[EMC]

The photo iPod is all hunky-dory, though I have no use for the device, I'm sure others will. However, it's not the first device on the market that can display and save photos.

I have an iPod mini. I use it predominently at the gym, and feel it's more advantageous to me to have a nice light player and just have to sync a lot when I want new music.

The number one iPod improvement though would be bluetooth and wireless headphones.

Think about it. Nobody has a bluetooth-enabled music player yet, so apple has another chance to innovate the market. Secondly, the technology is not a limitation. My cell phone and pocketPC are both lighter than my iPod, and they have bluetooth.

My headphone cords are constantly tangled, and I often lose an earbud when I accidentaly catch the wire on something. Wireless headphones would solve both these problems.

Also, with bluetooth, you'd also be able to sync it to iTunes without a cord.

The only downside I see is power consumption, but for those of us who use it an hour at a time, it's a non-issue.

[Geobunny]

It's a good idea and I've thought for a long time that bluetooth would be the iPod's natural progression. I must disagree on one of your points though - synchronising music over bluetooth would be a huge PITA. I think BT only manages about 5k/s (well, that's all my BT dongle can sustain anyway)

Having photos on my iPod would be cool though...if not entirely necessary!

[Ambassadeur]

Originally posted by EMC:
Think about it. Nobody has a bluetooth-enabled music player yet, so apple has another chance to innovate the market. Secondly, the technology is not a limitation. My cell phone and pocketPC are both lighter than my iPod, and they have bluetooth.

My headphone cords are constantly tangled, and I often lose an earbud when I accidentaly catch the wire on something. Wireless headphones would solve both these problems.

Also, with bluetooth, you'd also be able to sync it to iTunes without a cord.

The only downside I see is power consumption, but for those of us who use it an hour at a time, it's a non-issue.

EMC is right on bluetooth's transfer speed, so synching via BT is probably not viable.

Plus, what sort of headphones would work with BT? Earbuds? How? connected with a short wire to a battery dangling around your neck? Small, light-weight headphones with not-so-lightweight batteries? IMHO, this seems to be sort of a weak point of the BT idea...

And finding your iPod by following the cord is so much easier when it's flying around in your bag/backpack!

[EMC]

Bluetooth maxes out at 1Mbps, so syncing is out of the question, but it still doesn't preclude it for being used as headphones.

As for the design? Take the current Apple aftermarket earbuds without the wire and add a tiny lithium-polymer battery...

These guys do it with a microphone as well, and they lack Apple's amazing ability to cram hardware into itsy-bitsy little cases.
http://www.thetravelinsider.info/phones/bh220review.htm

[GORDYmac]

Am I the only person still wearing headphones? Earbuds really irritate my ears, and I can't find a quality pair of headphones to compliment my iPod. I'd jump at a wireless set--even an RF or 900MHz set--if it matched. This is all I can find, but it's overkill: