New iPod on the Horizon

Every so often I've predicted the demise of the larger hard drive based iPods and their replacement with flash memory based units. Well, I was half right - Apple did kill the Classic last year, leaving it without any high capacity portable music device. I was wrong in thinking that at the same time they'd release a new iPod with, say, 128 Kb of flash memory.

Good news, I think it's time to revive the forecast. I'd like to say I'm doing that on the basis of my perceptive analysis of Apple's digital music strategy but actually it's on the basis of a little personal observation and a comment from one of the Apple watching newsletters.

They're suggesting that Apple will shortly announce a new iPod - a super iPod Touch. It would have more storage capacity, and the range needs that. In the absence of the Classic users need a portable device with a respectable capacity, not everyone is able or inclined to be connected to the internet 24/7. Interestingly the new device would be either showerproof or waterproof. I don't think either is a "must have" but given the lives we lead a portable unit that scared of a little damp is rather 20th century. Also rumours suggest a very powerful processor. Playing music isn't greatly CPU intensive but one of the drawbacks of the rest of the iPod range (compared to the Classic) is the decidedly inferior Digital Signal Processor. Let's hope the new unit has enough horsepower not just to play music but also to make it sound great too.

The other pointer? We went to Lakeside last week and of course I went in to the Apple Store where I noticed a shiny new display of iPods. It has seemed to me that Apple were neglecting the iPod range in favour of the iPhone product line. Perhaps having achieved world domination in that area Cupertino are confident enough to dust off the music player line. Anyway, it shouldn't be too long before we find out.

How to Videos

When we designed and launched the new version of the site we found we had a little problem. The tiny bit of code that, we thought, enabled us to display our How To videos worked on our Macs here but sadly that didn't translate to the online version. Result, something of a blank page. Sorry.

Good news!

We've fixed it so you can now see our "How To" videos.