Greg Krehbiel
Inventors and investors, pay attention. The next new thing will be disposable iPods
by Greg Krehbiel on 11 March 2009
My kids have iPods, and over the last few years a few of them have broken.
That’s to be expected. Putting a sensitive electronic device (a hard drive) in a device a kid is going to cart around everywhere is a recipe for disappointment. In fact, it’s downright stupid.
The proper way to do this would be to keep your library of music in a stable place (your home computer, or — better yet — a professionally maintained online storage facility with backups) and to transfer portions of it to a disposable, portable device. Something like a disposable phone.
That way, if the device gets smashed, dropped in the pool, left in the hot sun, or whatever, it’s no great loss.
Also, you should be able to log in to your online music library from any computer and download the songs you want to your portable device. And when wireless access gets fast and cheap enough, you should be able to stream your music straight to any portable device. No synching or any of that nonsense. You’d maintain your library and your playlists on the server.
That’s the future of portable music devices. So Apple, Sony, LG, etc. — take note.
2009-03-11 » Greg Krehbiel
11 March 2009 @ 12:08 pm
I’m not so sure the memory’s the expensive part. A 2 gig flash drive is somewhat less than 20 bucks, but a 2 gig MP3 player is around a hundred.
11 March 2009 @ 12:48 pm
Storage with no moving parts (i.e., not a hard drive) does change the logic a bit, but I still think the move is towards data storage in centralized locations and networking to get it out to particular devices / applications.
11 March 2009 @ 9:55 pm
Actually, $100 is a little pricey for a 2GB MP3 player. An iPod, maybe, but you should be able to get a Sansa or even a Sony for <$50.
I would love an MP3 player that’s has no (or perhaps very little) builtin and uses standard USB keys for storage. That’d be really flexible, I could swap in a few different cheap keys for various uses. Haven’t seen such a beast yet. Attention Inventors and Investors!
Actually, I agree with Greg, the future will probably be wireless MP3 players that allow you to pull down your library from the “cloud”.