On 11/10/04 at 3:38 PM, pepper
reppep.com (Chris Pepper) wrote:
> At 8:26 AM -0800 2004/11/05, Travis Butler wrote:
> >In general, count me as one of the people unimpressed with the iPod
> >Photo. I go into a lot more detail in a LiveJournal entry, but to
> >sum up: the various changes don't make it a bad device, and indeed
> >it's a bit improved, but I don't think the improvements are even
> >close to being worth the premium Apple's charging for them.
> I think you're crazy (just a little bit). A 40gb iPod
> (non-photo) costs $399, and a 40-gb iPod Photo costs $499. That means
> $100 gets you a higher resolution 16-bit color screen, bigger
> battery, NTSC cable, and S-Video dock (regular iPods no longer
> includes docks).
>
> You may not be interested enough to spend $100, or want to
> trade thickness to get better battery life (I don't care much about
> either), but Apple would be stupid to charge less than $100 for all
> those additional features.
Sure, those features aren't free to provide, but their value is what
people think they're worth; as I tried to say in the last post, I think
they provide some relatively minor improvement to the iPod no matter
what you use it for, but their main value is enabling the photo
features. And while I find the photo features mildly interesting, and
would probably use them somewhat if I were just given an iPod Photo,
they sure aren't worth $100 to me. Let me go down the list you mention,
and what they're worth to me:
* Dock: I'd forgotten the regular 'Pods didn't come with a dock any
more; OTOH, I consider Apple's charging $40 for what's essentially a
shaped hunk of metal, a few connectors, and maybe a bit of circuitry to
be highway robbery. I wouldn't pay more than $20 for one, at most.
* NTSC cable: I have no interest in hooking the 'Pod to a TV, and I
think I've used an included video cable to hook a digicam to a TV...
maybe once or twice. Value to me is negligible.
* Bigger battery: extra battery life is always nice, but I'm living
pretty happily with the 6-8 hour life of my 3g; the 12-hour life on a 4g
is a big enough improvement that going from 12 to 15 isn't worth much to
me. $5 to $10, or so.
* Color screen... I've been through a B&W-to-color transition three
times: on the Mac, on the Powerbook, on the Palm. In every case, the
color interface/environment widgets made for a somewhat nicer
experience, but the big value came from the applications that ran much
better under color, or only under color: graphics software. Games. New
interface elements that made functional use of color, like color-coding.
So far as I've seen, the photo features are the only thing that falls
into that category on the 'Pod Photo; everything else is mild cosmetics.
And since I don't find the photo applications to be that compelling, I'm
not willing to pay much for the color screen. $10 to $15 on its own,
without considering photos.
Add it all up, and you're talking $40 to $50 in value to me, in somewhat
quantifiable terms. Anything over that is the value of the photo
features, along with whatever un-quantifiable 'greater than the sum of
the parts' value you get. (I'm thinking of something like the extra
value/charisma/etc. the iPod Mini gains from its size and design, even
though it's a much worse deal than the standard 'pod in price/capacity
calculations.) The un-quantifiable value is hard to judge without
working with one, but I know $50 is a lot more than playing with photos
is worth to me - especially since a decent digicam can do as good a job
as a photo-presentation device, and I would expect most if not all
potential iPod Photo customers already have a digicam.
> I agree with you, in that I hope the next-gen iPod Photo can
> be a USB host, or that it supports a radically upgraded Belkin flash
> reader. These improvements would probably be mostly in software, and
> there's no fundamental reason the iPod couldn't be a great digital
> photo wallet.
Yup, an iPod would make a great digital wallet; *that's* a feature that
would be worth $100 extra to me if everything you needed was included,
and it worked well.
> I agree with the previous poster -- flash formats are to
> varied and too dynamic to pick one or two for the iPod.
That was me. :) And yeah, after a couple of years when it looked like
formats had stabilized, they're breeding again. :p
> >The screen is too small for any but the most casual viewing, and
> >having to hook up to a TV set for a decent look takes away another
> >major factor of the iPod's appeal: your stuff, anywhere, anytime.
>
> I think it may actually work well for "wallet snapshots". I
> was very happy with the Tungsten C's 320x320x16-bit screen for Julia
> pics. The Treo 600's 160x160x11.5-bit(??) display is lousy for this,
> though. I think bit depth is more important here -- the graininess is
> killer, but no-one expects to see fine detail on a hand-held device
> (although I can read book spines when I zoom in on the Canon S400 --
> not necessary for an iPod device...
The 320x320 Palm screen is usable for large-format shots without much
detail, IMHO; head-and-shoulders portrait shots, large structures (the
sample Golden Gate Bridge they included on the Zire 71 looked very
nice), landscapes without much detail like a lot of mountain scenes. I
don't find it very satisfying for anything that has at least a moderate
amount of detail, though; the screen's just too small, in area as well
as resolution.
> >The same goes double for the video iPod some gadget-hounds are
> >clamoring for; pocket video has been tried many times with mini-TVs
> >like the Sony Watchman, and as far as I can tell has flopped
> >miserably every time. A portable video device I can see succeeding
> >is something with a form-factor like the portable DVD-players, which
> >are apparently enjoying market success; but to get something with a
> >screen big enough to be worth watching video on, you have to make
> >something so big that you can't really call it an iPod anymore.
>
> Agreed, except that Apple has 90% of the components in the
> existing iPod, so upgrading the MPEG encoder for another $100 might
> get enough high-end purchasers to make it worthwhile. After all, the
> three constraints on a DVD player are 5" for the DVD, screen size,
> and battery life. I'm not dying for an iPod, but I do spend about 90
> minutes on a subway each day, reading my Palm or paperbacks, plugged
> into my iPod. It wouldn't be that big a jump to watching video on the
> iPod, which already has capacity for several movies, a high-res
> screen (in the Photo), high-bandwidth link to load movies, and
> probably at least enough power to last through most people's one-way
> commutes, before recharging at the office. It may be too tempting to
> resist.
I have to agree with the people who pick screen size as the limiting
factor; as I said, every attempt to market pocket video in that size has
failed. I'm embarrassed to admit that I picked up a Watchman, though
thankfully at a closeout/damaged goods store so I didn't waste much
money on it; after a short time of 'cool gadget,' it's sat on the shelf
gathering dust. A postage-stamp screen just isn't comfortable to watch
for extended periods of time; it doesn't matter how high the resolution
is, I still have to squint to focus on a screen that physically small
after a while. (Digging it out to compare sizes, the Watchman screen is
almost identical in size to the iPod's. The Palm screen doesn't give me
the same trouble when reading e-books; it's almost double the area, and
it's a lot easier to read decent-size text than try to pick out details
in a mini-picture.)
I've also seen a couple of people arguing that portable video is a
non-starter compared to audio, no matter what; there are lots of
activities where you can listen to music but not watch video, like
walking, driving, biking... I think they've got a point, but there still
seem to be enough uses to drive sales of portable DVD players.
On the whole, video's something that might be a fun gimmick to play with
a few times, if it didn't add anything to the price, but there's no way
I'd pay extra for it on a screen the size of the iPod's. I saw one of
the iRiver PVP's at MicroCenter the other day, and the screen looked
almost good enough (clear, a little dim, but almost big enough for
comfort) to be tempting, if I had $500 to casually blow; it'd still only
be in addition to an iPod, though, because it's twice the size and thus
not pocketable/easily portable.
> PS-I would've checked out your LJ posting, but no URL...
<
http://www.livejournal.com/users/tbutler/>. Though I think by now I've
gone into more detail here than there. :) Lots of other meanderings
around as well.
Travis Butler
tbutler
mac.com
...Cats are the proof of a higher purpose to the universe.
![[F]](/Images/i7/site.gif){kind=small}
TidBITS 
TidBITS 