My brainbuster for the day – with all of the hype over the iPhone I kind of forgot about the iPod. Today in the car I was thinking “How long will it be before the next generation iPod?” Then it hit me – what’s holding them back from putting most of the cool UI stuff from the phone into the next gen iPod? How sweet will that be if I can watch 24 at the gym and turn the player sideways for a mini widescreen?
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4 replies on “The New iPod”
The form factor for the iPhone looks a lot like what everyone expected the video iPod to look like, so I have a feeling we’ll be seeing that soon. I wonder if Apple isn’t so much waiting for the technology as they are for new licensing agreements and more video content.
People are already complaining that the iPhone screen isn’t 16:9, but then again, that crowd is never happy.
Dude, the iPhone IS the new iPod. Everything is going down to the concept of the UMD or “Universal Media Device.”
Granted we all know that there will be 6th generation iPods without the phone and I too am excited. How in the world do you watch video while at the gym? I can’t pull that off. Has to be audio for me.
Peter – you are right on about the licensing, I heard they filed with the FCC the same day as the announcement. In the past year the press has figured out how to troll the FCC submissions to get the scoop on new stuff.
CC – Yeah, I see these devices (“convergence” was the buzz for a while) coming soon, but I want an 80GB iPod with the iPhone interface before the phone comes out. It doesn’t seem like much of a stretch (for me in the comfort of my own home doing nothing).
Video at the gym rocks. The key is that they have a rack in front of the treadmill so I can put the player right in front of my face. I watched Season 5 of 24 on my morning run.
The only thing better is a flat panel wall mounted in front of the treadmill…
Currently there are not any true HD widescreen Apple products except for Apple TV. Apple iTunes video content is matted, widescreen movie with black bars, usually at 640×480. The iPhone screen flipped will be 320×480, about the same as standard DVD 1:85 content viewed on a standard TV. The iPhone just crops out the black bars (it seems). However its not too hard to connect the dots to see what is coming. Apple this year needs to upgrade its video iPod to support widescreen HD file sizes, upgrade its content to HD in the store (they already went from 320×240 to 640×480 when the last iPod came out) to be in sync with the Apple TV which supports 1280 by 720, 24 fps, progressive output. If they don’t, AppleTV buyers will see on their widesceen TV current iTunes content with black bars on the top, bottom and sides. If Apple had not put widescreen TV as an Apple TV requirement, it would not matter. But they did put it in the specs, so they now need to upgrade content and make a next gen iPod.
The iPhone looks like a great phone, but not a great iPod, mainly due to 4GB / 8GB limit which is just a few shows or movies. Of course I want one haha. But I have a LG Chocolate…very cool..shoots stills, video, mp3 player, etc…but I just use it as a phone because all the other things can be done better by other units I have.
As for the gym..I always burn less calories watching video than listening to fast music. However with video you can lose track of time and do a longer workout..so maybe it balances out.
Frank