 will be flash-RAM based, meaning higher reliability and longer battery life. NAND is more expensive than standard HDD, but the prices are falling, and at the same time capacities are increasing, the only combination that would make the change work.</p>
<p>In addition, Wu sees the bulk purchase of high-capacity NAND drives as confirmation of the flash-drive based “MacBook Thin” sub-notebook, something that’s been rumored to be in the works for a few months now. While NAND-based notebooks are on the market now, there are none produced in the numbers Apple would most likely turn out.</p>
<p>The combined purchasing power of both product lines would directly contribute to getting decent pries on the 32- and 64GB drives needed for both the notebook and iPod devices, as Apple is known to not just buy NAND in bulk, but to also dictate pricing to Samsung and other manufacturers. Will this translate to lower pricing on these new models? Not likely, expect to pay a premium at first, with prices falling as production ramps up.</p>
<p>In all, we see the iPod switch as a no-brainer, but the sub-notebook as questionable. Apple will probably switch the MacBook lineup to NAND at some point, at least the Pro, to take advantage of the speeds and battery life savings. The idea of a whole new product line, though, still remains dubious.</p>
<p><a href=)
by
Matt Hickey
on
March 7, 2007
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80GB (or 64GB as the case is more likely to be) worth of flash in a full-size iPod doesn’t seem very likely anytime soon. I can see maybe dropping the 30GB HDD model for either a 24 or 32GB model of flash, but not till next year.
Then again, I suppose it’s possible if Apple bought enough flash to get a truly ginormous discount, they could pass the savings on to the consumer. Hmmm. Maybe a topic for my next AudioFile column.
-cap’n kobrin
I hope they don’t go to an all flash storage – it seems like the battery is harder to replace when they do this. when my ipod video battery died i had the juice guys replacec it and they couldn’t do that if the batter was soldered to the motherboard.
If Apple does stay with a HDD-based iPod they could see a massive increase in capacity that flash-based storage couldn’t compete with. I’ve done a comparison of growth trends in iPod Disk capacity versus generally accepted hard disk growth which you might find interesting.
http://www.libraryhouse.net/blog/2007/03/08/store-wars/