iLounge

1

That’s great, but wouldn’t we all rather see Flash memory with half that capacity?

Posted by urbanslaughter on December 5, 2006 at 7:51 AM (PDT)

2

Patience, young grasshopper.

Seriously though, 50GB flash would be awesome, but sometimes you gotta take technology advances as they come. At least this will make smaller capacity iPods cheaper, assuming Apple uses the 100GB drive in their next version.

Posted by cxc273 on December 5, 2006 at 8:00 AM (PDT)

3

But if we have flash memory, that means no more using the iPod as an external drive, right?

Posted by JW on December 5, 2006 at 8:10 AM (PDT)

4

Um, wouldn’t that be 20% more?

Posted by Todd on December 5, 2006 at 8:27 AM (PDT)

5

Todd, no ... the article was correct ... it’s 25% bigger.

Posted by tunatom on December 5, 2006 at 8:40 AM (PDT)

6

Gee, I hope Apple has some sort of conference in January to release a new iPod using these hard drives!

Posted by mike on December 5, 2006 at 8:47 AM (PDT)

7

100 is 25% greater than 80.  80 is 20% less than 100.

Posted by bozz on December 5, 2006 at 8:50 AM (PDT)

8

i’m not going to read the article to find out who said it, but, “In the past device makers have typically incorporated higher capacity drives quickly into their products” made me chuckle. whoever wrote that obviously didn’t suffer through the wait for iPods to go from 60GB to 80GB. it’s not gonna happen until 2008 at the earliest, IMHO. if that’s your idea of “quickly”...

Posted by mrfett in Washington, D.C. on December 5, 2006 at 8:53 AM (PDT)

9

Hey JW,
There isn’t anything preventing a flash-based iPod from being used as an external drive I don’t think. Isn’t that done with the Nanos now?

Posted by wil_bc on December 5, 2006 at 9:47 AM (PDT)

10

So does this mean that Apple gets this first? Or could it be Toshiba/Microsoft?

The Zune’s launch was fairly lame with only a 30GB unit to look/scoff/snicker at.

Posted by flatline response on December 5, 2006 at 12:20 PM (PDT)

11

The slim 30 gig does seem to be a sweet spot, it way outsells the 80 even though it’s less than half the disk space.  I don’t know how many people will buy a physically larger 100 gig over a tiny 30 gig, and pay the premium for the upgrade.  Besides, they’ve all got a TON of space.  My entire music library is only 180 gig, and that’s with a lot of lossless.  Really big hard drives don’t make sense until you start adding the rigors of video, and video won’t make sense until we move away from the 2.5” screen.

BTW, have you seen the Zune screen?  Have you seen the Zune playback interface?  They are both BEAUTIFUL, and make me wish that they player was a) supported by iTunes b) supported by the mac c) had a better user interface, because from a visibility standpoint it’s totally nex-gen.

Posted by dasmegabyte on December 5, 2006 at 12:44 PM (PDT)

12

If Apple brings out a 100gb player. They’ve got my money. That’s pretty much what I need at this point.

Now if they’d at folders to playlist (on the iPod itself) It would be a perfect player for me

Posted by Glorybox3737 on December 5, 2006 at 4:26 PM (PDT)

13

Damn. I really need a new HDD for my PC, it really sucks that a 1.8” drive has more capacity than the HDD i have in my PC.

But in response to the first post, I would rather see a 50, or maybe even 30 GB flash memory drive. I hear that Samsung has made a laptop with 32 GB of flash memory, coupled with a 80 GB hard disk. If Samsung can make a 32GB flash memory, I don’t see why Apple can’t. I wouldn’t mind spending an extra 50 dollars for added durability, longer life, and ruggedness.

Posted by The Soup Nazi on December 5, 2006 at 7:53 PM (PDT)

14

BTW, have you seen the Zune screen?  Have you seen the Zune playback interface?

If you’re talking to me…yes, I’ve seen the Zune screen. And yes I’ve actually used the Zune interface. For the past five days straight.

Fact is, I now actually OWN a Zune—after openly posting here on iLounge that I wouldn’t buy one. I’ve had a brown one for just under a week now. It’s actually a great music player and its SQ is, IMO, much sweeter sounding than my 80GB 5.5G. But regardless of what I think of the Zune, people in general still ridicule the thing. So I pander to the masses.

BTW, the Zune equivalent to iTunes is NOT great. A b*tch to install and even more buggy than iTunes 7.x. The user interface works, but it’s no better (or worse) than the iPod’s click wheel/menu system, IMO. To me the Zune’s screen is still TOO SMALL for video, not to mention the too few vid formats natively available to the Zune for playback. For me personally, vids don’t matter since it it’s a DAP first and foremost. It plays non-DRM .m4a files (which is most of my library), MP3 and WMA (from my Nomad Zen days), and does it more appealingly to my ears. But the screen makes my usual 300x300 pixel album art look like crap; higher-res (i.e., bigger sized) images work better.

I like that I can wallpaper my own images. And the FM works great…but the battery reminds me of my old 40GB 4G (okay, not quite that bad, but close). And the 30GB HD—for me—sucks, particularly after getting used to the 80GB 5.5G. That’s why I say MSFT needs the 100GB drive.

Posted by flatline response on December 6, 2006 at 1:52 AM (PDT)

15

I am so sick of people saying “I don’t know how anyone would have the need for X GB of space…”.  Some people have large libraries and want the largest hard drive they can get.

Posted by bonetoe on December 6, 2006 at 8:49 AM (PDT)