Michael Braun's Blog

If you are interested:
http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2007/09/05/coming-soon-live-blogging-the-apple-product-announcement/

This link seems to be better: http://live.slashgear.com

Today, at 10 AM PST, Apple has a media event scheduled. The rumors around the internets seem to indicate that Apple will announce a new line of iPods, including new full-screen, “true video” iPods. Rumors also have it that these iPods will have wi-fi, internet, and a whole bunch of other stuff. But, I don’t think so. I think we are going to see iPods with great capacity to play video, but not too much else. Now, obviously, I would like it if these iPods had wi-fi and whatnot, but here’s my reasons.

1. iPhone, iPhone, iPhone! No one doubts that the iPhone is, in fact, the coolest iPod ever. But you trade storage space for a phone. If I have to choose between a very expensive phone and storage space for all my music, there’s no hesitation. I’m going with the storage. Apple knows that there need to be other features on the iPhone to keep people buying it. They can’t limit themselves to smart-phone users only. An identical gadget sans phone will hurt iPhone sales.

2. It’s too much. The iPod has had wild success limiting features. There are plenty of devices with more features than the iPod, but the iPod still wins out. That’s because I can hand an iPod to my mother, tell her how to go forward and back on the menu structure, and she can play music with it. Now, perhaps the new features would be so well integrated that any one could use it, but I wouldn’t believe that my mom would be comfortable using the iPhone, so I’m skeptical that Apple would try to pack the iPod with so many features without some serious concern for the difficulty of use.

3. Market demand. Players with high features haven’t sold well. True, that’s in the face of intense competition from Apple: it’s hard to top the iPod in coolness, but now to make the iPod more like those other players seems silly. Is there any indication that people want to be able to browse the internet on their iPod? Do people really buy an iPod so they can carry their calendar around with them? The only reason I would like wi-fi in the new iPod is so I could stream music to my AirPort Express without using my computer. But not even the iPhone does that.

Anyway, we’ll see. In a lot of ways, I’m rooting for more features. I’ve already said that I would buy a full-screen iPod (though I’m not writing out the check just yet), but the new features (or lack thereof) wouldn’t necessarily sway me one way or the other. Although, imagine this… I go to travel for work and instead of needing to bring along two computers (my personal and my work laptops), I could just bring one, and my iPod. On my iPod, I’d have my music, pictures, and the internet. I can now email and blog right in my pocket. That sounds pretty damn cool.