In a report spotted on ARNet, Hitachi is planning to increase the capacity of their Microdrives. The heart of the iPods and Mini iPods. Currently, Mini iPods come in many colours but only one size, 4GB, holding around 1,000 tunes and reported to have a realworld battery life of about 4hrs.
Will Apple unveil a higher capacity Mini iPod as they have been doing with their iPods in the last few MacWorld conferences?
The mac rumour mill has been busy, as it should be at this time of the year, with rumours that Apple will unveil a 5GB Mini iPod based on a similar Microdrive by Seagate.
Hitachi is planning to raise the capacity of of their Microdrives to 8GB and 10GB by the end of 2005. We may yet see larger capacity Mini iPods as the year unfolds but the question of kickass performance from a small form factor begs to be asked.
How much battery can a Mini iPod eventually hold to power a larger capacity Microdrive and if the Mini iPods currently available are reported to top out after 4hrs of continous play, would a shorter lifespan Mini iPod remain desireable to the masses?