Another iPod Competitor

rael9real writes "NOMAD has intoduced a new player. It has USB 2 and FireWire (finally), and supports WMA and MP3. It has a 20GB drive like the high-end iPod, and supposedly holds more music because it supports WMA (though why someone would want to use WMA is beyond me). It *is* cheaper than the iPod, though. Looks like a definite competitor. Maybe it'll drive iPod pricing down." Update: 10/14 21:21 GMT by T : Note that the listed specs for the player mention only "USB," not USB 2.

Comments

Gotta say it...

[Drunken Coward]

Will it support Ogg Vorbis?

iPod fun not just music...

[guacamolefoo]

...part of the fun is doing other stuff with it and the community/culture of hacking it to do other stuff besides just play MP3 files. How much fun will the Nomad provide, and will it be able to generate the same sort of interest?

And oh yeah...what about ogg? (sheesh)

guac-foo

OGG!

[c0wh]

I would buy this as soon as possible if it played OGG. I suppose we need to make it clear to the manufacturers that OGG support would be beneficial to sales.

Perhaps we just need to give OGG time to become more pervasive.

Re:OGG!

[hendridm]

> OGG support will not be beneficial to sales.

I'm not so sure about that. A large portion of the typical portable player audience is probably geeks. If there was a single popular player out there that was the only one to offer Ogg, I can bet a significant number of the millions of Slashdot readers would take notice. Maybe it would only cause a 2% increase in sales the first year, but would the extra revenue be worth the firmware changes? Apparently not, according to Nomad, but I think there is something to be said about being the only OGG product on the market with any sort of brand recognition.

You gotta remember too, when the average customer talks to a typical blue shirt at Best Buy, the salesperson will say "Well, this one gives you an extra hour of playback at a *higher* quality than the others." Even though the customer may have no clue what OGG is, the salesperson does.

Contrary to popular belief, that computer salespeople at Best Buy are not all nitwits. Most of them know what they are talking about but are hindered by corporate policy.

Re:OGG!

[stungod]

Damn straight! That and BeOS support too. You might as well make the whole leap to technically superior and obscure. Then you can feel totally oppressed.

Honestly, I totally agree that .ogg support on all audio devices would be a good thing. But you also have to take into account the extra time cramming .ogg support on the embedded decoder vs. the typical consumer's wishes. It's hard to admit from the geek's standpoint, but there still isn't a real compelling reason on the vendors' parts to support .ogg. You probably won't see the shitty bundled software for Linux or even Mac for the same reason.

WMA isn't *terrible*

[ColGraff]

It's worth pointing out that, if you're just ripping your own CDs, WMA isn't a *terrible* format. It's reasonable size, reasonable quality. It can't compare to a quality ten ogg vorbis file, but then again I don't believe it's meant to. For portable devices, it almost makes sense - except, of course, for the lack of linux support. And if you want to do anything involving sharing music and putting it on your player, than of course the WMA DRM features can be - but aren't always - a problem.

This is great and all but what about the software?

[Kaypro]

The reason iPod is such a great product is because it integrates perfectly with iTunes. Not only does the hardware interface become a pleasure to use but the software-hardware interface is seamless as well. The real question here is how well thought out is Creative PlayCenter 3. Assuming that Creative made the hardware intuitive AND made organizing/transfering your music to it just as good, then they may have something here, at least for PC users. God knows that the iPod for Windows and MusicMatch Jukebox is just embarassing to use.

Re:Why not Ogg Vorbis?

[feldsteins]

Why not Ogg Vorbis?

I think it's because you're radically over-estimating the number of sales that such support would garner. I don't see any reson to doubt that the manufacturers do their homework and weight out whether adding such support would be a financial gain, a loss, risky, etc. A bunch of nerds on slashdot don't have access to the kind of market data that these guys have.

Or at least one would think that they are doing their homework. Is there reason to believe that they haven't? I mean besides a bunch of slashdot nerds claiming that the first manufacturer to build in Ogg support would be rocketed to the top of the heap through the sheer volume of previously untapped sales?

Re:From CDW, price is $399US

[Eccles]

So it's $100 cheaper than the same size ipod

With a 90 day warranty, instead of one year. Perhaps they have less confidence in its shock resistance.

Probably no price competitor

[Xunker]

While you may understandably think that a cheaper feature-for-feature iPod competitor would cause apple to drop the price on the iPod to match, there is reason this won't happen.

It's a common misconception that Apple in the business of selling hardware and software, much like people think that Nike sells shoes.

But Nike does not sell shoes and Apple does not sell computers. They are first and foremost Image companies, selling themselves -- they are their product. This is not a commant on quality, speed or anything of the sort, but it is on price. When you buy and iPod, you are first anf foremost paying for the the fact that is not simply a hard drive, decoder and DAC, but that it's a work of art put together by skilled Apple designers.

This is why Apple won't bother to match prices, because they don't need to. Though brand names may be little more than stories we tell each other, they are more than enough to justify a higher cost on an equal product. If the iPod does the same but looks better and has a better backstory, people will have little trouble justifying the extra cost.