6G iPod…

I will try and do my best to add some fuel to the fire that is the rampant rumor mongering surrounding every Apple product release. It looks like Apple is planning to update the iPod for the second time in the last six months. What is even better is it looks like they are finally moving from the standard iPod click wheel to a screen that covers the entire face of the music and video player. I think this is an obvious improvement to the iPod’s capabilities, but I am still waiting for Apple to leverage their considerable weight in the mp3 sector into a general purpose device that can run third party software. Apple has the engineers to pull off a new PDA-like device (they invented that term, anyway), and there have been rumors about Apple buying out Palm. Is it at all possible that Apple will reenter the PDA market with a new Newton? I would like to see Apple transition the iPod into a PDA, but I’m not sure people want that or that it would be a good move economically for Apple. My guess is that iPods are so popular because there really isn’t anything nerdy about them-nobody would buy a digital Rolex with an LCD screen, no matter how feature-rich it is, and I think that the iPod will be stuck as a music and video player for exactly the same reason… But there could be something cool comming from Apple in the near future.