[DRSpeed85]

The ipod nano is clearly a replacement for the mini. Will there be a nano version of full sized players? I have a feeling that even if apple keeps harddrives in them they will shrink it to the size of the sony hd5, probably even smaller. But now with the recent announcement from samsung ofthe 16/32gb nano grade flash drives, the possibility seems to be there.

 

[Fish Tank X]

Once you get past 4 or 8 gigs, the cost gets completly out of control. Would you pay $500 for a 30 gig iPod? The answer is probably no. Neither will the rest of the populace. Harddrives were chosen for MP3 players for a reason.

 

[nikongod]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Tank X Once you get past 4 or 8 gigs, the cost gets completly out of control. Would you pay $500 for a 30 gig iPod? The answer is probably no. Neither will the rest of the populace. Harddrives were chosen for MP3 players for a reason.

i agree. in the distant futore the chips will probably be less expensive, but for the present they are prohibitivly so.

most of the computer chips made NOW are thrown out because they dont work. because of some manufacturing flaw or another. immagine if they were more complex, and detailed. as time preogreesses, and the things are more relyably made they come down in price.

 

[trumpetdc]

You know, to be honest, I would probably be willing to pay 500 for a 30gb flash player...

 

[DRSpeed85]

But apple is in with a special deal with samsung to get flash drives at the price of alternative harddrives with the same capacity right? Isnt there a possibility that this deal with also include higher capacity flash drives?

 

[jefemeister]

Why can't the memory be compact flash? That way you could just get a single player (perhaps a couple with varying fanciness) and use whatever size memory you want. Maybe a song-copyrighting issue?

 

[blessingx]

Yes, but when is the question. Not right away that's for sure.

 

[nikongod]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jefemeister Why can't the memory be compact flash? That way you could just get a single player (perhaps a couple with varying fanciness) and use whatever size memory you want. Maybe a song-copyrighting issue?

they are out and about.

most types of removable memory are supported by the various players.

memory stick, smart-media, and compact flash are all available. probaby some others too.

 

[RedLeader]

CF cards use the same chips, it's all cost. You want to pay $300 for a 10gb chip, plus the $100 for the player?

 

[jefemeister]

yeah, I was just looking at tigerdirect. I had no idea the higher GB levels were so expensive. Well, at least we can look forward to it.

 

[ripfrankwhite]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DRSpeed85 The ipod nano is clearly a replacement for the mini. Will there be a nano version of full sized players? I have a feeling that even if apple keeps harddrives in them they will shrink it to the size of the sony hd5, probably even smaller. But now with the recent announcement from samsung ofthe 16/32gb nano grade flash drives, the possibility seems to be there.

The announcement was 16/32 gbits, not gbytes. Nothing huge.

 

[notnormal]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ripfrankwhite The announcement was 16/32 gbits, not gbytes. Nothing huge.

Go read the announcement again. They've created 16 Gbit NAND chips. If combined in a normal 16x16 configuration, then that would make 32 GBytes!

An 8x16 configuation would make 16 GBytes.

 

[traficante]

Not anytime soon. Ram doubles in capacity every 18 months...at least it has since I my 4 MB ram 486 PC back in 1993. So in 4.5 years we should have 30GB flash Ipods. At that point flash memory would be large enough to satisfy most users.

 

[azncookiecutter]

In my personal opinion, there's not going to be a flash memory full size iPod, since most people who buy the full sized iPods buy it for the price adventage per GB that the full size iPods have over its little brothers. Once flash memory hits that capacity point, it will no doubt be friggin' expensive.

 

[PooJou]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jefemeister Why can't the memory be compact flash? That way you could just get a single player (perhaps a couple with varying fanciness) and use whatever size memory you want. Maybe a song-copyrighting issue?

The point of varying sizes is marketing and positioning. It's difficult for consumers to understand all the various functions and what not as it is, that's why they say "20gb ipod Xthousand songs" "6gig nano Xthousand songs" - It's an easily definable variable

Oh and they'll prolly have to fix that whole limited write cycles thing with flashmemory first. That and the fact that you forget HDD makers scale as fast if not faster than Memory manufacturers.

Flash memory was chosen for the nano due to it's small size, and low power consumption. No doubt that the design team dictated that they needed to use solidstate memory in order to fulfil their criteria as opposed to the other way around ie. omg we need a solidstate ipod! (as i have a feeling that this happens a lot at apple

)