Toshiba will not have its 30GB and 60GB 1.8-inch hard drives in high quantities until late in the fourth quarter 2004, the company announced Wednesday.
The company had previously said the drives would be released sometime in the 3rd quarter 2004.
Apple uses 1.8-inch Toshiba drives in their 20GB and 40GB iPod models. If there will eventually be a 60GB iPod, this delay will push back Apple’s debut.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
RUMOR: 60 GB Apple iPod ‘guaranteed’ to debut tomorrow? – July 18, 2004
Apple smartly holds back 60GB iPod debut – July 19, 2004
Is Apple saving 60GB iPod debut for Paris? – July 19, 2004
Apple exec denies rumors, says ‘no plans in regard to announcing’ 60GB iPod – July 19, 2004
Marketing professor: Apple waiting on 60GB iPod to reap ‘publicity for reducing prices’ – July 21, 2004
First POOP!!!
you did a poop. I did a number 2.
Well, I guess that gives me more time to finish converting my extensive collection of music from analog into iTunes, but I sure hate having to wait.
i want a 100 GB iPod with a 100 hour bat.
*******
[url=http://www.geocities.com/nicktheelephant]http://www.geocities.com/nicktheelephant[/url]
I wonder if the 60GB iPod will coincide with Apple offering all of the songs on iTMS in their lossless format. As downloading music off the internet gets more popular, more audiophiles are going to demand high-quality formats. AAC is nice, but it’s still not as good as AIFF–but Apple’s lossless format is that good. It’s gotta be coming soon.
Nah…they will just go from 128Kbps to 320 instead.
Look for a January release at MWSF.
“high quantities in 4th quarter” – 4th quarter starts in October.
Previous statement was “350,000 delivered per month in 3rd quarter” which started in July.
These don’t necessarily conflict – depends on what “high quantities” mean and whether “350000 is high quantity”, doesn’t it?
Nor do they necessarily preclude Apple from introducing a product in early Sept – 700,000 to start in early Sept. If high quantities mean over half-million a month, then that fits right in.
Still hoping…
hairbo, do you really think they change what they offer? Hmmm, I wonder if they would charge more for the higher quality? And what will they do about all the songs that have already been purchased at the lower bit rate?
</holding breath>
COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR
Come on COLOR SCREEN MAN !!!!
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The itunes music store will continue to be 128 kpbs. The itunes MS is not supposed to be the be-all-store for everyone (just like regular stores don’t serve every customer).
The over-riding reason for the itms is for convenience with some/many tradeoffs – if it’s not the right value for you, it’s not the right value for you – for many MILLIONS of others, the price is just an acceptable tradeoff for fidelity and not having to drive & be dispointed the store doesn’t have it.
To offer even ONE other higher rate would just be confusing for the ‘convenience’ customer – you would have to DOUBLE+ the storage space just to confuse people and frankly, unless you offered all 5 rates, people would still complain OR complain it’s not Loss-less or the crazies who keep trying to get OGG support (they’re the sort of people who just want to support anything obscure – if Apple adopted OGG, they’d want APE or SHN). So why spend money on additional storage and confusion so you still get the exact same number of complaints?
For those who don’t like the encoding rate, don’t buy – there are very few tracks not available on CD that’s on the store and the few that are – 128 kpbs would not sound that much better than if you encoded at 320 (like those Verve OOP LP’s).
As for the Toshiba, at the quantity Apple buys, they could get in line first pretty quickly.
Even if people’s music listening habits are changing, 1000-4000 songs in your pocket encoded as 128 kb AAC will still be more than enough for the vast majority of people for many years to come.
This is not like computers wich had/have higher and higher requirements over the years because of bloatware, gaming and new usages like home audio/video editing.
Steve Jobs himself said that Apple is working on lowering the price of iPods.
The reason why the 15 gig model was dropped was probably that it would have end up at the same price as the mini.
Apple will eventually drop the price of the 4 gig mini that’s for sure but for now they can’t even produce enough of them at the current price.
I don’t see Apple just upgrading specs of iPods without dropping the price ad-infinitum.
I want a 6 terabyte model — one that comes with the entire eurasian music catalog (including the Kathmandu Gong Band, the Singapore Chewing Gum Company and Abba In Reverse) and uses DRM to determine whether to play a full or sample length.
jbelkin:
You’ve got som good points there. But as music sales are moving towards iTunes Music Store and away from brick’n’mortar shops, uncompressed music will be harder and harder to get for those who cares about quality. Record companys will shurely love the benefits of not having to print large quantities of CD’s they may never sell – putting the music on-line is next to free. So Apple will have to introduce uncompressed/lossless formats at one point in the future�
I agree, Mac112.
… and when, in the future, it’s easier to hear downloaded music over the stereo, there’ll be a lot more people who’ll notice the difference and demand better quality.
Until then, it’s CD’s only for me.
Whoops, i spelt “colour wrong”
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />, many times as well. How american of me.
I’d rather not have a colour screen thanks, they’re harder to read in daylight.
Could they just be putting up a smoke screen to compensate for their previous big mouths? That way apple has a real surprise rather than an anticipated anouncement.
Just an idea.
I wonder why this is…My brother works for toshiba and says that the drives are available now but are only being applied to laptops…I need more storage!!!!…my iPod is Full…..
60 Gigs could hold a few movies and lots of tunes…hmmm