Quote:
Originally Posted by
penartur 
256GB SSD for ipod costs $700 just because ZIF connector is uncommon standart, demand for SSDs with ZIF connector is low (when compared with SATA), and there are only one manufacturer making these. It doesn't say anything about the memory price.
256GB 1.8" SSD with MicroSATA interface can be easily purchased for about $400. Ipod Touch uses bare memory chips, not SSD with ZIF/MicroSATA interface, so that 256GB in touch should cost even less... but it seems that Jobs says that you should not want such capacities.
Sony 64GB is competitor not to touch but to old nano, it is similar in dimensions with nano. And it was released in November 2009. And the price was about $350 then and about $250 now.
At the end of the day though, it's supply and demand. Portable storage is still tiny compared to desktops and how many general users, the kind that buy Apple's products in their millions, are calling for more memory? Given that probably <0.1% of people that own them are filling them with lossless files or listening with non-stock buds and there's no competing brands icing them in terms of storage capacity, there wouldn't be any need to keep bumping up the size, not least with the increasing amount of content that is streamed from the cloud or via connected devices. Even the Hifiman, a player that is made for a niche market rather than the general consumer has a paltry amount of memory and you have to rely on swapping about microSD cards which max out at 32GB and cost about £3 per GB (here at least)! HDD players are dead or dying and I doubt they'll ever come back.
I think it's just got to be accepted that portable audio isn't perfect and you have to make a few compromises if you want to be one of these people that insist on having a vast library of music with them at all times. Either you buy a player with expandable memory and carry a bunch of cards about, or you can have a respectable collection of music in lossy on a PMP, or you use streaming, which is still fairly new. Unless you can't enjoy music unless it's lossless (ha?!) or it's your primary/only rig, then I don't really see what the big deal is with just using lossy for portable if most of your listening is done in environments that aren't conductive for critical listening and you have a lossless archive at home you can listen to. Even 32GB gets you quite a bit of music with VBR or some such. More memory is always welcome, obviously, but people here sometimes seem to forget who the target market are for most of these devices.
Even if they did make something aimed at audio enthusiasts, would it really sell enough to be considered a success? It's easy to think when you're on a fairly big forum that 'loads of people would buy it!' when in truth you represent a few blades of grass in a garden, at least for the big companies who produce players in huge numbers and who obviously wouldn't put out anything they didn't think would sell well.
Edited by Somnambulist - 9/2/10 at 1:20pm
