New iPod with Video

Apple dropped the bomb today, announcing an updated iPod available next week with a wider screen and support for MPEG4 and H.264 video. Thinner than the current units and no storage bump (yet), but the killer is the "one more thing ..." added at the end of the speech today ... iTunes 6 will allow you to buy TV shows. Lost, Desperate Housewives, and some other ABC stuff available at $1.99 a show, which is a decent price point as long as they're Ad-Free.

Obviously, this is all just a precursor to the fabled iPod Video ... get people hooked on the content, then drop the new model. Until now, the iPod has been the high end, but I think Apple realizes that they can milk even more money out of the faithful. I'm expecting a widescreen format iPod Video with at least 80GB of storage (if not up to 160GB), probably by end of the year or early 2006. You'd probably want it to have the same resolution as the PSP at a minimum, but you could make the screen smaller in terms of the physical dimensions for pocketability (the PSP stays in my backpack).

As for design, I just came up with the following idea for an iPod Video interface. Make the screen widescreen, and no controls. If the screen were a touchscreen, you could have a software scrollwheel that can "fade in" when you touch the screen, fading away after a couple of seconds of non-use. Obviously, the image to the right is a mockup (and very clearly fake, so the fanboys don't get all riled), but it'll give you an idea of what I'm talking about.