How would a wireless iPod operate?
Steve Jobs recently gave Newsweek an interesting interview. In it he spoke about the development of the iPod as well as the impact the device has had on how we listen to music.
To me, the most interesting part of the article is where Jobs talks about the Zune, and in particular its wireless music sharing feature. This is what he had to say:
“I’ve seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you’ve gone through all that, the girl’s got up and left! You’re much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you’re connected with about two feet of headphone cable.”
I tend to agree with Steve, the younger generations are not very patient. However, what I find really interesting is that Mr. Jobs never says that sharing music is bad idea, what he says is that Microsoft’s implementation of this concept is bad. So, the question is, how would Apple implement such a feature?
The way I see it, it would have to be very simple and quick. You go to a menu, you select your friend’s iPod from a list of devices near you and you immediately hear what your friend is listening to. The songs are never stored in your iPod, just the meta data. When you get home, after syncing your device with iTunes you get a chance to buy the songs you listened to from the iTunes Store. If engadget is correct and Apple releases a new wireless video iPod before the holidays we will know very soon if they can improve the ease of use of wireless music sharing over what Microsoft plans to offer. My guess is that they will, as usual.