The New Road

WiFi iPod

I've heard some rumblings about an iPod with Wi-Fi. I think that is an awesome idea. For one, iTunes already knows about the podcasts you listen to. So if the iPod were given the feed URLs it could monitor those podcasts while you are at the gym or the coffee shop. That way when you finish with one podcast you could see two or three more that weren't there when you started! Cool.

But I think there are more possibilties than just podcasts. Think about Pandora and what is going on there. Imagine that you could tell your iPod the artists you like and have it download twenty or so songs. Then as you listened it would download more so that you would never run out. The never ending random playlist.

You couldn't burn the songs or turn them into MP3. But you could just click on one and buy it through the iPod and have it permanently added to your collection.

In addition your iPod could live stream from your favorite radio station. Or pick up locally crafted mix feeds.

One last thing I was thinking about was a Wi-Fi camera in combination with a Wi-Fi iPod. Your camera could automatically download the pictures as you take them to the iPod. With 40-80GB of space you could easily spend a whole vacation taking pictures without ever changing a video card or downloading the card to iPhoto.

Suffice to say, an iPod with Wi-Fi would open up an almost unlimited number of options.

Of course, that blurs the whole product image line with the iPod. A product image that I'm not sure I fully understand. For example, my step Father asked me while he couldn't just put MP3 files on the iPod directly as a disk and have it play them. I was at pains to try and justify that and basically gave up. Why can't you play just a random MP3 that I drop onto the iPod as a disk?

Anyway, a Wi-Fi iPod would bring it closer to the PDA devices and the PSP. Which is probably a situation Apple doesn't want, since frankly the iPod doesn't stack up favorably against the PSP. It's only advantage is the drive.