Wi-Fi equipped iPod on the horizon?

Apple will bring out an iPod with Wi-Fi wireless connectivity on board during the latter half of the year - if the latest whispers coming from Taiwan's electronics manufacturer community are to be believed, that is. So claims local newssite DigiTimes today, which mentions moles from contract manufacturers Foxconn and …

[Anonymous Coward]

Streaming

Doesn't it make sense the iPod would be able to play content on Macs/PC's sharing their iTunes libraries? Kinda like what AppleTV does?

[Julian Lawton]

AppleTV

I don't buy the idea of Apple allowing you to buy anything directly onto an iPod or iPhone - for starters you'd get cases of people losing their iPod and therefore everything they've bought, wheras forcing them through iTunes - which nags you to back up - removes that issue.

Also Apple's DRM system is reasonably simple - iTunes manages what goes onto the iPod - the iPod does relatively little. This is far simpler than the various Windows schemes where the player itself has to do a lot of authorisation.

The most logical thing is for it to be part of a wider policy to allow Apple's products to all interconnect without cabling - i.e. go direct from iPod to AppleTV or AirportExpress speakers. Would be a good solution in cars too.

I also suspect we'll see an iPod that is somewhat like an iPhone without the phone bit - you could implement web connected widgets without a touchscreen - with a touchscreen you could have the browser, Google maps, etc, which would make a very neat portable device.