60GB iPod Coming? 563
An anonymous reader writes "Toshiba today announced that it will offer a 60GB version of its 1.8-inch hard drive in the coming months and that Apple has already placed its order. Cindy Lee, deputy manager of Toshiba's hard disk drive division, said the drive will enter mass production during July or August. All three iPod models (15GB, 20GB, and 40GB) use Toshiba drives, while the iPod mini uses a 4GB 1-inch drive from Hitachi. Lee noted that Toshiba is currently shipping 350,000 of the 1.8-inch drives per month to Apple."
Too much space! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Enough is Enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Too much space! (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because you don't have that much music doesn't mean other people don't.
I think the real interesting question is... (Score:2, Insightful)
Use for 60GB HD (Score:4, Insightful)
just with some quick calculations i did on my own, saving your music as in a lossless format uses approx. 5x as much space as a 256kb MP3.
so only 12GB of mp3's will give you your 60GB of music.
more than music (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Enough is Enough (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:iPod and UFS (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Somebody's gonna buy it... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not reading the article I can understand, but not reading the fucking summary?
Toshiba today announced that it will offer a 60GB version of its 1.8-inch hard drive in the coming months and that Apple has already placed its order.
Re:Enough is Enough (Score:4, Insightful)
Not yet, but I'm reaching the high-end of 40GB, and since there's no 41GB drives, that leaves me going for a 60GB unit.
I'm sure lots of people only have 10GBs of music like yourself, but many of us are going with significantly higher bitrates, and music libraries are growing fast...
Re:Too much space! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Now that's Paranoia! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd guess he's not encrypting them because they're family photos, but just because he encrypts all his backup data. I do the same, just on general principles--it may be overkill, but better overkill than underkill, no?
Re:Enough is Enough (Score:3, Insightful)
Music on the other hand, has been around longer than medicine. It could be considered entertainment, but it's a very important facet of human life. Almost everyone listens to music in one form or another, it's something that keeps us from going insane with boredom. I'd say it's more important than insulin.
Re:60GB on the go??? (Score:5, Insightful)
A $500 iPod is pocket change.
Cheap insurance, especially if you keep your CDs in a safety deposit box
Re:60GB... but anything else? (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the "hipster image", well, that's marketing and it's how they sell iPods. Most slashdotters may see it as disappointing that successful products aren't sold on specs. But the dominant group of consumers don't care. They'd much rather have something that's well culturally regarded ("hip") that they can figure out and utilize without too much effort. This is what Apple does and that's why they're so successful with this product. Also be glad that you can get what you want in the iHP 120. But it's unreasonable to expect Apple to market directly to a niche like geeks with the iPod.
Re:Enough is Enough (Score:3, Insightful)
Ideally my portable would be large enough to store a "backup" of my entire CD collection. That way I can take it with me and free up the space on my computer.
Re:Too much space! (Score:5, Insightful)
While I had thought about this, I realized that my iPod is also the bit of storage that I own most likely to be stolen. Having my critical files (i.e. financial records, tax returns, address books, etc.) on a device that has a (relatively) high likelyhood of being lost or stolen seems like a very bad idea.
Re:Too much space! (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm assuming that prices of smaller models will drop. Have a small music collection (like you)? Get a cheaper iPod.
Me? I'm waiting for a 120.
Re:Too much space! (Score:5, Insightful)
On second thought, of course, you could always encrypt everything that you store there, but that's a more complex backup system and one that I'd bet a lot of people aren't as likely to keep up with...
But yeah, encryption is an option, dare I say a necessity, if you want to use your iPod for backup.
Re:Enough is Enough (Score:4, Insightful)
I listen to all of them. Maybe not all of them on a regular basis, but I can't think of one that I'd be willing to say "I'm OK not listening to that ever again"
It's nice having a big chunk of that library be able to travel around with me.
While I'm certainly not everyone, there are people out there with even more than me. Just because most people are fine with a few hundred favorite songs, or a few dozen favorite albums, doesn't mean everyone is.
Also, how many 60 GB external harddrives let you play music? There may be more economical solutions out there, but the ipod is more likely to be in your pocket when you need it, and the two birds with one stone factor is pretty big for some people.
Re:Too much space! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's amazing how narrowly people seem to need to define the iPod. And I'm surprised that so many slashdotters can't seem to see past the "iPod == music player" shortsightedness.
iPod is a great music player, but it's also a great way to carry around a LOT of data of any kind.
iPod is also a hardware platform. That fact is emphasized by Apple's recent reorganization into a Macintosh group and an iPod group. At the moment it seems to be a relatively closed platform, but it has a processor, plenty of memory, a big disk, power, and I/O. It remains to be seen how Apple will use that platform, and when, but it's a pretty good guess that they'll do something interesting with it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Too much space! (Score:4, Insightful)
And what was that someone said about not storing the MP3s on the player, where they could get lost? Hello, you have them on both. And actually, my home HD busted recently, and the only MP3s I didn't lose were the 30GB of music on my iPod. Next time, I'll back them all up, so I don't need to rerip.
Re:60GB... but anything else? (Score:5, Insightful)
What exactly is stupid about it? Players with DRM, such as the iPod, and the Creative players, can play files without DRM. Players without DRM, on the other hand, cannot play files with DRM (without hacking or kludging).
Hence, the players with DRM provide the most flexibility.
Re:Enough is Enough (Score:3, Insightful)
Rich have a philanthropy disease (Score:1, Insightful)
Hard work is not owning a company and then getting lucky enough to retire after having your company bought out. Philanthropy is a disease on the conscious of the rich. To be fair, if he is being honest, most rich people just throw money to charities and various "causes" and consider that philanthropy, doing no real hands on philanthropy like he claims he does.
Re:Too much space! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How long is the iPod thing going to last? (Score:4, Insightful)
They had some iPod minis coming in. Buying frenzy ensued, and the color ones (blue only) were sold out in half an hour. Imagine a 50% off sale of Hermes (or LV) bags in Japan - it was kind of like that.
This is a fashion phenomenon, like none has happened in technology before. People buy them because they are sexy, sleek, the thing to have - especially the minis.
So this is not just a piece of tech with a cool look. It's a cool look (if you want to put it that way) with a piece of tech. Therefore, the competition will fail - they don't get it. Of all tech companies, Sony is probably the only one which would be able to launch a successful competitor. But they haven't so far...
The iPod, especially the mini, is about one thing: Being the coolest person in the gym - or in any other social situation. And you don't get there with a Dell, a Creative XYZ or an Archos whatever.
The biggest danger to the iPod thing, therefore, is fashion itself. Fashion trends tend to be unstable and things that were cool last year tend to be not cool anymore this year. But i somehow think the iPod will be spared this fate - maybe the Design is too timeless for that to happen.
Software Thieves Will Rejoice (Score:4, Insightful)
With 60GBs at their disposal, the possibilities are endless.
Home Folder on iPod (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:"ALLLOT" IS NOT A WORD! (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, someone needs to lighen up. The web and internet have a spelling and slang all of their own, like it or not. I would never write LOL or IANAL or kewl in a document at work, but have no qualms about using that lingo in email or instant messaging. Besides, it's fun!
A'ight?
Re:60GB... but anything else? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a quick reminder (Score:5, Insightful)
"iPod is a good product, but nothing to get excited over." - harlows_monkeys
"It's not cool at all. It's just another Mac attempt to have the coolest looking, hippest sounding gadget on the market. It adds nothing serious to the current options. For instance, no Ogg Vorbis support (and yes, I realize it probably decodes mp3 in hardware, but...) and it doesn't appear to be cross-platform. I guess this falls into the Dilbert principle of "the best target market is stupid rich people." Since they'll fall for anything and have the money to burn on it." - ichimunki
"...the "rose-colored glasses that you will need for this to seem like a worthwhile product. What a let-down, geez!!" - david614
"People need to realize that all apple ever really delivers is mediocre equipment that, while it may look really cool, is less technically advanced/powerfull/whatever than competing products that cost 20-25% less." - greysky
"A waste of time. Probably OEMed by someone else. Agree with the article poster - Lame. Not only is this a lackluster MP3 unit (which by virtue of being firewire will be limited to Apple Mac owners), but it has virtually no UI wizardry that might define it as an Apple product. A total waste of time." - Ars-Fartsica
"I'd rather pay $100 for a Rio Volt. 700mb of songs per CD with an unlimited number of CD's, provided you change them. Yeah, this should compete favorably with the solid state units, but they've already lost to the CD-MP3 units, IMO." - Fred Ferrigno
"I think it'll sell as well as the G4 Cube. Oops.
"And I was all excited they were gooing to release a OS X based wireless web pad. Instead we get yet another portable MP3 player
"I am very sad that Apple seems to be repeating the same mistake they made with the Cube - great, nifty product that anyone would love to own, except that it's burdened by an unbelievably poor price/performance ratio." - jchristopher (Apple shareholder)
"...this was a VERY poor design decision. This could have been a $150 device if they'd used a regular laptop drive." - jchristopher again
Re:July or August, eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Now that's Paranoia! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Maybe you've never used an iPod (Score:2, Insightful)
iTunes (and other software) is only there for your convenience. You do not need any special software to access the music on your iPod. The MP3s are stored in a folder hierarcy that is hidden from the Finder on MacOS.
To "enable" the drag and drop feature is a matter of seconds:
http://www.ipodlounge.com/tips_more.php?id=671_
Of course you can do it all from the shell, its a Unix...
Windows should work the same way.
Re:Software Thieves Will Rejoice (Score:1, Insightful)
You can get almost any piece of commercial software from any of the existing p2p networks. Without leaving your home.
Store thieves must be one particularly dumb breed...
Re:"ALLLOT" IS NOT A WORD! (Score:2, Insightful)
The idea that something 'is a word' or 'is not a word' comes from an early stage in our education, when often we said things that 'weren't' words, like 'brung' and 'sheeps' and so forth. So now we have a definite idea about what 'is' or 'isn't' a word. Changes in our vocabulary and the vocabulary of those around us (think about moving from the UK to the US for instance) mean that we can't afford to adopt a rigid view of what 'is' or 'isn't' a word, since someday, we could wind up somewhere where everyone says 'embiggen', and then we'd look stupid not to use it ourselves.
On the other hand, while we are where we are, there are certain words, 'virii' being a case in point, which are only used by certain people, and not necessarily by a majority. We know that 'virii' is badly-formed, we don't have to use it, and I'm not alone in thinking less of people who use it. So although we can't say 'it isn't a word', we still shouldn't use it. There are plenty of other words which are best unused on slashdot, because they are obscene ('cunt'), or archaic ('purl'), or dialectal ('fleen'), or childish ('moocow') or oxymoronic ('microsoft works') or whatever.