Viewing Thread:
"A new iPod for people to hate ..."

... not mentioning any names, of course.

[URL]http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=744[/URL]



Flash-based iPod digital music player on tap for early 2005.

Apple Computer in December will begin manufacturing a third variant of its flagship iPod music player, which will be based on solid-state flash memory, AppleInsider has confirmed through well placed and extremely reliable sources.

According to contacts in Asia, the computer company will build a stock-pile of approximately 2 million flash iPods before the product begins shipping world-wide in late-January or early February. The new players are slated to be announced at the annual Macworld trade show in San Francisco during the second week of January.

Though precise specifications were not readily available, the flash iPod will reportedly use controller chips from Austin, TX-based SigmaTel, and feature a storage capacity in the range of 256 Megabytes to 1 Gigabyte. Sources were unable to confirm if the player would be released in more than one configuration.

The iPod flash will retail for below $200 / £107 / €154 and sport a similar user interface to the company's ubiquitous iPod and iPod mini.

Despite comments from Apple chief executive Steve Jobs that flash-based digital music players are often received as gifts, rarely used, and "end up in a drawer," market share figures speak for themselves. Although the iPod holds a whopping 92% slice of the pie for hard drive-based players, this figure shrinks to 65% when flash models are tallied as part of the mix.

Sales of flash players remain strong in the second half of 2004 and account for a larger percentage of digital music players than that of hard-drive music players when surveyed on a global basis. The introduction of an Apple-branded flash player is expected to increase Apple's share of players in the far east, where the adoption rate for the iPod has been feeble.

At last year's Macworld Expo in San Francisco, Jobs introduced the iPod mini, a 4 Gigabyte hard drive-based player designed to compete in the high-end flash player market. A renowned success, the iPod mini drew strong demand throughout the better part of the year, but priced at $249, it remains inaccessible to many.

gamesfreak wrote:
> I've heard of 1GB flash drives, I wonder if their will be bigger ones
> by the time this new baby is released.

Roumor has it that M$ are looking into the possiblity of using 40GB Flash drives for the XBOX2, though this would make it prohibativly expensive.

Can see apple releasing a flash version of the iPod if there wasn't a market for it.

why would you pay for this?
by the time it comes out, you will be able to buy an ipod with 20gb for the same price!
why buy an ipod with only 1gb of memory?

I've heard of 1GB flash drives, I wonder if their will be bigger ones by the time this new baby is released.

Basically Flash is solid state with no moving parts, i.e. memory instead of hard drive.

Flash is jst a different type of storage which is much quicker, uses less power and is lighter.

Flash is the future. Flash will eventually take over in a few years as production increases and prices drop.

Yeah, what does that mean?
And why might you only get 256MB for over £100?

Seems a bit pointless.

What's flash-based?

... not mentioning any names, of course.

[URL]http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=744[/URL]



Flash-based iPod digital music player on tap for early 2005.

Apple Computer in December will begin manufacturing a third variant of its flagship iPod music player, which will be based on solid-state flash memory, AppleInsider has confirmed through well placed and extremely reliable sources.

According to contacts in Asia, the computer company will build a stock-pile of approximately 2 million flash iPods before the product begins shipping world-wide in late-January or early February. The new players are slated to be announced at the annual Macworld trade show in San Francisco during the second week of January.

Though precise specifications were not readily available, the flash iPod will reportedly use controller chips from Austin, TX-based SigmaTel, and feature a storage capacity in the range of 256 Megabytes to 1 Gigabyte. Sources were unable to confirm if the player would be released in more than one configuration.

The iPod flash will retail for below $200 / £107 / €154 and sport a similar user interface to the company's ubiquitous iPod and iPod mini.

Despite comments from Apple chief executive Steve Jobs that flash-based digital music players are often received as gifts, rarely used, and "end up in a drawer," market share figures speak for themselves. Although the iPod holds a whopping 92% slice of the pie for hard drive-based players, this figure shrinks to 65% when flash models are tallied as part of the mix.

Sales of flash players remain strong in the second half of 2004 and account for a larger percentage of digital music players than that of hard-drive music players when surveyed on a global basis. The introduction of an Apple-branded flash player is expected to increase Apple's share of players in the far east, where the adoption rate for the iPod has been feeble.

At last year's Macworld Expo in San Francisco, Jobs introduced the iPod mini, a 4 Gigabyte hard drive-based player designed to compete in the high-end flash player market. A renowned success, the iPod mini drew strong demand throughout the better part of the year, but priced at $249, it remains inaccessible to many.