of it you fill up becomes very important.
If all you do is to add songs, and almost never delete anything, it might last your lifetime, or longer. If you constantly change the files, and fill the memory up, it will go more quickly.
If it's used in a computer, for virtual memory, and is almost filled up, it may not last long at all. A computer can move files in and out of that memory many times a second. If the memory is constantly being almost filled, there is no where for the bit leveling schemes to put those bits. They will constantly be re-filled. I've been told that it's possible for that Flash to start deteriorating in months.
Comments
I'm not so sure about "milking" the design. There are a few people who really want such large amounts of storage. It's been shown that most people never fill up their smaller capacity models. I don't think Apple feels there is a need to raise the price of these models by enlarging the LCD, and draining more power.
By the end of 2008, if not sometime sooner, they will have a 32GB iTouch. That will satisfy most everyones concerns for storage for a while, until 2009, when it will increase again.
Of course they're "milking" the design, and storage capacity and design are not the same thing. If they were, Apple wouldn't command the market and we'd all be buying whatever the heck Seagate or WD cooked up in a small form factor and calling it an iPod.
Product Development must account for the distribution of R&D costs over the longest timeline possible while maximizing long-term marketing prospects. If Apple pulls a reasonable dollar for a protracted period of time on their HDD design without jeopardizing/destroying the market they expect to retain/gain in the longer term through competition or lost/lack of interest, they would be crazy to jump the market with the next (Touch) iteration of an HDD device.
Milking isn't a technical term, but it's definitely apropos when referring to any company in an industry where they hold market leadership. So when does a company stop milking and start developing and releasing new product? Watch what Apple does, because they tend to do it right. You start with a wide-windowed development and release roadmap and you narrow down the windows as you get closer and learn more about current market conditions.
So again, yes, "milking". And again, separate the whole HDD thing and what you think about your own library from the discussion. Your library, and everyone else's library, is going to dramatically change in size thanks to evolving video technology and a shift to higher quality audio compression algorithms - at least I'd bet you Apple's thinking this.
Mark this thread... HDD form factors aren't going anywhere soon.
...oh, and you're totally right. The iPod HDD is going away.... in the year 2011 based on some rudimentary calculations of Moore's Law!
Ah yes but by then you will need your 320 TB HDD to store all your holographic movies!
You guys can go ahead and make that conclusion. But your article shouldn't say "iSupply believes..." it should say "Based on what iSupply says, AI believes..."
There's nothing wrong with AI giving an opinion. The problem is you're putting your opinion in the mouth of iSupply.
Well, that's the point. They could have quickly taken the touch and dumped in a HD, but it wouldn't have optimal form factor and battery life. They didn't just take the iPhone and rip out the phone, they tweaked the design to make the most of it. Assuming they do a HD version of the touch, it will be the same thing, they'll take the time to get the design right.
Nicely put on both counts. It makes me nervous - regardless of the importance of the article - when an artistic reach like that in this article is made.
BTW, betcha Apple's got it fairly nailed right now and are just waiting to move it to production in time for early '08. Those guys are crafty at timing (read: making us regret purchasing quickly outdated models during the holidays)!
Ah yes but by then you will need your 320 TB HDD to store all your holographic movies!
So true. It's ALWAYS something next, isn't it?
Of course they're "milking" the design, and storage capacity and design are not the same thing. If they were, Apple wouldn't command the market and we'd all be buying whatever the heck Seagate or WD cooked up in a small form factor and calling it an iPod.
Product Development must account for the distribution of R&D costs over the longest timeline possible while maximizing long-term marketing prospects. If Apple pulls a reasonable dollar for a protracted period of time on their HDD design without jeopardizing/destroying the market they expect to retain/gain in the longer term through competition or lost/lack of interest, they would be crazy to jump the market with the next (Touch) iteration of an HDD device.
Milking isn't a technical term, but it's definitely apropos when referring to any company in an industry where they hold market leadership. So when does a company stop milking and start developing and releasing new product? Watch what Apple does, because they tend to do it right. You start with a wide-windowed development and release roadmap and you narrow down the windows as you get closer and learn more about current market conditions.
So again, yes, "milking". And again, separate the whole HDD thing and what you think about your own library from the discussion. Your library, and everyone else's library, is going to dramatically change in size thanks to evolving video technology and a shift to higher quality audio compression algorithms - at least I'd bet you Apple's thinking this.
Mark this thread... HDD form factors aren't going anywhere soon.
I understand the business aspects. I was in that business.
But, "milking" is a pejorative term. Sometimes a design is fine for the purpose, and doesn't need much development, without changing the entire design.
What I think is that Apple has looked at what people want, and decided that they would rather have much more storage, at similar prices, than much more sophisticated machines that were heavier, bulkier, and much more expensive. If these sell well enough, they will have been proven to be correct.
I really don't agree that many people will want to carry their Tv and movie libraries around around with them. Music is different.
When my daughter was 4, she watched the Little Mermaid over and over, she doesn't do that anymore.
I understand the business aspects. I was in that business.
But, "milking" is a pejorative term. Sometimes a design is fine for the purpose, and doesn't need much development, without changing the entire design.
What I think is that Apple has looked at what people want, and decided that they would rather have much more storage, at similar prices, than much more sophisticated machines that were heavier, bulkier, and much more expensive. If these sell well enough, they will have been proven to be correct.
I really don't agree that many people will want to carry their Tv and movie libraries around around with them. Music is different.
When my daughter was 4, she watched the Little Mermaid over and over, she doesn't do that anymore.
I hear you and you might be right. I don't understand portable video enabled by an iPod either, but I'm holding out the possibility that your iPod's going to drive larger screen content the way a TiVO does now, only with the benefit of carrying a much smaller box that will also likely easily connect to the auto multimedia and hospitality multimedia systems of the future. Heck, frankly it would be nice to carry some HD company presentations on there, too.
Sorry about the term 'milking' in the era of "do no evil". I guess I'm a little skeptical and believe (also as a product guy) that particularly market leaders don't have the onus of releasing next generation products as quickly as their corporate muscle will afford despite Apple's consistent record of market leadership. If a 6 month release delay gets you an extra $400 million it gets a little hard to blindly adopt the first to market principle sometimes and easy to overlook the long term risk when there isn't much there at this point.
Flash devices also do have a limited number of times data can be written to it, that limit is far less than hard disks, I'm all for having the option, there is no reason they can't develop both.
IIRC most Flash is rated for something like 100,000 erase/write cycles. (That is, each individual "block" in a Flash device - it's akin to a "sector" on a hard drive - can be erased one hundred thousand times. You typically have to erase the entire block before you can write new data in any previously-used byte within a block.)
So, if you totally fill the entire device, then erase everything, then fill it back up again and repeat, you'd expect to go through 100,000 iterations before you start being in danger of having data loss. (In reality, the number is a little less, because most filesystems have something like a block allocation map or file allocation table which will likely undergo several interim modifications through the process of filling up the device each time. As soon as the blocks currently housing the allocation map die, the entire device becomes unreliable.)
If you never totally fill the drive, and if you only modify a few megabytes at a time, then your effective write lifetime will increase dramatically due to wear-levelling techniques which are employed by most high volume Flash controllers.
In the end, I've heard it suggested that when you compare the electrical lifetime of most high-capacity Flash under typical usage patterns against the mechanical lifetime of hard drives, it's pretty much a wash.
Wouldn't the HD be spinning all the time and therefore the battery be drained quickly?
Isn't this, together with the higher price of Flash memory, the reason the iPod Classic is now indeed a Classic?
it is inevitable that someday all iPods except the shuffle will have a multitouch screen.
However, this will be gradual.
I think next there will be a HDD iPod touch, maybe by holidays '08, especially since apple is pushing video content more and more. But battery life might not be what Apple is targeting yet... that's why it is not out right now.
Then, when flash iPods with 64+ GB of storage can be produced at a reasonable price, the classic will dissapear.
And somewhere down the line there will be an iPod nano touch.
So, yeah HDD iPods will be gone, and the clickwheel will be gone too...
No time to put an HDD in a Touch? How much time would that take?
I'm sure it's more a matter of how much such a device would COST, and how bulky it would be if both the screen and HD got good battery life.
My impression from reading on-line is that current HD-based iPods do some level of buffering in flash to both help with reliabity and power management. I would guess that Apple has not yet implemented this on the version of OS X used by the iPhone/iPod touch platform. Either that or timing of the market showed there was more money to be made from one last iteration of the iPod classic. Or possibly some combination of both if the software is not yet well tested and not quite ready to go.
2007 = 16 gig
2008 = 32 gig
2009 = 64 gig
2010 = 128 gig
2011 = 256 gig
So it is 2011 by the time it catches up to today's 160 gig.
But how much would the hard drive grow by then if development continued?? 320 / 500 ??
I'll stick with my 160 gig today...
Question: Is a HD fast enough to run the iPod Touch software?
Wouldn't the HD be spinning all the time and therefore the battery be drained quickly?
Isn't this, together with the higher price of Flash memory, the reason the iPod Classic is now indeed a Classic?
Considering the price of fast Flash memory, I doubt if Apple is using it. HDD's are generally much faster than most Flash.
Look at Flash cards, and find the speed rating. It's rated as 8x, 20x, 40x, 80x, 133x, 266x, etc.
x=150KB/s.
When a card has no speed rating, it's usually 4x. Pretty slow nowadays.
A medium speed HDD,or medium speed Flash is more than fast enough for anthing an iTouch must do.
Using the iTouch and doubling every year.
2007 = 16 gig
2008 = 32 gig
2009 = 64 gig
2010 = 128 gig
2011 = 256 gig
So it is 2011 by the time it catches up to today's 160 gig.
But how much would the hard drive grow by then if development continued?? 320 / 500 ??
I'll stick with my 160 gig today...
We probably won't see doubling every year, for various reasons, but it will go up fast enough.
At a certain point, size becomes irrelevent.
As an owner of a 160gb, I don't know why they want to kill it off. I love having 160gb. FINALLY an iPod that can store enough video and music to where i CAN SYNC when I want to. Unless they can break 100gb with Flash, I don't see why the hd based players would be replaced. MAYBE they can break 100gb in a year, but I doubt it. Not because of technology but because of costs. We'll see.
HDD capacity to cost ratio will win over SSD capacity to cost ratio for many a year to come. Even if 100GB NAND iPod was cheap, I'd still want a 1TB 1.8" iPod Classic with a 3.5" 600ppi screen that can hold entire seasons of my favorite shows and my music and movie libraries while I travel abroad for long durations. They released the iPod Classic so it doesn't sound liek they are killing it off.
[Apple] didn't have enough time to roll the Touch interface into the HDD form factor.
I don't think it's possible right now, or for awhile.
? You'd have to increase the thickness for the HDD
? You lose speed due to slower access speeds of the HDD so you have to have a faster more power hungry processor to compensate as well as more RAM
? The battery wold also have to be larger also increasing the thickness
? Sorting 160GB of data will slow down the access times even more..
Even with the latest iPod Classic update to fix the speed issues, the Flash based models are still well ahead of the Classic. As much as I'd like to have an iPhone with 1TB HDD that plays videos for 24 hours straight I don't think my wish will come to fruition anytime soon.
Flash devices also do have a limited number of times data can be written to it, that limit is far less than hard disks, I'm all for having the option, there is no reason they can't develop both.
And our sun is dying, too. We apparently only have 5 billion years left! The write limits are high enough that it will outlast most HDD based drives moving parts.
Question: Is a HD fast enough to run the iPod Touch software?
Wouldn't the HD be spinning all the time and therefore the battery be drained quickly?
Isn't this, together with the higher price of Flash memory, the reason the iPod Classic is now indeed a Classic?
A hard drive is plenty fast to run your computer, isn't it? Should be fine for an iPod. And the HD doesn't have to be spinning all the time, just when it's loading or streaming material. Running the software is usually done mostly from ram anyway, or only swapped when a new app is run (if needed).
Considering the price of fast Flash memory, I doubt if Apple is using it. HDD's are generally much faster than most Flash.
Look at Flash cards, and find the speed rating. It's rated as 8x, 20x, 40x, 80x, 133x, 266x, etc.
x=150KB/s.
When a card has no speed rating, it's usually 4x. Pretty slow nowadays.
A medium speed HDD,or medium speed Flash is more than fast enough for anthing an iTouch must do.
Thanks for answering, but the HD would be running all the time and drain the battery much faster than a Flash based iPod?
My impression from reading on-line is that current HD-based iPods do some level of buffering in flash to both help with reliabity and power management. I would guess that Apple has not yet implemented this on the version of OS X used by the iPhone/iPod touch platform. Either that or timing of the market showed there was more money to be made from one last iteration of the iPod classic. Or possibly some combination of both if the software is not yet well tested and not quite ready to go.
Previous generations of the iPod had used a small general purpose NOR Flash to contain the low-level firmware required to boot the full software from the hard drive or start a USB-assisted firmware restore. They used RAM to buffer the data being pulled in from the hard drive for power-saving purposes.
I hadn't thought to look into the possibility that the iPod Classic did things any differently - personally, I think it'd be a mistake to use Flash for that purpose instead of RAM because it would increase software complexity and introduce additional parts that can potentially wear out, without adding any substantial benefit I can think of over real RAM.
I'd be interested in reading about it, though, if you have a link.
I don't think it's possible right now, or for awhile.
? You'd have to increase the thickness for the HDD
? You lose speed due to slower access speeds of the HDD so you have to have a faster more power hungry processor to compensate as well as more RAM
? The battery wold also have to be larger also increasing the thickness
? Sorting 160GB of data will slow down the access times even more..
None of those don't mean it's not possible, those are just design constraints. They definitely could make one, the question is cost and size. If they made a touch with HD, the expectation would be that size would be similar to classic, not to the flash models.
Also, the speed issues of the HD and the size aren't really relevant. HD is plenty fast to do what an ipod can do, and bigger hard drives aren't going to slow down anything except maybe for file search (which I suspect isn't done that often by most people). A bigger issue than HD speed is probably giving the unit more ram to cache data, things like keeping album covers in memory and full songs.
Thanks for answering, but the HD would be running all the time and drain the battery much faster than a Flash based iPod?
No, because there is as much as 30 seconds worth of delay memory in the machine. The HDD runs much faster than the device needs the information. so the drive can burst it out for a few seconds, then stop.
While Flash based iPods have better battery performance, it's not that much better.
It depends on the use.
Five years ago write lifetime was about 10,000 writes. Now, for most Flash, it's about 100,000. Much better. But, that doesn't tell the whole story. There is microcode to move the memory around when writes occur (often, but not always, reads as well). That's supposed to "level" the memory cell use, giving a much greater lifetime. And it can.
But, I think that this is a bit like the printer manufacturers. We age given a number of pages the ink or toner can last, but how many people get that number of pages? Very few. Why is that?
It's because the ink or toner life is based on a 5% coverage. If all you do is print text files, you might come close to that like (as long as you don't print too much in bold or large point sizes.
But, when you print graphics, or especially, photo's, you get a much smaller number of pages, possibly 10% as many. That's because coverage jumps way up.
The same thing is true of Flash. Manufacturers are using fill numbers that may not be realistic. So, how you use the Flash, and how much of it you fill up becomes very important.
If all you do is to add songs, and almost never delete anything, it might last your lifetime, or longer. If you constantly change the files, and fill the memory up, it will go more quickly.
If it's used in a computer, for virtual memory, and is almost filled up, it may not last long at all. A computer can move files in and out of that memory many times a second. If the memory is constantly being almost filled, there is no where for the bit leveling schemes to put those bits. They will constantly be re-filled. I've been told that it's possible for that Flash to start deteriorating in months.