Video iPod?

Patrick wrote some stuff about the rumoured Video iPod on his site. He doesn’t think it will happen, but is perfectly happy to be wrong. I’m the same, but different: I think it will happen, but I’m perfectly happy to be wrong.

Anyway, I posted a comment on his site, and it’s really long , so I’ll post it here too.

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I’m a certified fence-sitter about Apple rumours, but I’d like to offer four counter-reasons why Apple will release a video iPod:

# Sony PSP: Sony and Apple are butting heads in a lot of areas (I think a merger is long-term inevitable), but right now Apple sees the PSP platform as a threat to the iPod platform. They want to maintain their lead by offering something, even if it’s not the most popular thing in the world, to counter it. Remember the lack-lustre beginnings of iPod Photo? It didn’t take off right away, but it was there , and the functionality eventually made it down to the rest of the family.

# QuickTime: Apple’s never liked QuickTime, the player was one of the last visible bits of the default system to be Cocoa-ised. What’s with all the attention it’s been getting lately? There’s some fantastic MPEG-4 stuff in there now. MPEG-4 is flexible enough to degrade itself to be played anywhere. Hours of movies and TV shows can be stored even on my first-generation iPod. The player finally got Cocoa-ised. The code was cleaned up. Hmm.

# The curtains: Nano’s announcement had a jeans motif, as in “fit this in your pocket”. What’s with the curtain? Hmm.

# Pixar: Apple’s getting into the movie distribution business and they’re aiming to do it better than their music distribution business. Steve knows Hollywood, he’s commercialised computer animation and helped its acceptance as an art form, he’s successfully told Disney to take a hike.

# (bonus) Nano: Two separate announcements produce more news stories than one announcement of two products. The “Nano announcement” was actually “supposed” to be for the ROKR. In the days that followed, it turned into the “Nano announcement”. The Nano beat the ROKR, and Steve knew it would.

# (bonus) Apple’s never happy with status quo. They’re up to something. I think Steve gets bored easily.