It strikes me as odd that people habitually pack 30, 40, 80Gb even 160Gb of entertainment data in their disk drive based iPods. As a former iPod Nano user (who was perfectly happy with a mere 8Gb of flash based RAM) I was used to picking up a new selection of songs every week or so for using down at the gym (thus my preference for a RAM-based iPod rather then one with a more delicate hard drive). Okay, many times I have been caught out; sometimes I wished I had a certain song or LP not on my week’s playlist but that was the price I had to pay for owning a smaller capacity more rugged gym-friendly iPod; I valued the small size and lighter form-factor over the bigger iPod — that’s why more people like myself are willing to pay premium for owning a smaller, lighter less storage-heavy machine.
However reading the persistent whining of the Apple “fanboys” bemoaning the limited 8Gb and 16Gb capacity of the new iPod Touch, one comment (admittedly on a HiFi enthusiast’s forum — a place much loved by purveyors of ancient vacuum tubes and CD players — hardly the best place for reasoned or rational thought) even went as far as to say it would be “perfect” when Apple brings the iPod Touch to market with 1Tb! Now that struck me as an amazing example of near-myopic technological shortsightedness. Why pack a Terabyte when you have a networked connected WiFi iPod?
Even though drive densities will continue to increase and flash RAM does the same one day we may out of necessity (due to OS bloat and data-creep) be packing a Terabyte in our dockers; but for now I can safely state that the near future will not have us packing that volume of mostly-redundant store. In fact, I think we will be packing less data but making better use of the network! This is sledgehammer stuff guys! Those 80Gb music collections we have in our pockets is mostly surplus-to-requirements in a device that purportedly can only play media for 22hours at a stretch.
The reason why I think 16Gb is enough was not-too-subtly hinted by St Jobs in his sermon to the embarrassingly yow-ing and w00t-ing “press” last week — a comment that to my professional shame went over the heads of almost everybody assembled; just before cuing up Beck’s “Cellphones Dead” (more on that in another blog) to fill the silence while we watched a little blue download bar move across the screen Steve commented en passant in a way I have learned to listen to very carefully that the iPod touch’s Wi-Fi “is not only faster than 2.5G, but it’s faster than any 3G network.” Now, while most people took this to be an obvious dig at AT&T’s antediluvian and warbly EDGE network (are you listening Verizon?) I saw it as a very clear statement of intent that “if you want music by wireless, go for WiFi” — to a networked geek, once you made that connection the rest is easy…
But wait! There’s more…
“Starbucks customers will enjoy the lightening-quick downloads of popular songs and featured play lists powered by our robust T-Mobile HotSpot network,” said Joe Sims, vice president of new business at T-Mobile (in a statement issued by their press office immediately following the Keynote). “This new service is a great way for T-Mobile’s HotSpot network to help customers stay connected to the songs and content that matters most to them.“
Quite a fluffy quote and it doesn’t just restrict itself to Starbucks, iTunes WiFi or indeed any particular form of “content”. How did the press and public react when we saw Steve announce larger hard drives in the iPod Classic? Not exactly jaw-dropping awesome was it? I thought it was so old hat I barely suppressed a yawn at the 160Gb iPod Classic. Its been 2 years since Toshiba shipped the first 40GB 1.8-inch Perpendicular Magnetic Recording Drive and any way you analyze the curve — 160Gb seems “about right”. Hell, 500Gb drives of this ilk will be with us soon enough — new data-packing approaches are already coming along for 3.5-inch brethren and Flash RAM is already increasing in capacity — all a fact of life. Another fact of life is success in this area is how fast you can corner the market for raw materials — and that’s something Apple’s got down pat by pwning Samsung’s entire 4GB Flash RAM output — leaving the competition to muddle on until enough capacity could meet the demands of people other than Apple.
I’m sorry Steve but bigger drives are yawnsome not awesome. We’ve come to expect things like this: but making more or new use of the network… now that’s revolutionary and revolutionary is something the huddled masses had come to see St Jobs deliver.
When the prospect of packing even a 1Tb iPod does not seem to be impossible or revolutionary any more… something else has to happen and it’s important it uses the network to achieve this.
Why?
Well, say I have a load of music or TV shows on my iPod Touch, but I just don’t have *that* piece of music or TV show? What’s a nerd to do? Wait until I get home to sync with my desktop?
Well, thats how we do it today. What about soon?
Saint Jobs habitually dislikes “Umbilical Cords” about the only thing he (begrudgingly) accepts is a power cord and at times I wonder if he sees that as a necessary evil. I don’t like iPod data cords and I bet secretly he doesn’t either — except thats the only other route to charging and therefore powering ones iPod… I’ve been the route of the multi-box HiFi system and look back on it with the same mix of disgust and pity as I would viewing Neanderthal man scratching his arse… WiFi promises freedom from tethered lines and is something Jobs has embraced wholly…
So with my (theoretical) iPod Touch. Why should I go home to my computer to get another TV episode along with another bunch of songs? If I haven’t already bought it I can always buy an episode over the net — and (if I already own the rights to play it) then, why not simply access my iTunes library anywhere over the network? Especially a WiFi coffee bar where I get gouged for access to download the episodes while getting gouged for my boutique caffeinated beverage in a state of blissful [insert any word you feel is the opposite of ennui]. Any way I look at it, 16Gb represents a lot of cache and with just a small tweaking we should all be able to remote-access our iTunes libraries, and our iPhoto collections in fact *all* of our own data on our computers and access them anywhere where we can get a WiFi signal.
This should sit nicely with Apple — who get to gouge you for the computer, the OS, the gadget the episode data and the access; it sits well with the likes of Starbucks and T-Mobile who get a cut from an impulse purchase (which music is becoming more and more of these days) or the WiFi access and the beverage; it can even sit nicely with Rick Rubin who perversely wants to gouge you for simply not owning a music collection at all! It doesn’t sit all that well with AT&T (and I suspect any of the other cellphone providers in this game) who aren’t happy just gouging you for being a bit of plumbing… and that I think is the point of Job’s “Cellphone’s Dead” jibe — its dead if it thinks it can compete with the Internet in this arena!
So, I don’t think the iPod Touch’s 16GB capacity is particularly limiting — its enough for now; The whole point of having a network-connected device is you don’t need 160Gb, 320Gb or even 1TB of redundant store crammed in your dockers when you have access to all that data elsewhere (my next question will be where Apple considers that “elsewhere” to be — and how much they will charge us to gain access to it). if done right, the iPod touch’s limit is what you have at home or what you have paid for the right to gain access to. My iMac last week told me I’d filled up its first 250Gb drive to capacity thanks to keeping encoded RIPs of TV shows and DVDs along with my iTunes and iPhoto database, my spreadsheets, my blog entries my diary my security WebCam storage etc and my backups. So I went out and bought my first 1Tb RAID NAS box… it even has an FTP server and an iTunes server so I naturally want to access its content remotely from anywhere the network can get to it: My Bedroom, my Kitchen, my Office even from a Starbucks in Palo Alto — as soon as I saw Steve mentioning WiFi was coming to the iPod, I knew, if done right that 16Gb was probably (note the qualifier) going to be enough.
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