Jul 30

The Future Of iPod

A few years ago, when thinking about the future of iPod, most people saw Bluetooth and new colors, while others expected to get features Apple seems to ignore. No matter how good is the sound quality of any iPod out there(no matter what you will say, the iPods have good sound quality, but none of them is the best in its category - anyway, feel free to drop a comment if you think different, lossy music will always suffer from the limitations of its compression format, so support for losless music formats is the first new feature I would like to see in the next generation of iPods. Anyway, until we get there, let's see what rumors we have about the future of iPod, shall we?

First of all, I must tell you I have no idea if they're going to make them hot unpluggable or not and, honestly, I couldn't care less about that. Anyway, there's a reference to a new iPod Touch in the iPhone 2.1 firmware, and now everyone started coming up with suppositions. My guess? 3G support, and a plastic back. After all, the old iPod Touch was, practically, the "iPhone without the phone," so I don't think an "iPod Touch 3G" is something out of this world.

Second and last of today's rumors regarding the future of iPod, is an iLounge report about the fact that, according to "multiple sources," the 4th generation iPod nano will follow Microsoft Zune's example, and going against the speculations that future iPod nanos will turn into "mini-touches," with a new 1.5:1 widescreen aspect ratio, just like the iPhone and iPod touch, while old iPod nano and iPod classic only had 1.33:1. Even more, you'll be able to rotate it and watch movies as you wish, just like on the iPod Touch.

These being said, I will only voice again my request, although Apple won't rush in to comply - support for losless formats, please, and you can drop support for DRM audio! DRM cracking is already visible, and it's only a matter of time until the iTunes Store will be forced to follow the others and drop DRM protected tracks.

No matter how things may be looking now when it comes to digital music, but not limited to it, I am sure there will be a future in which quality will go on first place, not quantity, as it happens these days...