[psmith2.0]

Read all about it.

No mention of hardware, but I'm sure that would be part of such an event (new iPods and notebooks?).

Lots of specifics and details that make it seem like more than than fanboy wishing.

Anyway, it might be worth discussion and speculation, especially that part about "enable disk mode" and a dedicated iDisk app for iPhone and iPod touch. I could see that coming in handy for many people.

It's a page 2 story from MacRumors, so take it with the usual grains of salt. But it sounds interesting, and not too far-fetched or unbelievable.

[Kraetos]

Please please please please please please NO SUBSCRIPTIONS.

The last thing we need is anything encouraging DRM.

[feidhlim1986]

DRM is pointless on iTunes music, If you buy iTunes DRM song all you need to do is burn them to a CD (Audio CD mode) and then Rip them back using itunes and DRM is gone.
$99 for unlimited music is attractive (for those who pay for music ) thats just about the price of 10 Albums's a year, which isnt that bad considering you'll be able to download the $hit outta it

Also, would love a "sync" button for MobileMe on my iPhone!! Not having to wait and wait wait for it not to sync

[rasmits]

I would be happy with free streaming from iTunes, or even a nominal fee. I think that could be dubbed "iTunes Unlimited".

The 30 second preview is a dated concept and it's very annoying. I have to go places like Deezer to decide if I really want to buy an album.

[feidhlim1986]

Originally Posted by rasmits I would be happy with free streaming from iTunes, or even a nominal fee. I think that could be dubbed "iTunes Unlimited". The 30 second preview is a dated concept and it's very annoying. I have to go places like Deezer to decide if I really want to buy an album.

Free Streaming would lead to songs being recorded from the Stream, so I dont think they'd do that

[rasmits]

Plenty of websites offer free streaming, like Deezer as I mentioned. The quality is not nearly as good as a download, but it sounds about as good as an internet radio (which iTunes has) and its more than sufficient for previewing a song entirely before buying. Recording an internet stream would lose even more quality, plus it's not something the average person knows how to do.

I think it's a good idea and frankly, it's overdue.

[Jason]

I'll tell you what's really overdue - a complete overhaul of iTunes encoding.

128 kbps was laughable two years ago. Who would pay for that?
Any serious on-line music download service has been offering Flac or an equivalent for sometime now.

[Kraetos]

Originally Posted by feidhlim1986 DRM is pointless on iTunes music, If you buy iTunes DRM song all you need to do is burn them to a CD (Audio CD mode) and then Rip them back using itunes and DRM is gone.

That's not the point.

You can't have a subscription service without DRM. Subscription services operate on the principle that if you cancel your subscription, all your music stops playing. This can only be achieved with a DRM scheme.

Without DRM, there's nothing to stop you from signing up for a month, downloading a shit-ton of music, and then canceling your subscription.

If this happened, iTunes plus tracks would of course be unavailable to the subscription customers.

Jobs' stand against the record labels is the first legitimate ray of light in digital music distribution in years. If Apple did this, everything would be undone.

[psmith2.0]

New iPod rumors (Kevin Rose?), with pic!

If this is the new iPod nano, I LOVE it!!! That's sleek and sexy, like it should be.



So much nicer-looking than the current "short and fat" design, IMO.

Looks like the 2G nano we all know and love, but given a bit of the MacBook Air "taper" treatment.

I can dig it. Once again (assuming this is legit), the iPod nano will be sexy and irresistible...just in time for the fall and holiday shopping season. They'll sell eleventy gazillion, especially if those price cuts are as dramatic as talked about (iPods no longer "competing" with the $199 iPhone...holy crap, are we talking $149 iPod touches and sub-$100 nanos?)



I hope...everyone's gift-buying would just get instantly that much easier.



All this leads to another question (especially since the product wasn't mentioned in this report): if these full-featured, flash-based, video-capable nanos did get down to $99 (or below), would the iPhone shuffle have any reason to exist? They'd have to sell it at $29 or so, because who wouldn't spend an extra $50-75 to get a color screen, video, full controls, addresses/contacts, games, etc.?

Interesting stuff.

[dmegatool]

Almost looks like a Zune But I don't like the current little fat design either.

[709]

I like it a bunch too. Very sleek and Star-Trekkie. Much better looking than the iPod Chode.

[psmith2.0]

Originally Posted by dmegatool Almost looks like a Zune But I don't like the current little fat design either.

I'd argue that the Zune looks more like an iPod nano...Microsoft just made the screen bigger (a natural progression that anyone would hit on a some point ). Apple, realizing their slight mis-step with the pudgePod, returns to its roots and brings the large 3G nano screen with it. So yeah, it looks like the current Zune because of that. But I think it's one of those chicken/egg things, really.



Because let's face it...would the Zune even exist, period, if not for the iPod?

No, it wouldn't. And we all know that (even those who would never cop to it out loud or in public).

[dmegatool]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 [...] Because let's face it...would the Zune even exist, period, if not for the iPod?

Yeah I know. You are 100% right on this one

Maybe I don't love that much the new design cause it's not enough "innovative". I don't know, it feels a little bit like the 2G nano but tweaked. You can't fool me with round corners and bigger screen Maybe I don't know what I was expecting to be honest. It would have been nice to get a Touch nano or something. That way, the shuffle would still have a reason to live.

[PB PM]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 New iPod rumors (Kevin Rose?), with pic! If this is the new iPod nano, I LOVE it!!! That's sleek and sexy, like it should be. So much nicer-looking than the current "short and fat" design, IMO. Looks like the 2G nano we all know and love, but given a bit of the MacBook Air "taper" treatment.

I'm sorry, but that is a terrible design. The thing that made the 2G nano great, were the proportions, which that photoshop and the 3G nano lack.

[709]

Do you mean by 'proportions' that you'd have to turn it 90 degrees to watch a video? Because I'm betting the exterior proportions are within a quarter inch of the 2G nano:



There's only so many things you can do with two unyielding design constrains (ie: the clickwheel and a widescreen window), so I see this as a logical move back to something that's proven workable and popular. Move the clickwheel a tad south and rotate the 3G screen, and you've pretty much got what's depicted in the spy photo.

[PB PM]

Just compare the size ratio. The 2G looks perfect, that hug screen makes the photoshop look nasty.

Solution, drop the stupid clickwheel. Touch Nano baby!!!!!

[709]

That's the 5G.

[PB PM]

Maybe. I don't really care, I'm going for the Touch one way or the other for the WIFI, so I have something to do when I'm board at work.

[Satchmo]

Originally Posted by PB PM I'm sorry, but that is a terrible design. The thing that made the 2G nano great, were the proportions, which that photoshop and the 3G nano lack.

I agree. It looks too forced to mimic the MBA.
The Nano needs to have a larger display to stay competitive, but it needs to work intuitively with the scroll wheel. How does this work in a horizontal orientation? Maybe rotate the wheel and it might work.
Still looks ugly to me.

[psmith2.0]

You guys are crazy. That's a nice-looking design.

I think the 2G design looks a bit weird, with that click-wheel floating there and that tiny screen up at the top, and all that empty, unused space all around. I like this new design (Photoshop mockup or not) much better.

[PB PM]

Its the smallness of it that makes it a Nano, that thing is huge and would be extremely awkward in your pocket. The 2G Nano is the only thing I can stand in my pocket at work, the 3G is too fat and that looks much to tall. I rather like the smallness of the 2G screen, its there to help find your music and play it, not to put on a show. Small and simple, that is the key, too bad Apple lost sight of that with the new UI etc. I also have the black 8GB 2G so, I guess it doesn't have as much of the "floating" with the clickwheel.

[Robo]

Originally Posted by PB PM Its the smallness of it that makes it a Nano, that thing is huge and would be extremely awkward in your pocket. The 2G Nano is the only thing I can stand in my pocket at work, the 3G is too fat and that looks much to tall. I rather like the smallness of the 2G screen, its there to help find your music and play it, not to put on a show. Small and simple, that is the key, too bad Apple lost sight of that with the new UI etc. I also have the black 8GB 2G so, I guess it doesn't have as much of the "floating" with the clickwheel.

Again, that mock-up looks to be almost exactly the size of the 2G iPod nano (I wouldn't be surprised if it was, just as the 2G iPod nano was almost exactly the same as the 1G). So I don't get the "huge and...extremely awkward" comments. Everybody thought that the 3G iPod nano looked fat until people actually realized that, wait a minute, it was thin (although technically slightly larger than the 2G). This is the same - in fact, I'd bet it's smaller by volume than the 3G (just as the 2G was).

The fact that the screen is vertically oriented when holding the iPod nano "upright" means that the "splitscreen" menu from the 3G nano is probably gone. Since you seem to hate the new UI, that's a good thing, right?

I don't really see how anyone can feel that this is anything but the best of both worlds. It seems to have the smaller size, more pleasing proportions, and simpler menu of the 2G iPod nano, with the larger screen and video capability of the 3G. The only downside is that you'd have to rotate the iPod in order to view video, which is something Apple obviously tried to avoid with the iPod nano 3G (I'm guessing Jobs considered it "inelegant"), but is that really that big a deal?

[PB PM]

Lets put it this way, I find it very hard to believe Apple will use that design. How often has Apple reused a design style it abandon? I found it hard enough watching movies on the 5G iPod, I just cannot imagine watching on anything smaller, such as that.

I guess I'm just more willing to believe Apple will push for touch on everything, than Apple going back and recycling an old design style.

[psmith2.0]

How can you complain about how "big" it is when there's nothing in that photo to give it scale? There's no quarter or Coke can there for reference, so how do you know it's some huge thing that looks awkward in your pocket, going solely on that photo of it sitting there by itself?



Robo's right...I bet it's the same size as the 2G nano, which was freakishly small and thin...way more so than photos ever conveyed. I was always stunned when I'd see one in real life (at Target or in someone's hand) because the photos at Apple's site - the "beauty shots" of them on the white background or whatever - never made it obvious just how small and compact it was.

As for "re-using the design", what are you talking about? There's only so much you can do with a rectangle, a screen and a round click wheel. You could argue that the regular, full-size iPod has been "re-using" that design for about seven or so years now. What do you want...a round or triangle iPod?



This design is the only way I see for them to both a) have a larger screen than the 2G nano and b) have that same popular vertical-oriented design (instead of the short, squat look of the current nano). After a year or so - seeing them in person a few times, playing with one myself, etc. - I still hate how they look. Short, fat and square. It's the ugliest iPod they've ever made, IMO (sorry to anyone who has one, that's just my opinion).



This thing, if it's tapered like that (like a squished football, viewed from the top) is new to any iPod design, but probably takes its cue from the MacBook Air (thinning - or coming to a smaller point - at the edges).

I swear I'm not being a hard-head, but I truly don't get anything you're talking about...your complaints and analysis just don't hold up or make sense to me at all: you can't tell it's huge, it's not a retread design, etc.

[turbulentfurball]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 This thing, if it's tapered like that (like a squished football, viewed from the top) is new to any iPod design, but probably takes its cue from the MacBook Air (thinning - or coming to a smaller point - at the edges).

I think the tapered edges might make the clickwheel a little awkward to use.

[psmith2.0]

In what way? It doesn't physically spin (hasn't for years), so there's no issue of that. The wheel itself is just touch sensitive, and if it bends slightly to conform to the face of the thing (we're not talking anything huge or ridiculous, if the above photo is anything to go by...it looks fairly flat to me), I don't see how it's a problem.

Or were you talking about some other aspect (no good side grip or something)?



If the above pic is legit (I can't tell, but it's a pretty nice mockup if it's fake), then apparently Apple doesn't have - or see - a problem with it and they've manufactured the thing.

[turbulentfurball]

I just think that it'd be cumbersome to use with a curved surface. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to navigate it quite so quickly as with a completely flat surface.

[psmith2.0]

Wait, are we having another "ding the iPhone's keyboard - and deem it a failure - before the thing is even released" type of discussion here?

I'm pretty sure you'd get used to it, whatever design or approach Apple takes. We always do. We're humans...we've got that whole "walk on two feet and adapt to new, different things with relative ease" thing down pretty well. (we've all adapted to the shuffle's click wheel, which is nothing like that on the other, current iPods, which, in turn are quite different from the click-wheel of previous-generation iPods...things change and tweak over time, over the iPod's life-span, and we've all flowed right along with it; I can't think of why we wouldn't again if needed).

It's not as though that click wheel is on the side of a golf ball or something (or that this new iPod, viewed from the top, is actually - American - "football" shaped, making for a ridiculously huge curved front); how much of a "curved surface" could we possibly be talking about? It looks very slight to me, especially in the center area where the click-wheel sits.

BTW, the iPhone's keyboard is just fine; one of its nicer, more well-thought-out features, IMO. I type on it as fast and accurately as I want, and have pretty much since day one...so I guess I tend to view these sorts of things (concerns or complaints about a product's usability and comfort before we've even held and used one) with a bit more of a than I have in the past.

[turbulentfurball]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 I'm pretty sure you'd get used to it, whatever design or approach Apple takes. We always do. We're humans...we've got that whole "walk on two feet and adapt to new, different things with relative ease" thing down pretty well.

Heh, yeah I'm sure I would. I don't plan on buying an iPod Nano now or ever FWIW. Also, the iPod Touch's keyboard is the best thing since sliced bread. I can type faster on that than T9 on an mobile phone I've ever used.

[psmith2.0]

Definitely! It's pretty slick for such a small device...and way easier than I ever would've imagine, just going by the demos and website videos before I actually got my hands on one. I can actually type a two-sentence text message (with no "text speak" whatsoever...I actually spell out entire words! ) in seconds, instead of the 4-5 minutes it took with my old flip-phone with the numeric keypad only. I never got the hang of that whole thing...watching me try to text message on my old phone was like watching a monkey in a chemistry lab; you had no idea what was going to happen, but you're pretty sure it wasn't going to be pretty or good.