Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Humor, iPod Family, Rumors
Apple breaks silence - denies claims of wireless iPod, kinda
Apple doesn't feed the press many scraps, if any, and they rarely - if ever - comment on unreleased products. Apple Taiwan, however, has broken the silence by denying claims of Apple sending staff to major Asian markets to demonstrate these rumored wPods. So no, they didn't exactly deny claims that the devices exist - just claims that they're getting trained on how to use and sell them.
Speculation has been heating up about a wPod in light of Microsoft's announcement of Zune, an iPod competitor, that could feature wifi. Yes, I know wifi is an announced feature, so in all likelihood it should feature wifi, but in the tried and true Vista spirit of scrapping announced features, it sounds like Microsoft has already dropped video support from Zune. With the way things are going, they'll be lucky if the device ships with the ability to play music.
But I digress. Back on the topic of wifi and everyone's favorite little white music player, we very well might not see it in the next version. Apple hasn't been publicly hip on the idea (though Jobs did say video wouldn't happen either), it's tough to build in and, perhaps more importantly, it eats batteries for breakfast. The iPod already receives criticism for its 14 hour battery life (with only 2 or 3 hours of video) in light of competitors like Sony who get upwards of 20 and 30 hours, so adding a juice-hungry feature like wifi is no small step for a device like this.
Regardless, we'll see what we can see in the upcoming months, as the iPod is definitely ready for a refresh. Who knows, maybe you'll be able to buy iTMS music from the palm of your hand soon enough.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Brendan said 1:42PM on 8-16-2006
These rumors are too much, so many rumors and so few products. I think we all need to chill, even if they do release this thing the songs you buy will still cost money. It will be cool, but if it's going to eat the battery which it probably will then I don't want it until they(apple) can implement this efficiently.
People have been mentioning recently about a wish for Apple to put a camera on the back of the new iPod's, not for video-conferencing, but for taken snapshots. A 4.0Mp cam from Samsung(since they're in bed already) with a small flash, now that would be sweet indeed. Just out of curiosity does anyone here know what res. in Mp are the built-in iSights. (Im guessing about 1.5Mp or ??)
Reply
Matt said 1:43PM on 8-16-2006
from what i understand (and i may be wrong), but i think that 20-30 hours sony claims is only if you're playing their proprietary ATRAC codec. if you play mp3's, its back down to where the ipod is.
Reply
andy said 2:07PM on 8-16-2006
i dont think wireless is something people are really asking for?!?! bluetooth headphones are still to bulky, not the best quality and have battery issues themselves.
Reply
zune said 2:19PM on 8-16-2006
I think the beauty of Wi-Fi is file sharing. We are in a connected world now, look how the live service has boosted xbox.
Reply
astutefool said 2:31PM on 8-16-2006
Brendan, I wondered about that too. All iSight cameras are 640 by 480 VGA, basically low res camera phone equivalent.
Sony are misleading about their player's battery life.
All hard disk players have flash memory onto which upcoming songs are loaded, this saves the player from having to spin the hard disk thus saving power. 60GB iPod has twice as much memory as the 30GB (becuase it has a much bigger hrad drive) thus the higher battery life.
Sony's claims are based on a low bit rate proprietary codec, the songs from the music store aren't even that poorly encoded (48 Kbs). The base their claims on low bit rate files because more of them fit onto the small flash memory unit, so battery stats look better.
In real world situations, Sony's hard disk players have very similar battery lives to iPods.
Reply
Bob said 2:59PM on 8-16-2006
I would be wary of placing much trust in what Sony claims. That and Sony-manufactured batteries (limited to laptops currently) have been documented as fire/explosive hazzards.
Reply
kevin said 3:15PM on 8-16-2006
actually, their claims may not be as outrageous as some of you claim. their players that sport the ability to charge a player for only 3 minutes to get 3 hours of battery life is true. i owned such a sony player and this feature was quite useful.
Reply
EL Mystica said 3:20PM on 8-16-2006
It would be nice to see Apple export it's extras to Europe.
In Belgium, we are still waiting for ITMS' videos. We can buy iPods that can play video, but we still cannot buy videos from Apple it's store. Luckily, we can find footage elsewhere.
And what about the new Nike+/iPod?
I bought one in Miami but they are still not available in Belgium.
Or a new Airport Extreme Base Station for Europe?
And if they ever build a phone, please, make one for Europe too. Going to America every year is becoming a little bit too expensive...
And Apple Stores, Refurbished Apples, ... All very welcome in Europe. And after that, launch some new products :)
Reply
matt said 3:21PM on 8-16-2006
Doesn't Apple do the exact same thing? I remember reading something about how playing AAC files give you better battery life than MP3s or other types of files
Reply
astutefool said 3:52PM on 8-16-2006
Apple don't do the same thing. AAC is not proprietary and Apple battery life claims are not based on 48 kbps Atrac files. They are based on 128 kbps AAC files.
Reply
kevin said 4:05PM on 8-16-2006
ps. i was using only mp3s -- no other format
Reply
matt said 4:08PM on 8-16-2006
I didn't say it was proprietary. I just said that I read that they also give the best-case-scenario reasoning behind their MP3 player battery life as does sony, or any other company. So, since they use AAC files as their primary format, dealing with DRM and so forth, their best-case battery life is with AAC files.
Reply
brian said 4:28PM on 8-16-2006
AAC may not be proprietary but their DRM... ahem
Reply
Nik Fletcher said 5:10PM on 8-16-2006
Maybe Apple will reveal all at Apple Expo Paris :) Would also be an ideal time to refresh Airport and keep selling it in Europe (damn those Hazardous Substance Rules ;-) )
Reply
Paul Ingram said 5:32PM on 8-16-2006
To #12:
According to the iPod tech specs page, the battery life and capacity are based on the AAC files from iTMS, so this would be more honest and specific than Sony's number which are based on either a complete recompression of each and every song file or ridiculously poor sounding music.
One number is realistic in a real-world scenario, the other is just misleading.
Reply
oxjox said 5:37PM on 8-16-2006
I'm hoping you guys can help me understand the real world benefits of a wPod. I suppose you could access the iTMS with your ipod but that's a really lame idea unless there's a keyboard on the iPod. How will you search for music? You could share music, but that's not legal. You could stream to an Airport Extreme connected to your sound system - a very cool feature that I WOULD use! Anything else? It all seems pretty pointless and expensive to me.
What no one has developed yet is an XM, Sirius or FM Radio DAP that will let you flag a song that you would like to buy later on the iTMS.
How are iTunes sales driven? How are people hearing about new music if all they're doing is listening to their iPods with their own prerecorded tunes on it?
What WOULD be nice and I believe perfectly legal, is if I could beam a 30 second clip of a song to my friend's iPod that he could later sync to iTunes and discover it on the Music Store.
Reply
tnkgrl said 5:55PM on 8-16-2006
*oxjox*, I suppose that in addition to the scenarios you describe, an iPod with WiFi would allow you to sync wirelessly, and more importantly, to stream Internet radio like SOMA FM :)
To me that's not very useful, since my Nokia N80 (which, with a 2 GB memory card, has replaced my iPod) already does all that and more.
Reply
Bruce Anderson said 9:25PM on 8-16-2006
#13: There is no DRM in the AAC format. It's possible to add it in, as Apple has done with the files they sell in the iTMS, but files you rip yourself have no restrictions on them.
Reply
Jackmaninov said 1:03AM on 8-17-2006
Adding Wifi as a bullet-point feature makes no sense to Apple, unless there is some sort of FEATURE that it will allow. What could Wifi give us?
All I can think of are:
- Wireless iTunes sync. Who cares; you still have to plug in your iPod to charge it.
- Wireless music purchase. Where exactly are the hotspots for this to be a big deal? If I'm at home, I'll just use iTunes on my computer to purchase. Also, how is the iTunes music store going to be shrunk down to the tiny screen on an iPod effectively?
- Wireless music sharing (like share tunes with friends/people you bump into on the street, even temporarily). While I think this would be pretty cool, the record companies were already able to get Apple to all but kill its iTunes library sharing. How likely is it that they'll allow this? Or even if they do, that you'll be able to share purchased music?
Reply
brian said 10:04AM on 8-17-2006
#18: Yeesh, I never said that AAC files had DRM built-in. When I said "their DRM," I obviously meant Apple's DRM.
Reply