iPod

a n d r e w h a u p t

Some of what's revolutionary about the iPod is obvious: lightning-quick FireWire file transfers, small size, and a brilliant design, not to mention its 5GB storage capacity (about 100 songs). But a few things make me wonder if the iPod is not the harbinger of a new type of device, unrelated to its function as an MP3 player. The following seemingly random iPod qualities and industry facts lead me to predict that this player is a sign of things to come:

The iPod can hold files of any type. It shows up on your desktop as another drive, so you can use it as a portable hard drive.

One of the most useful features of handhelds and certain cell phones is the way they automatically sync with your PC so that new data goes to the right device without your thinking about it. The iPod is the first MP3 player with this function. When you plug it into your Mac, it grabs every new MP3 and playlist from iTunes.

MP3s and movie files take up an increasingly vast portion of people's increasingly large hard drives. FireWire could be the best solution for shifting these files around.

If you add all of these disparate facts together and look at the whole picture, you'll see where I'm going with this. The iPod is more than an MP3 player; it's a prototype of the data wallets that we'll all carry around within the decade. These devices will sync info between multiple machines and allow for music and video collections to be carried around everywhere. They won't have a complicated interface, but they will include a variety of ports for connection to keyboards, Webcams, monitors, networks, cell phones, stereos, headphones, video goggles--whatever peripheral you can think of.