Next Apple Device?
What do you think will be in Apple's next iPod-like device.
I personally would like another MP3 player. But instead of being a simple player, I think that Apple should integrate Airport and the iPod. MP3s would be streamed from a host computer to the device. The bandwidth would be more than adequate for a few streams. Of course, there'd be protection from people leeching your MP3s.
Apple could easily sell such a device for $149 and still make a profit.
I personally would like another MP3 player. But instead of being a simple player, I think that Apple should integrate Airport and the iPod. MP3s would be streamed from a host computer to the device. The bandwidth would be more than adequate for a few streams. Of course, there'd be protection from people leeching your MP3s.
Apple could easily sell such a device for $149 and still make a profit.
Comments
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<strong>The would be a pretty small jogging radius for such an MP3 player.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I was thinking that it wouldn't be marketed like that. I guess I'm just spoiled here at Carnegie Mellon... we have a campus-wide wireless network.
Then again, it could have, say, 64MB of memory so you could take some music with you, for jogging, etc.
Jonathan: Heh, true. It could be sold under iPod Wireless or some such thing.
This is the way I see the next iPod...
Video Playback
With the push towards desktop video editing, the next natural step is sharing your video creations. iDVD is nice, but still a rather impractical way for the majority of users to share their iMovies. So imagine if you could export your iMovies to your iPod, and then connect your iPod to anyone's television and/or vcr.
While you could theoretically preview movies on the iPod's built-in screen, exporting it to a larger screen would, of course, be ideal. I think making the screen larger and full color would be a bad idea, for the sake of cost and battery life, I think they should keep it greyscale, with the emphasis being on using the iPod like a VCR for iMovies.
I also think that if a clever and convenient way of connecting the iPod to digital cameras could be devised, it could be used to display the pictures on a television in slide-show fashion. Kind of like iomega's PhotoShow zip drive.
So how do we pull this off? Well, first of all, it's going to need some way to get the video from the iPod to the TV, I think an A/V port, like the one on the iBook would be perfect for this. It acts as a headphone jack when you want to listen to MP3s, and it works as a composite A/V output (with included cable), when you want to show off your latest iMovie. Having the single dual-function port would keep the design simple and uncluttered.
Next, the harddrive is going to have to be upgraded. While 5GB is plenty for MP3s, that translates to about 25 minutes of DV quality footage, not enough for an ambitious iMovie project, or multiple shorter clips. I expect by the time iPod2 comes out, 10GB and larger harddrives like the one in the iPod will be widely available, and much less expensive.
Now, is the iPod's hardware up to snuff for playing digital video? I think all the right bits and pieces are there, the iPod is obviously a very robust machine, capable of multitasking, and with enough raw horsepower and RAM to make the average PDA blush, but I do think it will need a faster processor and more RAM to handle video without skipping. All-in-all, a very doable proposition.
The price? Well, assuming they avoid the temptation of adding a larger, color screen, I think it could come in at around the current model's price tag. If they went all-out and added a color display, I expect it would cost atleast $100 more.
Thoughts?
ciao,
[ 12-13-2001: Message edited by: scadboy ]</p>
<strong>I hope they'll give iTunes the ability to send multiple streams to different rooms via Airport. The device would be the receiver or Airport equipped speakers in each room.</strong><hr></blockquote>
You can do this now. You can stream MP3s over http to iTunes (or any other player that surports the M3U format). M3U is basically a text file with the http adress of the mp3 on th host computer. I'm going to write a program (hopefully over break) that will set up the m3us for the user then use OS X's Apache to serve them.