Rumored iPod Flash Leaked

An anonymous reader writes "Apparently a -->detailed design of the new Flash-based iPod--> has been leaked. It doesn't have a screen and is this size of a cookie!" With size estimates ranging from 256 megs to a gig, it will have a much lower price point, and can be worn around your neck. Assuming it's not just a rumor. Update: 12/07 19:31 GMT by M : Temporary working link.

One way to find out

[macrom (537566)]

If Apple files a Cease & Desist order, then maybe there's some truth to it. I doubt they would waste that time for a simple fanboi dream.

Daring Fireball covered this

[MoneyT (548795)]

And I think gave a good argument why it isn't likely:

Here [daringfireball.net]

Re:Daring Fireball covered this

[jvagner (104817)]

Bah, I think he's wrong. I want a player without moving parts, and I don't want to spend that much money on an iPod not knowing how long it's going to last. $400-800 items shouldn't seem disposable, and the iPod seems like that to me. I buy a flash player for $150 and I care less if it dies on me. I just don't trust modern commoditized hardware at this level, and that includes all manner of iPod.

Re:Daring Fireball covered this

[wankledot (712148)]

18 months? Go FUD. I've had my original iPod since the day they were released and it still works great.

The iPod suffers from the same problems any lithium battery-powered device does. If you use it certain ways, the battery will quickly die, the same as ANY MP3 player with that type of battery.

Re:Daring Fireball covered this

[wankledot (712148)]

"Like your cell phone, laptop, etc. It's OK to partial charge it now and again, but it's bad overall"

Actually that's completely wrong. Lithium batteries only have so many charge cycles, and it's better to leave them charged and drain them rarely. Your method was great for old batteries, but not new ones.

www.Apple.com/batteries/

Re:Daring Fireball covered this

[Space Cow (93479)]

Just thought that you might like to know that you are taking the worst possible approach to maintaining the life of your lithium batteries. Lithium battery life is shortened by all of the following:

*) High charge state in warm/hot conditions
*) Deep discharge cycles
*) Extreme discharge (not possible with most modern electronics - built in safety circuits prevent this)

Two generally recommended practices are:

1) Charge early and often. Keep the battery at close to full charge.

2) When storing the battery for long periods of time without use (more than several weeks), discharge to about 40% of capacity and store in a cold location. Avoid freezing the battery, but down to 40-50 degree F will help preserve the charge capacity.

The reason people see their laptop batteries fail quickly is because they keep high charge levels with high temperature for months on end. This will shorten the useful life dramatically.

Take it or leave it, but I work in the consumer electronics industry and deal with the technical issues related to Lithium-ion batteries frequently.

Re:Daring Fireball covered this

[saha (615847)]

Apple's iTMS would be in a better position to license AAC with Fairplay to cell phone makers like Nokia, Samsung, Sony/Ericsson, PalmSource. Lately, Motorola has slipped to number three.

Re:Daring Fireball covered this

[rbrunner (519607)]

I run with my iPod mini all the time. No skips.

Why no skips?

[Tibor the Hun (143056)]

I like to throw in an occasional one-two-one skip every time I go out for a run. It reminds me of my childhood.
And what do you do in case you come across a puddle? Run around it? Pfft, much easier to skip over it IMHO.

Just my 2 cents...

Re:Daring Fireball covered this

[Richard_at_work (517087)]

It has a 32mb buffer that it reads songs into, so long as you dont continuously skip songs, and allow it to play stuff back from this buffer, it can handle rigorous exercise such as jogging very well. The hard disk is resilient on its own due to its smaller size (the arms become more rigid the smaller they are, so less susceptable to shocks), and spins down when the buffer doesnt need filling.

Re:Daring Fireball covered this

[cens0r (655208)]

It's not the skipping that's the problem with jogging. The large memory buffer handles that fine. It's the extra wear and tear on the drive itself. I'd be interested to see someone do a study about the MTBF of those drives comparing them operating motionless and operating under the shock of jogging.

Re:Daring Fireball covered this

[BrerBear (8338)]

I've owned 5, 10, and 30 GB iPods, and I run regularly. The iPods got me through marathon training. Having them definitely made things easier once you enter hour #3 on a long run.

However, having your iPod start to flake out an hour in is also a real downer, and I've experienced a lot of problems with them while running that I never experienced just playing them stationary or walking around. Everything from lockups and reboots, endless skipping, to playing with no sound. Usually a reset or a "timeout" where I hold it stationary does the trick, but I would probably agree that a hard drive based player is not ideal for running. The 10GB seemed to have the least problems among the lot.

I'm definitely in the market for a flash player.

Re:Daring Fireball covered this

[meme_police (645420)]

It's got a 20 minute buffer but they'll lock up if you keep bouncing it for that long. I know mine has.

True purpose of the flash iPod

[levik (52444)]

At a low low price of $200, Apple's main goal for the flash player will be to make its slightly bigger and slightly more expensive players (the mini at $250 and the full size at $300) seem like very well priced bargains.

Better place to wear your player

[MichaelCrawford (610140)]

There's a number of people who go to the same gym that I do that wear their mp3 players on armbands. It seems to work really well when working out vigorously. It's held securely and you don't need a long earphone cord.

RCA is one brand that apparently comes with the armbands, but I see some others whose brand I don't know.

What's the point?

[Quaoar (614366)]

The only thing that Apple could really bring to the table in this department is firewire, which really doesn't matter at these small sizes. There are already SO many flash players out there (some which are downright tiny), and without a screen, I don't see the point. That is of course, if this is true...

Re:What's the point?

[EvilTwinSkippy (112490)]

I'm pretty sure someone else mentioned this. The point is that with a flash/nvram based player, it's immune to shock. People who work out at the gym, jog, bicycle, whathaveyou can't really use an iPod (at least for long) because of the constant shock the hard drive would be subjected to during operation. Idle with the disk parked it's pretty invulnerable. Playing music, and you are asking for a head crash if you bang it, or try jumping jacks or step aerobics.

When you are working out you really don't want the screen, and you only need an hour or two of music.

Re:What's the point?

[teeker (623861)]

It would tighten their lock on their iTunes business. I can't really afford a real iPod, but I could probably afford one of these. If it worked with iTunes, it could be enough to pull sales from other cheaper players. I'd like to buy a cheaper player, but I really like iTunes and have a lot of music purchased through them, so ideally it'd be something that would work with the music I already have without having to burn and re-rip, or use tool with dubious legal status like HYMN to remove their protection. It would be useful for Apple to have an inexpensive alternative that is compatible.

Just my $.02...

Re:What's the point?

[jellomizer (103300)]

Brand Name.
Having an Apple iPod name. There are a lot of people where brand name is everything Where having Nike Sneakers is much more important then having Rebocks. So a lot of people will buy the Cookie Ipod because it is called an iPod not a cheap ripoff of the iPod but an iPod. It is like the Sony Walkman back in the 80s people bought Walkmans because of the name Walkman and they knew that they were getting a Walkman. The name is connected to the device. When kids see a person with a MP3 player they will call it an iPod.

Just like...
Xerox for copiers
Weed Eater for Trimmers
Transformers for toys that turn into robots.

Some people get it for a Snob factor just to say they have one to be hip. Others get it because it is a name they know and dont know the difference. So if you go to your Grandma and ask for an iPod for christmas you will get something with iPod in it like iPod Mini, origional, or the Cookie iPod. There is money to be made when you got the name behind you.

Re:What's the point?

[CrankyFool (680025)]

God damn, I love how history repeats itself.

iPod announced: Slashdot crowd says "Oh come on, there are a ton of mp3 players, including these CD-MP3 players which are the wave of the future. And $400? Another Apple lunacy that won't sell!"

iPod mini announced: Slashdot crowd says "Oh come on, it's $250! And a third the capacity of the $300 version! I'd pay $50 more to get three times the capacity! Another Apple lunacy that won't sell."

iPod flash announced: Slashdot crowd says "Oh come on! It's $200! And the market's already saturated with flash players! I don't see the point. Another apple lunacy that won't sell."

It's ... weird, it's almost as though Apple understands their market better than Slashdot geeks do, though obviously that _couldn't_ be the case.

Look, I sympathize. I've twice in my life looked at products my own company was developing and said "that's stupid, it'll never sell!" The first time was when working at Berkeley Systems and looking at the first You Don't Know Jack demo (you know, the only product originally made by BSI that's still around to one degree or another?); the other was at Macromedia, looking at Dreamweaver "Oh come on, anyone who really wants to code HTML uses vi/emacs! Who'd pay $400 for another WYSIWYG HTML editor when they can get hotmetal for free?" Turned out? A ton of people who wanted a good one.

Face it -- we're just not very good at predicting market success for some products :)

New Music Distribution?

[teiresias (101481)]

(Assuming it's not a rumor), it's an interesting idea that perhaps Apple is posisition these devices as the next form of music distribution ( the CDs successor). Dependant on the price point of the device of course, one could load one of these little guys up with a new album, maybe some new features (videos/interview/etc like a DVD), add in a player and it's a pretty neat gift.

Even if it wasn't used for single album released, boxed sets (a la U2's recent release) come to mind.

And of course, DRM would become very interesting. Knowing Apple, you'd be able to transfer the files to your computer but only to iTunes.

Price points

[madrivertech.com (837955)]

It will have a much lower price point than...? ... other iPods? ... other flash MP3 players? ... other MP3 players in general? I can get a Gigabyte Lexar flash for their MP3 player for the low $70's off of eBay. I am using a part in the same family now "Jumpdrive" and am satisfied with its quality under heavy use.

Of course...

[bludstone (103539)]

This must be true, because I just got an iPod about 2 weeks ago.

No screen?

[quinxy (788909)]

I don't see how you're supposed to navigate through 1 GB of music/etc. with no screen. I've got a little 1 GB mp3 player MPIO's FL300, and I can't imagine moving through all all the various folders and songs to try to find the one I want without a screen. I suppose you'd need listen to the first few hundredths of seconds of songs as you scroll. Sounds thoroughly unpleasant to me. Am I missing something?

Re:No screen?

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds suspiciously like today's product on woot.com [woot.com]

Re:No screen?

[nvrrobx (71970)]

Have you ever used a Phatbox [phatnoise.com]? I have one in my car, it's a 20gb hard drive based player that announces things. You can read the display if you want, but since it speaks to you (literally) you can do without the screen. Great for driving. No reason that an iPod can't do the same, especially if you craft your playlists correctly. The Phatbox can navigate via playlists, artists, albums and genre, like the iPod.

Disclaimer: I am not an employee of Phatnoise, I'm just a very, very satisfied customer.

iPod mini #2

[th1ckasabr1ck (752151)]

The rumor for the iPod mini was that it was going to hold fewer songs, be smaller, and be less expensive.

It certainly held fewer songs, and definitely was smaller, but it was still pretty expensive. Hopefully this one actually does have a lower price point.

anecdotal data

[cmoney (216557)]

ever walk into an apple store? the most popular item is undoubtedly the ipod mini. these things sell not because of "value" or number of gizmos but for design.

you don't find teenage girls walking into best buy, picking up a rio mp3 player and saying "ooh it's so cute, i want pink!" "yuck becky, pink is so last week, i want gold. that's hot." but you do see that in apple stores. and then their mom comes in behind them and says, "ok, but you're not getting that louis vuitton bag for christmas!"

i'd like to see a breakdown by ipod model as well, but anecdotal data says the ipod mini has cache among markets that other mp3 players don't even address. other tech companies are trying to market to the slashdot crowd, with gee-whiz features and more storage for less money. apple's realized the rest of the world is a much bigger, less fickle market and now they're getting paid for it.

Re:iPod mini #2

[badasscat (563442)]

You forgot about the fact that demand was so high for the mini that Apple could not produce enough - they've sold a shitload of these despite YOUR opinion that it's expensive.

It's not just his opinion, it's the opinion of a lot of people.

And you apparently don't know a lot about marketing if you think that Apple "could not produce enough". There are such things as manufactured shortages.

I've searched high and low for honest to goodness iPod Mini sales numbers, including through Google, Apple's investor relations site, and my E*trade account (where I can get company research that would otherwise be unavailable to the general masses). They just don't seem to break iPod sales down by model; they only release total numbers, and I doubt that's unintentional. I don't think anybody would dispute that the iPod Mini has sold fairly well to early adopters but I've just never been able to find any real data to back up your claim about Apple selling a "shitload" of them - anybody can underproduce an initial shipment and then claim demand is so high that there are shortages.

If someone's got some real and up to date sales numbers of the various iPod models, let's see em and compare. My guess is after the first wave of Apple die-hards buys in (which should have happened by now), the regular iPod will outsell the Mini by about 10 to 1 - it's just a much better value and I think most people know it.

Pricing does matter when you're taking about the mass market. Despite the iPod's overall success, I think Apple's still stuck in this idea of pricing things for their little hardcore niche. I don't think it's going to work in the medium- and long-term with the iPod Mini, and I'm not sure it's going to work at all with a flash-based iPod (I don't think there are millions of Apple faithful out there waiting for a $200 flash-based iPod, and there certainly isn't a mass market for such a thing).

Then again, I was surprised at the original iPod's success at its price point, so I've been wrong before - but that player was blazing a trail where none had gone before. Flash-based mp3 players are a dime a dozen so it's not as if Apple can come in and convince a bunch of people that their player is worth a premium of 100% or more over every other player on the market.

It's All Part of Job's Plan

[chia_monkey (593501)]

Remember back in the day when Steve talked about the digital hub? And then when the iPod came out and he said he wanted to use them to help sell Macs? Then iTunes came out and even though Apple doesn't make much money from iTMS, Steve says he wants to use it to help sell iPods.

Evidently his plan is working. Last week that report came out showing about 6% of iPod users had switched from PCs to Macs and that another 7% plan on buying a Mac. The halo effect is boosting Apple's revenue.

So the iPod rules the HD-based market. Now it's time to take over the flash-based market and make sure no other company erodes Apple's dominance in the player market. I see this as yet another opportunity...people that can't afford an iPod will buy the new flash-based one. Money for Apple. When these people can afford it, they'll buy the big iPod. It's like the gateway drug to Macs.

Re:Except

[chia_monkey (593501)]

I agree with you in your theory...that the halo effect requires certain conditions to exist before it can happen. My only sticking point with what you're saying is that we're talking about Apple here. You said "If you make a cheap minimal flash player you lose this selection effect; you are now targetting the budget market, where the halo effect is less likely to be effective because these are the people more likely to just go buy eMachines or whatever it is they make these days with a minimum of fuss." Do you really think Apple would make a cheap player...or a cheap anything for that matter? Apple prides itself now in making elegant machines.

We could debate this forever, but until we know exactly what Apple will come out with, it's a moot point. If they put out something cheap that gets lost in the shuffle (which would really really surprise me), then I think it would be a big mistake on their part. My guess is that they'll come out with some new player that makes all the other flash-based players look like cheap toys you could pick up at any gas station along with a bobblehead doll with any fill up.

Article Text

[Jck_Strw (35674)]

TheMacMind isn't known in the Mac world as being the source of intel on the latest Apple products, however through an anyonmous tipster (to you! We happen to know this person is 100% valid), we've been tipped off to a whole bevy of facts about the new Flash-based iPod from Apple. We also had this confirmed by a second contact at Apple.

When I first heard about the iPod Flash, I met it with the same scepticism as Daring Fireball did.

AppleInsider brought you the basic concept, but TheMacMind is here to let loose about how the new iPod works, what it looks like, and how it feels! And we're looking forward to being there when it's released at MacWorld San Francisco! (Sorry Steve, we couldn't resist!)

The Meat: Milano cookie. That's the basic principle. I like Tim-Tams, but that's just me. Rounded edges, flat, and tiny. We're looking at something that is about 2.5" long, 1.5" wide, and just .5" thick.

Get this: NO SCREEN. Got a cellphone with one of those flat joysticks? This is apparently how you'll get around on the screenless iPod. Left and right move between songs, up and down change the volume, and pressing straight down will play/pause your music. With any other company, I'd be incredibly doubtful that their techs would be able to pull off anything useable. Scroll through 250 songs in one big list? We're betting Apple has something better up their sleeve, and we'll hopefully be able to tell you about the interface in the next few days. Evenything goes in and out through a full-size FireWire port. Apparently, they are also virtually indestructible. We did a mock up of the iPod Flash in 3D. You can see how big it is compared to a business card (the same size as an iPod mini) and an Apple Firewire cable.

What does that tiny size mean? Well, the iPod Flash is meant to be worn around the neck. Yep, a nice little lanyard will keep the smallest of the iPod family twirling around your neck while jogging.

AppleInsider said "less than $200", but we we're told that the Flash iPod will be priced at $99. Freaking sweet, we're hoping that that's right on the money! There have been reports of storage capacities from 256 MB - 1 GB, which would correlate with that price. This release will make an iPod available to people in any price range.

TheMacMind
Image by Robert Padbury
[e-mail]

Another Site with Flash iPod info.

[the zonked (721054)]

More info about the Flash Ipod http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000040022898/

This will fail...

[anothy (83176)]

this new iPod variant will fail miserably, mark my words. just like the lack of wireless and ogg support destroyed the original iPod's chances of success, and the lack of an FM tuner and getting the price point all wrong prevented Apple from selling more than a handful of the iPod minis, this one will never be more than a bragging point for the apple hard-core. when will Apple learn? everyone on slashdot knows how to build a killer iPod... killer...

So, is this how Apple Marketing Works?

[Tenebrious1 (530949)]

Marketing has an idea, then they *leak* the information to some site. Then Steve and the marketing watch /. Depending on our reaction, they decide if they should proceed, what features they should or shouldn't include... and save a bundle of money on actual market research.

Bah.

[altgrr (593057)]

I won't be impressed with them until they come out with some of the ideas here [davidmccandless.com].

"iRule. Override all iPods within a given radius with your choice of music" - now we're talking.

Concept Image Mirror

[dark_lotus (657719)]

Yikes!

TMM switched hosting companies recently, and they've taken us offline. We thought we could survive a slashdotting, alas, we cannot.

Here's a mirror of the image (hosted on .mac) http://homepage.mac.com/dark_lotus/ipodflash.jpg [mac.com]

Why I call Bullshit

[Dark Paladin (116525)]

Right now, the iPod and iPod mini have a lot of marketshare because of two things:

1. Look
2. Feel

Look: If you pull out either an iPod or the "white headphones" (um, like the ones I have in now attached to the iPod on my desk), you'll have people who know what it is. When I was in DC on business, I was easily able to notice the people with iPods.

Feel: The Jog Wheel (patented or copyrighted by Apple, I'll let the lawyers here complain about which) is a perfect medium for MP3 players. Up, down, find the song and fast forward or back - all in one interface.

So what would an iPod flash look light?

Here's my $0.02: it will look like an iPod mini.

Take an iPod mini. Take out the hard drive and squeeze the electronics together. With just flash RAM, you could probably have a device that looks the same, acts the same, costs $100 - $150 (256 MB - 1 GB), and looks like an iPod Mini only with the thickness of two stacked quarters, and weighs a little more. Battery could still last 12 hours (remember - no moving parts).

So, for Apple to make a "display-less device" that nobody would recognize as an iPod, I call "bullshit".

I'll use the same skills for when I was 12 and heard about a new "Star Wars Episode I" coming out "someday": until I saw a trailer, I wouldn't believe. Saved me about 10 years of unhappiness. (Granted, not seeing Episode I would have saved me more, but that's another story for another day.)

No screen? Why not

[babbage (61057)]

Some of the article discussion complains that leaving out the screen is a bad move, but is that necessarily the case?

Maybe not.

In the essay What have we got to lose? [douglasadams.com] (as anthologized in _The Salmon of Doubt_), Douglas Adams gives a fascinating overview of all the cases where a clever new product was born not by adding some dazzling new feature, but by identifying properties that could easily be dispensed with.

Some of the most revolutionary new ideas come from spotting something old to leave out rather than thinking of something new to put in. The Sony Walkman, for instance, added nothing significantly new to the cassette player, it just left out the amplifier and speakers, thus creating a whole new way of listening to music and a whole new industry. Sony's new Handycam rather brilliantly leaves out the zoom function on the grounds that all a zoom does is cost money, add a lot of bulk and render every amateur video ever made unwatchable. (They might, while they're following this line of thought, consider marketing a record-only video player, and video companies might consider releasing movies that are actually recorded in fast forward mode.) The RISC chip works by the brilliant, life-enhancing principle of getting on with the easy stuff and leaving out all the difficult bits for someone else to deal with. (I know it's a little more complicated than that, but you have to admit, it's a damned attractive idea). A well-made dry martini works by the brilliant, life-enhancing principle of leaving out the martini.

So... an iPod with no screen. Well why not? How often do you actually look at the screen? Probably not very -- most of the time the device sits in your pocket, and a lot of people just control the thing through Apple's remote control, which of course has already dispensed with the screen, and has in fact left you with something that looks a lot like the device in the article's photo [apple-x.net].

But okay, some of the complaints are right -- browsing through even a modest music collection can get tedious when the only controls you have are to skip forward & back by a track. Being able to see what's going on is nice, but do you have to be able to see it when every iPod listener is already ipso facto listening to the device? Think about it: this would be an excellent place to use some kind of audio / speech interface, and Apple certainly knows how to design a system that way, having had a speech interface built into Macs for many years now.

That may or may not be what Apple is up to here, but it seems like an obvious future direction for the suite of products. It wouldn't surprise me at all if, for example, a future version of the bundled headphones doubled as a microphone somehow, so that you could control the device by just saying "iPod, shuffle playlist Beatles", and it would go forth and do your bidding, and you didn't have to dig it out of your pocked or your backpack or whereever you keep yours stashed.

Re:*Phew*

[Anonymous Coward]

"from the well-thats-not-very-exciting dept."
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame [slashdot.org].

Re:*Phew*

[stupidfoo (836212)]

LOL - from the people who won't follow your link:

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday October 23, @12:20PM
from the well-thats-not-very-exciting dept.
The BrownFury writes "At an invitation only event Apple has released their new MP3 player called the iPod. iPod is the size of a deck of cards. 2.4" wide by 4" tall by .78" thick 6.5 ounces. 5 GB HDD, 10 hr battery life, charged via FireWire. Works as a firewire drive as well. Works in conjunctions with iTunes 2. Here are Live updates". No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

Good call Taco!

Re:*Phew*

[mad.frog (525085)]

"Why the fuck would Apple want to put Flash on an iPod?"

I can think of 119 [homestarrunner.com] good reasons...

Re:Sexist

[jbrw (520)]

Maybe it's too complicated for a grandfather to use?

Re:Sexist

[Sunkist (468741)]

Is he Korean?

Re:Sexist

[b-baggins (610215)]

Lighten up and learn to laugh. You'll be happier. Trust me.

Re:Sexist

[Wordsmith (183749)]

Two reasons. Both are over-generalizations with plenty of exceptions.

1) Younger people tend to be more technically savy, or at least more comfortable using technology for its basic purposes than older people. THere's no great mystery there. They grew up with the technology. I knew how to program my VCR when I was five. My mother still struggles with it. She didn't have any such device when she was at the oh-so-impressionalbe age of five, when you sap up knowledge and skills like a sponge.

2) Men tend to be

Re:Cookie

[Anonymous Coward]

Another proprietary standard in the Corporate marketplace; clearly an exclusivity deal between Apple and Pepperidge Farm. What follows will be 4 years of "Mint iPod", "Orange iPod" and eventually, "Double Chocolate iPod" and "Enrobed iPod".

The open source community must respond quickly to this threat in its inimical global fashion. An open standard for digital music players must be started based on the Danish butter cookie, or, "dansk-be/urrhoekkoe/n" standards. There is enough community-based prior art on this one, that we should stand our ground.

I will be the first in line for a "3 sugar pretzel"-sized music player, as long as I don't have to whack it against a desk (crumble the cookie) to get it to work.

Re:Cookie

[MooseByte (751829)]

"the size would be comparable to a Milano cookie"

Glad to hear it. My first thought was one of those giant oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies they sell at cafes.

Walking around with that on my neck like some weird Vanilla Ice retro-puke with my plate-sized bling bling, with my "Go Away Or I Will Replace You With a Small Perl Script" t-shirt.

Re:Now this is exciting but....

[Overzeetop (214511)]

For $100 you can send it back and they'll replace the battery.

PS I'm going to want a glass of milk with it (sorry, I've got a 2 year old...it's the first thing that sprang to mind)

Re:Didn't last long.

[eyeye (653962)]

A computer noise announces the track name at the press of a button.

Thats what i'd do anyway ;)