You know, I, along with little_dude, am new to this board. It's obvious b/c of the number of posts i've submitted. But with this thread, and i'm sure in other ones similar to it, there is one thing that many of us should agree on and that is why Apple has to make any of these products we suggest? Honestly, any enterprising individual or company can make a product like "iFrame". It's all about the integration and pricing. If the product is doable and the potential marketshare and, more importantly, competitive price point exists than they should do it. If someone was to develop a 5x7 iFrame or even larger, if the price was right I would buy it. to have the iFrame sync with the photos on my Mac or even PC would make it worth it to me.
I must have underslept and overworked. I don't get the whole iFrame idea.
Is it a tiny television set? Scarcely you want a new 8 inch TV set when there are very good ones already in the market.
Is it a wireless monitor? What the heck will you use it with? With your 12" PowerBook on the road and with a 17" iMac at home?
Is it a static picture frame? So you want to adorn all the walls in your house with just one frame and change its picture every hour?
Is it a camera? What does it need such a big display for? In fact, bigger than most of modern digital cameras?
Is it a tablet PC? Aaaahhhhh, well, I see. You guys want a tablet PC, Steve Jobs says go grab it somewhere else, and in a fit or righteous indignation you burst out crying for videoPods, iFrames and god only knows for what else even less sensible than a tablet PC. If Jobs read these boards, I promise you, he would feel for you and made a tablet PC with his own bare hands. Just to never hear about certain 'projects' like iFrame.
<strong>A company called digi frame (www.digi-frame.com) makes digital picture frames. That took me all of about two seconds to find on google and was the first search I did, Im sure there are other companys with this kind of product. Apple should stick to making quality computers and software.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I believe I saw a product from Sony as well a long time ago (3 years I think it was now). This technology really isn't new and I fail to see why people expect it to suddenly take off just because Apple might sell it. I'm pretty biased on this though.
Maybe if it wasn't trying to replace a cheap, simple, ubiquitous, and durable product with one that is fragile, requires configuration, and is 50 times as expensive... maybe.
On second thought? No. This will remain a completely infeasible consumer product for many years to come.
Some of you guys are really not using your brains.
iTunes....iPod; thousands of tunes in your hand with the means of playing them locally (headphones) or collectively over a hifi. Benefit...not carrying 200 CD's around.
iPhoto....iFrame; thousands of pictures in your hand with the means of displaying them locally (screen) or collectively over a TV. Benefit...not carrying 1000 prints around.
Also potentially for the corporate dude...
iMovie/Final Cut....iFrame
Keynote/Powerpoint....iFrame
Also potentially for the pro photographer....
Memory card.....iFrame
Nikon/Canon.....iframe
Its very simple.
The market is at the same stage as when Apple entered the MP3 player sector....half a dozen different units now available from different manufacturers, all with different facilities and user interfaces. Market about to achieve some 'traction'.
[QB]Some of you guys are really not using your brains.
iTunes....iPod; thousands of tunes in your hand with the means of playing them locally (headphones) or collectively over a hifi. Benefit...not carrying 200 CD's around.
iPhoto....iFrame; thousands of pictures in your hand with the means of displaying them locally (screen) or collectively over a TV. Benefit...not carrying 1000 prints around.
...
Its very simple.[QB]<hr></blockquote>There are huge differences between the portable audio-device market and the portable-display market.
Almost all audio is distributed in 2-channel sound that can be reproduced on portable headphones with little sacrifice in user experience. Headphones offer cheap and/or audiophile quality sound in a portable package.
The same is not true for visual content like pictures and video. Portable display devices are inherently inferior to their stationary counterparts. Presentation quality is greatly dependent upon display size. Unfortunately, this makes visual presentation quality inversely proportional to portability. (unless the iFrame is a projector)
While it is prohibitively inconvenient to tote around 1000 different songs from different CDs without an iPod like device, the same is not true for pictures. It is easier to carry a photo album around than to carry around an iFrame.
Isn't an iFrame, as prophesized in this thread, a crippled but still expensive laptop? Consumers aren?t going to waste money on such a limited device when they can buy a non-crippled, two year old laptop for less.
If we assume an 800 x 600 pixel screen, in line with pesent LCD pixel densities, and if we assume a 40gig 1.8" drive (Toshiba and Hitachi, soon to go in the iPod) then the iFrame could store over 400,000 jpegs of that size (100K).
If we take the 2.2meg jpegs from a 5 megapixel camera then we are looking at about 20,000. Scale accordingly for the new 11 and 14 megapixal cameras.
If we take DV25 footage then 40 gig will store over 2.5 hours, 10 hours of MPEG2 footage and 20+ hours of MPEG 4/Sorenson
Incidently a 5 x 7 screen at 400mmm is equivalent to a 60" plasma at 3 metres; which you could plug into anyway if you want to present.
No, all you guys have it wrong. It's not a little frame thing you hold in your hands... It's glasses! A 1.3 inch screen an inch away from your eye is way bigger than any large-screen tv unless you're almost touching it. Plus, it's portable. Wave of the future, man... Think about it.
This technology really isn't new and I fail to see why people expect it to suddenly take off just because Apple might sell it. I'm pretty biased on this though.</strong><hr></blockquote>
MP3 players were not new, either.
"you can be like bill gates for merely $500"
Trying to guess where consumer tastes are going is pretty risky and expensive. Seeing where consumer tastes are...and then making the premium gadget...is more like the idea. Remember Steve J's obsession with the Walkman....
If this is to be, it would be marketed not just on the Apple name, but also on the seamless integration between this and the digital hub. You can set have special iFrame featurs through your .Mac account. You could have it show weather, stock quotes, advertising, tv lineups (and advertising).
If this thing does cost $500, I would run out an buy a $999 iBook for this purpose (larger screen too), and hey, I can even download the pictures from my camera with an iBook; movies too.
At $99 maybe, but $500 forget it.
I would love to see Apple build us a subnotebook, however...year of the laptop, right?
<strong>If this thing does cost $500, I would run out an buy a $999 iBook for this purpose (larger screen too), and hey, I can even download the pictures from my camera with an iBook; movies too.
At $99 maybe, but $500 forget it.
I would love to see Apple build us a subnotebook, however...year of the laptop, right?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Maybe $400. who knows.
And maybe you would say that if an iPod cost $400 you would buy a $999 laptop and download movies. Ah, but that is you and you are not everyone else.
A big problem with digital photos is that you have to print them out if you want to take them to a party or show them to your friends at work and talk about them. You spend five grand to go to South America, you spend $600 for a nice camera, you will spend the money to have the best way to show your photos to your friends. See, you can sell ibooks to college students, but you want to be able to sell cool stuff to people with disposable income, too. And you say, look between taking your photos around, you can have this on your wall and for $20 bucks a month, it can get weather and track your stocks duriing the day and show Vermeer at night.
And the beauty is that it is all existing technology. screen, harddrive, port, interface. And you sell enough of these and you sell enough iPods and you are branding Apple.
MP3 players were not new, either.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The iPod is nice but around 40 million mp3 players were selling annually before the iPod arrived. Apple didn't make that market take off it did it on its own.
<strong>And maybe you would say that if an iPod cost $400 you would buy a $999 laptop and download movies. Ah, but that is you and you are not everyone else.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Point taken, but I still would argue that an iPod is totally different; you can take it with you and literally carry it in your pocket. That is something you cannot do with a 5x7 iFrame. One of the iPod's features is that you enjoy it solo. You are not showing it off to others ala iFrame. For that purpose, a subnotebook would work best. Besides, I typically carry a laptop wherever I go; if for nothing else, than to show people my pics in iPhoto. Family, friends, etc... But you are right that is me. I would rather carry around a laptop, since I also love to show people the wonders of OS X. I think, even more than my photos, people are more impressed with the OS than anything else I could show them on my laptop. I guess that doesn't say much for my photos, huh? <img src="embarrassed.gif" border="0">
While I still disagree about the cost versus value of an iFrame for "showing off" one's pictures, I could see an interesting use in the business world. People are getting off (for some reason) on Tablet PCs. I work in the medical profession and while handwriting technology in Windows is starting to get closer to the functionality that I have enjoyed on the Mac for years, I still think it is garbage for speech recognition. The sales guy read the first few sentences of the Constitution, albeit quite slowly and it did admirably. But when one of our ER docs decided to try and dictate into it, it fell flat. Speech recognition in the medical world is still best handled by transcriptionists, alas.
However, I could see a world where architects or models would carry around an iFrame and show off their designs. Basically, a world where all you do is photo-related would be a target market. Perhaps even someone like a repairman that needed a visual manual, rather than carry around a binder full of diagrams, etc could carry around an iFrame.
It still seems that a laptop would do just as well, and have a ton more functionality. I guess I am just a hard sell in this area.
Of course, I am probably not thinking of all areas that could benefit from such a device. Anyone else think up a good target market for such a device?
Thanks for the private message dfiler (firstone I've ever had off this forum!) it was most er...informative, but a little unimaginative if I may say. Trading private insults is not how it works here though. Please explain to us how carrying your company's entire portfolio of photo's, flash animations, videos, powerpoint files, graphics etc. in (presumably) several large boxes is easier than carrying 5 x 7 x 1 inch device in, say, a nice leather sleeve.
Comparing it to an iBook is missing the point of the iDevices. Half the size, instant boot, longer battery life, and most important of all 'handleability'. I travel with two ti books (for various technical reasons); using and passing them around at meetings is a pain in the butt. Cost is not the primary issue for many people and companies if the functionality, useability and overall design are focussed and exceptional (iPod, iPod, iPod....)
Glanced at my Sports Illustrated calendar this morning. Miss February -- sigh.
After clearing my head of the more predictable thoughts, I found myself thinking of this iFrame thing again. What if my Sports Illustrated calendar was instead a live but passive device that knew when I was in the vicinity, perhaps because of a Sony/Ericsson Clicker type arrangement. This device might consist of little more than an LCD screen, an airport + bluetooth card, and enough processing power to handle voice commands. Think of it as an appendage to my main Mac, which is sitting somewhere else in the house or office.
Since this device knows that I'm nearby, it might tell me that I've got new emails. I could tell it to display them, or to fetch a website, or so on. Or it could just display more Miss February.
The point is that these technologies are here today, and the required components will be getting cheaper and cheaper. The requirements of this device are somewhat less than those for an iBook, owing to its specialisation. I don't know if a device like this makes economic sense just yet, but it probably will within two or three years.
[Edit: Yes, I know it's March. But my heart is still in February....]
...people are paying $700 for an PocketPC iPaq. Thats more than a Desktop iPaq. And its considerably less useful to most.
But....
...I'd buy an iFrame type gadget in a sec. Instant presentation machine. Big portable HD. You don't really NEED to use the Toshiba 40GB 1.8, but thin is always good in the portable world. I think possibly in a money saving move they could use a regular old 2.5 which is faster and cheaper by a long shot. Especially if you are gonna be presenting video to screen or capturing it from a FireWire consumer video camera (unless its gotta huge cache in relation, like the iPod).
And, in a year or so when the new 14MP bodies get down to the $2k range, look out. All us serious amateurs and professionals are gonna be moving towards digital (for those of us too poor to move theri already ). We're gonna need a portable picture book like this to store our RAWs til we get back to the home base.
$599, $699, I'm there if its got a nice tight resolution on a 5X7. 10X7 res on a 5X7 form factor would roxor, but I'm sure that an LCD like that would be waaay out of the $599 price range.
Anyhoo, a FireWire 800 and USB 2 combo cable would make it a natch for PCers and Maccies alike, although Maccies would get the first run to themselves ala the iPod.
A lot of replies to my original posts. But many people seme to see an iFrame as some sort of tablet or large pocketPC. I would not see it that way. In my view, it's simply a portable presentation device with a HD and wifi. That's it. No advanced processor in it, so no mail-reading or web-browsing, since that would make the thing too expensive, and would drain the batteries.
Offcourse, there should be some sort of applescripting on a wifi-near mac that generates images with your mails, and as such you could view your inbox with the iFrame, but it would not be an advanced input device.
The 2 target groups would be managers (business presentations thanks to tight integration with keynote) and home users (view iPhoto & iMovie libraries without having to sit behind your iMac upstairs)
Once again, my strongest point for an iFrame would be that it fits the concept of digital hub perfectly. Far more than a digital camera or pocketPC : these are rather stand-alone and do not require a mac around. The iFrame would, like the iPod, be a hardware extension of your mac and "useless" without other Apple hardware (iPod eventually got a windows interface, but only after Apple made sure the mac market got it first).
<strong>A lot of replies to my original posts. But many people seme to see an iFrame as some sort of tablet or large pocketPC. I would not see it that way. In my view, it's simply a portable presentation device with a HD and wifi. That's it. No advanced processor in it, so no mail-reading or web-browsing, since that would make the thing too expensive, and would drain the batteries.
Offcourse, there should be some sort of applescripting on a wifi-near mac that generates images with your mails, and as such you could view your inbox with the iFrame, but it would not be an advanced input device.
The 2 target groups would be managers (business presentations thanks to tight integration with keynote) and home users (view iPhoto & iMovie libraries without having to sit behind your iMac upstairs)
Once again, my strongest point for an iFrame would be that it fits the concept of digital hub perfectly. Far more than a digital camera or pocketPC : these are rather stand-alone and do not require a mac around. The iFrame would, like the iPod, be a hardware extension of your mac and "useless" without other Apple hardware (iPod eventually got a windows interface, but only after Apple made sure the mac market got it first).</strong><hr></blockquote>
The only use I'd personally see for an iFrame is for family holidays. I'd download all the photos from the past year or so and bring down to my folks house and let them see it.
OR, I'd burn them onto a DVD to play with iDVD slideshow with motion and music. OR I'd burn them onto a CD and let them play them in X's slideshow on their iMac. OR I'd use iPhoto to print out some 4x5's or contact sheets on the photo paper bought from the money I saved from not buying the iFrame.
Sorry, if it's just a frame, just a simple small picture viewer then ah, it ain't getting my money. I don't think Apple would put out something so limited in value and with so many current alternatives already installed on your mac.
Comments
Is it a tiny television set? Scarcely you want a new 8 inch TV set when there are very good ones already in the market.
Is it a wireless monitor? What the heck will you use it with? With your 12" PowerBook on the road and with a 17" iMac at home?
Is it a static picture frame? So you want to adorn all the walls in your house with just one frame and change its picture every hour?
Is it a camera? What does it need such a big display for? In fact, bigger than most of modern digital cameras?
Is it a tablet PC? Aaaahhhhh, well, I see. You guys want a tablet PC, Steve Jobs says go grab it somewhere else, and in a fit or righteous indignation you burst out crying for videoPods, iFrames and god only knows for what else even less sensible than a tablet PC. If Jobs read these boards, I promise you, he would feel for you and made a tablet PC with his own bare hands. Just to never hear about certain 'projects' like iFrame.
<strong>A company called digi frame (www.digi-frame.com) makes digital picture frames. That took me all of about two seconds to find on google and was the first search I did, Im sure there are other companys with this kind of product. Apple should stick to making quality computers and software.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I believe I saw a product from Sony as well a long time ago (3 years I think it was now). This technology really isn't new and I fail to see why people expect it to suddenly take off just because Apple might sell it. I'm pretty biased on this though.
Maybe if it wasn't trying to replace a cheap, simple, ubiquitous, and durable product with one that is fragile, requires configuration, and is 50 times as expensive... maybe.
On second thought? No. This will remain a completely infeasible consumer product for many years to come.
iTunes....iPod; thousands of tunes in your hand with the means of playing them locally (headphones) or collectively over a hifi. Benefit...not carrying 200 CD's around.
iPhoto....iFrame; thousands of pictures in your hand with the means of displaying them locally (screen) or collectively over a TV. Benefit...not carrying 1000 prints around.
Also potentially for the corporate dude...
iMovie/Final Cut....iFrame
Keynote/Powerpoint....iFrame
Also potentially for the pro photographer....
Memory card.....iFrame
Nikon/Canon.....iframe
Its very simple.
The market is at the same stage as when Apple entered the MP3 player sector....half a dozen different units now available from different manufacturers, all with different facilities and user interfaces. Market about to achieve some 'traction'.
They ain't for hanging on the fcuking wall!
[QB]Some of you guys are really not using your brains.
iTunes....iPod; thousands of tunes in your hand with the means of playing them locally (headphones) or collectively over a hifi. Benefit...not carrying 200 CD's around.
iPhoto....iFrame; thousands of pictures in your hand with the means of displaying them locally (screen) or collectively over a TV. Benefit...not carrying 1000 prints around.
...
Its very simple.[QB]<hr></blockquote>There are huge differences between the portable audio-device market and the portable-display market.
Almost all audio is distributed in 2-channel sound that can be reproduced on portable headphones with little sacrifice in user experience. Headphones offer cheap and/or audiophile quality sound in a portable package.
The same is not true for visual content like pictures and video. Portable display devices are inherently inferior to their stationary counterparts. Presentation quality is greatly dependent upon display size. Unfortunately, this makes visual presentation quality inversely proportional to portability. (unless the iFrame is a projector)
While it is prohibitively inconvenient to tote around 1000 different songs from different CDs without an iPod like device, the same is not true for pictures. It is easier to carry a photo album around than to carry around an iFrame.
Isn't an iFrame, as prophesized in this thread, a crippled but still expensive laptop? Consumers aren?t going to waste money on such a limited device when they can buy a non-crippled, two year old laptop for less.
[ 03-05-2003: Message edited by: dfiler ]</p>
If we assume an 800 x 600 pixel screen, in line with pesent LCD pixel densities, and if we assume a 40gig 1.8" drive (Toshiba and Hitachi, soon to go in the iPod) then the iFrame could store over 400,000 jpegs of that size (100K).
If we take the 2.2meg jpegs from a 5 megapixel camera then we are looking at about 20,000. Scale accordingly for the new 11 and 14 megapixal cameras.
If we take DV25 footage then 40 gig will store over 2.5 hours, 10 hours of MPEG2 footage and 20+ hours of MPEG 4/Sorenson
Incidently a 5 x 7 screen at 400mmm is equivalent to a 60" plasma at 3 metres; which you could plug into anyway if you want to present.
<strong>
This technology really isn't new and I fail to see why people expect it to suddenly take off just because Apple might sell it. I'm pretty biased on this though.</strong><hr></blockquote>
MP3 players were not new, either.
"you can be like bill gates for merely $500"
Trying to guess where consumer tastes are going is pretty risky and expensive. Seeing where consumer tastes are...and then making the premium gadget...is more like the idea. Remember Steve J's obsession with the Walkman....
If this is to be, it would be marketed not just on the Apple name, but also on the seamless integration between this and the digital hub. You can set have special iFrame featurs through your .Mac account. You could have it show weather, stock quotes, advertising, tv lineups (and advertising).
At $99 maybe, but $500 forget it.
I would love to see Apple build us a subnotebook, however...year of the laptop, right?
<strong>If this thing does cost $500, I would run out an buy a $999 iBook for this purpose (larger screen too), and hey, I can even download the pictures from my camera with an iBook; movies too.
At $99 maybe, but $500 forget it.
I would love to see Apple build us a subnotebook, however...year of the laptop, right?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Maybe $400. who knows.
And maybe you would say that if an iPod cost $400 you would buy a $999 laptop and download movies. Ah, but that is you and you are not everyone else.
A big problem with digital photos is that you have to print them out if you want to take them to a party or show them to your friends at work and talk about them. You spend five grand to go to South America, you spend $600 for a nice camera, you will spend the money to have the best way to show your photos to your friends. See, you can sell ibooks to college students, but you want to be able to sell cool stuff to people with disposable income, too. And you say, look between taking your photos around, you can have this on your wall and for $20 bucks a month, it can get weather and track your stocks duriing the day and show Vermeer at night.
And the beauty is that it is all existing technology. screen, harddrive, port, interface. And you sell enough of these and you sell enough iPods and you are branding Apple.
<strong>
MP3 players were not new, either.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The iPod is nice but around 40 million mp3 players were selling annually before the iPod arrived. Apple didn't make that market take off it did it on its own.
<strong>And maybe you would say that if an iPod cost $400 you would buy a $999 laptop and download movies. Ah, but that is you and you are not everyone else.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Point taken, but I still would argue that an iPod is totally different; you can take it with you and literally carry it in your pocket. That is something you cannot do with a 5x7 iFrame. One of the iPod's features is that you enjoy it solo. You are not showing it off to others ala iFrame. For that purpose, a subnotebook would work best. Besides, I typically carry a laptop wherever I go; if for nothing else, than to show people my pics in iPhoto. Family, friends, etc... But you are right that is me. I would rather carry around a laptop, since I also love to show people the wonders of OS X. I think, even more than my photos, people are more impressed with the OS than anything else I could show them on my laptop. I guess that doesn't say much for my photos, huh? <img src="embarrassed.gif" border="0">
However, I could see a world where architects or models would carry around an iFrame and show off their designs. Basically, a world where all you do is photo-related would be a target market. Perhaps even someone like a repairman that needed a visual manual, rather than carry around a binder full of diagrams, etc could carry around an iFrame.
It still seems that a laptop would do just as well, and have a ton more functionality. I guess I am just a hard sell in this area.
Of course, I am probably not thinking of all areas that could benefit from such a device. Anyone else think up a good target market for such a device?
Comparing it to an iBook is missing the point of the iDevices. Half the size, instant boot, longer battery life, and most important of all 'handleability'. I travel with two ti books (for various technical reasons); using and passing them around at meetings is a pain in the butt. Cost is not the primary issue for many people and companies if the functionality, useability and overall design are focussed and exceptional (iPod, iPod, iPod....)
Dazzle us with your intellect.
After clearing my head of the more predictable thoughts, I found myself thinking of this iFrame thing again. What if my Sports Illustrated calendar was instead a live but passive device that knew when I was in the vicinity, perhaps because of a Sony/Ericsson Clicker type arrangement. This device might consist of little more than an LCD screen, an airport + bluetooth card, and enough processing power to handle voice commands. Think of it as an appendage to my main Mac, which is sitting somewhere else in the house or office.
Since this device knows that I'm nearby, it might tell me that I've got new emails. I could tell it to display them, or to fetch a website, or so on. Or it could just display more Miss February.
The point is that these technologies are here today, and the required components will be getting cheaper and cheaper. The requirements of this device are somewhat less than those for an iBook, owing to its specialisation. I don't know if a device like this makes economic sense just yet, but it probably will within two or three years.
[Edit: Yes, I know it's March. But my heart is still in February....]
[ 03-09-2003: Message edited by: boy_analog ]</p>
But....
...I'd buy an iFrame type gadget in a sec. Instant presentation machine. Big portable HD. You don't really NEED to use the Toshiba 40GB 1.8, but thin is always good in the portable world. I think possibly in a money saving move they could use a regular old 2.5 which is faster and cheaper by a long shot. Especially if you are gonna be presenting video to screen or capturing it from a FireWire consumer video camera (unless its gotta huge cache in relation, like the iPod).
And, in a year or so when the new 14MP bodies get down to the $2k range, look out. All us serious amateurs and professionals are gonna be moving towards digital (for those of us too poor to move theri already
$599, $699, I'm there if its got a nice tight resolution on a 5X7. 10X7 res on a 5X7 form factor would roxor, but I'm sure that an LCD like that would be waaay out of the $599 price range.
Anyhoo, a FireWire 800 and USB 2 combo cable
Offcourse, there should be some sort of applescripting on a wifi-near mac that generates images with your mails, and as such you could view your inbox with the iFrame, but it would not be an advanced input device.
The 2 target groups would be managers (business presentations thanks to tight integration with keynote) and home users (view iPhoto & iMovie libraries without having to sit behind your iMac upstairs)
Once again, my strongest point for an iFrame would be that it fits the concept of digital hub perfectly. Far more than a digital camera or pocketPC : these are rather stand-alone and do not require a mac around. The iFrame would, like the iPod, be a hardware extension of your mac and "useless" without other Apple hardware (iPod eventually got a windows interface, but only after Apple made sure the mac market got it first).
<strong>A lot of replies to my original posts. But many people seme to see an iFrame as some sort of tablet or large pocketPC. I would not see it that way. In my view, it's simply a portable presentation device with a HD and wifi. That's it. No advanced processor in it, so no mail-reading or web-browsing, since that would make the thing too expensive, and would drain the batteries.
Offcourse, there should be some sort of applescripting on a wifi-near mac that generates images with your mails, and as such you could view your inbox with the iFrame, but it would not be an advanced input device.
The 2 target groups would be managers (business presentations thanks to tight integration with keynote) and home users (view iPhoto & iMovie libraries without having to sit behind your iMac upstairs)
Once again, my strongest point for an iFrame would be that it fits the concept of digital hub perfectly. Far more than a digital camera or pocketPC : these are rather stand-alone and do not require a mac around. The iFrame would, like the iPod, be a hardware extension of your mac and "useless" without other Apple hardware (iPod eventually got a windows interface, but only after Apple made sure the mac market got it first).</strong><hr></blockquote>
The only use I'd personally see for an iFrame is for family holidays. I'd download all the photos from the past year or so and bring down to my folks house and let them see it.
OR, I'd burn them onto a DVD to play with iDVD slideshow with motion and music. OR I'd burn them onto a CD and let them play them in X's slideshow on their iMac. OR I'd use iPhoto to print out some 4x5's or contact sheets on the photo paper bought from the money I saved from not buying the iFrame.
Sorry, if it's just a frame, just a simple small picture viewer then ah, it ain't getting my money. I don't think Apple would put out something so limited in value and with so many current alternatives already installed on your mac.