With the exciting news today that Apple is releasing the iphone later this year one can’t help to wonder is the Ipod coming to its end of days. I ask the question is there really a need for a separate device, why have 2 when you can have one that does both. I never really asked this question before about camera phone because people will always want both. A professional camera to do some professional photography and a mobile phone with a camera will never give this, I mean at the level of an SLR. Photographers will always want something better than the average Joe has on the street.
On the other hand the digital music player is something else, you can already see the early adopters walking
around with Sony Ericsson headsets listening to their Sony phones with a maximum size of roughly 1GB. Now you are going to have the iphone holding a huge amount of songs with a whopping size of 8GB which us surely going to increase in the coming years. SO why are we going to need a ipod, heck we are going to be paying at least 300 pounds for a device now who is going to want to go out and spend more on a ipod or any other device that pays music in the few hundred pounds range. Gradually even these cheap MP3 players (i hate that term) are going to past because even the cheapest mobile phones are going to consist of a music player of some sort.
Currently now I leave the house with a wallet, phone and ipod in my jeans pockets I have funny looking bulges in places old women shouldn’t be looking but do we want to have a one device that does all, a phone and ipod and even a wallet (electronic) in one. There would be many people that would jump at the chance I wouldn’t blame them it sounds a rather interesting concept, but it does have its issues thief, loss, privacy and technology restrictions off the top of my head. I ask this question what are the advantages of having one whole system except for convenience, none. It is convenience that drives technology today, its the same thing that has been driving us for centuries. Its convenience that made Bill Gates the richest man in the world to be honest, its the same reason why vista will be a success. The average Joe goes to the PC World now to by a computer, he gets a PC because its the norm, its one of the cheapest, its there. He’s heard he can go home write letters, send emails and do whatever this average Joe can do on a computer, because it will make his life easier. Let me put it this another way one of the original features to be found on any mobile phone sold to the public was the ability to have an in build 24 hour clock, therefore why on gods earth do be still need wrist watches?, the majority of us have mobile phones. The reason is convenience is easier to simply look at the watch on your wrist then rummage through your bulges to find your phone, therefore in the future it will be convenient for us to carry one single device that will do all. Therefore in my eyes Apple is on its way to killing the ipod.
Like anybody out there I could believe this latest adventure by Apple could go tits up hey just look at the digital camera they released. But this new little adventure by Jobs and Co couldn’t possibly go wrong the reason for this being they aren’t starting a new topic and appealing to a new market like the camera. They didn’t start designing a new phone what they have done is to design a new ipod that includes a phone therefore becoming the iphone. This just doesn’t appeal to people wanting a new phone now it appeals to everyone who has an ipod making the population audience huge. Look at the image of the iphone if I told you yesterday that was the new video ipod (of course make it sleeker and remove any interface images) you could happily believe it. Listen its touch screen and wide-screen everything you want in a new video ipod except for the size of the item of course, gradually both will become one and the very images of an ipod or single mp3 player in fact will become a distance memory.
-Kyle
UPDATE: Right after the keynote ended Niall Kennedy shot a bunch of photos of the new iPhone that was on display at the Macworld expo. (via Laughing Squid). Check these images out very good.