Those who see the iPod as just an MP3 player are just limiting their vision of the opportunities that we now have. For example, those of us who don’t have (or want) to carry around 1000 songs will have an iPod with a bunch of empty hard disk space. Currently, you can use it as a FireWire external drive, which for some people, may be the best way to temporarily store some files while they do other things on their Mac. For example, you may be editing some video and just need one or two more gig to get the job done. Just hook up your iPod and store your data until the job is done then move it back.
But there is another great potential which I would like to see in iPod v.2. If you added a USB port, then you would have an extremely large electronic wallet for digital photos. You could hit the road with your digital camera and your tunes. When the camera fills up, download into the iPod and keep shooting. You would never fill it up.
Then when you get back to your room/office/whatever, you could transfer your photos to your iBook while the iPod charges. Now compare the cost of a couple of gig on iPod to the cost of flash media, and you have a real king-size bargain. To me this is exactly what being the “hub of your digital lifestyle” is all about. What kind of features do you think the iPod 2 should have?
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