I don't like the direction mainline iPods are headed...

[AmazingDM]

if they are to be widescreen, touchscreen, movie-oriented I don't think my next "main library" iPod will be a mainline one.. It'll probably be a larger sized blue Nano.

As it is I've realized I can't put every single album I have on any of the iPods out so I might as well get one that I can load a majority of all my favorite stuff/new stuff that I want to try out.

I'm hoping that in the future they seriously up the storage capacity of flash based iPods that don't have some humungous screens. I don't like the idea, and I don't like touchscreens.

[bobbit]

Now that Apple's hit that road with the iPhone, you can be assured that if it works out most other companies will follow.

Touchscreen technology has been around for years, it's just going to take a big push into the handheld-device (other than PDA's) market. Prices will start dropping and it'll become more and more. Why? Because it's convenient and opens the doors for more posibilities within small devices.

Nanos will of course grow in storage capacity, but flash technology is so far behind what companies like Toshiba are offering in the mini-harddrive department (180gb) now that it's going to take it a while to catch up -- and by the time flash drives are big enough to be decent, they'll be hugely overpriced. This will either mean larger Nanos for HDD storage, or leveling off at around 16gb for $50 more. ;P

[AmazingDM]

Well hopefully they have a small, regular iPod, no touchscreen/widescreen BS... that you can work out with

[bdb]

Keep in mind, its nothing more that some peoples' assumption that big touchscreen video devices are the direction Apple is taking for iPods. No one has actually posted anything from Jobs or Apple stating this as a direction.

I share your concern, but one of the big selling points for the full-size iPod is its relatively small size. I think there's a good chance that they're not going to sacrifice that for video.

[bobb-mini]

I dunn like touchscreens either, but I guess until flawless voice recognition, something gotta give.

[jhollington]

I share your concern, but one of the big selling points for the full-size iPod is its relatively small size. I think there's a good chance that they're not going to sacrifice that for video.
I think when people think touchscreen/widescreen they're thinking something larger like a PSP-sized device, but keep in mind that the iPhone is only slightly larger than the 30Gb iPod (about 0.4" taller, but the same width and thickness). Presumably if Apple were going to go in that direction for a full-size iPod, it would maintain the same form factor as the iPhone, with perhaps only a difference in thickness.

The problem is that at this point the only justification for a full-size iPod other than video capabilities is the large capacity, and I don't know if that's enough of a justification for Apple to keep the product line going in that direction. The Nano provides all other music playback-related capabilities, with smaller capacity being it's only deficiency.

I'm also concerned about whether a new iPod in the iPhone's style would be a goodmusic player (compared to the current design), but at the same time I very seriously doubt that Apple is not going to leverage the iPhone's design into the next iPod. They may choose to leave the present 5G on the market for those who still want a device that is predominantly a music player, but I seriously doubt we're going to see any significant upgrades in the current form factor.

Regardless, the Nano is not going away any time soon, and will probably start to be positioned as the defacto music player in the iPod line (which it's already starting to become). As a workout device it's a much better option than the full-sized iPod anyway, and as somebody who owns both a full-size 5G and a Nano, I've found myself using the Nano far more often when I just want to listen to music.

[AmazingDM]

iPod 5G - ultimate tool for students who need to study. Or ultimate vacation driving relief.

Otherwise.. a bit impractical.

[SmackyTheFrog]

My main concern after seeing the iphone and its touch capabilities is what about the wheel?

I mean seeing from the keynote the only way to scan through music is to move your finger from the top of the screen to the bottom then pick it up and put it at the top. That is a waste of movement that traditional scroll wheel ipods dont have.

Unless the touch screen works much better than it seems why would I give up my clickwheel? For me it and itunes are the main reasons to buy this slightly overpriced mp3 player. If the next ipod ditches the wheel I may seriously consider jumping ship, and the ipods have been my only mp3 players.

tlrdr; clickwheeel = ultimate management of long lists.

[jhollington]

Well, I can say from some experience that the touchscreen actually does work quite a bit better than you might expect. It is very intuitive, and somewhat motion and velocity sensitive.... Much like the wheel, the faster you move your finger the faster it will scroll through the list. Further, there are letter shortcuts that appear on the right-hand side of the screen when dealing with longer lists of artists or albums, making it easy to scroll immediately to a given letter group.

The interface also provides for features that have been missing from traditional iPods, such as the ability to go an album or artist track listing directly from the "Now Playing" screen, which will also make music management much easier and more intuitive.

While the clickwheel is very efficient for some, there are those who don't see the point of spinning one's finger around a wheel "like a hamster on crack" if there are alternative methods provided to skip to specific positions in a list, which to be fair is what the iPod has traditionally been missing (the "Quickscroll" introduced in September is a step in the right direction in this regard, mind you, although it can still be a little bit tricky to master).

[paranoidxe]

I just think the touch screen is going to involve a lot more pulling out the iPod and looking at the screen than what the design now offers, unless they some how incorperate both designs.

[justblaize]

I just think the touch screen is going to involve a lot more pulling out the iPod and looking at the screen than what the design now offers, unless they some how incorperate both designs.
I came up with this mock up. Nothing amazing, i know, looks almost exactly like the iPhone. But referring to your problem, notice the strip at the bottom of my image, it could be used to move volume up or down (by sliding your finger left or right) and change tracks by clicking forward or backward just like the traditional clickwheel. Just my 2 cents.

[bobbit]

That's an interesting idea, justblaize.

However since it's a touchscreen anyway, there wouldn't be much need for a strip. Just extend the screen right to the bottom and then keep the volume control there.

To make it easier for the lazy pocketers, though, maybe put a 'Lazy Mode' setting on there, or something, that shrinks the volume bar a little, puts the back and forward buttons on either side of it and hard press anywhere along that line to pause and play?

[jhollington]

Actually, the volume control is already pretty much where it needs to be for the ability to control it mostly be feel.... It wouldn't really take much to feel to the bottom edge of the screen and just slide your finger left and right, which is much the same way you would have to manipulate the clickwheel, if you think about it.

Even the Next/Pause/Prev buttons aren't particularly inaccessible when playing a track, since they sit right above the volume control.

Ultimately, this could all be solved with a simple wired or wireless remote, however, similar to the ones that are already available. In fact, if it were that much of an issue, there's the possibility that Apple might even include a remote in the package to facilitate in-pocket control of the device.

[bobbit]

Built-in remote receiver you recon J?

[jhollington]

Wouldn't surprise me in the least, actually. In fact, since the iPhone has bluetooth and WiFi, it's very likely that the next-gen iPod will retain at least some wireless capabilities. A Bluetooth remote control would not be outside the realm of possibility.

Of course, Apple's recent history suggests that they would be more likely to sell it as an add-on rather than packaging it into the device itself, but at least it would be available for those who want the device to use primarily as a high-capacity music player.

[paranoidxe]

The only thing I really would need so I wouldn't have to pull out the device is the REW/FF buttons..so I don't think it'd be too impractical to keep these buttons outside of the touch screen..and if this seriously happened I would actually get a 6th gen..but if it involves a complete FULL SCREEN iPod..forget it.

[bobbit]

What's so difficult. You feel the bottom right corner of the screen, press -- next song. Bottom left, previous song. Tap the bottom middle, song pauses or plays. scroll left to right, volume changes.

That's the most difficult way Apple could possibly make it with a touchscreen, and that's not even hard to comprehend and will be easier than a scrollwheel...

[paranoidxe]

What's so difficult. You feel the bottom right corner of the screen, press -- next song. Bottom left, previous song. Tap the bottom middle, song pauses or plays. scroll left to right, volume changes.

That's the most difficult way Apple could possibly make it with a touchscreen, and that's not even hard to comprehend and will be easier than a scrollwheel...

how is feeling in your pocket, pressing next (like it is now)HARDER than pulling the unit out looking at the screen and pressing the ON SCREEN controls (if there were a touch screen)?

a full touch screen would mean you can't feel the buttons you'd have to take out the unit to see the buttons.

[bobbit]

Did you not read what I posted?

[pohatu771]

If Apple were to give us a widescreen iPod anytime soon, I can't imagine they'd abandon the horizontal measure of iPods... since 2001, iPods have all been the same width, and since 3G, this means they can all use the same dock and speaker systems. Why would they change that?

[Surf Monkey]

There's no way they'll obsolete the whole iPod ecosystem. Any new flagship iPod will be essentially the same size as iPod w/ Video.

Personally, I don't relish the idea of an iPod that takes two hands to run. I'd prefer that they stay with the small screen on iPod. I'll go wide if that's where the line goes but I don't see any particularly compelling reason to have it.

[ddsd]

I think the 5.5G is almost perfect. They could have made it slightly wider for a wider screen imo. It wouldn't have hurt anything since the iPod looks wide anyway. Also, for a touchscreen iPod, what kind of screen would they consider using. What meterial would it be? Would the iPod not also have to be slightly thicker to hold such a screen.

[jhollington]

Actually, even the iPhone will fit in the same docks that the 5G iPods use, and in fact is basically the same thickness as a 30GB 5G iPod.

In fact, the iPhone itself will be fully compatible with existing iPod speaker systems, at least as far as the iPod side of the device goes.

A widescreen iPod doesn't mean that it needs to sacrifice it's current dimensions or that it will even require two hands to operate. The iPhone is quite usable with only one hand.

Therefore, it's reasonable to assume that an iPod based on the iPhone's design would most certainly retain the same form factor and compatibility.

[kylo4]

Who wants an ipod that looks like a psp. Its for music, not video. The touch screen capability is neat, but the scroll wheel is iconic. Like the iPhone though!

[bdb]

Who wants an ipod that looks like a psp. Its for music, not video. The touch screen capability is neat, but the scroll wheel is iconic. Like the iPhone though!Well it seems video is what people want these days. Personally it seems of very limited usefulness, as it requires you to be doing nothing else (whereas music can be playing while you're doing a lot of other things), but that's what people seem to be desiring.

The biggest difference, as I see it, is that the current scrollwheel is partially tactile - FF/RW and pause, which are pretty common functions. You can reach into your pocket to do these things, or even do it through the pocket fabric. With a pure touchscreen, just having it in your pocket can cause these functions to accidently occur, so it needs to be locked (which is why the first thing on the iPhone is "slide to unlock"). All this constant locking and unlocking seems very user-unfriendly.

[bdb]

Who wants an ipod that looks like a psp. Its for music, not video. The touch screen capability is neat, but the scroll wheel is iconic. Like the iPhone though!Well it seems video is what people want these days. Personally it seems of very limited usefulness, as it requires you to be doing nothing else (whereas music can be playing while you're doing a lot of other things), but that's what people seem to be wanting for some reason.

The biggest difference, as I see it, is that the current scrollwheel is partially tactile - FF/RW and pause, which are pretty common functions. You can reach into your pocket to do these things, or even do it through the pocket fabric. With a pure touchscreen, just having it in your pocket can cause these functions to accidently occur, so it needs to be locked (which is why the first thing on the iPhone is "slide to unlock"). All this constant locking and unlocking seems very user-unfriendly. That along with cracking and scratching are my concerns about a large screen consuming the entire front of the iPod.

[bzavala]

how is feeling in your pocket, pressing next (like it is now)HARDER than pulling the unit out looking at the screen and pressing the ON SCREEN controls (if there were a touch screen)?

a full touch screen would mean you can't feel the buttons you'd have to take out the unit to see the buttons.


I have to agree with Bobbit... I keep my ipod on my pocket when i'm excercising, and if I want to skip to the next song, or just turn up the volume, I just can reach and feel and press/touch the necessary buttons and don't have to take the ipod out at all. Sometimes I can even do it "thru" the cloth material if it's thin enough (i.e. some shorts).

But again... I think we all will adjust if they do an all-touchscreen one...

Ben :cool:

[kylo4]

Well it seems video is what people want these days. Personally it seems of very limited usefulness, as it requires you to be doing nothing else (whereas music can be playing while you're doing a lot of other things), but that's what people seem to be wanting for some reason.

The biggest difference, as I see it, is that the current scrollwheel is partially tactile - FF/RW and pause, which are pretty common functions. You can reach into your pocket to do these things, or even do it through the pocket fabric. With a pure touchscreen, just having it in your pocket can cause these functions to accidently occur, so it needs to be locked (which is why the first thing on the iPhone is "slide to unlock"). All this constant locking and unlocking seems very user-unfriendly. That along with cracking and scratching are my concerns about a large screen consuming the entire front of the iPod.

That's a great point and I agree 100% with you. I don't even use the video feature on my ipod, I think its a waste of battery life and I'm a music guy. But the touchscreen will get scratched easy and like you said the buttons part will be rather tedious to use.

[ddsd]

That's a great point and I agree 100% with you. I don't even use the video feature on my ipod, I think its a waste of battery life and I'm a music guy. But the touchscreen will get scratched easy and like you said the buttons part will be rather tedious to use.

I use my video function all the time, as well as music, but I never have to woory about my battery. If I'm not using my iPod, it's charging. It's become habit that instead of sitting it down, plug it in and leave it. I can't wait to see how Apple deals with the scratching problem that'll be bound to happen with a widescreen iPod. People were complaining about the Nano's screen. Apple will hopefully use a better type of screen. The screens they use now aren't working very well. I don't have ANY scratches, but that comes from babying mine like kids.

[justblaize]

Well it seems video is what people want these days. Personally it seems of very limited usefulness, as it requires you to be doing nothing else (whereas music can be playing while you're doing a lot of other things), but that's what people seem to be wanting for some reason.

The biggest difference, as I see it, is that the current scrollwheel is partially tactile - FF/RW and pause, which are pretty common functions. You can reach into your pocket to do these things, or even do it through the pocket fabric. With a pure touchscreen, just having it in your pocket can cause these functions to accidently occur, so it needs to be locked (which is why the first thing on the iPhone is "slide to unlock"). All this constant locking and unlocking seems very user-unfriendly. That along with cracking and scratching are my concerns about a large screen consuming the entire front of the iPod.
Thats what we have a "hold" switch for. I know that with the touchscreen, some unwanted things may happen, such as the volume going up or down, but cmon, lets be real, it happens with the clickwheel too.

[kylo4]

Yeah but the iPod is for music, not videos. I have 6 gb's of video that I don't watch (just the iPod ads) I want that space for albums.

[mjmoonwalker]

iPod 5G - ultimate tool for students who need to study.

LOL Yeah right! It's more of a distraction than a tool.

[cyclist14]

I would be happy if this was the Apple product line in two or three years:


16, 32, 64 GB Nano ( Flash Memory)

200, 400 GB iPod ( Micro HDD)

16,32, 64 GB iPhone ( Flash Memory)

16 GB Shuffle ( Flash)

[ddsd]

Thats what we have a "hold" switch for. I know that with the touchscreen, some unwanted things may happen, such as the volume going up or down, but cmon, lets be real, it happens with the clickwheel too.
Not as nearly as frequently as it might with a touchscreen iPod. It's completely different to slide your finger across a touchscreen and blow your ears out, than to roll your fingers in circles to get the same effect. The only time I even mistankingly blast my music is when I use my iPod directly after having it plugged into my speakers. I'll forget to turn it's volume down and select a song. Then it scares me to death and I turn the volume down.

[supra2jz]

KEEP THE CLICKWHEEL :p

[bobbit]

Yeah but the iPod is for music, not videos. I have 6 gb's of video that I don't watch (just the iPod ads) I want that space for albums.

I pray that was some form of sarcasm. Making such badly-stated opinionated comments don't fit well. Go have a look at the stats for video downloads on iTunes.

Cyclist14: Those are actually the most reasonable capacity estimates I've seen in quite a while -- and considering we're already up to 180gb micro HDDs, 400gb in 3 years isn't hard to imagine.

Not as nearly as frequently as it might with a touchscreen iPod. It's completely different to slide your finger across a touchscreen and blow your ears out, than to roll your fingers in circles to get the same effect. The only time I even mistankingly blast my music is when I use my iPod directly after having it plugged into my speakers. I'll forget to turn it's volume down and select a song. Then it scares me to death and I turn the volume down.

Hold switch/slide stop that, immediately. I constantly blast my head off with the clickwheel -- it's really not that hard to do -- and to be honest I think it will be harder to do on a touchscreen since the volume control will be notably smaller. Also with a touchscreen, you'd be able to say press the volume control area, then let go, then drag, as added measure -- can't so that with the clickwheel.

KEEP THE CLICKWHEEL :P

They will, definately. On the Nano.

[kylo4]

[QUOTE=bobbit]I pray that was some form of sarcasm. Making such badly-stated opinionated comments don't fit well. Go have a look at the stats for video downloads on iTunes.

In Canada we don't have video downloads, that could be why I don't understand the importance of video here. I'm not saying people don't love their videos, but the iPod is generally a music player, and marketed towards music lovers. Unless the battery life increases drastically and the screen is bigger than it can be fully marketed as a audio/video device. But the screen is like 2.5 inches!

[bdb]

I pray that was some form of sarcasm. Making such badly-stated opinionated comments don't fit well. Go have a look at the stats for video downloads on iTunes.Jobs said they've sold 1.3 million movies and 50 million TV shows since the service began...and they sell 5 million songs a day. This doesn't even count the other 97% of the music on iPods is not from iTunes. Video is definitely a minor focus area by iPod users, which why many of us think its odd that Apple would make that their major focus.

[kylo4]

I couldn't agree more with you bdb. The stats say it all. There is some copyright issue but if video was so important it would be available in Canada would it not? For such a high selling thing. All we have are some music videos. I've watched maybe 10 minutes of video in total since getting the iPod. The other hundreds of hours have been music. The video feature is just an added incentive to want to purchase the iPod.

[Glorybox3737]

but the iPod is generally a music player, and marketed towards music lovers. Unless the battery life increases drastically and the screen is bigger than it can be fully marketed as a audio/video device. But the screen is like 2.5 inches!

Things evolve.

[ddsd]

Jobs said they've sold 1.3 million movies and 50 million TV shows since the service began...and they sell 5 million songs a day. This doesn't even count the other 97% of the music on iPods is not from iTunes. Video is definitely a minor focus area by iPod users, which why many of us think its odd that Apple would make that their major focus.

Well, those figures can be misleading. Remember that of the millions of iPod's sold, only a fraction are iPods with video playback. That would mean that the majority of the iPod-owner population own iPods that don't play videos. Now consider the fact that videos do cost more than songs. I'd say that is pretty good when you take into consideration what I've mentioned. People are buying plenty of video content. Buying a song on iTunes seems like such a simple thing now, especially if you've had your iPod for quite some time. Buying a movie seems like more of an investment, and I'm sure that affects sales as well.

[jhollington]

I don't have any specific statistics, but I think you would also find that more people also buy music CDs than DVDs as well. Firstly, there is the much larger scope and availability of music CDs, and the fact that music is something that people will listen to in many different places and much more repeatedly than watching videos.

DVDs are something that are more the domain of the home theatre enthusiast or movie collector. There are still a lot of people who are content to rent a movie, or go and see it in the theatre, and would never bother buying a DVD.

Again, I too was concerned that Apple would place too much emphasis on video playback and sacrifice the utility of music playback on a new iPod. Having had a chance to see the iPhone, however, I'm less concerned. I don't think the iPhone design makes any serious compromises in that area, as it remains an audio player, the size has only very slightly increased, and the interface changes aren't that bad (and in some ways make the device more usable, since the clickwheel had some disadvantages in the area of precision).

On the other hand, the Nano has become the defacto music player, and Apple is selling a lot more Nanos these days as well over their full-size counterparts. For somebody who only wants music playback, the only real advantage that the 5G has over the Nano is the increased capacity. This comes with a disadvantage of being larger and having a hard-drive, making it less suitable than the Nano for convenient on-the-go portable music playback.

[kylo4]

Well if they made a 40 gb nano I'd get that, but I wanted a music player that could hold 500 albums so I opted for the 80 gb. How much flash can there be now?

[bdb]

Well if they made a 40 gb nano I'd get that, but I wanted a music player that could hold 500 albums so I opted for the 80 gb. How much flash can there be now?A few days ago, a market analyst was saying that Apple will likely make the 30GB model all flash in the relatively-near future. It will be quite a few years before large quantities of flash will be affordable, though.

[kylo4]

Interesting. They might last longer too, since they don't have a hard disk spinning inside them all the time. If Flash really expensive right now? If it was less expensive would Apple be able to make a 60 gb iPod with flash this year (assuming Flash was ultra cheap)?

[Eric Lewis]

wasnt apples main goal of the ipod...music? so why do we need all these fancy things...really soon people wont use the ipod for music!

[XVI]

If the ipod was just for music, then there'd be no point for upgrade, so there has to be wigets and gimmicks. As far as complaining about the motion screen you can't say anything you haven't even tried it yet!

[Surf Monkey]

People need to get a grip.

iPod IS a music player. All you have to do is look at Apple's product line to see that the delineation will always exist between iPod and other products. For example:

iPod = music platform

iPhone = communications and organization platform

Apple TV = video platform

Yes, there will be some crossover between devices but anyone who thinks that iPod will get more and more and more and more features as time goes on is fooling themselves. Apple has and will continue to make distinctions between the primary focus of various devices. iPod is a MUSIC player, plain and simple.

[bobbit]

Yes, there will be some crossover between devices but anyone who thinks that iPod will get more and more and more and more features as time goes on is fooling themselves. Apple has and will continue to make distinctions between the primary focus of various devices. iPod is a MUSIC player, plain and simple.

So we're all fools thinking that iPods are heading in the general direction of things like WiFi, large touchscreens, more advanced games, a tad more focus on videos and all that?

*puts on a big pointy hat with a big 'D' on it*

Oh, wait, no. The Zune has WiFi... they're selling games on iTunes, and videos -- ehh *takes off hat*

;)

[ddsd]

People need to get a grip.

iPod IS a music player. All you have to do is look at Apple's product line to see that the delineation will always exist between iPod and other products. For example:

iPod = music platform

iPhone = communications and organization platform

Apple TV = video platform

Yes, there will be some crossover between devices but anyone who thinks that iPod will get more and more and more and more features as time goes on is fooling themselves. Apple has and will continue to make distinctions between the primary focus of various devices. iPod is a MUSIC player, plain and simple.

I see the validity in your arguement. Makes perfect sense. By doing this, they are being more consumer friendly. They realize that not everyone wants a full-blown video player, but some people do want a music and video player. That's the iPod. The iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV target different needs. This keeps people from having to buy a highly priced product that does all of these. You can have your music and videos, music/videos and telecommunications, and/or Apple TV. I would want an iPod, but never an iPhone. That's why they're two completely different products. I don't need a phone, but I do need a video/music player. It's about choice. The next iPod will of course play videos, but will more than likely be a music-based product. Who knows, though?

[XVI]

What about the people who want an ipod with wifi, they just miss out? No one's forcing you to use any features you don't want to. I guarntee in 5 years the ipod will be MUCH more then a music/video player, wifi, cameras, hi tek games, etc. It's all going to happen. You coulda argued in 2001 that the ipod is just a music player it doesn't need and will never have...

Click Wheel
Color
Games
Music Videos
TV Shows
Movies
Touch Screen
A Slender Thin Sleek Desgin

But you woulda been wrong, the ipod MUST gain these things or it won't move forward, space and size isn't enough of a change. In that case I'd never upgrade till mine died. You see my logic?

[jhollington]

Actually, let's be realistic here... The is no more of a comparison between the iPod and the Apple TV than there is between an iPod and an Airport Express. The Apple TV fits a different niche, and is the logical evolution of the AirTunes technology, and not exactly an indication that Apple is going to move away from portable video in any way.

The iPod line has evolved beyond a music player into a portable media device. Music is one form of media, but we've already observed the expansion into audiobooks, photos, podcasts, and videos. Certainly with the full-size iPod the focus is still on music, and I'm sure it always will be, since that's going to be the most popular and common use of the device. However, it doesn't mean that the device will not be expanded into other media-related uses.

What I do not see the iPod becoming is a full-fledged PDA. That area is definitely reserved for the iPhone and similar devices in that line, and the comparison there is apt, since they are both portable devices.

[XVI]

So if it will not become a PDA where else will it go? How else can it evolve?

[bobbit]

PDA's are predominantly for business purposes, which is where the iPhone is heading.

As J said -- the iPod is a media device. Games, music, videos, audiobooks, podcasts -- all that. It'll stay as an expensive toy and more gadgetty bits will be added to it over time but nothing that will turn it into a portable computer.

[XVI]

Ok, but what are these "gadgetty bits" we have all that stuff you've mentioned, the only thing they can really improve out of those things are games, but there has to be more. Now I'm not saying put Windows on it but it's not too hard to just slap wifi on the mofo you know what I'm saying?

[bobbit]

Wifi is a definate possibility but I doubt Apple is going to put OSX on there so we can all use the internet. The prices will skyrocket and no one will buy it. The only logical reason why Wifi would go on a media device would be for more convenient syncing and music/photo/video/whatever sharing -- like with the Zune.

As for the 'gadgetty bits' -- games, obviously, but also things like calculators, proper notepads (where you can type it on the iPod rather than sync through your computer) and also if Apple does it right, third party applications.

[XVI]

Wifi is a definate possibility but I doubt Apple is going to put OSX on there so we can all use the internet. The prices will skyrocket and no one will buy it. The only logical reason why Wifi would go on a media device would be for more convenient syncing and music/photo/video/whatever sharing -- like with the Zune.

As for the 'gadgetty bits' -- games, obviously, but also things like calculators, proper notepads (where you can type it on the iPod rather than sync through your computer) and also if Apple does it right, third party applications.

So keyboard for the notepad? I mean you make good points, but you don't make a lot of them, I mean these are things that will happen, but it will certainly happen in less than 5 years. If the ipod doesn't have a browser in 5 years I'll give you $20. I don't see OSX going on (or at least for several years) but I beilve cameras and wifi and trading will happen within 5 yeaars, because there's no where else interesting to go.

[Surf Monkey]

I think you guys are missing something here. Apple is not going to cram every feature under the sun into iPod. It just isn't going to happen. As new capabilities come along, new Apple devices will be introduced that focus on them. The iPhone and Apple TV are perfect examples. One's a communications device, not an iPod. The other is a Video device, not an AirPort or an iPod. Yes, iPod will probably get Wi-Fi but I seriously doubt it'll get a camera (for example).

And using the argument that the iTunes Music Store sells video so video will become the focus of iPod is also missing the point. iTunes Music Store is the content source for ALL Apple hardware, not just iPod. They'll be selling video mainly to Apple TV customers, not iPod customers. Some iPod people will continue to buy video from iTMS but the primary market for those downloads will be Apple TV owners.

All I'm saying here is that we shouldn't expect iPod to the be locus of all new features. It's not going to be THE converged device. Apple may NEVER make a completely converged device. If you all are expecting it, you're going to be disappointed. You have to look at the whole Apple product line in order to understand their strategy. It's not all about iPod, as much as we'd like it to be.

[bobbit]

And using the argument that the iTunes Music Store sells video so video will become the focus of iPod is also missing the point.

Nope. We've been saying this since before Apple TV was even created -- and it still stands. Also I do believe video downloads for iPods are completely different to those of Apple TV, since iPod screens are tiny and don't need something so huge.

I agree with the mostpart of that post though. : )

[Surf Monkey]

So if it will not become a PDA where else will it go? How else can it evolve?


Why exactly does iPod need to evolve in order to remain successful? What other device do you expect this kind of evolution from? Do you expect your microwave to do more and more with each passing year? Remember that Apple thinks about these devices more like washing machines or microwaves than they do like hand held computers. iPod has plenty of room to evolve in terms of capacity, size and connectivity. It can and will get Wi-Fi. It will get smaller. It will get much larger capacity. It will get a bigger screen. But it's probably not going to get OS X, tons of games, all sorts of third party software, cameras, phones, GPS units and so forth. It's a music player (or media player if you like) and Apple is going to make sure that they don't dilute it to the point that people forget its primary function. It's FAR more likely that Apple will develop (or already has developed) other products that focus on other functions. iPhone is just the start. It's very likely that Apple will make a dedicated camera at some point. They may make a GPS. Who knows? The point is that they're not going to jam all those things into iPod. Try and see the bigger picture here, people.

[Surf Monkey]

Nope. We've been saying this since before Apple TV was even created -- and it still stands. Also I do believe video downloads for iPods are completely different to those of Apple TV, since iPod screens are tiny and don't need something so huge.

I agree with the mostpart of that post though. : )


Well, we disagree. I think it's clear that Apple understands people's needs. Right now video on portable devices is a bit of a fad, but no one wants to watch hours and hours of video on a screen that's smaller than their very first TV set. The uses of portable video are very limited. It's good for people on long trips, on the bus etc. but it's not going to be something that people use when they want to sit down and watch a movie or catch up on a week's worth of TV shows. If Apple wants to increase video downloads (and they do) they'll focus those on Apple TV (and they are.) The bottom line is that video on iPod, phones, PDAs etc. is a gimmick that has a limited usefulness. Even video on computer screens (a la YouTube) is of VERY limited usefulness. On the other hand, video delivered to TV sets and home theaters is exactly what people want. Delivering it to iPod was just the opening salvo in a much more targeted effort on Apple's part. They're aiming for the living-room, not the palm of your hand.

[mjmoonwalker]

wasnt apples main goal of the ipod...music? so why do we need all these fancy things...really soon people wont use the ipod for music!

Why would you care? You love the iPod for games and videos, right?

[jhollington]

All I'm saying here is that we shouldn't expect iPod to the be locus of all new features. It's not going to be THE converged device. Apple may NEVER make a completely converged device. If you all are expecting it, you're going to be disappointed. You have to look at the whole Apple product line in order to understand their strategy. It's not all about iPod, as much as we'd like it to be.
I agree with that statement wholeheartedly. I also think this is why we're unlikely to ever see video playback or even games on something like the Nano, since that device is clearly focused as a music player.

However, we've already observed the development of the full-size iPod into a general portable media device. Of course the iPod is still going to be focused on music as it's primary function, but again this is because of what people are more likely to use in a portable device more than anything else (music, or at least audio content in general, is still the primary function for any portable media device due to the increased number of situations in which music can be consumed as opposed to other types of media content).

I was one of those who somewhat doubted that whole video concept on the iPod in the first place, but now that it's there it's a nice value-add, and Apple has done it in such a way as to not take away from the music playback capabilities. I don't expect that the iPod is going to develop into much more than a media player, but I think that it will continue to embrace all forms of digital media content that people are looking for.

Even the current video capabilities complement the Apple TV very well. Consider watching the first part of your favourite show on your iPod duringyour daily commute home, and then dropping your iPod into the dock and being able to pick up where you left off on your Apple TV.

I still think that the iPhone is a foreshadowing of the design of the next-generation iPod. Note that this does not mean the next-gen will have the features of the iPhone, but I do think that's where we're headed in terms of the overall design. Take away all of the phone and Internet communications capabilities, add a hard drive, and you're basically left with a touch-screen, wide-screen iPod that many people have been clamouring for. The phone and PDA capabilities are almost certain to be stripped out of an iPod, but at the same time things that have a utility for media content, such as Bluetooth and WiFi are more of a coin-toss.

Those who fear that the new design will take away from the device's utility as a music player need to revisit the iPhone design and realize that other than the low capacity (of the iPhone), it's really still going to be very useable for music player... In some ways even more-so. The full-size iPod has been gradually moving away from the ultra-portable "throw-in-your-pocket-and-take-anywhere" player anyway, with the Nano moving solidly into that role.

[bobbit]

Well said, Jesse :)

[XVI]

[QUOTE=Surf Monkey]Why exactly does iPod need to evolve in order to remain successful? QUOTE]

Because it has been evolving for half a decade, and if it doesn't keep chaning no one will want to upgrade and people will get bored. If the ipod just got smaller, more space, and a bigger screen... well I certainly wouldn't want a smaller version of the 1G Ipod. I want the new features. Now I understand what you and others are saying. And I don't see GPS naviagotor on my 6G ipod but I personally think in 5 years it will be there.

[bdb]

I still think that the iPhone is a foreshadowing of the design of the next-generation iPod.Did Jobs say something that would lead you to believe that the iPhone will become the iPod? I don't understand the connection. It it just because the iPhone happens to be roughly iPod-sized that everyone thinks it will lead to an iPod?
The full-size iPod has been gradually moving away from the ultra-portable "throw-in-your-pocket-and-take-anywhere" player anyway, with the Nano moving solidly into that role.It seems that's what most is predicting, which I find disappointing. All I want is to be able to throw my music library in my pocket and take it anywhere - the smaller the better.

I'm really curious what this is going to do to the iPod case market. There's an entire industry built around protecting iPods from scratches & cracks. But with the new iPod, you can't protect the front anymore (since its touch-screen), and the back is metal. I guess we're just supposed to let them get scratched up or broken, then go buy a new one.

[Surf Monkey]

Why exactly does iPod need to evolve in order to remain successful?

Because it has been evolving for half a decade, and if it doesn't keep chaning no one will want to upgrade and people will get bored. If the ipod just got smaller, more space, and a bigger screen... well I certainly wouldn't want a smaller version of the 1G Ipod. I want the new features. Now I understand what you and others are saying. And I don't see GPS naviagotor on my 6G ipod but I personally think in 5 years it will be there.


Evolution for evolution's sake isn't in Apple's playbook.

[bdb]

Evolution for evolution's sake isn't in Apple's playbook.This certainly has been the way the iPod has progressed in the past. Color, photos, video...these things all showed up in competing players well before they showed up in the iPod. This has allowed them to maintain a secure grasp of the mp3 player market, and they continue to maintain an enviable growth rate:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/57/Ipod_sales.svg/400px-Ipod_sales.svg.png

Now people are predicting they'll dump a strategy that is quite successful, and basically kill off their cash cow to do something completely new. That seems like a very odd move that could put the entire company at risk.

[Surf Monkey]

Who said they were going to dump their strategy? Go back and read my posts. I didn't say that iPod wouldn't evolve. What I said was not to expect a ton of new bells and whistles. Don't plan on iPod ever having a camera for example. iPod, like all of Apple's products, will evolve but it isn't going to be the core focus of all of Apple's innovation. iPhone shows that very clearly. As new functions are developed at Apple, new devices will be developed that support them. iPod will always be a media player. It's not going to evolve into a PDA or a phone or a camera or a converged device. It's success is due to its core function, not to the various things they've added to it over the years.

[bdb]

Who said they were going to dump their strategy? Go back and read my posts. I didn't say that iPod wouldn't evolve.Neither did I. All I'm saying is they have a successful strategy of slow evolution & core music focus, and I'd be surprised if they completely move away from that strategy and risked it all on a completely new converged platforum.

[jhollington]

Actually, evolution by definition is a slow process.... :) Apple's products have been evolutionary rather than revolutionary in terms of technical features, and that seems very much in line with their strategy.

The reality is that Apple doesn't add new features for the sake of having the latest bells and whistles, and they certainly don't add them until they're sure that they can do it properly. The core focus is intuitive ease-of-use and accessibility to the common man moreso than throwing in the latest gadgets that will make the geeks freak out.

Video is a perfectly good example of this. Lots of players had video capabilities long before the iPod did, but they were relegated to the realm of the technologically savvy, as they generally were only good for downloading little clips off the web, or for messing around with converting your own video. The iPod didn't bring video capabilities into the picture until Apple was able to create a platform that could deliver the video to the end user in a neat and easy-to-use package. Leaving aside the fact that you have to buy the content, the reality is that Apple has made this content available to the average user who likely wouldn't have the knowledge or patience to start encoding their own videos or messing about with torrents.

What is revolutionary about Apple's technology is not the 'golly-gee-whiz' technical features that they add, but rather the way in which they add and deliver these features. The iPhone is another great example of this.... As I've said elsewhere, there's nothing in the iPhone in terms of the actual features that wasn't done in other smart phones as far back as five years ago in some cases. However, it is the way in which Apple has brought those features together, and the intuitive design that makes the iPhone revolutionary, not the features themselves.

Let's face it, the sales graph above basically says it all... The iPod has been an overwhelming success because it appeals to the much larger demographic of the average user. Most other DAPs have limited themselves (whether intentionally or not) to the technology enthusiasts, which is a much smaller market.

[Surf Monkey]

Right, and that's exactly what I'm saying. All this talk of "it'll have a camera! and a GPS! and OS X! and a can opener! and a shaver!" etc. etc. is unrealistic. No matter what happens, iPod will remain iPod. Other things will suppliment the line like iPhone but Apple isn't going to dilute iPod just to satisfy the tech lust of people who want more and more and more gizmos added to it.

[XVI]

Look, no ones saying OSX on the ipod. I'm just saying it has to go somewhere besides space and size because that's boring and it will eventually gain PDA features. I'm really curious what you guys are thinking because you probally heard what I thought. Post what you think the iPod will be like in 5 years

[Surf Monkey]

Look, no ones saying OSX on the ipod.


Actually, based on iPhone, lots of people are saying exactly that.

[L33tG4m3r]

Personally, I would stick with my 5.5G if Apple decided to go that way with future iPods. I am a firm believer that iPod should be "All about the music", and I think a touchscreen and WiFi would be impractical. I have never needed or wanted WiFi on any of my electronics (you're talking to a teen who wants EVERYTHING). Touchscreens are impractical in the sense that they cost more to manufacture and they are weird to use for an MP3 player. Apple should make the iPhone, so people who want those functions can get an iPhone. But PLEASE, keep iPods music first!

[Surf Monkey]

I agree that music should remain the focus and I tend to agree that touch screens may not be the way to go with iPod. The greatest thing about iPod is the single hand opperation of the click wheel. If Apple dumps that, they make iPod just another music player. The click wheel is the innovation that makes iPod unique.

As far as Wi-Fi goes, I disagree. I want to be able to synch my iPod without wires (Bluetooth would also accomplish this goal) but more importantly, I think that Apple would like iPod users to be able to access iTunes Music Store without having to sit down at their computer. Being able to buy songs directly from iPod would allow people to make purchases on the bus, at a party, at a friends house etc.. It make perfect sense to me.

But yeah, I'm not a big fan of moving to a full touch screen interface. Long live click wheel!

[bobbit]

(Bluetooth would also accomplish this goal)

Go transfer a full song to your mobile via BlueTooth, see how long it takes, come back and say that again.

As for accessing the Music Store with the iPod -- you'll need a much bigger screen to do that ;)

[XVI]

Actually, based on iPhone, lots of people are saying exactly that.

No one in this thread is what I meant.

And someone, tell me where the ipod will be in 5 years if it's not the wiget way?!?!?!

[Surf Monkey]

As for accessing the Music Store with the iPod -- you'll need a much bigger screen to do that ;)


That's assuming that the interface for iPod would be the same one you see in the iTunes software. It's a very big assumption indeed.

[bobbit]

That's assuming that the interface for iPod would be the same one you see in the iTunes software.

Not at all.

[Surf Monkey]

Apple would dial iTMS to work fine with whatever screen is on the theoretical Wi-Fi iPod, even if it's the exact same size as the current iPod screen.

[jhollington]

A common misconception of "OS X" on the iPhone is that it's going to be a full-fledged computer-style operating system. Not only do I not think this is true, but let's not lose sight of the fact that they didn't say the iPhone would run "Mac OS X", but rather just "OS X".

The iPhone's present design only runs a few embedded scaled-down applications. The underlying operating system is not particularly relevant in this case to anybody but the programmers, and while it certainly speaks to future expansion capabilities, it doesn't mean that the iPhone, nor any iPod that might use OS X is going to turn into a portable handheld computer.

I think the next-generation iPod probably will run "OS X", but not in the sense that most people are thinking.... Apple has gone pretty much as far as they can with the iPod's current embedded firmware, and I"m sure many of the software-based limitations that people are seeing today are probably somewhat based on the limitations of that approach, which was really a firmware/OS designed back in the days of the 1G iPod.

As for a touchscreen taking the focus away from the music, if you read my posts from before MWSF, you'll see that I was just as skeptical and concerned about this aspect of a new iPod. Prior to January 9th, I would have sworn that a full-screen/touch-screen interface is something Apple would never do as it would take the focus away from the music.

Now that I've seen the iPhone, however, I'm a convert. Apple has an amazing touch screen design on the iPhone, the size of the device has not dramatically increased, and it's very usable with one hand, for the iPod portion at least.

In fact, it's even more useable than the click wheel, since the click wheel always lacked precision and could be a pain for scrolling through long lists (hence their need to kludge things on like the new "quickscroll" feature).

Moving over to this design doesn't mean the focus will be taken away from music.... Quite the opposite, as I think it would increase a person's enjoyment of their music library.... It's much easier to find and select specific tracks and the cover flow feature is a thing of beauty. The reality is that anybody with a large music library is probably going to very much appreciate this design. After all, what's the point of carrying 80GB of music in your pocket if it cannot be easily accessed? I know that even on my 5G iPod, most of the music on there sits ignored unless I'm looking for something specific.

Even with the current iPods, you have to look at the screen to actually navigate the interface. The only downside to a touchscreen is accessibility to controls like volume and play/pause while it's in your pocket, but they've even positioned those so they're not too difficult access by touch alone (certainly not that much moreso than trying to access the clickwheel). Regardless, that's easily solved with a remote, or perhaps just external buttons for that purpose.

[Surf Monkey]

Actually, you don't have to look at iPod in order to do a lot of the functions right now. I can feel where to press the click wheel in order to skip, pause, play, increase or decrease the volume etc. The only thing you have to look at iPod for is selecting a specific song or playlist. After that you can do it all blind. Losing that would be a step backwards.

[paranoidxe]

I changed my mind about the touchscreen iPod concept, I'd in fact get one if:
- it offered 100GB or 120GB capacity
- the screen was WELL EQUIPPED to handle scratches and smudges
- FORWARD/BACK (REW/FF) buttons OFF the screen, this way I wouldn't have to take the iPod out to change between songs.

If it came out to be its own line of product I would continue to buy the current design iPod

[bdb]

Having used the touch-driven interface on the Creative Zen Vision:M a bit, I can vouch that that sort of interface can make it a lot easier to get through long lists. You start moving your thumb or finger down and it scrolls, hold it and it continues scrolling. Believe me, holding your thumb on one spot is much easier than madly scrolling on a wheel.

And re-thinking the notion of how it might get automatically activated in a pocket, I rememebered that you can't adjust an iPod's touch-sensitive volume through the cloth of a pocket...so the same could hold true with any function on a touchscreen.

My primary concern is about durability, which has always been the iPod's failing. That's an awfully big screen to try to protect, and it seems that protecting it will render it useless. It'll also be disappointing if you always have to look at it to do primary functions (foward/back/pause). It'll be interesting to see what a huge screen does to battery life, too.

[XVI]

About the huge screen hindering battery life... we can now alter the brightness of the screen so... well yeah

But yeah I know I'm spamming the crap out of this but Where will the iPod be in 5 years? I mean how can it not have wifi and wigets

[XVI]

And again, the click wheel is gone.

[Surf Monkey]

And again, the click wheel is gone.


Huh? What are you referencing?

[XVI]

Someone mentioned it awhile back, i dunno. The point is the iPod has to become a PDA because there's not much else for it to do. And you can't hate the direction Mainline Ipods are headed because you (TC) hasn't even touched the iPhone abd he can't predict the new ipod. And I really wanna hear someone tell me how the ipod will be in 5 years, if it won't be a PDA.

[bobbit]

I can see XVI's point that for the iPod to evolve, more features have to be added. Whilst I don't agree that it will become a fully-fledged PDA, it's pretty clear that if Apple want to continue the iPod craze and wipe out any competition, they're going to have to push past the 'Oh my gosh it can't evolve past a music player my brain won't be able to cope with the change!).

What do I say to that? It already has -- get over it.

As for the clickwheel, that's as good as gone, especially with the release of the iPhone. However whether it will implemented in either the 6g, 7g or 8g iPod is yet to be discovered. I'm pinning for 6g but I'm just overly impatient. ;)

I see it this way: iPod Photo evolves into iPod Video, hello Nanos. Nano's will probably keep the traditional basis of the 'Oh my god MUSIC' player that your heart so desperately craves, while the current iPod Video continues to evolve, raking in the cash for Apple and the extra features for people like me. :)

[Surf Monkey]

I'd hope not. I don't see why the device "needs to evolve" into something else, especially into a PDA. Personally, I think dumping the clickwheel would be a bad decision on Apple's part. Also, the Nano doesn't work for me as a replacement since the capacity is much lower and will continue to be lower for some time to come. iPod is a music/media player and I think it should stay a music/media player. Making it into something else makes it stop being an iPod. I understand that XVI wants it to become something else but I don't think he represents the mainstream iPod customer.

And again, this goes back to how Apple thinks about these things. They don't see them as whiz bang gadgets. They see them more like appliances. Do you expect a microwave to evolve into something else over the next five years? Why would you? What's the point of taking iPod away from the very thing that made it successful in the first place?

Rather than continually expecting Apple to change iPod into a PDA or whatnot, why not expect Apple to actually make a PDA? After all, if you take the phone out of iPhone, doesn't IT become iPDA? Newton 2.0? Seems more logical to me that a stripped down version of iPhone would come along before iPod would evolve into something that we don't recognize as a music/media player.

[bobbit]

So you suggest just forever up the harddrive space and battery life and leave it at that?

[Surf Monkey]

So you suggest just forever up the harddrive space and battery life and leave it at that?


Not necessarily. I'd speculate that Apple will add additional features just as they've done so far but that those feature ads will be limited. In other words, they added some very limited PDA capability but intend to launch a new device (iPhone) with greatly expanded PDA functions. Rather than remake iPod as something new, I suspect that they'll add things that enhance the existing functions. Coverflow for example. What I doubt is that they'll add is features that take iPod away from its core function and target market. I doubt that it'll get a full fledged desktop type interface like iPhone. I doubt that it'll get a camera and so forth. At the very most, I could see it going to a full screen interface, but if you check out Apple's recent patents, that full screen may be a "click screen" that functions a lot like clickwheel (rocker buttons under the screen.) But that's pure speculation.

The point is that iPod is what brought Apple back from the brink. It's their most successful product. There's simply no way that they'll "evolve" it in any radical way, even over the course of five or more years. It's much more likely that in five years we'll look at iPod and be able to tell exactly what it is. Meanwhile, Apple is likely to add additional devices that address new functions, much like iPhone.

[bobbit]

Whist I do agree with most of that, and as I've said -- anything close to PDA will be stupid --, Nothing will take the limelight off the iPod's core function. Not Wifi nor videos nor touchscreen nor games. Heck even adding a crappy little camera to it isn't going to do a great deal of damage to the overall 'Hey, it's an iPod!' craze.

They will add new bits of hardware (WiFi, for example), they will add plenty more software features and updates over time (as you said, CoverFlow), but even with reasonably pointless things like cameras, the iPod is an iPod and will always be an iPod as far as I'm concerened and so long as Apple doesn't add so much that they can't give it a decent price (which they wouldn't anyway), people like you will still buy new ones and just not use some of the newer bits, surely?

[XVI]

Surf Monkey your not relizing how much 5 years are. And about appliances, I'm sure they didn't have wifi refrigarators 5 years ago but that's not the point. The point is it's not about what you want, it's about what is likely. And even if it doesn't become a full fleged PDA it will have sevreal PDA features. And yes, the click wheel is long gone. We will get Wifi (most likely 6G) we will get cameras, we will get caculators, wireless headphones etc. Because the ipod has to have a dramatic change. The Wheel, The Color, The Pictures, The Videos. And sixe and space just isn't enought, niether is cover flow. ESPICALLY in five years. Surf Monkey I would really like to see your version (like a list price, in detaile) of the ipod 10G, or five years in the future, without a camera, or wifi, or a video recorder, or bluetooth.

[jhollington]

Well, we have the past five years to look at for comparison in terms of what Apple has already done thus far, and as I mentioned earlier, the changes have been extremely incremental. What are the significant differences between the 1G iPod and the 5G iPod? USB support, a colour screen, photo/video capability, and more capacity. That's pretty much it for core features.

Further, one has only to look at the technologies that Apple has already more or less developed to see where they may be going.

I personally don't think we'll see a camera integrated into an iPod at any point in the near future. The iPhone has a camera to keep in somewhat competitive with the other smartphones on the market, almost all of which now include integrated cameras. On the other hand, I have yet to see a DAP with an integrated camera.... Even few dedicated PDAs have integrated cameras.

Further, the integrated cellphone/camera aspect is something that the carriers clamour for, as it gives them an opportunity to have yet-another-service they can charge for.

WiFi and Bluetooth, on the other hand, are inevitable eventually. In fact, the very existence of them on the iPhone is a foreshadowing of a future-generation iPod, since I'm still quite certain that Apple would not have spent the amount that they did on R&D for the iPhone if they didn't intend to leverage that into other devices.

Personally, I think the next-generation iPod is going to be somewhat of a mix-and-match of the technology that has been developed for the iPhone. All they really have to do is scale down the firmware, take out the phone-specific communication features and a few of the other bells and whistles, and throw in a 100GB hard drive, and they've basically got the 6G iPod. I think the camera will be stripped out as part of that process, but I see no reason why Bluetooth and WiFi wouldn't be left in.

Of course, I don't think we'll see Safari on the next-generation iPod, since again this is what the iPhone is ultimately for. If Apple truly intended to release a 6G iPod that was everything but the phone portion, then they probably wouldn't have bothered with the iPhone in the first place. WiFi might be used to support synchronization (they've already essentially enabled this in iTunes with the Apple TV, so it's not a stretch), and Bluetooth for wireless headphones.

As for device-to-device sharing ala the Zune? I don't think that's likely to happen any time soon, as it goes against Apple's normal business model (let's face it, they don't even let you transfer non-purchased songs from your iPod to your computer), and frankly even with the Zune that's a niche feature. Apple doesn't do niche features in their products, but rather tries to keep them as mainstream as possible.

Further, Apple doesn't incorporate new technology into a device until they're sure it's going to work seamlessly for the average consumer.

Regardless, I still think that even in five years, the iPod will remain a media-centric playback device, as opposed to a PDA-like device (especially now that the iPhone has slipped into that niche).

[Surf Monkey]

Well, we have the past five years to look at for comparison in terms of what Apple has already done thus far, and as I mentioned earlier, the changes have been extremely incremental. What are the significant differences between the 1G iPod and the 5G iPod? USB support, a colour screen, photo/video capability, and more capacity. That's pretty much it for core features.


This gets exactly to the point of what I was saying. The changes to iPod thus far have been very minimal. If you hold up a 1g iPod next to a 5g iPod it's clear that they're the same thing. In five years I suspect that if you hold up a 5g iPod next to a 10g iPod it'll still be clear that they're the same thing.

Another factor that people are missing here is that many of the features they're calling for on iPod are ALREADY on iPhone. In other words, why would Apple cannibalize iPhone sales by adding the same functions to iPod? If anything it seems to me that they'll do what they can to make the two products distinct from each other. You want a PDA, a camera, a Web browser and so forth? iPhone is the device for you. You want a media player that's primarily used for music? It's all about iPod.

And further, XVI and others should consider the fact that iPhone itself is also bound to go through subtle evolutions. It won't stand still any more than iPod will stand still. You need to realize that these are completely different products, aimed at completely different markets. iPod is not going to end up being iPhone lite and iPhone is not going to end up being iPod deluxe.

That's why I seriously doubt if the clickwheel will go away any time soon. It may end up being virtualized but I'd be very surprised if it disappeared altogether. Why? Because the clickwheel IS iPod. The clickwheel interface is the exact thing that made iPod unique. Without it, iPod is just another media player. Apple will need to come up with an equally innovative interface if they intend to dump clickwheel and as far as I can tell, the touch screen interface to iPhone isn't it. The key to iPod and clickwheel is that you can use it with one hand, without looking at it for most functions. Apple isn't going to dump that unless they have an even better solution. The ease of use is bound to the clickwheel interface more than anything else IMO.

[jhollington]

That's why I seriously doubt if the clickwheel will go away any time soon. It may end up being virtualized but I'd be very surprised if it disappeared altogether. Why? Because the clickwheel IS iPod. The clickwheel interface is the exact thing that made iPod unique.
Actually, I would agree with all of your points except for that one. For the record, prior to January 9th, I was saying the exact same thing... That the clickwheel was iconic, and that a touch-screen would be more difficult to use and would sacrifice ease-of-use (and that Apple would therefore never do it).

Now, having seen the iPhone, I'm convinced that it really wouldn't be a bad thing, because Apple, as always, has done the interface very well.

The truth is that the higher capacity iPods have outgrown the clickwheel. For a Nano, it's still a reasonable interface, but as soon as you need to start navigating large libraries it starts to fall down in ease of use.... It lacks precision, and scrolling through long lists like a hamster-on-crack is really not the easiest possible way to navigate the interface.

Don't get me wrong, the clickwheel is still quite ahead of many competing solutions, but a properly-designed touch-screen interface is really the inevitable progression. The reality is that user interface is probably the single thing that Apple does best, and if they're going to abandon the clickwheel for a new interface (which after five years it probably is time for a change), they're going to do it right.

Let's face it, has Apple stuck with the clickwheel because it is the best solution one could ever come up with, or because it was simply the best solution available within current technology? Realistically, two years ago they probably couldn't have come up with a better interface. The iPhone itself was over two years in the design, and I'm betting the touchscreen interface was the biggest part of that.

The iPhone touchscreen is usable with one hand, and provides a more efficient navigation system than the iPod presently does. Looking at the screen should not be required on the iPhone (in "iPod" mode) any more than it is on the iPod today. Further, the touchscreen provides a level of precision that the clickwheel simply cannot.

Again, I don't think that Apple is going to stand still on the full-size iPod now that the Nano has been coming up as the default music playback device. The larger capacity of the full-size iPod is probably not motivation enough to not evolve the interface. I really think we'll see the Nano taking the front row as the portable, pocketable, go-anywhere music player, and the full-size iPod evolving into a general-purpose media device.

[wot_fan]

Actually, I would agree with all of your points except for that one. For the record, prior to January 9th, I was saying the exact same thing... That the clickwheel was iconic, and that a touch-screen would be more difficult to use and would sacrifice ease-of-use (and that Apple would therefore never do it).
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The iPhone touchscreen is usable with one hand, and provides a more efficient navigation system than the iPod presently does. Looking at the screen should not be required on the iPhone (in "iPod" mode) any more than it is on the iPod today. Further, the touchscreen provides a level of precision that the clickwheel simply cannot. I agree that the multi-touch screen will eventually replace the click wheel on the iPod. Multi-touch seems to be the logical next step for UIs. Here is a good article (http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9011412&pageNumber=1) on the subject. If you don't have time to read the article, at least check out this video demonstration (http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=j_han) of a multi-touch UI in action. It makes what Steve showed us in his keynote look like child's play. I look forward to this technology making its way to the PC :cool:.

[XVI]

I understand why you guys are thinking...

I think the Wheel is gone.

And I see that the 1G and the 5G look similar but they are COMPLETLY different when you turn that baby on. And an 8 year old a 5G iPod, they'd be like cool, great, take that away and give him the 1G he'll be like WTF, the point is they are very different and besides size wifi/bluetooth and capacity you guys aren't really naming new features, and I just can't beilve the iPod will be like this for 5 years. And I'll tell you one thing, the 1G looks NOTHING like the iPhone! Besides, Surf Monkey (or jhollington) answer my question about create an iPod (with great detail, list format) that we will have 5 years later, plese do it so I can really see what your saying. Because currentli I'm really agreeing with bobbit who said "So you suggest just forever up the harddrive space and battery life and leave it at that?" Because that's boring.

[Surf Monkey]

I just don't see how the touch screen is going to allow you to pause, play, skip forward, skip backward and increase/decrease the volume without looking at the iPod. That's why the clickwheel is so brilliant. You can do all those things by feel. I don't see how you can do those things by feel on a featureless flat screen.

[genomeman]

i dont reckon that the next ipod will look anything like the new iphone, and probably wont be touchscreen, i think apple intends to branch out a new line and make the iphone somewhat unique, i think to make a future ipod like the iphone, would propt the question oh look i have an iphone why do i need this ipod, you notice that apple have only announced a max of 16gb, i think their planning in this is so that ipod doesnt become obsolete, they want users to still have both, I wouldnt be surprised if apple came out with a completely new form factor for ipods that hasnt been seen before. or else just add new feature to the old form factor i mean seriously not much has changed along the ipod lines after all this time, the new video still looks recognisable to the original ipod that came out, just a bit more compact with a newer screen and video nothing much has changed in layout

[Surf Monkey]

Besides, Surf Monkey (or jhollington) answer my question about create an iPod (with great detail, list format) that we will have 5 years later, plese do it so I can really see what your saying.


Then you're not paying attention. We've been very articulate about where we see it going and why.

[Surf Monkey]

i think to make a future ipod like the iphone, would propt the question oh look i have an iphone why do i need this ipod, you notice that apple have only announced a max of 16gb, i think their planning in this is so that ipod doesnt become obsolete, they want users to still have both, I wouldnt be surprised if apple came out with a completely new form factor for ipods that hasnt been seen before.


Exactly. Apple's not stupid enough to canabalize iPod sales by making iPhone and iPod the same thing. They don't want one to canabalize the other. Like I said above, iPod isn't going to become iPhone lite and iPhone isn't going to become iPod deluxe. They're different products and it seems much more likely that Apple will work to make them distinct, not to converge them.

[jhollington]

Well, realistically the iPhone and iPod are not going to be the same thing, even if they did look identical (which I'm not saying they will).

The iPhone is 8GB at this point, and it's unlikely they're going to go much higher with it in the near future. It will probably stay fairly closely aligned to the high-end Nano capacity, simply because it's based on flash memory, and the iPod side is only a secondary feature of the device. The iPhone also sells for a relatively extravagant amount of money, requires one to sign up for a long-term contract with a cell phone carrier, and will not appeal to anybody who really just wants a simple cell phone.

On the other hand, a next-generation iPod will be more widely available, will pack a lot more storage capacity, and will likely be sold for a much more reasonable price (probably the same price point that today's 5G iPods are selling for), making it more accessible to the general consumer base.

Personally, I doubt the next-generation iPod is going to look exactly like the iPhone, but at the same time I'm sure much of the same technology will be leveraged into it. I really don't see Apple spending 2.5 years of R&D on technology that will be limited to a device that is only going to appeal to the luxury smart phone market.

Remember that there's a big difference between converging the product and simply converging the design.

[Surf Monkey]

But my question still stands: how is one supposed to opperate the pause, play, skip forward, skip backward, stop and volume up/down functions on a touch screen without looking at the device?

[XVI]

Then you're not paying attention. We've been very articulate about where we see it going and why.

No, I mean a list of features including price, size, features etc. Similar to my future ipod (which I'm sure you saw)

to answer you most recent question...

Well I couldn't answer that question because I haven't messed around with the iPhone, however I'm sure it's possible, but even if it's not, who cares, it's a sacrafice I'm willing to make for a screen twice the size. Now answer my question in list format.

[maleheffer]

i think everyone is looking at the negatives of the touch screen, and while there are negatives, the click wheel is not perfect either. i think apple will think about most of these things, and having a touch screen can open so many possibilities for the future.

[jhollington]

But my question still stands: how is one supposed to opperate the pause, play, skip forward, skip backward, stop and volume up/down functions on a touch screen without looking at the device?
The realistic answer to that is fairly simple.... The device could either still include buttons for this purpose, could bundle a wireless remote control (which would be far more effective, IMHO, than trying to hit it in your pocket), or they could even provide some sort of on-screen tactile feedback.

As it stands right now, the volume controls and play/pause/fwd/back buttons on the iPhone are actually not that difficult to locate by touch, and in fact even the iPhone has a hard-button for volume control. Volume exists at the very bottom of the screen (so the edge would be a guide), and the other controls are directly above that. The only thing that would likely be an issue is the need to lock the screen to prevent accidental feedback, but there's nothing saying that the physical "hold" switch has to be eliminated.

Again, I'm not suggesting that the next-generation iPod is necessarily going to be a carbon-copy of the iPhone... There will be things that make it more appropriate for it's purpose. However, I think it will look a lot like the iPhone in design concept. I really don't think that the entire feature-set and user interface that went into the iPod side of that design is going to be wasted by limiting it to the iPhone.

There's also the other possibility as well.... That whether we like it or not, Apple will simply move the next-generation iPod into the design of the iPhone and leave people to use the Nano as the ultra-portable pocketable music player. As I've said, for music playback (which seems to be the issue we're discussing here), the higher capacity is the only advantage the 5G offers over the Nano. I can't imagine that this is reason enough for the design to stay the way it is.

No, I mean a list of features including price, size, features etc. Similar to my future ipod (which I'm sure you saw)

Now answer my question in list format.
The problem is that this question is virtually impossible to answer. As I said above, the 1G iPod and the 5G iPod did not introduce nearly the changes that people might have predicted five years ago, and the changes have been incremental.

My own answer to those issues can already be surmised from what I've said.... Apple will improve the interface (probably completely redesigning it), and will continue to focus on media consumption features (playback of music, audiobooks, podcasts, videos, photos, etc). I do not see the iPod going any further in the direction of a PDA, although it will probably retain it's existing features in that regard.

The only major enhancements I can see coming in the next five years are:

WiFi (specifically for synchronization of media content - not for Internet access), and probably for Internet Audio/Video Streaming
Bluetooth (specifically for wireless headphone support),
Transition to the iPhone-style User Interface
Capacity Increases, etc, etc, etc.
Wireless Synchronization (see WiFi above)
Wireless iTunes Store access (see WiFi above)


Some of the above can actually be surmised from the incremental evolutions that Apple has made in the past few months.... Wireless over-the-network is now possible in iTunes for the first time ever (courtesy of the Apple TV), and the "Transfer Purchases" mode now in iTunes 7 goes straight to the ability to get music onto your iPod while not near your computer, yet still be able to transfer it back.

Things I'm pretty sure will not happen:

Camera
Internet Browsing
E-Mail
Chat
Third-Party Software Expandability
Other PDA-like features
Removable/Expandable Memory


Things that may or may not happen:

Device-to-Device Sharing (I just don't think it's Apple's 'style')
Expanded Calendar/Contact features
Improved Game Support

[Surf Monkey]

Interesting ideas.

One thing that I think continues to get lost in this conversation is the value Apple places on design integrity and iconism. iPod is recognizable as a rectangle with a square and a circle inside it. It's an icon. Its entire brand identity is bound to that physical realization of the interface. Icons are an Apple innovation (if you ignore Xerox Parc) and the most core of their values. Abandoning the iconic nature of iPod would be a major step by Apple and one they won't take lightly.

As far as your suggestions on alternate interface solutions to make iPod easily operated with one hand and without looking at it go, I think that the only valid one is the addition of physical feedback on the screen. Adding buttons to the side makes it just like the generic masses of existing phones, PDAs and music players on the market. That's not Apple's style. Adding a remote is a possibility but unlikely as it forces people to carry two devices to get the full functionality and that's not Apple's style either.

[jhollington]

One thing that I think continues to get lost in this conversation is the value Apple places on design integrity and iconism. iPod is recognizable as a rectangle with a square and a circle inside it. It's an icon. Its entire brand identity is bound to that physical realization of the interface. Icons are an Apple innovation (if you ignore Xerox Parc) and the most core of their values. Abandoning the iconic nature of iPod would be a major step by Apple and one they won't take lightly.
I agree completely on that point, and as I mentioned earlier, this is almost exactly what I was saying six weeks ago about the touchscreen concept.... I really didn't think they would go that route for exactly all of the same reasons that you've just described.

On the other hand, however, the iPhone was a huge surprise in that regard, and when looking at the level of design and user interface that they've put into the iPod side of it, I really don't see Apple wasting that by limiting it to the iPhone device. The new interface is so much better (speaking specifically with regards to the iPod side), that not adopting it into the next-generation iPod would result in the iPod looking extremely archaic by comparison.

It's entirely possible that after five years Apple has decided it's time to do a revolutionary design change. It certainly wouldn't be the first time, and most other Apple products have gone through their design generations in terms of aesthetics (transition from the eMac to the iMac, as one example, or between the G4 and G5 PowerMacs).

I personally think a new iPod based on the iPhone's design is inevitable. The only real question is whether this will be an additional product in the iPod line, or a product that replaces the existing 5G iPod.

However, that hearkens back to the actual numbers and reasons behind why people are buying the various models, and the remaining consumer base for a 5G-style iPod may be too small to be a consideration for Apple. The Nano is already outselling the 5G iPod by leaps and bounds, and the reality is that there are really only two categories of people who are buying the 5G iPod:

Those who want a music and video player
Those who want a high-capacity music player

Those in the first category probably make up a much larger demographic than those in the second, and in fact there are those who have stayed away from the 5G iPod because of it's current limitations in regards to video. How many people would a new iPod design really drive away from buying an iPod? At the end of the day, it's only going to be the potential sales numbers that Apple is concerned about, and let's face it, the more they differentiate the designs, the more likely they are to sell both devices to some people :)

[Surf Monkey]

Well, if Apple abandons high capacity players, they lose me and everyone I know as a customer. Capacity is the key feature for anyone with even a reasonably sized library and the desire to carry all their music with them at all times. That defines the two dozen or so people I know who own iPods. All of us would seek out other products if Apple chose to drop the large capacity flagship iPod in favor of Nano.

[XVI]

The realistic answer to that is fairly simple.... The device could either still include buttons for this purpose, could bundle a wireless remote control (which would be far more effective, IMHO, than trying to hit it in your pocket), or they could even provide some sort of on-screen tactile feedback.

As it stands right now, the volume controls and play/pause/fwd/back buttons on the iPhone are actually not that difficult to locate by touch, and in fact even the iPhone has a hard-button for volume control. Volume exists at the very bottom of the screen (so the edge would be a guide), and the other controls are directly above that. The only thing that would likely be an issue is the need to lock the screen to prevent accidental feedback, but there's nothing saying that the physical "hold" switch has to be eliminated.

Again, I'm not suggesting that the next-generation iPod is necessarily going to be a carbon-copy of the iPhone... There will be things that make it more appropriate for it's purpose. However, I think it will look a lot like the iPhone in design concept. I really don't think that the entire feature-set and user interface that went into the iPod side of that design is going to be wasted by limiting it to the iPhone.

There's also the other possibility as well.... That whether we like it or not, Apple will simply move the next-generation iPod into the design of the iPhone and leave people to use the Nano as the ultra-portable pocketable music player. As I've said, for music playback (which seems to be the issue we're discussing here), the higher capacity is the only advantage the 5G offers over the Nano. I can't imagine that this is reason enough for the design to stay the way it is.


The problem is that this question is virtually impossible to answer. As I said above, the 1G iPod and the 5G iPod did not introduce nearly the changes that people might have predicted five years ago, and the changes have been incremental.

My own answer to those issues can already be surmised from what I've said.... Apple will improve the interface (probably completely redesigning it), and will continue to focus on media consumption features (playback of music, audiobooks, podcasts, videos, photos, etc). I do not see the iPod going any further in the direction of a PDA, although it will probably retain it's existing features in that regard.

The only major enhancements I can see coming in the next five years are:

WiFi (specifically for synchronization of media content - not for Internet access), and probably for Internet Audio/Video Streaming
Bluetooth (specifically for wireless headphone support),
Transition to the iPhone-style User Interface
Capacity Increases, etc, etc, etc.
Wireless Synchronization (see WiFi above)
Wireless iTunes Store access (see WiFi above)


Some of the above can actually be surmised from the incremental evolutions that Apple has made in the past few months.... Wireless over-the-network is now possible in iTunes for the first time ever (courtesy of the Apple TV), and the "Transfer Purchases" mode now in iTunes 7 goes straight to the ability to get music onto your iPod while not near your computer, yet still be able to transfer it back.

Things I'm pretty sure will not happen:

Camera
Internet Browsing
E-Mail
Chat
Third-Party Software Expandability
Other PDA-like features
Removable/Expandable Memory


Things that may or may not happen:

Device-to-Device Sharing (I just don't think it's Apple's 'style')
Expanded Calendar/Contact features
Improved Game Support


Those ideas (except for the may or may nots) will proabbly happen in one to two years.

[jhollington]

Well, if Apple abandons high capacity players, they lose me and everyone I know as a customer. Capacity is the key feature for anyone with even a reasonably sized library and the desire to carry all their music with them at all times. That defines the two dozen or so people I know who own iPods. All of us would seek out other products if Apple chose to drop the large capacity flagship iPod in favor of Nano.
Well, nobody's suggesting they'll drop a high-capacity device, merely that they'll change the design of it. This may or may not take away from it's efficiency as a music player (as compared to the present 5G iPod), but I'm quite sure there will always be a high capacity device available.

I own both a 5G iPod and a Nano. Since I bought the Nano, my use of my full-sized iPod has decreased dramatically. I now use it primarily on long trips (where I want my full library with me), and for video playback. The Nano is used when I'm just going out for the day and want to grab my current selections to take with me.

In that sense, a redesign of the iPod would not affect me very much at all, since the way in which I use it doesn't normally involve the need to operate it from within my pocket with one hand. Now, I realize not everybody is going to be able to afford a full-size iPod and a Nano, so the decision may become a compromise for some.

The reality is that I've been somewhat obsessed for years with the idea of carrying my entire music library around with me, but my increased use of the Nano has proven to me how unnecessary that usually is, particularly with iTunes' very efficient handling of smart playlists. Most of the people I know who own full-size iPods seldom even scratch the surface of their music library, and while it's nice to have it all with you for whenever the mood strikes you, I've noticed more and more people I know "upgrading" to Nanos (from 3G/4G models) since they prefer the smaller size over the higher capacity and have no use for video.

Granted, I would personally never get rid of the full-size iPod, because I do travel quite a bit, and I can't quite go without having my entire music library with me for those situations. However, I would also not lose too much sleep over an iPhone-styled device, because generally if I'm exploring my entire music library, I'd actually rather do it on a device like that then on the traditional iPod design.

The bottom line, however, is that when you look at the millions of iPods sold, it's obvious that Apple isn't too concerned about the relatively small demographic of folks like you and I who have large music libraries and an obsessive desire to carry them around. Really, I'm not even suggesting that a change in iPod design would necessarily be a good thing (I do like the current design for what it is), but I do think it's something that's going to happen regardless of whether people such as ourselves like it or not.... :)

[Surf Monkey]

I buy that. I suppose that as long as Apple continues to make a high cap iPod, I'll keep buying them. I've owned every version of the flagship iPod and my GF has owned both of the Nanos and the Shuffle. We're the typical Apple brand loyal couple. I see what you're saying about the high cap market being small but I do think that Apple would like to grow it and seems to cater to it at every turn. They encourage people to put more and more onto their iPods all the time so it follows that the high cap market is important to them. As I said before, it's all a waiting game at this point. Only Apple knows what the 6G is going to look like.

[kylo4]

I read through all of the posts and agree with points made by both jhollington and Surf Monkey. The iPod is iconic for its look, so much so that it will always be remembered in the pop culture lexicon of iconic images. Changing that design may lose many customers. However, if Apple goes with a touchscreen for the iPod ala iPhone, and still releases the original design of the iPod, than everybody wins. Unless the Nano has over 45 gb of storage capacity, I won't be satisfied. I do like my entire collection in my pocket, and the iPod has revolutionized the way I listen to music, and I don't want that to change.

[L33tG4m3r]

Yep. I think I am going to keep using my 5.5G if the next iPod becomes touchscreen. I hardly ever watch videos, and I believe that iPod should be "All about the music"

[Code Monkey]

The iPod is iconic for its look, so much so that it will always be remembered in the pop culture lexicon of iconic images. Changing that design may lose many customers.
I don't see them losing hardly anybody at all as long as any future designs are good. While there are a vocal group of people I guess you'd call "iPod fundamentalists" who believe that the iPod should be only white and only a rectangle with a circle, I think the market has shown the general consumer far more flexible. The mini was decried as blasphemous when it came out and it outsold the regular iPods by huge margins, now that the nano has returned to the mini's roots, it's enjoying simular popularity. Besides, the rectangle with a circle mp3 player predates the iPod by years, it was Apple's marketing that made an old design "their's"; they can almost certainly repeat the process IF the design is good. People are married to the software and the extended addon and peripheral ecosystem, not the appearance in and of itself.

[mrdantownsend]

My persoal guess is that when the iPod and the iPhone become more similar over time, they may just lump them into one product.

[Code Monkey]

My persoal guess is that when the iPod and the iPhone become more similar over time, they may just lump them into one product.I'm not sure what you're saying, the iPhone IS the iPod lumped with a smartphone. Beyond that, there is never going to be a unification because the market for standalone players doesn't want their music player inextricably linked to their communications device. I don't use a cell phone regularly, have no intention of ever using one regularly; if you force me to have a cell phone service just to buy an iPod and I'm using something else.

[Surf Monkey]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: iPhone is not an iPod. It's an Apple smart phone and PDA with iTunes functions built in. iPod is a media platform.

[kylo4]

Thank you Surf Monkey, you are completely right. People keep thinking the iPhone is the new gen iPod. Its the same as any Rogers or Bell Phone with movie/music capabilites, only better. People just think its a new iPod because its from Apple. Its a great product though.

I hope the 6 gen iPod adds a whole slew of new features but no phone. If it's touchscreen, then have a special layer that goes over the screen so it doesn't get fingerprints/scratches (like the iPhone was when Steve showed it).

[Code Monkey]

I hope the 6 gen iPod adds a whole slew of new features but no phone. If it's touchscreen, then have a special layer that goes over the screen so it doesn't get fingerprints/scratches (like the iPhone was when Steve showed it).
I pretty much expect the 6G to be the iPhone only without the phone part. I think the future is pretty clear: pure audio device = the nano; multimedia device = iPod; multimedia, communications, & PDA = iPhone. Since the basic hardware of the iPhone is a superior multimedia device Apple will "undoubtedly" bring the full screen touch based interface to the *iPod* line.

I suspect that Apple knows what the various polls on this and other sites show: the number of people with gargantuan music collections is a very small percentage of their customer base, and that the market for a portable video device is still unsettled. The only mainstream way to continue to justify these massive capacity iPods is to give the general public something to really do with all that capacity. While the 5G iPods established there is a demand for more than just audio, it's still "not there". I switched from a 60GB 5G to a 8GB nano even though my music collection is massive because I simply never used it in a way that mandated the extra disk space or video capabilities. Now I have just as much functionality in a much smaller package and I'll never bother again with the current iPod design. They have to move the large iPod forward even if it means abandoning their so-called iconic design. Other media formats are going to have to become as must have as audio for people to keep buying the larger iPods when the nano line has become sooo good as an audio device.

[raine]

We, the users of iLounge, represent a fairly small demographic of the 100 million iPods, in their various shapes and sizes, sold. Here's what I see happening:

The 6G is a widescreen iPod, 40 gig and 80 gig, with touchscreen capabilities similar to the iPhone, but with the same abilities the iPod has now. It will be the same size. The human eye keeps getting confused on each new iPod, and the 5G looks wider than all the others, but isn't, and older ones look much thicker, but they are very very similar. The iPhone looks huge due to its screen, but in reality it's nearly identical.

Apple got screwed into a crossroads with the iPod. Before, each upgrade was a pretty easy decision: Remove the weird scroll wheel, buttons outside the wheel, make it touch sensitive (my favorite iPod, actually), integrate the buttons with the wheel, add photo capabilities, add video capabilities and make it look even more contemporary, and BAM, just like snowboard shaping, the iPod has reached its peak with the screen and wheel. What can change? I have no idea, I mean, I'm sure I could think of a few minor changes, but nothing to justify the 6G iPod. So, they have to jump off this cliff and hope the landing isn't too far down. Wish Apple luck, this is a tough one.

Back to me predicting the future:

The Nano remains in its sleek, glorious multi-colored form and eventually flash drives catch up, and I buy one and am using all the time to replace my 4G iPod (non-photo, I get my iPods refurbished because I just like portable music) and the Nano is basically awesome as it is. Since most people don't expect anything from the iPod's cute little niece, Apple won't feel pressure to revamp it aside from the minor hard drive and battery upgrades on each generation.

The iPhone will of course grow in battery life and will be like a mini computer, with software upgrades and all that jazz and third parties releasing software for it, and it'll be its own wonderful, beautiful niche product.

Apple will release a regular phone. Yep, the macPhone or something, a phone that can compete with Motorola and Samsung and stuff. Maybe. I think they are still with Motorola, so maybe they won't release anything to compete, but I know I'd drop $300 for an Apple phone that can play music and make phone calls, but without all the crazy OS X stuff that I don't really need (I work on a computer for class AND work, I don't need one with me 24/7) or want. If it's gorgeous and stuff, I'd much rather have an Apple cell phone that is basically a nice-looking, simple functional product to set mine apart from the rest of the cell phones. Like the iPod before it, the Mac Phone will make a glorious operating system for cell phones and reset the industry standard so we don't have to hassle with this crap. My phone is a Nokia 2600. It's $50 without any contract and it's as dull as can be. If Apple can match that, I'd buy it. If it can add a big flash drive (16 gigs+) and MP3 capability, it'd replace my iPod for good. I'd pay $400 for something like that.

Apple will release a smart iPod, basically the bridge between the amazing PDA capabilities of the iPhone and the simple functionality of the Nano. It will have all software system of the iPhone, no cell phone, widescreen and touch sensitive of course (for now, who knows what they have up their sleeve), and assuming Flash drives get up into the 120 gig range in the next 5 to 10 years, we have a wonderful iPod that is very desirable

The Shuffle is perfect. Small, light, low capacity. High capacity of course defeats the purpose of the shuffle.

Apple's portable line in 2012:

iPod Nano, up to 80 gig flash drives?

Smart iPod, OS X portable, widescreen, touch sensitive, large capacity

iPod is finally removed from the lineup after being the king, at least the iPod as we know it today

iPhone continues to grow and develop software and hardware wise

Mac Phone released in 2010, becomes ridiculously popular, I already want it

Shuffle continues to be a perfect product

[mjmoonwalker]

8 years with the iPod Shuffle, nano, and iPhone? C'mon! Apple's not paying their design people to continue the same products for that long...heck, the iPod product line hasn't even been around that long.

[Surf Monkey]

the number of people with gargantuan music collections is a very small percentage of their customer base, and that the market for a portable video device is still unsettled.


Utter hogwash. I've seen plenty of evidence that the opposite is true. People buy the largest capacity iPod they can afford and then fill it up in no time. Also, your whole assumption is based on the notion that 128kbps MP3/AAC files will remain the standard. Don't count on it. These over compressed, horrible sounding files will be replaced on iTMS first by higher bit rate and later by completely lossless files as the bandwidth and the storage capacity opens up. How many lossless files can you fit on an 8 gig Nano? Fifteen or twenty albums worth? You have to remember that the size of a song is determined by the bit rate and bit rates are going to go up.

[kylo4]

I like raine's estimations. They make a lot of sense to me. I would buy a touchscreen iPod, to hold a piece of history in my hand. Don't think I'm against touch screen, I just don't want something that will scratch easily. But I think the 6'th gen might be an iPhone-phone 'Pod as well. I really like the idea of the "touch scroll wheel" so it doesn't lose its iconic look, but its still incorporating new technology.

I agree with Surf Monkey in that the bit rate will be upped sooner or later. With 120GB storage, the itms should offer you the choice of what bit rate you want to download your songs in. I didn't think I could fill an 80GB and within a month I had over 26GB on it.

[Mac Ex Machina]

So long as the 6G iPod retains the healthy balance of music and video I'm all for it. I'd hate to have my music listening experience ruined by a device that was once great for it, but now trades balance for video optimization. I don't want an Apple Archos, nor do I want to have to settle with a low capacity nano for a good music experience. Apple is probably aware of this kind of thing and would provide a good solution so that my one day 6G video iPod can still be enjoyed by people who listen to music more than they watch movies.

a higher quality wired remote would be fan-frikkin-tastic. Plus it would make a nice remote control when you decide to watch movies.

[jhollington]

I think many folks are fearing that just because Apple may choose to put a larger touchscreen on the device it's going to suddenly make it completely unsuitable as a music playback device.

The iPhone that we've seen thus far actually enhances the music playback experience by making it easier to browse for your music, view albums, sort through your collection, and so forth. It may take away some of the "grab-and-go" portability, but the reality is that this is truly the space the Nano is pretty solidly in now. Code Monkey is basically right that from the perspective of the overall market base, the people with large music collections who also feel the need to keep them on their person at all times is relatively small. All we have to do is look at the sales figures for the Nano vs the 5G as evidence of that. The Nanos are selling like hotcakes, despite the 8GB unit being the same price as the 30Gb full size. Even the Mini had that effect on the average consumer, and it had no other relative advantages other than a slightly smaller size (it was still hard-drive based rather than flash-based, for instance).

As I've already said earlier in this thread, from a music player point of view, the ONLY thing that the 5G has over the Nano is increased capacity, and to be fair this does come at the cost of a physically larger and more fragile player. With the release of the Nano the 5G has already been superseded in it's role as a grab-and-go, take-anywhere portable player.

As for the question of bit-rates, I'm not expecting that we're going to see realistic increases any time soon. Again, the key point is "average consumer", and the reality is that for the vast majority of the iPod buying public, 128kbps is more than enough. As much as there are those people out there who would like to see a higher bit-rate, we have to remember that Apple has never built the iPod to cater to the <5% of it's consumer base that cares about such things, and with over a billion tracks sold on the iTunes Store, they certainly aren't getting any kind of message that 128kbps is going to cut into their bottom line. Most people either can't hear the difference or don't care about the difference.

But getting back to the device itself, the reality is that even the iPhone still puts a good emphasis on the music playback experience, and it's supposed to be a phone. Even if you never put a single video on it, it produces an excellent experience for listening to music, and the larger screen and touchscreen makes for a better method of navigating the music library. The only issues are tactile controls for things like prev/next, play/pause, and volume, all of which I would certainly expect to be addressed in some way in a device that was specifically an iPod.

[Code Monkey]

As for the question of bit-rates, I'm not expecting that we're going to see realistic increases any time soon. Again, the key point is "average consumer", and the reality is that for the vast majority of the iPod buying public, 128kbps is more than enough. As much as there are those people out there who would like to see a higher bit-rate, we have to remember that Apple has never built the iPod to cater to the <5% of it's consumer base that cares about such things, and with over a billion tracks sold on the iTunes Store, they certainly aren't getting any kind of message that 128kbps is going to cut into their bottom line. Most people either can't hear the difference or don't care about the difference.
This, though, is a VERY weak spot for Apple. Yes, currently they are dominating the legal download market with their particular strategy, but they are also the only other major (and I use that term looslely ;)) download seller other than Wal-Mart that is still selling 128 kbit files. 192 or even 192 VBR is used by the majority of others.

My personal belief is that it's not that people can't hear or don't care, it's that they don't even know there is a difference since it's not like Apple is falling all over themselves to create an educated market, and *that* is something Microsoft, Yahoo!, Real, et al. should be hammering home in their ads. In the long run I think this is an insult to customers. Jobs and company know they'll be forced to upgrade the quality of the downloads at some point, they just don't care enough about the customer to do so now rather than later. After all, since they don't offer any upgrade path, the longer they can sell the 128 kbit files the more repeat sales they'll get once they start selling "new, improved, higher fidelity iTunes downloads from Apple(tm)!", and the same people willing to buy their crud now will lap it up like fine champagne. It's pure cynical capitalism at its worst: use a dominant market position to squeeze extra profit out of your business and when you finally have to change practices, act like you're actually doing the customer a favor, and you know they will.

[Surf Monkey]

As for the question of bit-rates, I'm not expecting that we're going to see realistic increases any time soon. Again, the key point is "average consumer", and the reality is that for the vast majority of the iPod buying public, 128kbps is more than enough. As much as there are those people out there who would like to see a higher bit-rate, we have to remember that Apple has never built the iPod to cater to the <5% of it's consumer base that cares about such things, and with over a billion tracks sold on the iTunes Store, they certainly aren't getting any kind of message that 128kbps is going to cut into their bottom line. Most people either can't hear the difference or don't care about the difference.


I disagree. After all, AM radio was "more than enough" for people too. So was mono playback on record. But that didn't stop people from strongly supporting "hi-fi" stereo and FM radio. People buy satellite radio now in order to get better clarity and higher quality audio. Meanwhile, billions of dollars are spent each year by people upgrading to better and better audio equipment for their home stereos and home theater setups. Desire for high quality audio is no a niche thing. It's completely and totally mainstream. Suggesting that 128kbps AACs are the sweet spot is absurd since you can ONLY get 128kbps AACs on iTMS. You don't have an option to get anything else so we don't know how many people would opt for a better bit rate if it was available. If you look at P2P sites, you'll see that 320kbps files are the baseline standard most places and loss-less formats like OGG and FLAC are preferred by many. In other words, on sites where there's a choice of bit rates, people pick higher rates for the better sound quality. And additionally, as the home theater and home stereo markets continue to expand and as iPod becomes increasingly a part of a home audio setup it gets more and more evident to people that iPod itself is the weakest link in the chain. iPod may sound fine through headphones but you don't get good audio reproduction out of it when you hook it up to even little bitty 3 inch speakers.

You may think that all comes from an audio enthusiast's viewpoint but I assure you, it's my reasoned opinion that audiophiles are not the only ones who want better quality rips for their iPods. People can tell the difference and they will opt for better quality if and when it's available. There's no question that Apple will up the bit rate sooner or later. There's no question that the default format for songs will be one of the loss-less codecs in years to come. The only think holding it back is bandwidth and storage capacity. Apple didn't choose 128kbps because they think people can't tell it sounds bad, they picked it because they don't want people with slow connections to have to wait for hours to download a single album and they want to be able to say that an 8 gig Nano holds thousands of songs.

[Surf Monkey]

...it's not that people can't hear or don't care, it's that they don't even know there is a difference since it's not like Apple is falling all over themselves to create an educated market...


Exactly. I agree 100%.

[toothpaste]

Utter hogwash. I've seen plenty of evidence that the opposite is true. People buy the largest capacity iPod they can afford and then fill it up in no time. Also, your whole assumption is based on the notion that 128kbps MP3/AAC files will remain the standard. Don't count on it. These over compressed, horrible sounding files will be replaced on iTMS first by higher bit rate and later by completely lossless files as the bandwidth and the storage capacity opens up. How many lossless files can you fit on an 8 gig Nano? Fifteen or twenty albums worth? You have to remember that the size of a song is determined by the bit rate and bit rates are going to go up.

This is absolutely incorrect and I would like to address just one point. The bold section above.

First, how do you know that higher bit rate or lossless files are coming to itunes anytime soon? Just as our collections grow exponentially with the increase in file bit rates, so does Apple's. All this has to be stored somewhere. Massive amounts of storage that cost money, hence eating into the profit margin of Apple selling music that Apple itself has to license, costing money.

Second, as the bandwidth opens up. This ties in closely to my first point concerning Apple having to spend more money, again eating into their profit margin, for added bandwidth to support the bigger files transfer that will take longer. Straining resources.

Third, storage. Whether this comment was about storage for the ipod or storage for Apple to house a bigger music store (increased bit rates), it is very unlikely. The economics are not in favor of selling a few pieces for a high price, rather saturating the market and killing their competition with sheer volume.

I had to point this out as I don't see where you could have drawn your conclusions from. The trend you speak of is not present here on ilounge. While there are a few of us who have big collections, the majority of people here have relatively small libraries. Large capacity ipods that cost a few hundred dollars is more than many people would be willing to pay. Not to mention all that wasted HDD space, the bigger ipod size. The nano makes a better choice from a vast array of options. For me the small size of the nano was key.

In conclusion, features and HDD or flash drive capacity are nothing if the battery life is not improved. Battery technology has improved but in my humble opinion it is still lagging. Once battery life improves we will all be much happier.

As for how many albums can one fit on a nano, I'm not sure. I have a 1st gen 4gb nano, and thanks to code monkey and his really good smartplaylist pdf I have been able to construct some really interesting way to sync music to my ipod. I have new music on my ipod everyday. In total, I have 79 days of continues music that I haven't heard a repeat of in months.

[jhollington]

Firstly, I'd actually debate the point to how many people actually can hear a difference if they were to do a true blind ABX test. A 128kbps AAC from the iTunes Store is indistinguishable from the same store-bought CD for the majority of people that I know, and I know a number of people with high-end audio systems.

The comparison to AM radio and FM radio is not particular apt, as there is an obvious quality difference that any ear can hear. Today we are experiencing a realm of far more diminishing returns.

In fact, I've become convinced that there's an incredible placebo effect in operation here.... People have been told that there's a big difference, and therefore they naturally hear one. I have a friend who is a self-proclaimed "audiophile", who has a stereo system that runs into six figures, and buys $500 earbuds. He was insistent on never encoding anything at less than FLAC/ALAC until we decided to trick him by replacing some of his favourite tracks with 128kbps VBR AAC versions of the same rips (actually direct conversions of his FLAC files). He didn't know the difference until we pointed it out to him, at which point he was finally convinced by that little experiment to do a proper blind ABX test. In his case, he decided on 192kbps VBR AAC for most of his collection, as he could hear the 128kbps difference during careful analysis of his music, but couldn't find anything wrong with 192kbps (to be fair, he ripped a few albums at 256kbps as well).

...but this was a person with good ears who actually took the time to carefully listen to and analyze the music during an ABX test. Until he was paying enough attention, he didn't even realize we had replaced his FLAC files with 128kbps versions.

Now, if anything Apple might eventually offer higher bit rate music to address this placebo effect (after all, lots of people buy "bigger, better, and new and improved" just on perception and marketing-spin, even though the improvements gained are subtle at best).

However, I'm still quite sure that the average iPod buyer doesn't care, and it's not just consumer education, since the only way to "educate" a consumer would be to get them to do their own comparisons, and that's not going to happen with most folks.... They'll believe what they're basically told to believe (like my audiophile friend), and buy into higher bitrates not because they can hear a difference, but because they believe there's a difference.

Now, I'm not saying that the bit-rates might not gradually increase... I could see 192kbps or 256kbps showing up eventually, but I'm not holding my breath about seeing lossless files on iTS any time soon, since there's just no need, and I would challenge anybody but the most diligent audiophile with super-expensive equipment to actually prove that a 192/256kbps VBR rip is distinguishable from the original source.

[Code Monkey]

I would also be surprised to see Apple move towards lossless any time in the near future, although I do think it will be the standard form of music distribution before they cremate my carcass. 192VBR with LAME or AAC seems to be enough to achieve transparency for 95%+ of the user base and would not significantly increase storage or bandwidth relative to the increased revenue it could generate. I would *never* buy a 128 file, but a 192 VBR might get my $0.99 if I really wanted just that one song, particularly if Jobs can manage to get anywhere with his alleged desire to open up DRM schemes

Of course, he could always put his money where his mouth is first and start licensing Fairplay cheaply to anyone who wanted to incorporate it into their player, although I'm not certain that's not his endgame goal anyhow. Make a stink about how DRM is crippling online sales. Then after some period of "negotiation" declare the record labels are pigheaded morons, sigh and "reluctantly" open up the iTunes store to all hardware platforms who will support it. After all, as Microsoft has shown us, an overwhelmingly dominant yet technically proprietary platform is as good as an open standard for the vast majority of the populace. Then he bumps the bitrate, rolls out the new, improved iTunes store and PROFIT!

[bdb]

These are some good points, I would add a couple more:

1. Increased bitrate means faster battery drain. People have been complaining about battery life ever since mp3 players were around, and having an iTMS format that drains a nano's battery in four hours is going to anger a lot of customers.

2. Everywhere you go, you see white Apple earbuds. They're not even getting the most out of the 128kbps music.

There are some small web operations that offer up music in higher qualities, but they don't seem to be doing very well. If the big labels will finally give up on DRM they'll probably sell more.

[Code Monkey]

I would challenge anybody but the most diligent audiophile with super-expensive equipment to actually prove that a 192/256kbps VBR rip is distinguishable from the original source.I completely agree with this sentiment. I did do the tests and found anything higher than 160 kbps was statistically indistinguishable from lossless, hence LAME -V2 new for all my lossy encoding.

Although there is one MAJOR thing you're skipping: the ability to re-encode a lossless file with no unecessary degradation. How many times have you seen some ignorant make the claim you can burn iTunes store tracks to CD and rip them to whatever you want? These people are either woefully ignorant of how bad of an idea this is or they have tin ears.

I don't want to be able to buy lossless so I can listen to it as such, I want to be able to buy lossless so I can listen to it however I want without any unecessary artifacts or sound degradation. Right now, LAME & AAC-VBR encoders are at the sweet spot for quality, file size, and compatibility, but what about in another 5 years? In 5 years time I'll be able to re-encode my lossless archives to whatever the codec du-jour is, while the people with their 128 kbps AAC-DRM files will be stuck at that level of sound quality forever. And the only difference between them and me is that they actually paid more on average for their 128 kbps file than I did for a lossless copy.

I really don't see the defense of Apple's practices on this subject.

[jhollington]

I'm not so much defending Apple's practices as pointing out that they've generally always marketed products for the average individual (the "common man" if you will), and the content on the iTunes Store is no different in this regard.

I think it's fair to say that the intelligent and discerning consumer is going to look elsewhere for their music, unless they really don't have a problem with 128kbps AAC stuff. For the record, I'm somebody who doesn't, so I happily buy tracks from iTS, but that's a conscious decision on my part, and I am fully aware of all of the factors that are involved, from the lower bit-rate to the DRM. For me the convenience outweights any of the negatives (and I've done many blind ABX tests with phones going all the way up to E500's and can't hear enough of a difference between 128kbps AAC and a CD to care, so for my ears it's more than good enough).

But the common person who just wants to buy a few tracks and listen to them on the white earbuds (as bdb puts it), isn't going to even notice the quality issue, and many don't even care if the quality they're hearing is good enough for them.

I'd really like to see somebody go out and do a bunch of blind ABX tests on the average public passerby, kind of in the same way that the "Pepsi Challenge" used to be done, and see if the average person can hear a difference, and if those who can hear a difference would actually care enough to pay a higher price (not in dollars, but in terms of increased storage requirements and battery life).

As for the question of conversion/transcoding, most encoders have become much better at handling that than they used to be, and quite frankly there is a huge myth about the quality that is actually lost when transcoding -- people dramatically overestimate this loss. In fact, the loss of burning an iTS purchase to CD and re-ripping it to AAC is statistically zero, since you're using the same baseline encoder. When going to different formats, you will of course lose some quality due to the different algorithms in use, but it's nowhere near what people generally assume it is, even between different formats (I have, for example, heard a lot of people suggest that burning and re-ripping a 128kbps AAC to MP3 produces a 64kbps quality of MP3, which is simply not true).

Further, anybody who would have a 128kbps track in the first place is very obviously not somebody who cares that much about the original quality of the audio.

Obviously if you're expecting to transcode your content, particularly to different formats, a lossless format is the best thing to start out with. I keep my existing CD library stored away in FLAC for that very reason, but for normal listening I've got it all encoded at 128kbps VBR AAC.

[Surf Monkey]

I find the assertion that the average consumer can't tell the difference between compressed audio and the higher quality source insulting and frankly somewhat elitist. As I pointed out before, there have been advances in sound quality for home audio equipment since the very beginning and the public has enthusiastically embraced just about all of them. If no one could tell the difference between low quality audio and high quality audio we'd all still be listening to 45-rpm mono records over AM radio. The idea that the public generates no demand for higher quality audio is flatly false.

[Code Monkey]

Obviously if you're expecting to transcode your content, particularly to different formats, a lossless format is the best thing to start out with. I keep my existing CD library stored away in FLAC for that very reason, but for normal listening I've got it all encoded at 128kbps VBR AAC.
See, that's sort of the point (noticed you italicised "expecting" ;)):
These are not phantom issues only of interest to some sort of elitist audiophile snob who spends his days electrically shielding his basement so there won't be any interference in his system. In just my life, I've seen the mainstream move from vinyl, to 8-track, to cassette, to CD, and, now, to slowly and sloppily enter a more fluid paradigm shift as music becomes purely digital not necessarily tied to any particular physical medium.

If you pull your random person off the street and start saying kilobitawhatheheckyousay and codecahuh and veeberuh, sure, they're going to look at you like a dog looking at a calculus book. But if you explain it in terms of the ability to move between vinyl to 8 track to cassette to CD to iPod to streaming home stereo to inner-ear-implant-controlled-by-thought-waves with perfect fidelity, nobody is going to say, "I don't want that!".

Ostensibly, Apple is about making the technical accessible to non-technical person, but here they are doing the opposite: they're deliberately seeking to keep the non-technical person ignorant because they have a financial stake in doing so. This isn't the sort of difference that fuels the Mac versus PC type arguments because that's a question of style: the Mac isn't quite as flexible, but it's a bit slicker out of the box so you need to worry about less to get the same job done. This is completely different: the person who understands about lossless versus lossy, transcoding versus re-encoding, etc. doesn't just get the same job done, he blows the base iTunes user out of the water for what they can accomplish.

Instead of intentionally crippling the built-in mp3 encoder in iTunes so their own AAC sounds better in comparison, I'd rather see them put their efforts into finding ways to create full scale media library management that lets them profit but doesn't do so at the long term expense of their customer base. We know they're capable, they made the Unix/Linux type platforms accessible to the masses, and they've taken a small step for the digital revolution, but I can't but help feeling that their current business model isn't about not confusing the masses but rather making sure the masses never realise they fully intend on selling them the vinyl, the 8 track, the cassette, and the CD all over again when there is no good reason why this should be so.

[bdb]

If Apple sold at high bitrates, iTunes would probably be out of business by now. People would have realized quickly that iTunes music eats up iPod (and PC) disk space quickly and makes battery life something closer to the current video playback. Either that or iTunes would have to convert everything before it puts it on the iPod, resulting in painfully slow song loading (and PC disk space disappearing quickly). Keep in mind, laptops are the fastest growing PC market and they don't usually have any more disk space than the iPods (and the OS takes a lot more than the iPod's)!

[Surf Monkey]

If Apple sold at high bitrates, iTunes would probably be out of business by now. People would have realized quickly that iTunes music eats up iPod (and PC) disk space quickly and makes battery life something closer to the current video playback. Either that or iTunes would have to convert everything before it puts it on the iPod, resulting in painfully slow song loading (and PC disk space disappearing quickly). Keep in mind, laptops are the fastest growing PC market and they don't usually have any more disk space than the iPods (and the OS takes a lot more than the iPod's)!


Yes, file size is one of the reasons Apple has been selling lower bit rate files but your assertion that outrage and chaos would follow if they upped their encoding to 192kbps is insane. At 192kbps the files wouldn't be all that much larger. And as storage gets bigger and bandwidth gets broader Apple and others will be forced to upgrade their encoding. It's only a matter of time before loss-less files are the standard. A few years at the most.

[Code Monkey]

If Apple sold at high bitrates, iTunes would probably be out of business by now. People would have realized quickly that iTunes music eats up iPod (and PC) disk space quickly and makes battery life something closer to the current video playback. Either that or iTunes would have to convert everything before it puts it on the iPod, resulting in painfully slow song loading (and PC disk space disappearing quickly). Keep in mind, laptops are the fastest growing PC market and they don't usually have any more disk space than the iPods (and the OS takes a lot more than the iPod's)!A bit of a straw-man, don't you think? I've got more than 22,000 music files that are completely transparent compared to a CD for me and they only take up around 130 GB and have no noticeable impact on battery life compared to Apple's claims for the iPods I've had.

Even if we assume your argument is based around lossless, who cares? You mean to tell me that Apple can't design a system that allows the user to seamlessly buy a lossless file, archive it to CD, and keep a smaller more convenient for daily use file on their hard drive?

[bdb]

Yes, file size is one of the reasons Apple has been selling lower bit rate files but your assertion that outrage and chaos would follow if they upped their encoding to 192kbps is insane. At 192kbps the files wouldn't be all that much larger.I never mentioned 192kbps, as the discussion had focused around lossless. iTunes' bitrate seems to be based on what was common at the time of its inception, and Apple doesn't seem to care to increase it. 192kbps VBR is common today, and that bitrate sounds considerably better on decent equipment. It would be one less reason for me not to buy from them if they did that (without increasing the price).

It just seems like the average iTunes consumer is mostly drawn by convenience and price, and probably wouldn't be willing to put up with something that required all sorts of disk space management and CD archiving, and higher prices for lossless music.

Not that it matters. Apple will do what Apple wants.

[Surf Monkey]

No, 128kbps was low the day that Apple introduced the iTMS. They were behind the curve from day one.

And again, I don't think consumers really care what the file size is, just as long as it downloads quickly and there's plenty of room on their iPods. In other words, as bandwidth opens up and storage capacity increases we'll see Apple go to higher bit rates and eventually to Apple Lossless as the standard. It'll be a few years but I have no doubt that it'll happen.

[raine]

I've always ripped my stuff at 192, no big deal, and when I take other people's stuff I have no idea what the bitrate is, and it usually kind of sucks. About a quarter of my library is 128 or less. I can't tell on most songs, since I'm like, oh, recorded lo-fi, whatever, I don't care. But a lot of stuff isn't 192 and it doesn't matter. A lot of my eMusic stuff is below that, and it's not a big deal. A lot of it is way above. I had trouble installing LAME on my computer, so I gave up. I have a big range and I can tell some stuff is below, but I generally need a side by side test. If I have one, I can tell really, really easily. If not, a lot of my stuff I don't really notice, since I don't feel like using my Grados when I'm walking around campus, since people think I look like an alien. I only use those in the library. I don't really think it's a big deal.

[superspiffy]

I completely agree with this sentiment. I did do the tests and found anything higher than 160 kbps was statistically indistinguishable from lossless, hence LAME -V2 new for all my lossy encoding.

Where are the best sites to do online bitrate sample testing?

[Code Monkey]

Where are the best sites to do online bitrate sample testing?I'm not sure I understand what you're asking, this is a test with *your* ears.

For instance, classic ABX would involve making a playlist of three songs where you didn't know what the X was, A you know is, say, 128 kbps, B is 192kbps, and X may be either 128 or 192 and it's up to you to compare the sound and decide what you think the answer is. Only after you've recorded an answer do you check what X actually was.

Repeat a bunch of times and see if you actually can tell or if you're actually guessing.

[jhollington]

nstead of intentionally crippling the built-in mp3 encoder in iTunes so their own AAC sounds better in comparison
Incidentally, to be fair to Apple they're really not "intentionally crippling the built-in MP3 encoder", rather they're using the only encoder they legally can. There's a reason that LAME actually stands for "LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder".... It's grey-market software that isn't officially endorsed or licensed and could therefore never be legally included in a commercial software application like iTunes. Large companies like Apple and Microsoft are forced to license the Fraunhoffer/Thomson MP3 encoder, which is the only official commercial one, and therefore we're left with a sub-standard encoding solution. For the record, MP3 ripping in WMP is of the same quality for the same reason.

This is the same reason, BTW, why we'll never see DVD-ripping built-in to iTunes. While there may be a dozen different grey-market solutions out there to extract content from CSS-encrypted DVDs, no large company is ever going to get away with including this technology without getting sued.

Back to the other question at hand, however, I still think it will be a while before we're going to see lossless downloads on the iTunes Store. I could see it perhaps going up to 192kbps, but the truth right now is that the majority really don't care about that. Somebody already pointed out the number of iPod owners who are still walking around with white earbuds, and I don't really believe it's that people don't know the difference (although some don't), but I think many don't really care.... If their music sounds good enough to them, then why fuss over it?

There will always be those for whom 128kbps is too low-quality, but I really do think that this argument is based more upon perception than upon reality for most people. I myself spent years worried about whether or not 128kbps was actually good enough until I did a blind ABX test of my own, and came to the conclusion that I could not hear the difference unless I was actually taking my time to critically analyse my music (in which case I could hear very subtle differences on a few of the tracks I tested), which is not how I normally listen to my music anyway.

Again, I really wish somebody would go out there and do a series of blind ABX tests for the "person on the street", ala the Pepsi Challenge, and see what kind of feedback we actually get from the average consumer, as opposed to the person who spends more of their time thinking about and analysing these things.

[Code Monkey]

Incidentally, to be fair to Apple they're really not "intentionally crippling the built-in MP3 encoder", rather they're using the only encoder they legally can.
That is not true. They replaced the FhG encoder they licensed with an in-house modification of the FhG encoder around iTunes 5 if memory serves and their version was widely held to sound worse than the years old FhG they originally included.

[jhollington]

Do you have a legitimate source for that information, because I have heard nothing about that, and as you can well imagine I follow the whole iPod/iTunes industry pretty closely.

I know there was a lot of FUD going around during that time about the MP3 encoder that was being used, and although it's possible that Apple may have made attempts to improve upon it (subject to their license agreement with Fraunhofer), there's probably even then only a limit to how much they can do.

iTunes 5 was a very short-lived version anyway, and there were also some rumours of MP3 encoding improvements in iTunes 6. I never took any of these claims very seriously in either direction, since most of the ones that I read provided little to no evidence or empirical testing other than people's basic impressions, which of course are very subject to the placebo effect in the same way that different bit-rates are.

I'm sure they're not making any efforts to improve upon the encoder, but I'm not cynical enough to believe that they're deliberately "crippling" it to make AAC sound better by comparison. The Fraunhofer encoder is already lousy by comparison, and it certainly doesn't need anybody's help in that area. Again, I seriously suspect that they've for the most part left it alone, since there's not much motivation for Apple to touch it at all.

[ThisisCraigP]

I dont like the idea of a touchscreen ipod. I wish that theyd bring back the old monochrome screens I miss them. I would also like to see Apple getting rid of the clickwheel and replace it with the old 3 genn controls. But i highly doubt that either of my whishes will ever happen. But i really dont want to see a widescreen/touchscreen ipod. I need my ipod to play music and no more.

[TheFNG]

Post moved

[tw0k1ngs]

But the common person who just wants to buy a few tracks and listen to them on the white earbuds (as bdb puts it), isn't going to even notice the quality issue, and many don't even care if the quality they're hearing is good enough for them.

So much of today's "musical" quality is so #### poor that SQ isn't even a factor.

[bwh79]

Where are the best sites to do online bitrate sample testing?

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking, this is a test with *your* ears.

For instance, classic ABX would involve making a playlist of three songs where you didn't know what the X was, A you know is, say, 128 kbps, B is 192kbps, and X may be either 128 or 192 and it's up to you to compare the sound and decide what you think the answer is. Only after you've recorded an answer do you check what X actually was.

Repeat a bunch of times and see if you actually can tell or if you're actually guessing.
It's a program, not a website, but you can do this with Foobar2000 (www.foobar2000.org) (and probably with lots of other audio programs out there, but that's the one I know). You feed it two files, which are then played back as A, B, X, and Y. You can switch between them as you listen, and when you think you know which is which, then you simply click the button "A is X, B is Y", or the other button "A is Y, B is X". You repeat this as many times as you want, and each time it tells you if you were right, how many times you've been right, and what the probability is that you were guessing (the more times you answer correctly, the more likely it is that you can actually tell the difference. If you're right about half the time and wrong half the time, then you were probably just guessing). I haven't tried it yet with LAME mp3s, but I can tell you now that I can't hear a difference (on my admittedly lousy equipment: PC satellite speakers and Apple earbuds) between AAC-128 and AAC-192(vbr) encoded with iTunes.

[MusicAddict911]

I'd prefer if Apple would just keep the click wheel design. It works perfectly and I wouldn't really want a touch screen on my iPod.

[XVI]

Because...?

You haven't even tried it yet.

[Offspring]

Because...?

You haven't even tried it yet. Neither have you, obviously.

[XVI]

Neither have you, obviously.

You can't crtisize something if you haven't tried it, however virtaully every critic of the iPhone LOVED the control scheme, watch you guys, you'll all love it.

[irishdelight]

i think wireless/bluetooth is the future in ipods.

[jhart71]

I'm intrigued by the possibilty of a touchscreen - I can't wait to at least see it (even if I don't buy one).

Personally, I prefer a more "mechanical" connection with my music player. Really though, I just think the clickwheel is iconic, and I would hate to see it go away.

A few things that I would suggest in a touchscreen player:

• Preserve the overall dock connector and width/thickness of the current iPod. Starting from scratch would anger a lot of people who've invested in sound systems
• Research scratch-proof and smudge-proof materials
• If the physical scrollwheel goes away, at least simulate the wheel on-screen (none of that "flipping" as on the iPhone)

[jhollington]

Well, since the iPhone is preserving the dock connector and the dimensions (it's virtually the same size as a 30GB 5G iPod), I think it's fair to say that the next-generation iPod will do the same.

The usefulness of the scroll-wheel is debatable, although to be fair a lot of people have gotten used to it, and find it difficult to imagine something else. However, the iPhone interface actually seems to be much more efficient for dealing with very large libraries, whereas, although the scroll wheel is better than just about every other solution out there, it is far from ideal when dealing with a large list of items.

[kylo4]

jHollington, say you have 2000 albums on your touchscreen iPod and it controls like the iPhone, wouldn't it be scrolling far too fast and it would just skip over half the albums. I'd personally be annoyed to use my finger and slowly put it over the device to watch it move. Unless you could press the letter of the first of the album so you hit B and all albums with B comes up like Back to Bedlam, but it still takes too long. It takes me about 25 seconds to find the album I want to right now out of 450+.

[jhollington]

Well, for one thing you have the Coverflow view, which provides a nice way to navigate your albums, although that could still be inefficient on a larger library.

If you had to scroll with your finger, you'd be absolutely right in that the touchscreen interface would be no better than a click wheel. However, the iPhone does provide the ability to jump right to a specific letter in the song list, album list, or artist list, as demonstrated at MWSF.

Further, with a keyboard interface, the "Search" function presently found on the 5G iPods would be dramatically improved -- picture just typing in the name of the song, artist, or album you're looking ofr, in much the same way the 5G iPods work right now. Except that a click wheel to pick your letters borders on being downright cumbersome.

[Surf Monkey]

Coverflow is pretty but it's far from the be all and end all interface for getting to specific albums quickly. In fact, I find it slows things down in iTunes. I use it when I want to look at the album covers, not when I want to get to data quickly.

And as far as using the clickwheel to select letters goes, I disagree with your assessment that it borders on cumbersome. The current fast scroll function is actually quite elegant. Additionally, there's no reason why clickwheel needs to retain the exact same behavior it has now. It's an intuitive physical interface that has potential that has yet to be explored.

[kylo4]

Surfmonkey, Jesse is talking about the search option on the iPod that requires you to type in the letter, not the "scroll fast and letters fly" option which is really useful.

The touchscreen scrolling would be nice for small libraries but if it is 100GB and you have 1000 CD's on there, that could take forever.

[jhollington]

Surfmonkey, Jesse is talking about the search option on the iPod that requires you to type in the letter, not the "scroll fast and letters fly" option which is really useful.
Correct.... Trying to type in letters with the scrollwheel is quite cumbersome, particularly compared to having a keyboard available.

The fast-scrolling function that displays the letter is actually referred to as "Quickscroll" just to be accurate.

The touchscreen scrolling would be nice for small libraries but if it is 100GB and you have 1000 CD's on there, that could take forever.
However, it has already been demonstrated that the iPhone will have a feature that allows you to scroll to a specific letter, which will likely be at least as efficient as the current Quickscroll feature, and probably slightly better (since Quickscroll can take some time to get the hang of).

However, a keyboard-based search feature would be far superior to the current 5G Search feature, which right now I suspect is so cumbersome for most people that it rarely gets used.

[kylo4]

I have a feeling that the iPhone will be a disaster and sell very poorly, much like the Apple Newton which was ahead of its time. If the iPod has touchscreen, no one will want an iPhone and just stick with the $0 phones you can get with a plan for $30 a month. The iPod you can do whatever you want with it.

[jhollington]

Well, I don't know about it being a disaster but I don't think it's going to be the huge seller that Apple hopes and that some are predicting. The price point and feature set is not quite where it needs to be... It presently lacks the business-device capabilities to unseat the RIM and Windows Mobile camp, yet at the same time is out of the price range for even the casual power-user.

However, it is Apple's first foray into the market. What happens with it will be interesting to watch.

The reasons you describe, however, are to me exactly why Apple is not going to confine the interface of the iPhone to only the iPhone. Most people won't buy an iPhone just for the iPod features... It's too restricted, too expensive, and already has a limited customer base by its very design and marketing.

Even if the next-generation iPod doesn't have an iPhone-style interface, this is not going to encourage more people to buy the iPhone. There will be too many people who can't buy an iPhone even if they want to, and there are those who cannot possibly justify paying $500 USD for a device with 4GB of storage and a slew of useless extra features (ie, phone features), no matter how "pretty" the interface is.

Once all of the die-hard iPod enthusiasts jump on the iPhone and buy it in the first month after its release, the only people left will be those who actually want it for the Internet phone and communications capabilities.

The end result is that Apple would have spent a great deal of money and R&D capital in a single device that is targeted at a very narrow market, and not leveraged that into the return-on-investment that they can achieve by incorporating it into the next-generation iPod.

[Surf Monkey]

The price point and feature set is not quite where it needs to be...


We don't actually know what the final price and feature set is going to be. There are plenty of rumors suggesting that we haven't seen the final feature set yet and that ATT/Apple will offer some kind of price incentive with two years of service.

That said, I tend to agree that iPhone isn't going to be the sensation that Apple claims it will be. The phone market is mature and the competition is fierce, unlike the nascent MP3 player market was back when iPod came out.