We should probably make mention of the ‘Wireless iPod’ documents that Apple Insider is showing, obtained from the US Patent Office. Personally, I don’t think they amount to much, as they were filed in 2003, and it’s not a huge surprise that Apple has been considering adding wireless streaming to the iPod for quite some time. If you didn’t at least consider that as an option when the Airport Express with Airtunes came out, you were in a fairly small minority. Obviously, though, Apple doesn’t think a wireless iPod is that great of an idea or they would have hired a real illustrator to draw up the patent information.
And really, think about this for a second. The big idea is… wireless devices! Talking to each other! It’s cool and we’d certainly use it, but I don’t think Apple, who already has a low-ish battery life compared to the rest of the market, is going to waste perfectly good electrons on broadcasting songs over the air when a PC equipped with Airport Express can already do the job just fine.
Document reveals iPod with wireless capabilities [AppleInsider]
