WTF with the term "Nazis" associated with "Apple Design"?

sorry - culturally insensitive - changing

Both the Everun and the OQO Model 02 have a hard drive and an accelerometer. The Everun actually touts as a selling point the same sort of auto-rotation that the iPhone does. The OQO Model 02 does auto-rotation with a free hack available on the web. (The accelerometer on the OQO was intended as a drop sensor to protect the hard drive.) Considering that auto-rotation works fairly well, even on the OQO Model 02 which wasn't designed for it, I think Apple can create an iPod with both a hard drive and an accelerometer if they want to.

Apple touts up to 20 hours of audio playback, or up to 6.5 hours of video playback on their current 5.5G 80Gb iPods. Based on this, I don't think hard drive power consumption is a huge problem for iPods. I doubt a larger hard drive would cut into those times at all. However, wifi will. But, unlike iPhone, it won't also have a cell radio eating up battery life.

iPhone is .46in thick. The current 80Gb iPod is slightly thicker, .55in. I don't know how much thicker the 1.8in 100Gb, 120Gb, and 160Gb hard drives are, if any.

It may be easy to add VOIP to an iPod sized device, especially if it runs OS X. However, iPod have never come with a speaker, or, AFAIK, the ability to do audio in and audio out at the same time. Without these features, even with Wifi, I don't think VOIP on an iPod (with Wifi) will be very usable. So the interesting thing here will be to see if Apple releases an iPod where VOIP is reasonable.

iPods are now competing against devices like the Archos 605. Various internet tablet like devices play audio and video now. There are more options for portable media playing than there used to be. My speculation is that Apple sees where the market is moving and puts Wifi on at least some of their iPod models.

I have to admit that I don't understand the cannibalization arguments at all. They all presume that people are willing to pay $600 for a 8Gb flash based, touchscreen iPod that's noticably larger than Apple's other flash based offering, regardless of it being a phone. If that's the case, why haven't they bought it already? The reason is that they're really not willing to pay so much for just an wifi iPod if they don't value the actual phone. If that's the case, there no cannibalization. Also, IIRC, Jobs said at the employee all-hands where he made reference to the OS X based iPods, that if any company was going to cannibalize iPhone sales, it would be Apple.

I just figured that there will be people who need a phone, and those people would buy an iPhone. There will be people who need mass storage. They will buy an iPod. The cell phone with lots of mass storage is a niche that doesn't exist yet. Maybe Apple will pioneer it.

Incidentally, my bias is:

I'd like to put my entire music library on an iPod, so I'd like to see lots of storage. I'm currently trapped with Verizon, so I'm not looking for a phone, nor am I interested in AT&T anyways. I'm not interested in Wifi on my iPod at all because most of the Wifi networks I'm near most of the time require 802.1x authentication. iPhone doesn't currently do that. I have no reason to believe that a Wifi iPod will do that out of the box.

I'd like Apple to come out with an iPod with lots of storage because that's what I want. I think a device with wifi will make Apple feature competitive with the rest of the market and help them maintain their dominance. If the device which is effectively the iPhone without the phone is mated to a large hard drive, I really doubt there will be any cannibalization. Those who want a phone will buy an iPhone. Those who want mass storage will buy an iPod. Those who want both a phone and mass storage in the same device aren't any more screwed than they were last week.

Hey hands up who wants there iPod to play music & videos?

hmm hmm, only me then!

I don't think the next iPods will have wifi capabilities, just look at the excellent reasoning given above. It doesn't seem to me that it would make much sense so soon after iPhone's release. Still another One or two more generations before we see internet etc on the iPod, and by then it wil probably be - as has been noted above - an iPhone.

I'm just uber excited about touchscreen!!!!!

Wooooot

I've never bothered to actually anticipate/follow specific date launches for Apple gear, in the past I just hear there's a new model out and eventually pick it up - Will the new iPods be available on the 5th or is it still gonna be a while til you can actually go pick one up?

My prediction - it will have WiFi that like the iPhone will be very hard to actually use with a wireless network... they will make up for the cost by going with slightly wimpier (approx 80/120 GB instead of 160s) hard drives. No bluetooth or its just a matter of time until the iPod makes a better phone than an iPhone.

I wonder how many other consumers are like me with the big iPhone/iPod dilemma. My problem is that I can't own an iPhone because there is no AT&T service in my area, and I won't buy a new iPod unless it has something amazing (like WiFi) because I already have a video iPod and right now it's pretty hard to justify having two of them.

I'm enjoying all the iPod speculation because I'm learning a lot about hard drives, flash drives, wifi, etc. and about different ways people use their iPods.

That being said, i can understand why some people would want a 160 gig iPod. Me personally, I'm having trouble imagining what I would do with the leftover 155 gigs after I load up the music I want to hear regularly.

The idea of using an iPod as a backup device, and then carrying my backup around with me in my pocket, is terrifying. I have an external firewire drive for that, so the only thing that will destroy my backup is a house fire - no chance I'll drop it under a bus or put it through the wash.

the best part about OSX based ipods is that they can be easily hacked to add tons of features. look at all the iphone apps that can easily be installed with ifuntastic.

I guess another difference is that the iPhone is on a network where you can hop on the internet from anywhere. The iPod would only pick up the internet if you were at a hot spot. That would be another thing that would separate the two devices.

My prediction plain and simple

Hard Drive OS X based iPods with WIFI. Basically an iPhone with out the phone part. You will get safari and calendar and contacts, but you won't be able to edit it, just like its always been.

I think the replacement for the 5.5G iPod video--which will be a full-screen device with a touchscreen interface--will sport a hard drive for these reasons:

1) Flash memory at high capacities are still very expensive and hard to get.

2) 120 GB 1.8" hard drives are widely available now, and 160 GB 1.8" hard drives will be available by early 2008.

3) Given the MASSIVE size of video files even compressed with QuickTime or H.264, it's way better to use a hard drive to store the media file on this new iPod.

While the so-called iPod mini can play videos, that device is more for occasional video viewing and will be limited to 16 GB of flash memory for now, with possible upgrade to 32 GB of flash memory early in 2008.

So does this mean that there will be no 160GB iPod?

I didnt think they have made 160Gb ones available that small just yet, or commercially anyway!
Dont shoot me down though, I could be wrong, haha.
I thought that 120Gb was the biggest one available to a mass market at present.