Yes, continue I must on this iPod quest…
I was telling the female about the new iPod minis, saying that they were smaller, but had less space for music, after I used the word ‘gigs’ and was reprimanded, I told her that the iPod mini might hold 1000 songs while the regular iPod might hold 4000 songs, to which she thought I was nuts for thinking that was some big deal, explaining that she doesn’t even have that much music anyway. (I had to guess on the numbers, she caught me off guard.) Of course I would have responded that I do have that much audio, and would like to have a large pocket firewire drive, but instead I gave up. The iPod mini will find it’s niche. (A side note to this would be that she might be used to loading up a device before use, as she does with the Rio, but again, I didn’t feel like pursuing the issue.)
Now, what if Apple had gone the other way? No, not made them bigger, but kept the same size of the old iPod, and added features. A Network connection? The Rio Karma has an ethernet port, which sounds very interesting, perhaps Apple could have incorporated wifi into the iPod. I suppose you could do this with a Rio Karma by adding a wireless ethernet bridge, of course it would be nice to have it all in one little package. Don’t you think the geeks out there would like a 40 gig wifi-enabled hard drive and digital audio player? Of course you’d have to figure out battery charging, or replaceable batteries, or an AC adapter, but those are minor issues… Again, maybe the technology just isn’t there yet for Apple to do it right. Evidence to this would be the following on the RioWorld forums: Re:Ethernet – have you gotten it to work?
Rio responded to my support e-mail stating there is a known issue with ethernet compatability and they are looking into it, whatever that means!!!!!!
Whatever that means, indeed. It seems to mean it “sort of” works, and as we know, Apple isn’t into things that “sort of” work. You’ll find other messages in the forum regarding how to repair old players on your own, with tips like: "have you tried bending the battery contacts outward slightly?" and such.
Archos (and others) also seem to be doing a bit more with portable players, like making them recorders as well. The Ondio 128 FM Recorder records directly into MP3 from a built-in FM radio, and does voice recording as well. What if voice recording and/or FM tuning had been added to the iPod? Besides perhaps angering 3rd party add-on manufacturers, I think people might welcome these things.
So what’s the point? Only that we’ve just begun, and these devices, whether they play audio, record it, or do a dozen other things, are quite interesting, and will hopefully only get more interesting in time…
Stay tuned!