My "Ultimate" iPod Wish List

Next week, there is a major Mac conference where something "big" is expected. The internet is buzzing a lot about a new Video iPod with a larger screen. The latest spy photo pictured here is from MacShrine. I'll leave it to the iPod faithful to debate if the floor pictured around the unit is typical of what is found in an Apple store or not. In the end, we don't even know if this is an Apple product, or from a competitor. It might not even be a media player in the end, perhaps it's a handheld, or a remote control or something else. At any rate, it certainly is interesting to follow the discussion.

Personally, I don't expect any replacement for the Video iPod for a while. Why? The new flagship iPod has been a back to school, end of summer tradition. This way, the buzz is created all fall, and it is still quite a new product in time for the all important Christmas shopping season. Otherwise, the buzz may be gone by the time the holidays roll around, and there goes the sales from sizzle to fizzle.

In the meantime, I'd like to go through the improvements that should be incorporated into the next top of the line iPod to make it "the ultimate." I think we'll only see a few of these features incorporated next time around, but here is "my wish list."

1. The larger screen in the picture is a key feature we'll see incorporated soon. The smaller screen was completely adequate before support for photos and now videos was added. The screen on many handhelds, and even some smartphones is larger. If Apple wants to go beyond the novelty of selling videos at the iTunes store, and wants to sell a billion videos, I'm sure they realize that larger than a 2.5" screen is needed for this.
2. We need a larger storage capacity. Thirty and sixty gigabytes was fine when it was all music, with a few photos mixed in. When the iPod Video debuted, there was no increase in capacity. With a season or two of your favorite shows, and some movies, the hard drive will start to get crowded. Hard drives work best when they've got plenty of extra space. I'm sure Apple will up the storage capacity- eventually. I hope that the new capacities are 40 and 80 gigabytes when the next player is introduced with incremental improvement afterwards.
3. I doubt we'll get this anytime soon, but I really would like to see WiFi incorporated into the next iPod. Everything else, from computers, to handhelds and even cameras have cut the cord, so why not our favorite music player. This would open up several possibilites for the iPod. How about wireless "quick synching?" Just bring the iPod near your computer, and your new songs from iTunes go from your computer's hard drive to your white music player. On vacation, this would be a way to download a new movie for the plane ride home in the airport without a computer. Want to share your songs? I would love a way to send intros of songs to a friend's iPod. If they like it, they can buy it off of iTunes; if not delete it and try another.
4. This is in the category of "when hell freezes over," but I'll still include it on my wish list. I'd like the new iPod to support some other music formats like WMA and OGG. Yes, there are some hacks, but native support is always best. The "ultimate player" should be able to play all my music, even if it happens to be in a competing format like WMA. We all have some older files on our hard drives that we still want to be able to listen to without a week long conversion project.
5. Also on my wish list, is better handheld functionality. I'm talking about more than just email addresses, or a calender. With a new touchscreen, and a stylus alphabet or onscreen keyboard, the new iPod could easily make every handheld stay charged in its cradle. Who needs a Pocket PC when the iPod's hard drive can hold all that and so much more?
6. A flash card reader slot would be another welcome addition. What better way to back up your flash media card while on vacation. Then, of course, you can view your pictures, while not depleting the camera's battery. At the very least, support for SD cards should be done. Apple can even make it profitable by selling trademark "Apple white" memory cards with their logo on them. Think this is not going to happen? SanDisk is planning on a microSD slot in their upcoming player. Apple should follow along on this one.
7. The ultimate upcoming iPod should have a removeable battery. This serves two purposes. The first is that you can buy a spare to have around and keep charged. Think about all the money Apple could make selling the spare batteries, the upgraded high capacity batteries, and the desktop and travel chargers for the batteries. This would also be great as it would not require all the issues of fixing an iPod's dead battery. 'Nuff said on this one.

These seven ideas are what I'd like to see incorporated to make the iPod the ultimate music player. Let's see, whenever the next iPod is released, if any of these featured ideas get incorporated by Apple. Is your favorite feature not on the list? Let us know in the comments section what you would like to see in the next release!

--Jonas