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Toshiba's iPod Competitor
a lonely moose writes: "It looks like Toshiba basically copied Apple's iPod. They got cheap on screen size and unit weight, and without iTunes, it'll be darn hard to handle as elegantly as the iPod. Anyway, check out
MacCentral's article and the smoking forum at the bottom."
I'd say that Toshiba definitely has the advantage here because:
1) They can buy the drives from themselves at cost
2) They support Windows users (officially)
I think that we can declare them the winner.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
I not spending my hard earned dollars on any digital audio hardware until it supports Ogg Vorbis...
Wow. At first, I thought, "It's an MP3 player for the Mac. That isn't necessarily a rip-off of the iPod". But then I saw what it looked like...
I can feel thousands of Apple-print panties bunching as we speak.
If I can copy songs FROM the unit TO the computer. Does it? The iPod prevents you from doing this am I correct? Now I can be like those Mac pirates and walk into stores and steal WINDOWS software!!! Yay!
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
Removeable 5GB HDD, that fits in a card slot...
That has potential... I see many options... Most of them along the lines of a decent replacement for the floppy disk finally.
The player itself seems no different from a host of others.
-- Jason
Now hopefully this will create better faster cheaper iPods and also have them a bit more open so many platoforms can use it. For me the fact the iPod only works on a mac isnt an insentive to buy a Mac or and iPod. It would actually be a turn off for both. Apple should put more concetration on open standards then making hardware that is incompatible for the reason "just because"
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Let's see how Apple responds to a *little* bit of pressure?
:)
I say a little because it's USB 2, meaning it won't work with Macs right off the bat (connecting at USB1 speeds is a horrible idea).
$402 vs $399 means that they are *exact* price competitors for each other, where one has FireWire support and the other has ejectable disc support.
I suppose this means I can plug into my PC card slot and use iTunes (or the Finder) to update it at PCI speeds. Of course the laptop or PC card drive is still the speed bottleneck.
I wanna see if Apple ignores it (possible, since it isn't cheaper or exactly platform compatible) or 'improves' the iPod. It's plausible that the pricing of the Gigabeat is because the market will 'bear' the price of a $400 iPod
GPL Deconstructed
As long as it doesn't begin with "i" or "e".
Yes, the iPod "prevents" you from copying the music from the iPod onto your computer, but it's trivial to get around it - all the data is there. The "prevention" is in iTunes. If you just plug the thing in and fish around on the drive, all the data is there in discrete files, and writing a perl script to extract it back into a music folder would be very easy.
Objects in the blog are closer then they ap
I have friends who use PCs, and I can't recommend the iPod to them. This looks like a fine substitute. However, if you have a Mac, I think the iPod is a better choice. My wife has an iPod, and I _really_ like the user interface. The Toshiba's user interface looks like it would be hard to operate while rollerblading, which is when I usually use it.
With its rectangular shape, liquid crystal display and circular control panel, the Gigabeat bears a passing resemblance to Apple Inc.'s iPod....
Okay, I can see the "circular control panel" as an iPod reference, but come on -- rectangular shape? liquid crystal display?!? Those are hardly unique hallmarks of Apple design.
In any case, the removable PC Card hard drive makes this way more than an iPod clone. Who needs iTunes -- or any other special software?
The pc card is definitely a win on the system. Lots of time I've talked to people who would buy the Apple iPod if it could mount on a PC WITHOUT a 3rd party vendor util software. What were they thinking in Cupertino when they decided the format of the drive should be HFS? Even Linux doesn't have HFS support in the kernel. vfat would have been so much interoperable.
PPA, the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
If this device is a quality piece of hardware, maybe it will help push down the price of Apple's stuff. Of course, I'm not sure that Apple has ever given a crap what other people are charging for similar products (or at least as similar as you can be to Apple).
with the iPod had the in line remote though:( oh well maybe soon, if you inspect the headphone jack there appears to be three unused contacts arround it. rumors have been on the iPod sites that apple will release an external control for it but nothing official yet. maybe this will bring it to market sooner.
I want 2D games back.
I hope I'm not picking nits, but I can't see how this is a "basically copied" iPod.
Because it has a hard drive? Others do.
Because it has a circle in the control area? So does Archos! Does it operate the same way?
Because it's gray? iPod is white!
Because it has a similar form factor? It's too big!
Sorry, I think it's a competitor -- as Maccentral states -- but only in that it's another MP3 player.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
First, Toshiba isn't the first to sell an "iPod competitor". We've already seen the Treo 10 ("...which is similar in appearance and function to the iPod...") and Nomad hit the market, with similar press responses.
Second, the iPod has a lot more going for it than 5/10 GB and a FireWire connection. That thumbwheel on the front makes it insanely easy to navigate through the music stored on it (you just spiiiiiiin and click, versus click-and-click-and-click-and-click-and...). Instant sync with iTunes means that you can organize playlists on your desktop with a full-size keyboard and download them perfectly into your portable. If you've never held one, you'd be amazed how small and light it is.
Bottom line: Apple's not the only high-capacity MP3 player on the market, and they know it, but they can sell theirs for higher prices because (a) they're selling to Mac loyalists and (b) they've got ease-of-use down to a science, to a degree almost no other company can match. Believe me, they're far from running scared.
But the bad news is towards the end of the article, when it comes to availability. Isn't it always the case with new products thatr look darn cool, and pre-announcements to make them even more desirable?
Dammit, why are none of my friends in Japan for the World Cup. If only ....
get over it. toshiba didn't make this with the explicit intent that it would work with linux. it's a windows/intel compatible device that happens to also work with linux because most linux runs on intel hardware.
A+ Certified means dick. The A+ test was nothing but memorizing what IRQ meant what and a whole bunch of obsolete information. I went to Barnes & Noble the day before I took the A+ test and picked a study book off the shelf, read it twice, took the test, and got certified. The test was a joke. I worked at a computer repair store for 3 years [i worked there for 2 before I took the test to get a $0.50/hr pay raise, getting my CCNA got me another $2.00/hr], and the majority of laptops that came in where off-brands. Toshiba was no more frequent than Dell or Compaq or Gateway. The Toshiba Satellites are very very good laptops. Oh well.
I agree. Toshiba's device isn't meant to steal Apple's thunder. It's just going to fill the enormous gaps outside iPod's market. I mean, what Apple user would buy the Toshiba? Also, Firewire and a kick-ass OS is still an advantage over USB2.0 and another goddamn confusing, cheap-o OS with a dolphin screen saver.
You've got 5GB of songs. An average 128-kbps MP3 file takes up, say, 5MB of space. That means you've got room for about a thousand songs on one drive. That's a thousand songs. Approximately the size of my entire music collection, including the ones I hate.
So, aside from swapping your entire music collection with a buddy -- why in the world would you care if you can take the drive out and replace it?
Toshiba was once at the top of the notebook computer industry because they are cheap, but people have caught on. You get what you pay for. I am an A+ certified tech, and have repaired hundreds of Toshiba laptops. Junk! Did you know a part has to fail in the field three times before they will accept that it is defective? Don't buy their i-pod rip off. It will be garbage.
I wouldn't buy an iPod then; they both use the same hard drive internally.
You did know that Toshiba make the hard drives for the iPod, didn't you?
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
macosx is based on bsd and nextstep. how is that riping off linux?
Who needs iTunes -- or any other special software?
Anyone who wants to be able to easily organize and sync their music collection. You sound like someone who has not used iTunes. As any TiVo owner will tell you: "The difference IS the software."
Let's hope Apple doesn't crack down on this IMO praiseworthy effort the way they did on Aqua-interface look-alikes...
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
It can plug into the pc card slot on your laptop. Pretty nifty, eh?
a few notes about the ipod:
-it's overpriced
-it doesn't work with window or linux by default (you need special programs to use it)
-itunes SUCKS. I have used itunes on a g4/500 with 384mb ram and it takes at least 30 seconds just to load a playlist of 7 gigs of mp3s.
Toshiba's will probably be cheaper, won't need one of those expensive plastic boxes to run it (aka a mac), and won't force you to use the horrible itunes.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
I'm quite happy with iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, the iPod, etc, etc :)
If you want the software, feel free to buy it. I think it only costs, erm, $1199 to get access to iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, the iPod, iDisk, the iTools suite, etc, etc. If you get an older model, the price drops down to a much more reasonable ~$800.
GPL Deconstructed
They were thinking it would work on Macs, which is what it does, and it does it well. When are you going to learn that Steve Jobs doesn't want grubby little nerd whiners like you in his club?
I WAS an A+ tech fixing Toshiba laptops also, even "Toshiba" cerified. The major computer company I worked for sold more Toshibas that any other laptop, so of course we fix mostly Toshibas. That does not mean there junk. And the fail three times thing is mis-leading. A hard drive "fails" once, it's bad, they replace the hard drive. All laptop manufactures have some type of policy on this. At least you can get parts for Toshibas, try to get a part for a Sony (under warrenty)!
Would be nice in Canada especially if they manage to raise the levy on non-removable media like they want to. At the rates that were being bandied about it could mean that this device is ~$50 cheaper when the hd and player are sold separately.
Apple sued eMachines, I believe, back when they copied the look of the original iMacs. They claimed that the overall design was intellectual property. I wonder if they will take the same approach with Toshiba, whom they have a working relation with.
You can sure get it pretty, but it will undoubtably cost you an arm leg compared to a similar performing product... And Windows support strait outta the box ta boot. I might just buy one now...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
It looks like Toshiba basically copied Apple's iPod.
;)I wouldn't worry though, nobody can provide the level of integration and sophistocation in their products like Apple.
I don't think so at all. Other than the shape of the player (which is a rectangle) it looks very little like the ipod. No silver polish and new features such as removable hard drives. If the form factor is what you're complaing about, you could say that apple ripped off the rio which is also rectangular
why would someone spend 2 times as much money on a system that is generally slower than a pc that costs half as much? The programs and the OS.
As much as apples hardware is lagging way behind pc's, their OS and programs are easier to use and the average consumer is impressed by that.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Doesn't make it easy to organize and sync *my* music collection, at least not with the additional $1000 purchase of an Apple computer (and finding some space to put it). That's hardly high-value proposition.
As it is, I have a nice organizational scheme called "a directory tree" and a sync system called "rsync". It might be missing a few frills, but it's very quick, doesn't rely on anything special, and works perfectly well. If I wanted to do more sophisticated cataloging, it would be next to trivial to set up something with namazu. Unlike the iPod, the Toshiba device would fit right into this.
Of course, the ability to slip it into any computer (give or take) isn't the only advantage of having a removable drive -- as I'm sure dozens of people have pointed out by now, it makes it easy to upgrade as well.
Main plus on the Toshiba seems to be swap capability on the drive. For upgradability reasons, mostly (which Apple never seems too concerned about). Sure, I can fit my entire MP3 collection on less than half my iPod's 5G drive, but then I filled the rest up with backups, documentation, etc.
The things the Toshiba seems to be lacking are:
a scroll wheel (which really seems like the ideal interface for navigation LONG lists)
recharging from USB cable(?)
The main reason I bought an iPod is it seemed like the first device I could actually use that would really take advantage of the Firewire ports on my computer, which I never ever used. The same seems true for this Toshiba and windows users. w/USB 2.0
You drank my drink, you drunk!
If the average CD-RW can hold approximately 650 MB of data, that comes out to needing just under 8 CD-RW's to hold what the single 5GB disk holds. A decent portable CD/MP3 player can be had for around $150, and let's round up to a 10-pack of CD-RW's for $20, plus a carrying case for the CD-RW's for $10.
So here's what I don't get...is the smaller profile of the device worth the extra $220?
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Does this have a rechargeable Li-Polymoer battery like the iPod or do I have to buy AAs and a clunky charger that I'll have to carry around.
One of the beauty of Firewire is that the iPod or any device can charge off it. No need for an adapter.
Anyone know the battery life of the Gigabeat ?
--it's cheaper than the comparable sized Gigabeat (by about $3)
--it's available now. It's been available for over 8 months now. It's compatible with Windows, but requires a FireWire card and a program to read HFS+ volumes
--it uses Windows Media Player on a PC, strangely enough, and iTunes on a Mac. It takes about 5 seconds to load 4gb of music on my G4-400, but then again why close iTunes? 0% CPU usage when idle.
Apple will probably drop the price as it unveils larger versions (20gb models) since the design has already paid itself off, and maybe even unveil a cheaper 2gb version to accomodate Toshiba's 2gb discs.
Oh, and the iPod *is* smaller and lighter, as well as easier to use, if that means anything.
GPL Deconstructed
Dammit. Why can't someone come out with something that has Vorbis support. MP3's sound like shit on my car stereo, the bass distorts way too easily. Vorbis sounds great, but I don't wanna carry a laptop around my car to listen to all my vorbis files.
The second someone releases a decent player like this with vorbis support is the second I fork over a few hundred bucks for one.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
Has anyone gotten Linux running on this yet? I'd really like to install Debian and be able to run X.
and laptop drives are normally 2.5 inches - so it's quite a bit smaller.
Looks like it has some form of PCMCIA slot for the hard drive. I wonder who will be the first person to hack a wireless card into it. That would definatly kick ass for listening to tunes around the work place or other location that you don't have too move around too much.
How about portable storage?
The ability to boot off the device?
The ability to keep in your pocket?
The ability to transfer at ~10MBps?
How much is all that worth?
GPL Deconstructed
Speaking from a Mac user's perspective, the Toshiba player isn't too useful. USB2 is only available on the Mac to tower users who spend extra money, and I saw no mention of Mac software anyway. The removable hard drives are a long term advantage, not a short term one.
:-)
Myself, my iPod just arrived in the main today, so I've put my money where my mouth is. I'm off to work with it now!
"Common Sense Ain't" -Unknown
The removable drives are $321!! At the Apple Store, you can pick up the same drive mechanism with a firewire interface for $99! Not sure if this link will work for everyone: http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/A ppleStore.woa/51/wo/0xQ0h03uOCgCTPRvcF2/1.3.0.3.30 . .3.13.13.0
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
I was a tad testy in my reply.
Anyway, yeah, it's an expensive proposition, and it's tough for some to swallow.
But really, iPhoto+Mac+Canon Powershot or iTunes+Mac+iPod or iMovie+Mac+Sony Handycam or iDVD+Mac+iMovie is really, really, really cool.
It's not worth it for just one of them, but all of them combined is really, really, nice.
GPL Deconstructed
Toshiba says an entire CD worth of audio can be transferred to the device in 30 seconds.
:-(
ohhh but I wanted to listen to it now.
I have 12GB of music (all legally ripped from my own CD's thanks...) so 20GB is the minimum I want from my mp3 player. you never know when you want to hear some Mozart or some Merzbow. I want it all on one player. Can't the device makers get that? Why not sell it it with no drive and offer a 5, 10 and 20GB option?
/b
[Please type your sig here.]
Please tell how, oh, how Linux was ripped off for OS X? Most of the ideas that are in OS X were released in 1988 with NEXTSTEP.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
Uh, Apple invented FireWire. Have you ever seen the PARC GUI? Nothing like modern WIMP interfaces. Can you actually name one thing Apple copied? They licensed the GUI from the PARC, even.
Why bother with removable media when I don't ever want to remove the media. A 10GB drive need not be removed. And my interface is much more clever/robust than USB 2.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
Add a more powerful CPU/ASIC, video out, firewire. Then you can load divx ;) movie rips or DV straight from your camcorder. Ignore copyright bits and you could swap movies just by plugging one device into another. Allow an optional color LCD screen of decent size so you can watch movies on the go.
Then you have a portable media library.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
I'll wait until I see an actual store price... Have one handy? I seriously doubt that's the street price, but if you're right, then they screwed up bad. And yes, I know the iPod is just now getting competent Windows support. Indeed, the price difference is going to be a hella lot more than $3 before I buy one.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
You can run with these things in your pocket, they are less likely to brake (well, in theory- less moving parts), the disk media doesn't scratch easily, its easier to add/erase songs, you can store more music in less space... The list goes on.
Although its true, cds are cheaper. It depends if you want to jog with music or not, I guess.
"Partly because of the hard disk slot and ejection mechanism, the Toshiba player is slightly larger but not by much. It measures 7.2 centimeters (cm) by 2.2 cm by 11.2 cm, which puts it around 1 cm wider and taller than the iPod. At 180 grams with no disk and 235 grams with the drive inserted, it also weighs more than the Apple player, which is 185 grams including its internal hard disk.
Other features include...."
wait, you just told me why NOT TO buy it, and then go on like you were telling me why TO buy it??
this article is retarded.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
What if Toshiba talked Apple into licensing iTunes for this device, to connect it to windows (or maybe even linux/BSD, as long as we are fantasizing) ?
Perhaps Apple could be cajoled into it, because it would be less risky for them than porting some of their other good software to other platforms. And then if it was successful, it might plant the seeds that lead to a full OS X with aqua for intel hardware, sold as a boxed set.
But I have a feeling the hardware dongle idea is so entrenched in Cupertino that a vulcan mind-meld overseen by Catholic excorcists would not remove it.
You heathen! Slimeball! Unwashed blasphemer!! how dare you suggest Apple products are somehow lower than it's true place above and beyond all other hardware!? I'm not a fan boy... But a priest! Yes! The iPod is a creation unto itseld with NO puny ancestrial... Um... Ah...
Well, it was fun while I could keep a strait face.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Don't let it bother you - there are people out there who could care less how much things cost. These people are very different from you and I. They would rather lick the snot off a man's hairy ass than perform such a vulgar act as eating Kraft Macaroni and Cheese from a box. If they ever eat mac-n-cheese, you better bet they can tell you which provinces in Italy and France the pasta and cheese hailed from.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
All these crappy little PDA's with 32mg of ram, could be used for real work if they could store some serious data. 5gb of swapable HD would be a nice start.
This is a PCMCIA card, what else could you put in there? A wireless NIC, to connnect you to a music server?
I would rather be ashes than dust!
Surely you can't be suggesting that some news item would have exactly zero impact, be it boon or bane, on Linux?
If goodness of news is measured in discrete quanta, then P(goodness=0) = 1 ÷ = 0. If it is measured as a continuous quantity, then it is even smaller.
I foresee the remote effects of many news items on Linux. If you disagree, please explain your reasoning. Otherwise, it is this kind of foreward thinking that may finally make Linux a force to be reckoned with.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Considering the the hard drive card alone is currently running about $350 (cheapest pricewatch price at a place called Googlegear), its hard to argue with the value of this device.
Buy it for value of the hard drive alone. The MP3 player is a bonus.
It is great for navigation, but a click and hold button could do pretty much the same.
The problem with the scroll wheel is that it makes it nearly impossible to create a case that completely encloses and protects the iPod while still allowing access to the controls.
They already have.
Rhythmbox, which "takes its inspiration from Apple's iTunes application", is a direct rip-off of iTunes. It's also what I point at each and every time someone mentions open-source innovation.
Sure, it must be removable. Just think about it, using your favourite p2p tools, you can easily fill up more than 5GBs. What a bout one disk with Jazz, one with Rock, another with classics and so on - such that you may swap in and out depending on your mood...
There may even be other gadgets supporting the disk out there, like laptops - then it is really nice with removeable disk.
So, definitly, this looks like a great feature to me.
Ta det kuli, det ordner seg i marsjen
As it is, I have a nice organizational scheme called "a directory tree" and a sync system called "rsync". It might be missing a few frills
Usable software is not what YOU use. It is what is usable to "anyone". My girlfriend couldn't get along with rsync. iTunes is transparent to her.
Of course, the ability to slip it into any computer (give or take) isn't the only advantage of having a removable drive -- as I'm sure dozens of people have pointed out by now, it makes it easy to upgrade as well.
You seem to have forgotten that the iPod uses Firewire, and works as an external disk (in addition to it's transparent sync). Upgrades happen transparently to the user, and there is no need to 'remove the disk'. You just use a firewire cable and connect it.
With a CD/MP3 player I still have to:
a) Carry around a big CD/MP3 player
b) Carry around those 8 CDs
c) Swap between those 8 CDs
d) Find the CD with the album I want listen to
e) Whenever I get a new album, burn a new CD that includes it.
With my iPod, I drop it in my pants pocket and I'm done. No fishing for CDs, no carrying cases, no saying "oh shit" when my CDs get scratched.
Absolutely worth it.
spreer
Yes.
I'm a BIOS developer and spend lots of long hours in a very noisy machine room hunched over prototype machines will all sorts of fan and other noise around... My iPod is small enough to drop in my shirt pocket which is a good thing because the amount of hanging cable to my ears is much shorter than a larger device on my belt (think about hazard getting caught in fans, etc).
Also the battery life (10 hours) is long enough that I can go all day on a major debug bender and not worry about my tunes dying right about the time I get to an interesting problem.
Also having multiple CD-RWs means I've got multiple CDs floating around the lab that I need to protect from scratches or from other people clipping, etc.
I may develop PC hardware, but I love my iPod (and yes... the iPod was enough for me to go out and buy a G4 PowerMac)
--Rob
Apple would have a hard time sueing in the EU, where being able to trademark a shape was thrown out of the law today. The fight, which was was over electric shavers, said that a shape could not be trademarked and claimed as intelectual property if it made the product better.
Real interesting change here for international trademark law. A really interesting change for Apple, who loves to make cool shapes that makes computing more intuitive--and then trademark them.
NMG
Well... To change the topic slightly, look at it this way:
:) Sounds like a "floppy replacement" to me!
The Apple iPod can be split between music and data. So you could, in theory, put your absolute favourite music on it, and leave the rest of the space for a system folder (and some utilities).
Apples can boot from Firewire drives.
The new Apple XServe has, on the front, a FireWire port.
So any responsible sysadmin that has to look after an XServe _needs_ an iPod as an *ahem* emergency recovery disk.
Given that the Unix way is to have a "boot floppy" and a "fixit floppy", I'll go with Apple on this one
- Oliver
The right to bear arms is only slightly less stupid than the right to arm bears...
Honestly, thats why I just bought a mini disc player. The media is 75% smaller, with a little compression (just a lil) each MD can playback 160 minutes. I think full compression nets you 240 but it sounds like poop.
BOSTON SUCKS!
There's one VERY important thing that nullifies the advantage the ipod gets. Apple doesn't have windows software for it. So, let's see here, Windows controls roughly 90% of the market. Apple controls maybe 3%. Now, let's say that all the apple customers buy an Ipod. Toshiba would only have to sell a player to 1 in every 30 PC owners to be matching apple's market share.
Apple's plan to release Ipod with only apple software initially may have made sense but it's going to kill them in the long run if they don't get off their high horse.
Also, add to this that the Toshiba has some features that make it, in my mind, superior to the ipod. The fact that it's hard drive is removable is a definite bonus. Not only can I speed up transfers by hooking it up to my laptop's pcmcia slot, I can also upgrade the thing later if I need more space.
We'll see when these devices finally come out, but it seems to me that overall these are similar enough to cut into apple's sales in the long term. If apple decides to stick to selling to a base of apple customers, then they will never sell as many Ipods as Toshibas take on it.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Since the hard drives being used will have a far lower sustained I/O rate, probably around 3-5 MBps (24-40 Mbps). My gripe is that, even though I use a PC, I find firewire more convenient than USB. Motherboards implementing the USB 2.0 standard are still fairly rare (I know all my computers are only USB 1.1 compliant). I bought my IEEE 1394 card a couple years ago for DV I/O. But I suppose if they are targeting Windows users, USB was probably the better choice for broad compatibility.
I think I might too. Maybe you'll catch a cold from buttock-snot licking (?!?!), but eat Kraft Macaroni and Cheese straight from the box and you're likely to break some teeth.
So here's what I don't get...is the smaller profile of the device worth the extra $220?
Kind of a simplification of the features, eh?
- Smaller profile
- No swapping of 8 CDR
- No burning of CDR... just copy over and go
- New hard drives will be made with larger capacities.
- These hard drives are PC Cards, so they can be used for other things as well as this device.
Yeah, I think that makes it worth an extra $220!
"And like that
Didn't we see this exact same thing happen about four years ago with iMacs? Macintosh comes up with some, IMHO, great computer designs, and gets ripped off by their cheaper competitors. The iMac begat the E-Machine. But where's the E-Machine now? The godawful things have been obliterated by Macintosh.
The same thing will happen to Toshiba. You just can't compete with Macintosh in this arena. Macintosh has the advertising, and the design, exactly what middle-America eats up like candy.
The only thing Toshiba has in their favor is compatibility with an x86 computer. If they're smart, they'll get the hell outta Macintoshes way and stick to an "iPod for x86" brand.
A decent portable CD/MP3 player can be had for around $150, and let's round up to a 10-pack of CD-RW's for $20, plus a carrying case for the CD-RW's for $10.
So here's what I don't get...is the smaller profile of the device worth the extra $220?
Yeah a rewritable hard drive sure is not worth it when I could be lugging burn after burn of land fill CDs.
Apple's iPod hardware is entirely compatible. It's just a hard drive, with MP3 data stored in a particular sort of file tree. It's the software that Windows and Linux need to access it, and Apple hasn't bothered making that for the simple reason that they're not in the business of making PC products.
... but in the meantime their proprietary "we control everything and we interact with nothing" strategy means they deliberately cut off 90% of the market in a (likely vain) effort to make the other 10% look appealing.
This is the standard excuse Apple constantly uses for shooting themselves in the foot. "We are not in the PC business" [which is why we implimented a completely proprietary way of doing what everyone else has been doing using standard protocols/hardware specs for years now].
Apple keeps hoping to lure in new customers and then snare them with their proprietary hardware/software combination ("You can only do that with our stuff, switch to Apple"). What they do not understand is that anything sufficiently compelling will be implimented elsewhere, on people's preferred platform (whatever it may be), and that relatively few people are going to be compelled to switch platforms on the basis of such things.
Wintel, for all of its faults, is at least open on the hardware side (even if you're unlucky enough to be running windows), and if you're using *BSD or GNU/Linux, it is a completely open system. Contrast this with Apples growing list of "works only with Apple" peripherals, from their iPods to their proprietary LCD monitors. To be fair Apple's OS X is based on an open and free system (*BSD), but if all of their filesharing and other functions are implimented with proprietary protocols on top of that, it means very little in terms of the overall openness of the system, which in turn translates to virtual imprisonment of the customer. That may be Apple's goal (just as it has been Microsoft and Sun's goal), but customers do not like to be imprisoned, even in a gilded cage, and Apple is playing a game that, rather than taking advantage of the growing backlash against Microsoft, is likely to put them squarely in the same camp from their users' point of view.
Perhaps eventually Apple will manage to ensnare massive quantities of new people into their proprietary lock-in products
I have friends who are not GNU/Linux users, who have come to hate Microsoft with a passion, but are unwilling to switch to Apple because they know that then not only will their software be monopolized (by Apple), but so too will their hardware, putting them in an even worse (and even more expensive) predicament. What is interesting is that they, even without understanding all of their options vis-a-vis FreeBSD and GNU/Linux, still have managed to develope a sense of the entrapment proprietary hardware and software platforms imply, and they are sick to death of it (having experienced it first hand from Microsoft on the software side).
Apple's leadership will have to learn, sooner or later, to work with open standards and make their products able to interact and function with computers in general, not just their particular brand. Until they do so they will never be anything more than a niche player, and likely a small niche at that. It is interesting how many people, desperate to leave Microsoft, are unwilling to switch to Apple because they see Apple's proprietary nonsense as even worse.
And you know what? Even though they are relatively uninformed users, they are still absolutely right.
It is frustrating to see a company that produces so many neat things behave in such a destructive manner. Destructive to their customers, destructive to the computing community and marketplace, and most of all destructive to themselves. One would have thought they would have learned from the last time they engaged in this particular folly and nearly went bankrupt as a result, but alas it appears not.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Ummm.... he meant upgrade as in "increase disk size", not as in "update firmware".
Unless you'd like to suggest how you're going to replace your iPod drive with a 20Gb drive in a year or so?
Oh yeah. Without opening it up and voiding your warranty, you can't.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Ummm.... he meant upgrade as in "increase disk size", not as in "update firmware".
My mistake.
Unless you'd like to suggest how you're going to replace your iPod drive with a 20Gb drive in a year or so?
I'm hoping that in a year or so, 3 solid days of music will still be enough to tide me over, and I won't feel a need to upgrade.
I can see where that would be a problem for your solution - I guess it might help if you had better software to manage what's on your player at any given time.
specs link and image
No Mac support!
I think he was referring to the ability to upgrade the amount of storage the machine can handle.
seriouslyexcited.net
I have a creative nomad that was upgraded to 30gig of space (I only use about 20gig of that). Basically I don't want to haul around ANY cd's. Its nice to grab the player and headphones and have everything you need to listen.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
Because having a viable alternative product has always made Apple strive for opening their platforms, and cutting the prices. And it's worked wonderfully for them. Look at how their market share has gone up and up with every new release of Windows.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
This is by far the longest battery life that can be found on any portable. Way to go guys! big photograph http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20020617/gi gab.jpg
Japanese Press Releases
http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2002_06/pr_j1 701.htm
Name : GIGABEAT
Support File Type : MP3(16kbps~320kbps,22.05kHz~48kHz),WMA,WAV
HDD : 5GB(MobileDisc)
INTERFACE : USB 2.0(MAX 480Mbps)
DISPALY : 160 x 120dot LCD with a back light
Language : Japanese,English,French,Spanish,German
Power Supply : Advanced LithiumIon Battery
PLAYING TIME : 18Hour (Recharge time 3.5Hour)
Dimension : Approx. 72.5 X 22.3 X 112mm
Weight : Approx. 235g (including MobileDisc)
Price : About 50,000 yen (US$402)
June 22 sale in Japan
-eric
I started using oggs yesterday by accident when grip encoded them as oggs by default(it supports mpegs) They sound better, and while I'm not too concerned about diskspace, I've heard that they are smaller.
Does the terapin mine support oggs? Can you get a console on it?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
The closest analogy to using a CD-MP3 player versus an iPod is using a dozen different DOS boot disks to play a game versus having a dozen shortcuts on your windows desktop. Either one will let you hear the music/play the game that you want to...but one it noticable more elegant and workable, not to mention easier for the average user to handle.
± 29 dB
Perhaps. Here are the reasons I can think of to justify the cost:
So in short, I think it's just a bit more than profile.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
From their page:
MP3 files are great, and that is why we support them, but Ogg doesn't have any nasty license restrictions, compresses 10% smaller on average with 50% better quality, and our tests show it consumes less CPU on the Zaurus by a third, so this should also extend the battery life.
(Emphasis mine.)
(for actually using the device in conjunction with your Linux based PC)
I know kernel 2.5.2 has USB 2.0 support, but does USB 2.0 have some kind of generic storage support like USB does? What filesystem does the device use? If so, would it be easy to simply mount the device as a generic USB 2.0 filesystem without writing drivers?
Hrm... some further google research found this on linux-usb.org:
Device: Disks, CD-RW, etc.
Driver: usb-storage
Comments: Linux USB 2.0 support seems to work pretty well for the usb-storage devices that now exist, though it's slowed down since the usb-storage driver does not queue its USB requests. (Some devices will run twice as fast when that's fixed.) Most devices seem to use the In-System Design ISD-300 part internally.
1) USB has an isochronous mode (since at least 1.1).
2) You probably don't want to use isochronous for what is essentially SCSI emulation. isoc can be fast because bad data (usually) isn't retransmitted and error checking might be done on larger chunks o' data (e.g. up to 1023 bytes vs. 64 for USB 1.1 iso vs. bulk transfers).
Think UDP vs. TCP.
isoc.'s goal isn't speed but guaranteed throughput anyway. For USB, isoc. has a lower theoretical maximum throughput.
3) Your point of looking at how the raw bandwidth is actually used is a good one, but your details are misleading.
Here's a better example: USB 1.1 bulk transfers (used for Mass Storage Class among other things) are a maximum of 64 bytes and you can send a max. of 19 of them in one frame. There are 1000 frames per second. 19 * 64 * 8 / 1000 = 9.7 megabits/s vs. a raw rate of 12 mbits/s.
USB 2.0 bulk transfers can be up to 512 bytes per packet and 13 fit in a microframe for 426.0 mbits/s vs. 480 raw (there are 8 microframes per frame).
Mass Storage class requires a 31 byte command and 13 byte answer for every transaction. The largest I can remember seeing is maybe 32 kbytes at a time, so we're only losing 1/10th of 1% to protocol overhead at that level.
I only program USB controllers (though I love firewire for DV), so I'll leave it to someone more qualified to answer the efficiency questions for it.....
------
Incidentally, USB 1.1 isoc. does 2 512 byte packets per frame for 8.2 mbits/s. USB 2.0 can do 2 3072 byte packets per microframe for 393 mbits/s. In both cases it's actually less than for bulk transfers.
USB 2.0 is pretty much the same as 1.0 as far as I know, and largely backwards-compatible. Most of the advantages in USB 2.0 are at the hardware level, in terms of higher bit rates and such...
The parent to your post already gave two links to two products for bridging the iPod gap.
Apple's own website shows the bridge between ADC (their proprietary LCD solution) and DVI, the respected standard. Try http://www.apple.com/displays/adapter.html And that's not the only one, it just has Apple's blessing.
Now, why don't I tell you what *isn't* totally incompatible. A G4 tower. The kind that has a side that opens, many industry standard PCI cards, an industry standard AGP slot, industry standard SDRAM, industry standard ATA drives..
Or maybe you care to avoid their industry standard USB peripherals, like their stock keyboard/hub and mouse that works with Wintel hardware.
Or maybe you care about their documented hardware? The same hardware that you can boot Linux from.
Jeez guy, maybe you should get up off your high horse and realize that Apple is just selling very expensive hardware. Use any damn OS you want on it, but remember that you're also purchasing license to the Mac OS which includes a lot of good stuff, like iTunes, iMovie.. An OS that runs X11 and compiles like BSD. And if you don't like the cost, then complain about the cost and don't make crap up
well no - and thats why I don't have one.
On a side note - that silver phillips CDRW mp3 player I think is by far the best out of all of them. A) it can be had for under 100$, B) it actually works (unlike a lot of cd/mp3 players) and C) it lasts up to 10 hours continuously on two AA batteries. Plus it read's CDR's and CDRW's flawlessly.
But I have to agree with this guy. I work on PC's and Apples for a living and Apple uses quite a bit of hardware that is industry standard. Hard drives? RAM? USB? If you look at a G3 for example, about the only things that aren't compatible is the motherboard itself (imbedded chip). I won't go into the analog board or CRT here. I could actually stand a G4 because they are SO much easier to work on.
What I can't stand is the disparity in software and support or price for parts. I know from experience manufactures gouge you when buying from them, but Apple positively rapes you. Need an Apple fixed? Good luck. The place I work at is one of the few in the area. Software? Games? You must be joking. Yes, they got a decent amount of the popular stuff and it's slowly getting better, but the parent is also right-- Their "we could give a shit" attitude is gonna kill em eventially and it'll continue as long as Jobs is at the helm (or is "Chief Politcal Officer")
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Why hasn't anyone mentioned the imminent release of MP4? It's all speculation (although pretty likely)...but I'd imagine we'd see an iTunes & iPod firmware update to allow them when Jaguar hits this August. It's already in QT6... From what I hear, you'll get the same audio quality at half the file size...Guess I don't need the 10 gig iPod after all.
Don't you hate pants?
You mean the kind of innovation where you find a product superior to yours and then copy it because you couldn't figure out how to invent it yourself?
Of course *Apple* and *Microsoft* tend to *pay* the innovators by purchasing the software, instead of copying it (iTunes was purchased, as was DirectX)
I couldn't tell if you were sarcastic or not when you mention 'open-source innovation'
GPL Deconstructed
Yes, but CD-RW media by itself isn't terribly useful.
You need, um, a portable CD device, with, um, USB, SCSI, or FireWire, and those, well, are pretty big.
And you don't get the storage capacity unless you have a portable CD-RW device...
GPL Deconstructed
Unless you'd like to suggest how you're going to replace your iPod drive with a 20Gb drive in a year or so?
I'm hoping that in a year or so, 3 solid days of music will still be enough to tide me over, and I won't feel a need to upgrade.
I can see where that would be a problem for your solution - I guess it might help if you had better software to manage what's on your player at any given time.
Well, given that I used to use a Nomad Jukebox with 6Gb of space on it, and I already filled that with half of my CD collection... and not to mention that I *don't want to shuffle crap onto and off of the player* -- I want to put it on there and forget about it -- I would already fill an iPod several times over.
Heck, these days a 20Gb might not fill it.
BTW: What sound quality do you store you MP3s in? I doubt you'd get 3 solid days of music if you recorded them at anything approaching high quality.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Heh... There's nobody to alarm because nobody cares. Apple doesn't care. Their fans don't care because they're fanatically loyal and nobody on the other side of the fence cares because they're happy with the flexibilty a PC offers. The only person I appear to be alarming is you.
Honestly though, I really have mixed feelings about the Mac. On one hand they represent a tremendous creative force. On the other hand it's a proprietary dictatorship, which in my shrilly, alarmist opinion is The Bad Thing (TM). There IS a reason why the PC market has a huge share of the pie, regardless of how loyal or fanatical Apple users may be. Why ya suppose that is? Whatever the reason, maybe Apple could use a healthy dose of it. You tell me. Actually, don't. I'll probably just get more of the irrational fanboy crap.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
But the same could be said about Gateway or Compaq, though their plans aren't quite as generous. I've never had a problem replacing an in warrenty part or machine. Keep that extended warrenty action going and everybody is a happy camper, regardless of platform. Again, Apple does look at their products in the longer term though.
Of course, you're right about Mac licensing vs. Microsoft licensing, but then, Mac OS is your only choice.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I hate to post this... but competition is a good thing. Even if you like the iPod better, the fact that it has a competetor (or several) will likely make it more affordable.
Amazing magic tricks
Mod this up!
I was about to say the same thing. NetMD players are amazing. Their music quality can range from better than CD (if you're recoding live or via the optical input from a better source) to just as good as MP3, depending on what compression you choose. The media cost under $5 and you can fit 4 full albums on each disc (they are rewritable) Half the size of these MP3 players and the NEVER skip. I skate and listen to music and not once has my music missed a beat.
There is no reason for someone turn pass this technology up.
sin(6cos(r)+5A)
Off topic, but you may want to look at etymotics (www.etymotic.com) Their ER-6 and ER-4x earphones provide noise reduction. They're also very highly rated in terms of sound quality. Check out www.headphone.com for some reviews as well.
Well, given that I used to use a Nomad Jukebox with 6Gb of space on it, and I already filled that with half of my CD collection... I would already fill an iPod several times over.
Must be the new math. If half your collection fits on 6G, fair guess is that all would fit on 12G. I don't understand how 12G is "several times" 10G (the large iPod size).
Must be the new math. If half your collection fits on 6G, fair guess is that all would fit on 12G. I don't understand how 12G is "several times" 10G (the large iPod size).
Reread the post.
Half my collection fit on a 6Gb drive about two years ago.
I buy music regularly.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
The Toshiba actually looks interesting, with its removable drive.
Excuse me, I hardly think USB2 or Firewire is slowing down the transfers. The theoretical limit is about 50mbps; that's nearly 2x faster than *most* of the fastest IDE hard drives out there, much less a pidly little PCMCIA hard drive.
The funny thing is that in terms of competition, no Toshiba drive will outsell an iPod to *Apple* users because of lack of USB2... As for PC users, if I'm not mistaken there's still a larger installed base of FireWire than USB2, so until Toshiba makes a FireWire drive, Apple still has the advantage there too.
Well, with ephPod and XPlay
GPL Deconstructed
Er, so does the rest of the world.
I just looked at a Babel translation of the Toshiba blurb (http://www.toshiba.co.jp/mobileav/audio/meg50js/p roducts.htm).
It appears that the Gigabyte has the following features:
lithium ion battery
aluminium case
USB 1.1-compatible
On the advantages of PCMCIA vs Firewire vs USB-2, may I point out that the number of laptops with PCMCIA far exceeds the numbers of computers with Firewire and USB-2 combined
But my work pc is a different matter entirely. I don't work for a software house and the IT support department (whilst being very clueful) would have hysterics at the idea of me opening my PC and sticking a card in.
So my only option is either find something like a firewire to USB adaptor cable or look at alternatives. I asked this question in the last ipod topic and everyone told me to buy a firewire card which, again, for my work PC is totally 100% absolutely without-a-doubt out of the question.
So unless there is such a thing, Ipod (for me) is out.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
It must be gone. Not surprising, considering they were selling them for $99 while everyone else had it for $199. (Apple was also giving them out free with Powerbook purchases. They must have gotten a ton of them at a great OEM price.)
I had put one in my shopping cart last night, but I guess the cart expired. Now they're gone from the site. Darn!
four nine eighteen twenty-7 thirty-nine forty-7 fiftyeight sixty-nine seventy-9 eighty-8 one-hundred-and-nine one-twenty
or you could double teh quality of the music on your 10 gig iPod :P
werd to yo motha, muh nizzle.
Uh? By that point, I think the mouse was a commonly used thing in other places. Doug Englebart built the thing years and years before. I'd be hard pressed to say it was a copy any more than the use of a keyboard was a theft of innovation.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
Or use an encoder based on LAME.
Personally, I use gogo - LAME plus 3DNow! optimizations. Great quality, and WICKED FAST.
My SCSI 8x reader couldn't keep up even on my old 800 MHz Athlon. (And yes, it rips at 7.5-8x, unlike my Creative IDE DVD drive which rips at 0.5x - Creative sucks!)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Oh, I don't know, maybe this has something to do with it (search for "Linux" on that page).
True, it's not a big piece of the whole, but it is there. And do you honestly think that Apple would have ever gone open source, much less switched to a mach/unix based system, if it hadn't been for the attention Linux has been getting recently?
Nathan's blog
Nope. In the PC card format, the largest Toshiba is still 5 GB. That's even on the website link you had.
Eh? That's talking about Mach, and how Apple engineers got their hands wet by porting Linux to it. Yes, look at the history, Apple started MkLinux specifically to experiment and learn.
As for this whole Unixy OS, recall that this all started in the late '90s when they were looking at Be and NeXT to buy for their technology. They made the decision to buy NeXT, and use NeXTStep as the basis for their next-gen operating system, in 1997 (the first version of MkLinux was released in 1996, and based on 1.2/1.3 versions of Linux).
You may recall that Linux wasn't exactly getting mad props as a server, or a desktop, in those days, BSD was just undergoing the Net/Open split and people were talking like it was the end of the world, and everyone thought Unix was finally dying.
--Matthew