So I have a shiny new iPod. I've put my calendar and contact info on there (I hope a future iPod revision has group browsing for the contacts--just seeing a huge list of people with no context for who the hell they are is a bit scary). I found a program on the net that lets me put the weather into a "contact".
So what else can I do with it? Why isn't there an ebook reader? Why can't I view pictures? It's so cute, I want it to be my PDA too. Music could well be the hook that means I carry the thing everywhere with me.
I guess in a generation or two, the iPod will have Bluetooth to beam contact information around. I'd love to see a Firewire keyboard--it'd be great to be able to edit track information on the iPod, enter new contacts, change appointments. Then again, if it's a metric shitload of money now, I shudder to think what it'd cost if it was useful as well as fun :-)
--Nat
That's a nice scentiment, but is it practical? Ignore the 4-line screen for a moment. Apple hasn't released the tech specs on the guts of the iPod, but I doubt there's a CPU of any merit inside that little box. A few hardware review sites have noticed a dedicated D/A converter or a DSP to handle MP3 decoding, but no one has accused the little iPod of having a CPU. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that it has an itty bitty embedded microcontroller to drive the (simple character driven) display, drive the FireWire, respond to the jog dial and load up the play buffer. Hell, the whole thing might be running on a few KB of FORTH code ferchrissakes.Why isn't there an ebook reader? Why can't I view pictures? It's so cute, I want it to be my PDA too.
It would be nice to have a moderately full featured PC about the size of a walkman. But it would probably cost about as much as an iBook. And let's hope that it doesn't run some bloated OS like Wince...
