iPod 2 Speculation

1) Just the fact that satelite radio has subscription fees means I don't want tto see it in my iPod. The .mac integration in OS X is one thing, but OS X has zillions of great features, and you can find alternatives (though not as nice in many cases) for all it provides. I should not have to pay a subscription for a key feature of a new iPod, which radio would be.
2) As far as listening to radio news on the iPod now, Audio Hijack lets you record audioi from any app, so if you can find net streams of the broadcast you want to hear, you can tell RealONE to automatically connect to it at the appropriate time, have Audio Hijack automatically start recording at that time, and write a script to automatically move that to the iPod when it's done. You say there is no net stream of what you want? Plug your radio into your Mac using one of the many ways to do so, find an app that records from any input source (hint: http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/index.shtml), and again transfer the resulting file to your iPod.
 
Ok. Lets clear up a few things. My original point about Satelite radio was the same as sheepguy, not whatever the hell you people interpreted it as.
Second. As for the car-kit. Sure i think that for people who dont want to spend a lot of money on a car stereo the audio-in port on the front of many newer decks is good, but this relates in no way to any requirement from the ipod. All you need is a male-male mini-jack. My point was that including an FM transmitter is a stupid idea. it would consume a heap of power and would bump up the price unecessarily.
And as for PDA's and photos. Remember. the iPod is designed for listening to music, and other audio material. That's it. You can also use it to store address-book style contacts, but the primary use is listening to music etc. If apple think there is a market for a tablet/PDA/palm-type computer, I'm sure they'll do something about it, rather than incorporating the features into an existing product and bumping the price up.

People too often misinterpret things because they make assumptions about too many things.
 
what about streaming & providing Steve Jobs Expo speaches in downloadable mp3's ....... ?? its somethin i thought they would have had especially with the release of the iPod, ost people are still on dial-up connections which make it annoying to watch the jerkey footage and too slow to watch it for the full duration.....
 
One thing I hope they keep is the backing of the iPod...the shiny metal part. Why? Well, if you don't have a mirror near by, the back of the iPod works rather well, provided you don't have a bunch of scratches and stuff on it.:p :D Hehe, yeah...it sounds dumb...but it's a cool little feature that maybe was intended.
 
Originally posted by Ugg
I love radio yet am rarely in the right place at the right time to listen to what I want to hear which includes NPR, BBC world service, diverse german talk radio shows, etc. Now, if I could record these and listen to them while I am riding my bike on the weekends, wow!!! I would be in heaven.
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Hey that's an great idea! Tivo for audio programs -- nice! I'd totally go for that, and it would be even better if it could record in the background if I was playing mp3's or something. (As for having your computer do it, sheepguy, cool but not a very good solution imho. First of all, wouldn't work well at all for laptops, which are often asleep and waking them up and wasting battery power to record a show isn't a good idea. Powerbooks get around 2-3 hrs battery life max & iPods get around 10 hrs max. And if you have a desktop wouldn't you like to take your radio show with you? Much less convenient if you have to set up a stream or connect your radio as well as transfer your files to your iPod afterward.)

I hope Apple steals your idea Ugg... :)
 
I think that satellite radio would be an incredible addition to the iPod. But as nice as it would be I don't think its the kind of thing apple would add to an iPod. All the XM radio's made now are much bigger, and heavier then the iPod. I dont expect that there is an incredible amount of open space in the iPod right now, and the new iPod will have a hard drive about the same size, a screen about the same size and similar components. As much as I would love to have some type of radio in my iPod, I don't think its a very easy thing too add. Something that seems a lot more likely is someone writing a 3rd party application to transfer recorded streaming audio onto your iPod automatically. I think if apple add's anything new to the iPod it will be software related, like a text viewing application.
 
Originally posted by pyroboy
Pengu, XM Radio, AKA satellite radio, is wonderful in concept. 100+ streams of music and conversation. It doesn't require a huge antenna and the subscription rate is fairly reasonable.
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No, the antenna isn't huge (about the size of a billiard ball), but the tuner is a pretty hefty item to think about sticking in your pocket (about two or three times the size of a video cassette and weighs several pounds). I have a Sirius system installed in my car and the three pieces that make it up are not insignificant in size. Beyond that, though, all of these pieces have a substantially higher powere requirement than the iPod does now.

For the person who said that this feature would make the iPod the first portable satellite radio I must disagree. Delphi makes a tuner/receiver module for XM which "docks" to connections that you install in your car(s), boat, home, etc. There is also a "boom box" dock that makes the system fully portable.

I think this would be an absolutely stellar thing to have, but I believe we are far more likely to see a cellular-type modem that lets the iPod connect to the internet for streaming audio.
 
Hmm, about "Bluetooth headphones..." how would that work. Bluetooth = wireless, so would there be 2 little earbud things that you just stick in there? 'Cause they'd be real easy to lose.
 
actually, bluetooth headphones and headsets already exist -- in fact, they've been around for a couple of years.
 
I wonder the sound quality from a Bluetooth headphone. Any idea?

P.S. My iPod 5GB's Firewire port is died :(
 
Bluetooth is quite low-bandwidth, and most headsets are made for voice, anyway. Creating a new one only for the iPod would certainly be okay, but sound quality would be less.
 
Originally posted by fryke
Bluetooth is quite low-bandwidth, and most headsets are made for voice, anyway. Creating a new one only for the iPod would certainly be okay, but sound quality would be less.
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Absolutely true. Bluetooth is 700kb/s max and it must be low power (or it's to heavy for a headset), so that it cannot decompress mp3 or similar encoding. Encoding for low-power are much simpler like 8-4 encoding which reduces bit rate by a factor 2 (instead of 20 for mp3). This limits to voice quality, mono. They will be improvements in the future, off course, but still this is a limitation.
 
Here is the BlueTooth datarates.
 

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simple and effective ipod update:

- 10/20/40 GB versions. 5gb are not available anymore (everyone knows that). 40gb 1.8" drives have also been out for some time.

- colour screen. this is the norm now for phones and pda's. the tricky thing is getting it to look nice in low light AND bright sunlight.

- mini usb port to connect to digital camera a la iPhoto. Cut down version of iPhoto allows dowload/delete off camera and viewing capabilities. the portability/large hard drive aspects of ipod combined with the explosion of digital cameras cries out for this feature: imagine, the end of expensive flash cards..

- firewire 800 & 400? combined with usb, this amounts to far too many ports. maybe their engineering team have something up their sleeves.

Seeing as apple are pushing fw800, it would make sense to implement it in as many devices as possible, methinks.

just me two cents..

(btw, bluetooth is entirely unsuitable for gb+ transfers..)
 
Why would apple give up on their proprietary firewire technology as teh primary primary connection medium and add a usb conenctivity card also...???
Originally posted by themacko
I agree with the digital camera thing ... all they'd really need is to add a USB port to the thing.
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because most consumer digital cameras use USB and not firewire, it would allow you to store images from your camera on your ipod, giving you a camera with huge capacity
 
You have a very good point, however apple is striving to propell firewire 800 into the foreground of teh standards. Despite usb making teh ipod great for hooking digi cams up to it i am unsure as to apples position on it...

Originally posted by mightyjlr
because most consumer digital cameras use USB and not firewire, it would allow you to store images from your camera on your ipod, giving you a camera with huge capacity
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Originally posted by mdangelo
You have a very good point, however apple is striving to propell firewire 800 into the foreground of teh standards. Despite usb making teh ipod great for hooking digi cams up to it i am unsure as to apples position on it...
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Apple is the reason USB is so popular. Apple likes USB, it just likes firewire even more, considering it invented it and gets money from it. Even though they are trying to get Firewire 800 up and running, a digital camera is one of the lasts places you are going to see it. Putting a USB port on the iPod would be very useful for all of those people who have digital cameras, and who will buy them in the future, because almost all digital cameras will have USB for the foreseable future.
 
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