Apple breaks silence - denies claims of wireless iPod, kinda

Fans are screamign for a wifi enabled device and Microsoft has come through. The music sharing capabilities are super cool.

You can find more at the Zune Forums http://www.zunemax.com/forum/index.php

It's most importantly, even more importantly than reading TUAW, to not use bogus words like "importantly". :)

Your statement made it clear to me that you believed that AAC contained DRM in its spec. I posted to correct that belief. There was nothing obvious to me that would indicate you meant FairPlay. Now it's apparent I was wrong since you clarified things with your response. I stand by my post because if I thought it, others might as well. I posted as much to correct you as to correct others who might misread your post. If you feel offended or that I've stepped on your toes, so be it.

#18: Yeesh, I never said that AAC files had DRM built-in. When I said "their DRM," I obviously meant Apple's DRM.

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?

#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.

*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.

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.

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.

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 ;-) )