How about a touch-screen video iPod that would look and feel like an iPhone but without the cellphone part? Imagine the e-book possibilities.
In fact, Wintek, a displaymaker in Taiwant, is reported to have landed a contract for just such a screen. Let’s hope that goodies such as WiFi can appear (speculation mode!) to brighten Bill J’s day and promote online e-book viewing, not just downloading. The more options, the better—just so viewing doesn’t displace downloading.
Separately, a hacker has come up with a nifty way to get PC-hosted files transferred to the iPhone; see screen shot. Read on for details on that. Please note that this won’t let you run uBook, Mobipocket and the rest. But remote desktop control could still be a nice convenience for moving over your e-book library for the iPhone’s PDF reader, if that’s your format of choice.
New iPod launch rumored as early as July
Back to the iPod. The launch could take place as early as next month, according to Digitimes. Or, some others speculate, it could be delayed until after Christmas—to avoid cannibalizing iPhone sales.
Alas, the usual ifs pop up. Will the cost be under $300? Just how open a machine will the new iPod be, if it exists, and will it run OS X?
In Adobe’s place, I’d be making a big push to get some form of Digital Editions running on the the new iPod at some point. Adobe just might help its cause with Apple if it supported branding of a nonDRMed version of the IDPF standard. Remember Steve Jobs’ move away from DRM in music?
PC apps on iPhone—including e-book reading?
Meanwhile iPhone fans might check out a reported way to run desktop-related PC tasks via your iPhone, via TightVNC.
As of now, 47 percent of TeleBlog readers responding to a poll are planning to buy iPhones, with e-books among the more common apps, despite the limits of the current machine (nothing like the joys of e-mailing PDFs to yourself, eh?). So an iPod with iPhone-ish characteristics would be exciting news—well, assuming it’s true.
Related: Techmeme roundup on the rumored machine.
(Updated at 11:24 a.m.)
I’m not sure if I missed it or not, but I-Pod screens are way too small to read on for me. Are they planning on releasing a device that has a bigger screen?
Excellent. I think it would be quite readable.
i have an iphone, and i can tell you that with the zooming feature, the screen i very nice for reading, even if you stay at small sizes. the iphone screen is MUCH larger than the current ipod model screens.
hello again — just read this clever hack for getting PDF files onto the iphone without having to resort to the “email it to yourself as an attachment” routine.
just thought i’d share…
….it’s called the ipod touch – it’s lovely 🙂