Apple Releases New iPods

[Alex]

Also amusing, since I got to poking around, using the benchmark here for the current 1TB hard drive.

In fastest write speed from an external source it took 31 seconds to write 1GB of data. That means 31,000 seconds to write one terabyte; 31,000,000 seconds to write 1 petabyte; and 31,000,000,000 seconds to write on exabyte.

31,000,000,000 seconds equals about 982 years. So, not only do we need to wait for the exabyte hard drive, but we'll need to live a lot longer if we want to ever fill it. (I know, if such a thing ever came to be, write speeds would presumably have increased immensely as well).

Also from poking around, the current "pie in the sky" data density for hard drives is (I think) 1 terabit/in^2. That would be an 8,000 square inch hard drive just to get to a petabyte, and 8 million square inches for an exabyte. That would a hard drive 1.2 acres in size.


(And, of course, having wasted my time doing math with big numbers it will turn out that I forgot to carry a zero or something and everything is way off.)

[innerSpaceman]

All I know is I'm glad I got my Nano when i did. I hate the new square design.


I've played with iPhones ... and they do nothing for me. I guess I really don't care about the interface, and am only interested in function.

[Kevy Baby]

I don't believe that Apple (nor most other technology based companies) sell based on manufacturing costs. I am sure it is a careful balance between market based pricing and manufacturing AND development costs.

[Brigitte]

Is anyone else puzzling over why the iPod Touch has such a smaller capacity? I'd love to play with it, but what's the point of getting that when I need so much more space? My 80 gig iPod got stolen last week (left it in the daycare van, unlocked in the driveway, not smart, but something we've done for years with no problem) so I'll be replacing it with the 160 instead.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Brigitte

Is anyone else puzzling over why the iPod Touch has such a smaller capacity? I'd love to play with it, but what's the point of getting that when I need so much more space? My 80 gig iPod got stolen last week (left it in the daycare van, unlocked in the driveway, not smart, but something we've done for years with no problem) so I'll be replacing it with the 160 instead.

The smaller models have flash-based storage instead of hard drives. The hard drives can have much higher capacity, at the cost of size and reliability.

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

The smaller models have flash-based storage instead of hard drives. The hard drives can have much higher capacity, at the cost of size and reliability.

One thing I've wondered is why not put multiple flash memory chips in? Is this a possibility (from a technological standpoint)?

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Kevy Baby

One thing I've wondered is why not put multiple flash memory chips in? Is this a possibility (from a technological standpoint)?

Sure, but again the tradeoff is physical size.

[Brigitte]

I'd forgotten that part. I still wouldn't mind the size to gain the capacity though.

[mousepod]

I'll probably get an iTouch sooner than later.

What really makes me drool is this story in today's New York Times.

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by mousepod

What really makes me drool is this story in today's New York Times.

Ooooo