New Video iPod Or Apple April Fool’s Day Joke?

How do you like that new iPod with video? Come April First, it may be out of date. Why?

iPod Micro, Pequeno, and Invsa notwithstanding, an iPod with a much larger screen may come off the drawing boards and into your pocket.

When? That’s the tough part. Invisioning a larger iPod with the famous click-wheel embedded into the screen is one thing, getting it out the door is something else.

Apple has surprised nearly everyone with a steady stream of iPod models the past year. Shuffle. iPod nano, the new iPod with video.

What’s next?

How about an iPod with a 3.5-inch color screen? In fact, this design is mostly screen. Touch the screen and the click wheel and other controls become visible.

The cool designers over at Deviant Art came up with this deviant design, so cool it looks like tomorrow iPod today, so subtle it looks plausible, so cool that I want it.

Why is such a futuristic and pragmatic design so plausible just weeks after Apple introduced the latest iPod with video?

Because Apple likes change, never before so personified than the Saturday Night Live sketch with a lifelike Steve Jobs introducing the iPod Micro which was obsolete within seconds.

The Micro was followed up by the 1-million song Pequeno, which became obsolete before cameras could get a close up.

Then, before microscopes could be brought onto the SNL stage, the Pequeno disappeared in favor of the Invisa. Yes, it was invisible, though it held every photo ever taken and 8-million songs.

I suspect that the next incarnation of the iPod won’t be that spectacular, and I hope the product life cycle is not similarly brief.

April 1, 1976, Apple Computer became an official company. 30 years later, and our favorite Cupertino, CA computer maker, portable music maker, and software company may have something new.

Something new? What a shock? What is it?  Deviant Art’s atristic capabilities aside, Apple has two directions where they must move the iPod juggernaut.

The first is simple. Newer, bigger, smaller, better. That bodes well for an iPod with a larger screen; perhaps as large a device as a Sony PlayStation Portable.

We’ve read of a wireless iPod device, though I suspect wireless remains too slow and to heavy a drain on batteries to sync up with your Mac or Windows PC.

Regardless, new is coming, and April 1, 2006—30 years after Apple Computer began—seems a likely date for something new.

The second direction is also simple.

Look at the crippled iTunes phones from Motorola and Cingular.

There’s that nasty 100 song limit, which reduces the value and cool factor of a phone that’s also an iPod.

Apple doesn’t want to hurt the iPod market with a cell phone that’s also an iPod. So, will Apple have their own iPod phone?

It’s a logical extension of the product line. Who will make it? Motorola? Sony Ericsson? Who will sell it? Apple and every cell phone carrier with a brain.

For the next few weeks we’re stuck with excellent graphic depictions of the future. I decided to skip this latest iPod with video in hopes that what’s next would be waaaaay cool.

My wait may end on April 1. Or, it may just be another April Fool’s Day.

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