Rumors about new Apple gizmo’s to be released at WWDC are starting to swirl, moreso following the recent (totally expected) hardware announcements. One of the big rumors going around is about a wifi 802.11g iPod. The potential of a wifi iPod is amazing:
- iPod streams to AirPort Express speakers
- iPod controls iTunes via wifi (universal iTunes remote)
- iPod able to stream music to other iPods (local music parties)
- iPod able to update from iTunes library wirelessly (slow, but the fewer wires the better)
- Internet access on iPod (drool)
- Possibility to wirelessly purchase music from commercial sources (concerts, stores, etc), directly to iPod
- Roaming iTMS access
- Radio via Internet streams
- An exceptionally cool $499 pocket wifi detector
In short, the iPod would be much more of a peer device to the computer, right now iPods are mostly dead-end portable containers.
Much as I know it will never happen, I really wish Apple would just release an iPod SDK. THEN we’d start to see some really cool stuff.
This post started as a comment to Steven Frank’s blog.