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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."
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
iTunes doesn't have a way to do it, but there are a number of freeware/shareware programs that will copy music off the iPod, including some that integrate directly into iTunes. Check out versiontracker.com for more info..
toshiba can't afford *not* to sell drives at competitive prices to all other manufacturers (i'm sure apple has leverage here with their other drive purchasing), so i imagine that their price advantages are not significant to us the consumer.
plus, the work-arounds to using an ipod on a pc are well known. anyone who drops $400-500 on one of these is going to be at least a somewhat serious user.
and, in the end, the itunes interface with the ipod is simply superior to anything else out there.
i'm not so sure anyone is the winner-- except us as apple must have to lower the high prices on ipods now that they have direct competition on size and price.
just my two cents.
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.
I dunno, I suppose being able to encode metadata, boot off the drive, retain permissions (another form of metadata), and a few other things, makes the argument for HFS+
Oh, and perhaps compatibility with over, what, 10 years of legacy might have helped too.
HFS+ is interoperable, it's just that Microsoft doesn't implement HFS+, so yeah it's a pain to pay someone $40 to implement HFS+ support for you, but then what do you think Apple users have to deal with when buying PC oriented products?
GPL Deconstructed
I'd say that Apple definitely has the advantage here because:
1) The Ipod is smaller, lighter, and has a bigger screen.
2) The battery is a Lithium Polymer, which can support playback of up to 13 hours, by some user reports, while this hunk of junk may very well use AA's.
3) It costs, oddly enough, $10 more, even though Toshiba makes the hard disc, and it has *ahem* a smaller screen.
4) The backlight can't be nearly as good.
5) USB 2.0 can't power the unit, while firewire can, so I never have to bring an AC adaptor *anywhere*.
I think that you maybe didn't read the article?
First, Toshiba isn't the first to sell an "iPod competitor". We've already seen the Treo 10 [com.com] ("...which is similar in appearance and function to the iPod...") and Nomad [nomadworld.com] hit the market, with similar press responses.
The amusing thing is, even though the press might compare the Nomad 3.0 with the iPod, the Nomad 3.0 was leaked on the Creative Nomad newsgroups about a year before the iPod was announced.
And all the specs were the same as when it was released.
The details of their Audigy stuff were released at the same time.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
"Faster"?
How much faster do you want it to play the music, anyway?
:)
--T
http://www.theMediaBunker.com
Apple should put more concetration on open standards then making hardware that is incompatible for the reason "just because"
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.
XPlay and EphPod both work, separately or together, to bridge the iPod/PC gap just as iTunes already does for Macs. And they do so with Apple's blessing, because Apple already knows that being able to sell iPods to PC users would be a good business decision -- but using iPods to help sell iBooks and iMacs is, from their end, an even better one.
You mean like 1, 3, and 5, genius?
Oh, wait. We just read a product bragging page, and they didn't spend even a single line talking about their great battery life. What do you think that means, champ?
*yawn*
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.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Ogg seems to take significantly more processing power to decode. The media player manufacturers probably don't want to spend extra money to handle Ogg when 99% of the market just wants to play MP3s.
Has anyone gotten Linux running on this yet? I'd really like to install Debian and be able to run X.
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 just finished writing an article for DV Magazine about FireWire yesterday, so I've got this on the brain.
While USB2 does have a theoretical maximum data rate of 480 Mbps compared to 400 Mpbs with FireWire, FireWire does a much better job of time-critical streaming with its isochronous mode. Thus you can actually use a much higher percentage of the theoretical bandwidth with FireWire.
Of course, we're talking 400 freaking Mbps here. A real-time stream of DV is only 25. Maxed out MP3 files are 0.32 Mbps. Heck, Panasonic is going to have 1280x720 HD decks that use FireWire later this year, and THAT is only 100 Mbps.
USB2 also has less bus power than FireWire, so it can't charge bus-charged devices like the iPod as quickly.
Also, while 1394b is coming, the name Gigawire is purely theoretical.
1394b includes faster speeds over copper and optical connections (800 Mbps initially, with 1600 and 3200 coming), with run lengths up to 100 meters. It'll also do 100 Mbps over CAT-5, so you can route real-time video over existing wiring.
There will be two new connector types. Bilingual cables will hook up to both legacy 1394 devices and 1394b. This means you can mix and match 1394 and 1394a devices and computers. There will also be the beta connector for 1394b only applications (not beta for "non-quite-done" but for the b in 1394b). There won't be any more of the 4-pin v 6-pin confusion in 1394b, thankfully. As long as you don't have any beta-only stuff, you can just use normal 6-pin FireWire cables for all your stuff.
My video compression blog
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
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
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!
I'd say that Toshiba definitely has the advantage here because[...]
I'd say many people are missing something that in retrospect may seem obvious.
The iPod contains a Toshiba drive (the same drive, or one twice the capacity.) Apple made a large purchase from Toshiba. There's probably more to that relationship than just one cash order. Apple may have given Toshiba cash to hold off selling the drives for other companies to put in other players, with a clause allowing Toshiba to sell their own version starting at some specified time, but holding off on the larger drive. I'm sure there's a relationship between the two companies we're not privy to.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
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.
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
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...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Ogg seems to take significantly more processing power to decode.
You're wrong :-)
I currently have my iPAQ sitting on the other side of the room playing an Ogg file. Ogg playing seems to take around 30% of the CPU time, while MP3 playing takes around 20%. That's with madplay - a high quality integer-only MP3 decoder - playing the MP3, and the integer-only version of the Ogg Vorbis reference decoder. Okay, the Ogg decoding takes more, but I'd guess that the Ogg decoder could be optimised a bit more as well...
Paranoia isn't an infectious condition, it's a way of life
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
USB provides power, but not _enough_ power. Less than 500mA at 5V. Firewire provides 12v to 16v at around 12W in most cases - far better than the 2.5W of USB.
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.
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