alex chiang: web 6.0

David at Mind Poison wants bluetooth on the iPod. The two killer apps he mentions are wirelessly transferring photos from a digicam onto the iPod and a built-in cell phone. Personally, I think those apps would be great, but probably not possible (well, at least not the photo transferring part; a cell phone I could believe).

Here’s one analyst’s opinion on Bluetooth and iPod:

Built-in Bluetooth is also not expected due to its slow transfer speeds. “Apple management does not see where Bluetooth would be used other than possible for wireless headphones, but then the headphones would need batteries.” While Wi-Fi is also not seen as a viable feature due to its power requirements and relatively limited speed.

I tend to agree.

Let’s do some of our own math. According to the Bluetooth faq, the throughput is 720 Kbps. A 4 MB photo is 33554432 bits. It would take about 45 seconds to transfer a single picture.

Given that the iPod uses the most of its limited battery capacity while the hard drive is spinning, 45 seconds per picture is probably just too slow, even ignoring the fact that a user would be annoyed at the slow speed.

The Belkin Media Reader can transfer data around 300 KBps, so the same 4 MB photo would take 13.7 seconds to copy.

Just for grins, the firewire spec claims a 400 Mbps theoretical max throughput, making a transfer of that 4 MB photo take a mere 0.08 seconds. Looks like Belkin has some room for improvement.