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5 Reasons Not to Buy an iPod
TommyH1000 writes "CNet has posted an article with five reasons not to buy an iPod. " The article really just shows the major shortcomings with the iPod (Battery, Cost, Moving Parts etc) and gives several alternatives. A great summary of the major things going on in the portable MP3 player market.
We want open, free media formats!
Rip all my CDs and then burn them back onto CDRs. You can fit like 12 CDs on one CDR in MP3 format. I have a wallet case when I travel and I manage to pack the music of 144 CDs with me that way. Best Buy has portable CD players that they sell for 30.00 that read MP3s and there you go, the cheap solution. When I get my cut of this money that the Nigerians are transferring to me though an iPod is the first thing on my list!
"Don't buy it"
"We love it, but it doesn't blah blah blah blah...."
"But it's still the best"
Thanks for nothing....
So how do I moderate a CNet article as (-1, Flamebait)?
Yet, that's the only way to get huge capacities at a somewhat affordable price. If they had gigs of flash media, they'd be too expensive for most people. It's a trade-off, not a defect.
hell hath no fury like a mac addict unfavorably reviewed.
it seems odd that for each point, they suggest different mp3 players- which all have some of the same faults the ipod was critiziced for previously. I also don't think that the lack of support for windows media files means it won't work at all with other services, I think the services need to give you an oportunity to convert the music to mp3 or some other less controled standard.
the end of the article says it all: Of course, if you don't care about low battery life, aren't fond of jogging, have ample disposable income, don't need to record/encode music portably, and want to purchase music downloads only from the iTunes Music Store, then the iPod is the best the way to go. While not ideal for some niche activities, it's still hands down the best-designed MP3 player in the world.
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
... such as the ones about excessive weight for jogging (what kind of wimp can't carry 6 extra ounces?) and hard-drive vulnerability. The author clearly fails to understand how rugged those microdrives actually are. I doubt you could wreck one on purpose with anything short of an attack with a blunt instrument.
However, I'm concerned about the non-replaceable battery point he raises. I've already had to buy a $300 replacement lithium-ion battery for my two-year-old Vaio. Is it actually true that the IPod's battery can't be replaced, even by sending it back to Apple? If so, that's the mother of all deal-breakers for me. Modern technology is great and all that, but batteries still suck hard, and I certainly wouldn't want to give up the ability to replace them as needed.
This article doesn't make sense, because there is no other MP3 player that offers solutions for all 5 reasons either.
Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy the Apple iTunes Music Store; its AAC-encoded files sound great, the selection is decent, and it's easy to use. But I don't like feeling hemmed in. Some other MP3 players let you choose between BuyMusic, Musicmatch, and Napster, all of which use Microsoft's secure WMA files.
The article really just shows the major shortcomings with the iPod (Battery, Cost, Moving Parts etc) and gives several alternatives.
No, it shows who CNET wants as it's friends.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
is that there is no MP3 player that will fit all uses and users (as if we didn't know that). I still prefer my iPod to any other player I've tried, but longer battery life would have been nice.
1. 6 hours is not enough battery, ok fine.
2. Jogging with an iPod could be bad, ok fine.
3. iPod is expensive, duh.
4. Voice recording is an add-on. Find a better one.
5. Since when is the online store a part of having a portable mp3 player? Alsoi, "Microsoft's secure WMA files" made me laugh.
All-in-all, seems like weak reasoning. Yes, its expensive, but I think its high quality.
IIRC, battery life in the 2nd-gen iPods was about 50% longer than the 3rd-gen ones, if not more. That was a sacrifice Apple made for the smaller size. If battery life is your only complaint, buy a used 2nd-gen online.
It's not like there's anything better. What, should we buy a Nomad or one of those Napster branded ones? Forget it. The iPod might not be perfect, but it's a damn sight better than anything else on the market. I'd get an iPod, if only I had any money......
don't like music at all. Who's this bozo in the story? He reminds me of those crazy liberals that are always trying to impose themselves on the human populations.
Of course, if you don't care about low battery life, aren't fond of jogging, have ample disposable income, don't need to record/encode music portably, and want to purchase music downloads only from the iTunes Music Store, then the iPod is the best the way to go.
Well, I routinely get 5 to 6 hours on my iPod and that is plenty for me. I have never had to have more battery life even on cross country plane flights or drives. I jog routinely with the iPod and have never had a problem and I tried the other music outlets for downloadable music. The iTMS is simply the best there is so.....What is his point?
And then at the bottom of this rant, the author saysWhile not ideal for some niche activities, it's still hands down the best-designed MP3 player in the world.
What gives? Is this guy totally out to lunch?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
If you hate Apple so much don't buy their products. I however see the value in their products and will continue to buy them.
What happened to my robot, I was promised a robot.
What do you call the HDD???
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
and they all start with an $
Oh yeah, for sure Microsoft is behind this huge campaign against apple+itunes+ipod...
Neuros is great.
Huge discount right now: $229 for the unit with swappable 128meg CF and 20gig HD backpacks.
Works with Linux
Plays Ogg vorbis
Plays mp3
Plays wma
Records to mp3
Records to wav
Built in FM transmitter so no line-out to tape dongle to hear the thing in your car
This thing is great. It's cheap now because they will be introducing a newer version soon.
www.neurosaudio.com
I don't give a damn. Yes, the iPod isn't perfect, but none of the products he mentions is. I am a bit sceptical of the jogging argument as well, seeing as the iPod has 25 minutes of skip protection. But in any case, I think the guy just wants to point out flaws in the iPod. All this is fine, but do you really want the Dell alternative that has the one feature that the iPod doesn't have, and is missing all of the other things that make the iPod great?
I charge my iPod overnight, and take it to work with me. I have consistently had battery to spare after 8-9 hours, lasting the drive home.
I don't know what flights they're taking, or where they get the 6 hour number from, but that's just flat wrong.
NB this is with the original 5GB iPod, I have no experience with newer models.
Can't Microsoft post it as a large headline on their own homepage?
A few months back I was reading the Sunday comics and some kid had written in to their mail advice section asking how to make his MP3s all sound the same volume. What really flored me was that the advice person actually answered with some good info about normalizing MP3s.
It's great seeing what was pure geek technology before spread to the masses. So to with this article, it shows MP3s are really becoming mainstream. Hopefully more and more people will start to see how bad the DMCA/broadcast flag/etc are as well.
not that I'm comparing and iPod to the above, but I'm sure you could somehow mangle those reasons to argue against anything that costs more than dree-fiddy.
Two wrongs may not make a right, but three
so, you didn't bother to RTFA?
their talking about the moving parts inside the ipod, ie:hard disk drive
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
With 1 really being the biggest issue.
;) I have a tread mill at home, so I can use headphones connected to the TV, and play Tekken on my PS2. Next. (I also have a teeny first generation YEPP that has no moving parts if I ever wanted to venture out into the realworld)
2- I don't jog
3- Its expensive, but its cute. And if you can rationalize the Cute-vs-$ argument, then its a non-issue. I just got a stereo that looks like a digital toaster. I could have found a cheaper one, but this one looked K00L, so I payed more.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Why waste the joules to program a flash-memory buffer? wouldn't it be less energy to use an sram buffer? flash is only necessary for non-volatile storage, since when does a playback buffer meet that requirement... or is the author a moe-ron?
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Not only does the battery only last about 6 hours, but at least on mine, it doesn't give you much warning before it dies.
There is a charge indicator which displays a full charge right up until death. After that, you have to charge it, watch it reboot, reset the date/time if you aren't tired of doing that, then repopulate the playlist. PITA.
Other irritations: The front and (especially) the back of the iPod get scratched. The touch sensitive pad seems too sensitive. The "Brick" game is buggy.
Don't get me wrong, I like my iPod, but contrary to the hype it is by no means a perfect player.
There is a small IDE drive inside the iPod, which has at least one spinning platter inside of it - just to name one thing. But i guess that doesn't count..
Or maybe it does?
Okay, except for maybe the battery life point, the other four points are:
2,3,4,5)Because it doesn't do something it's not designed to do.
Btw: If you won't buy an iPod because it's expensive, you obvious aren't in the target market for the device. It's actually reasonably priced in it's segment.
It's like saying 5 reasons not to buy a house:
1)It's expensive
2)You can't take it to the grocery store... etc.
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
1. Battery life. He's on the low side, and I guess the 8+hour fliers will be inconvenienced.
2. Jogging at the exact moment the buffer needs filling... this is an astronomical chance and not worth mentioning.
3. Um, right - carry 20 discs and a player vs. this small unit. That's a matter of choice. Hardly compelling.
4. High quality recordings...well you already have the ability to do that with the computer you're using for the back end of all this... no one buys an iPod as a standalone.
5. Choice. Um, so he's saying that by using any of those other players you get a choice of exactly one other format in a bunch of stores who all use WMA (he notes that it's secure - but doesn't note the faiplay drm of apple) all from stores with smaller selections, obscure catalogs or the status quo in illegal downloads.
is at least 51% FUD.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
1 - the things in the list have nothing to do with technological flaws with the unit itself.
2- the author's expectations for battery life versus product size exceed that of most major military technologies.
3- I, like the author, need a bigger paycheck so I don't have to buy cheap, lower quality music devices all the time.
4- Making high quality digital recordings is something I should be able to do from a $500 device that fits in my pocket.
5- The picture of the author inspires me to buy a new pair of headphones.
It's more than mp3 with variable bit rate. It supports more than 2 channels (mp3 is limited to stero). It also has tested as better sounding at lower bitrates, and supports bitrate peeling, which allows you to reshape a file on the fly for differing circumstances.
the article makes some good points. low battery life, too expensive. my suggestion would be buying an older iPod. the old 20 gig model has 8-10 hours of bettery life, and goes for about $300 (same as the newer 10 gig one). you can get a 5 gig one for under $200. (and not used off ebay. either new, or factory refurbished)
yes it isnt good for jogging, etc. if you're jogging, you're probably not gonna need more than 2 hours of tunes, and a flash based mp3 player is fine. (unless you're running a marathon?)
as far as having a choice in online music stores, you do have a choice. but you have to make a choice and stick with it. choice #1: use iTunes and iPod. choice #2: use something else.
You can reasonably argue about whether an iPod is worth the money or not. I have one and it's worth the money to me. Another person can make a reasonable argument that it's not a good value for him. But this article is bizarre. It's almost as though some editor told this dude to write an article slamming the iPod's weaknesses in some situations, but he had an attack of honesty at the end where he said it was the best MP3 player to buy -- after he had spent the article pointing people to other players based on various iPod shortcomings. Overall, it seems to be really bad journalism, because the whole article suggests one thing which is contradicted by the conclusion of the piece.
If you're fitting 12 CDs on one CDR, you're not exactly going for the best sound quality, though.
What I need is a player that can hold 50 gigs of ogg files (~400 CDs at high quality - over 2 weeks of music).
GL
I love this guy's approach. Standard Slashdot posting technique (for karma in spite of going against the grain): say that you know something's great, and you know you'll probably get flamed for saying it, BUT ...
...
... other MP3 players let you choose between (services) all of which use Microsoft's secure WMA files." Great.
... product designers are paid to make trade-offs.)
Then you have a middle section that leaves out just enough information to make your troll seem passable
Then you wrap up with "but I still think the original thing's great."
Best flame: "Of course, if you don't care about low battery life, aren't fond of jogging, have ample disposable income, don't need to record/encode music portably, and want to purchase music downloads only from the iTunes Music Store, then the iPod is the best the way to go."
I mean, let's go point by point on this:
1) 6 hours of battery life on a long airplane flight --> low battery life
2) Jogging --> "Some experts say that it's impossible to damage the drive in this way, but I'm not buying that"
3) Ample disposable income --> well, actually, yes Apple's picking a high price point for its product, but it's a trade-off.
4) Record music portably --> If you really need this, I wouldn't recommend an iPod either.
5) iTMS --> "I don't like feeling hemmed in
And he's joining all these reasons together to say, "well, you can *settle* for an iPod." (Dreaded use of 'and' instead of 'or' -- *None* of the MP3 players he's hawking resolves all 5 points
But he's sandwiched it all between praise of the iPod, so I guess it's ok. Or something.
The article is too thin on details. It does not give enough alternatives and also does compare them. The article just points some of the drawbacks of iPod but does give info about other players which are better than iPod for that particular feature.
It's hard to believe reason 4 when they say "experts say that it's impossible to damage the drive in this way, but I'm not buying that". I think they're called experts and not arm-chair hypthesisers for a reason.
Note also that few of the alternatives satisfy more than 1 of the conditions given.
Also, they don't seem to know that if the battery dies you can get it replaced.
Why not just do a proper group review, rather than saying "Don't by this because we don't like it"?
I've just ordered my iPod and it is, as we speak, winging its way over to me from Taiwan. I am quite comfortable with my purchase, and having read over such excellent sites as The iPod Lounge I am pretty happy I have bought the right thing.
A group test for me is the way forward.. simply picking a product, and then writing an article to slate it is pretty poor IMHO. How the hell do they know what I am looking for in a portable MP3 player, or which MP3 player appeals to me more?
Apple were one of the first with a killer product, which is selling around 350,000 units per quarter - sure it obviously has a few issues such as the battery life, but Apple obviously felt that a reduction in size was worth the cost in battery life.
Pretty much anyone who owns one or anyone who reviews one ends up raving about it.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
So they dont like it for the same shortcomings that all their suggestions have?
I got a 10GB 2nd gen which I am listening to right now at work (Lewis Black - White Album Live). I got it for $135. Give me a break.
Hard drives have no moving parts?
5. You want a choice in online music stores.
Sure, other stores only offer windows-proprietary format for download which won't play on the iPod. So burn the songs to CD, then rip them via iTunes so that the iPod can play. Obviously a bizarre solution, but how many people actually prefer a different music store -vs- iTunes?
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
He calls WMA "Microsoft's secure format" hyping that its secure (so as not to scare you from an otherwise notoriously insecure Operating Environment. What he ignores is that WMA = DRM just like AAC. Online DRMd music is NOT MP3, and none of these devices play Oggs, which is a technically supieror format.
This was written for Joe Sixpack, who doesn't want the burden of actually having to understand 'all that technical stuff'.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
1. If six hours isn't enough, take an airline power adapter with you and plug it in.
2. Sure it's cool. I ride mountain bikes and BMX bikes with my iPod turned on, and I can't remember it ever skipping. Chalk this argument up to FUD.
3. Boohoo. Quality costs money. Live with it. Show me another MP3 player with similar size, features, a decent UI/controls, and equal storage space that costs less.
4. What percentage of the owners of portable MP3 players are DJs that want to record their sets? DAT is lossless and is an industry standard, which makes it considerably better for recording your live sets.
5. Huh? Who cares? I'd be willing to bet that between 60 and 75 percent of the music on iPods everywhere is stuff that was downloaded, with 24 to 33 percent being ripped from personal collections, and the remaining 1% purchased from an online store. (On my iPod, which currently contains 4303 songs, 27 of them were purchased at the iTMS. 0.6%)
I guess the question is, how much did Samsung and iRiver pay for this article?
blog |
yes. i agree. 6 is definatly not enough for me. a Beaowulf cluster, whatever the hell that is, is what i would need. i love ipod as much as i love metalica and brittany spears.
i also love the new album, metalica and brittany spears unplugged featuring neil diamond and the only place to get it is ipods page.
wow....this world is an amazing place to be in this century.
The battery life really is not great, and it continues to suck power even when you don't have it on so you have to recharge the thing constantly. The other issues like weight, and expense are valid too, I also dislike the the touch-sensitive buttons, no manual EQ settings, no line-in.
Apple zealots don't do Apple any favors as they set themselves up so high on the pedestal, that they're bound to get knocked down a peg. The iPod really isn't THAT much better overall nowadays.
Don't get me wrong, I still like the iPod, but it's not so clear-cut nowadays with all the new competitors. Hopefully, Apple will address these issues in the next revision to stay ahead of the pack.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
Well, FWIW, if you're not constantly fast forwarding or skipping songs, the hard drive buffers 20 minutes of music and then spins down.
the point is that in general iPod is the best player, but if one of those five criteria the author pointed out to you is very important (ie you must have 15 hours of battery life on a single charge) you might want to consider getting a different player. its like an engineering problem; there are choices which work most of the time, but situations vary and so should your choices.
Jogging can damage it? Then I should be more careful, as not only do I run with it (though mostly to classes), I regularly play squash or work out while jammin' to "War and Peace" from audible.com. Not to mention the many times I've dropped it (note: get a carrying case!).
It should not be difficult, however, to refute their claim. Considering the accelerations present when jogging with it, compared to the internal velocities of the hard drive, it really seems inconsequential. Though don't take my word for it.
apart from the recording and music store ones, but it is still the smallest HD player and still the best looking and it has the best interface (not that I have tried them all). And besides I've got one and there's no way that you're going to persuade me that my 299 was poorly spent.
Anyone else notice that CNet has jumped on an anti-Apple bandwagon, or better known as "yes Bill, we are your bitch" syndrome.
It also has tested as better sounding at lower bitrates, and supports bitrate peeling, which allows you to reshape a file on the fly for differing circumstances.
Ground Control to Yoda Doll...
Lack of radio is a small but important one for me. Considering that it costs less than 50 cents for an integrated radio chip, and that the iPods UI is ideal for radio tuning, it is certainly something I would like to see. Sometimes I want to hear the news and other live events.
Apple could open up a bit more in terms of media formats, but then again, so could the online stores. AAC is far more open that WMA is at the moment. Heck AAC, is even part of the MPEG4 standard.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Why does a portable digital jukebox need more than two channels?
I don't know about you but two channels works great for me!
AAC kicks anything's ass at the lower bit rates, and the iPod has bitrate peeling emulation in the form of a graphic equalizer.
The reviews says "Since each MP3 CD holds about 10 hours of music, you could carry 20 CD-Rs in a CD wallet and have about the same amount of music that fits on the 15GB iPod. Best of all, you can pick up a decent one (the iRiver ChromeX) for less than $60" Well you can as well carry a backup with a cheap laptop and use it to play 40GB songs. The cheap laptop can be bought from ebay for around $300 and that beats the iPods cost of per GB of songs. Crappy comparison, just for sake of putting down a product that public loves and buys.
1. Apple hasn't partnered with Cnet to sell their device via click-through, resulting in less revenue for CNet from the apparent #1 player.
2. Were Apple to increase in marketshare as a result of 1)the #1 portable music device and 2)the #1 online music store, we'd have to have people cover it more, potentially resulting in less coverage of Microsoft-based products.
3. Anyone can find something wrong with anything, and I have, and since I work at CNet and you don't, you have to listen to me.
4. Microsoft creates standards, not Apple. If Apple creates standards, or supports ones not approved by billg, we'll be back in the chaos of the 80's and early 90's. I can't go back to installing WinSock! I can't!! Buy WMA devices, please!
5. Ha ha, sucker, thanks for the ad impressions. Coming up next: 5 reasons why you shouldn't use Linux, Mac OS X, and/or Mozilla!
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
If you look at the iPod specs here:
http://www.apple.com/ipod/specs.html
You'll notice that the iPod has a maximum altitude of 10,000 feet, and is not meant to operate in temperatures greater than 95*F. For the millions living in these altitudes or climates, their iPod is in serious danger of being destroyed by the environment if the head crashes don't get it first, since it is basically a moving hard drive. So, if you're a basketball player travelling in a mountainous state or a soldier on the streets of Basrah, an iPod is pretty much useless to you.
I personally get about 8 hours from my iPod. And when I need more juice I use this:
s ?Merchant_Id=&Section_Id=201526&pcount=&Product_Id =148969
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.proces
If you need to listen to music for more than 10 hours having an optional battery pack is a must, and it uses AA's so I just swap those for more power.
I don't see one offered for the Dell or Samsung player.
I'm fairly happy with my IPod, although I should have tested the other ones out before taking the plunge. I was taken in because it's just so sexy.
Physics: Making the universe open source.
CNet has really been piling on the FUD lately. First a crappy review of the otherwise well reviewed Panther, then bitching about extremely rare data loss issues, then lying by saying Apple doesn't plan to fix 10.2.8 issues that were fixed in Panther, and now slamming the iPod.
What crawled up their ass?
"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."
-E. W. Dijkstra
It kicks the crap out of every other MP3 player on the planet with it's tight integration with iTunes. I have owned several different brands of Mp3 players but I will never give up my iPod.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Crippled functionality is not something to worry about with iRiver. Their design philosophy seems to be "end user experience = GOD, screw what the RIAA wants". Every flash/hard drive based player they have works as a USB drive. This one also has built-in mp3 recording off analog/optical audio in (with bit rates up to 320kbps). iRiver also has a great menu system rivaling the iPod (preference is up to the user, though). Their North American site seems to be ./'ed, but European site is working fine. Has all the same info about the same products. It's about time these guys start to get the recognition the deserve - I've been in love with them for over a year. I just wish I could afford one of these, but alas, I am but a lowly student.
And your music collection is only ever on your "digital jukebox"? You don't understand bitrate peeling. It lets you encode things at a super high quality to stay on your hard drive (say with 5.1 sound), but then strip it down on the fly as you transfer it to your "digital jukebox" or email it to a friend or stream it on the internet to a lower bitrate and fewer channels. And, not everyone plugs their "digital jukebox" into headphones. You could plug it into a real speaker set, or a sound system.
All the other stuff is just personal preference and not really a reason NOT to buy something. Battery life is something that pretty much affects everyone.
Maybe cnet is just bitter because apple doesn't buy banner ad space on their servers? I've never seen one but plenty of ads for dell and other makes of the other mp3 players they mentioned.
look at all the links on the page, see how they try to SELL you the product .. this looks like a really thinly vieled ad. I love the final paragraph though
". Some other MP3 players let you choose between BuyMusic, Musicmatch, and Napster, all of which use Microsoft's secure WMA files. Those files are supported by a wide range of MP3 players but not the iPod. If you want a greater degree of choice in music services, go with an MP3 player from one of the following companies. ...."
.. alomst exactly the same if i remember correctly
Kinda reminds me of something MS was saying recently.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
The article doesn't tell you anything you don't know. Built-in batteries are cool until they run out and you can't throw in AA's. Hard drive players have the limitations of hard drives. They're expensive. You use Apple software..
Big. Red. Truck.
(that's the punchline from a rather humorous blonde joke about being amazingly dense)
Sent this missive off to CNET:
While there certainly are downsides to the iPod, your article took a very skewed and biased approach.
1) Battery life - you mention the iPod has "6 hours". Not sure where you got this information since Apple quotes 8. I've routinely gotten 10 hours (full drive from Memphis to Chicago, including some rush hour traffic). Meanwhile, Dell quotes 15 hours and you helpfully add "lasted almost 20 hours in our battery test". Okay, you want to run your own tests, fine, but do it for the iPod as well. I don't dispute that the Dell has a much longer battery life, but your reporting is extremely biased here.
2) Jogging - First off, you give the impression that the iPod drive is running much more than it is (" hard drives spin thousands of times per minute") - it's on for a couple of seconds. You yourself say that experts agree the iPod hard drive will not suffer problems from sudden shocks. Yet even with that, the gauntlet comes down from your "expert" opinion - "Some experts say that it's impossible to damage the drive in this way, but I'm not buying that". Some experts say journalists are supposed to have some objectivity and quest for truth, but I'm not buying that.
3) The iPod is expensive. Agreed.
4) You want decent recording. Yup, the iPod won't do that.
5) Choice - So, you get the iPod and can use the most popuar music store with the most liberal DRM and largest catalog. Or you get some other playerand either get locked into its service (ala Dell) or maybe not be able to play purchased stuff at all - many players have major issues with DRM WMA.
However, what strikes me most is you make several points and back them up with an example. However, the examples given fail the other points. The Dell has great batter life, but is expensive and will suffer the same claimed jogging problems. The CD MP3 player is cheap but is all moving parts and is far, far too big for jogging (and certainly no recording). Flash players can't generally record and while they might have great battery life, that means you can play your 20 songs over and over and over. Which leads me to my final point...
You neglect the key benefit of a hard drive based player - for many people, this means they can take their ENTIRE music collection with them. If they're jogging, it's there. In the car, it's there. No remembering CD's and switching them in and out. No getting locked into burned playlists on MP3 CD's. No limitations on the tiny, tiny limitations of flash based players.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
at bitrate/quality, computational complexity, and algorithmic approach.
OGG is AAC for free with the additional benefit of a lightweight decoder and bitrate peeling. It's perfect for portables. It's a shame it didn't get popular sooner.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
He found a player or two that were better at doing one single thing than the iPod, but did not offer the good general all round package you expect from Apple.
The fact it didn't do WMA files was a bonus; I've done my damnedest to ensure there is not a WMA file in my jukebox.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
A comparison on ebay shows that the Nomad Zen NX goes for around half the price of the iPod. Not taking into account the fact it has longer battery life, has an easily replaceable battery, and supposedly better sound. The MP3/CD players aren't bad, and I had a Rio one for quite a while. But they _do_ skip, even when walking, which I found very frustrating. Plus they're on the large side, and you still have to carry your CDs around with you. They're good, but not comparable to a hard drive MP3 player really. P.
You want a small form factor? Guess what, battery life will suffer. You want a lot of capacity? Well, you need a hard drive. And so on.
And the casual way the article is written doesn't give it much credibility either:
Some experts say that it's impossible to damage the drive in this way, but I'm not buying that
Excuse me? So, your opinion weights more than expert assessments? At least quote some statistics, or some personal experience!
I don't mean to say this as flamebait, but this article didn't deserve to be posted in the first place.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
How can anyone trust a review site like CNet? For one thing, every product they cite is linked to their shopping site. Furthermore, there's a giant Dell banner ad at the top of the page. It's getting harder and harder to find reliable reviews of anything high-tech these days, from video cards (reviewers often agree not to publish benchmark numbers, which makes their reviews all but useless) to games (there's definitely something illicit going on under the covers between IGN and the N-Gage). It's absurd, and it reflects very poorly on all of the "journalists" involved.
Whether or not it sucks is open to debate, but it is open and many audiophiles prefer it.
Neuros makes a damn good mp3 player that will handle your oggs (and mp3s and wmas) with aplomb.
229 for the unit with switchable 128 and 20 gig backpacks.
Whoot!
www.neurosaudio.com
It looks like they really had to stretch to find 5 reasons. "choice in music stores", look, it doesn't matter, the fact is that they still cost $.99.
;-). Still, it's nice to see someone being objective about it.
The skipping while playing is pretty iffy, because they are suggesting that the flash buffer is completely empty before the HD spins up to refill it, which is completely untrue. It spins up long before it's empty to fill up the buffer. A lot like the way burning a cd works (only different
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
bitrate peeling = multiple streams at different quality from one source file. You could implement a power-saving mode in a portable with that.
Or fit a lower-bitrate playlist (longer play) onto space-constrained solid state players from a high quality archive without re-encoding.
Heh.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The same reason PSP's has 7.1 sound.
I too had that problem. Then I updated my firmware during the Windows iTMS launch.. now my iPod's battery meter actually gives me a real warning.. it shows a bar split into 8ths indicating the remaining power.
Hope that helps,
Eric
PS - iTunes > manually using Disk Mode > MMJB
I have one of the first generation iPods. One of the first things I did with my new player was slam it in the car door. HARD!! It didn't seem to mind a bit.
I read a few months ago about a fellow who slammed his iPod in the hood of the car--kept opening and shutting the hood on the sturdy little iPod with no damage at least to the iPod.
As long as Mom and Dad keep makin' IdJits glad that Apple is makin' iPods ;)
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy my wife; her voice sounds great and her ass is decent, and she's easy to get along with. But I don't like feeling hemmed in, so I'm still going to play the field.
They point out a situation where it's being hard drive based can be a drawback. I mean, if I go for a 30 minute jog, a large capacity isn't my main concern when it comes to a MP3 player at the time.
The hard drive isn't bad, it's just potentially bad in that given scenario.
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
This article really isn't written for the slashdot crowd, and isn't the great technological comparison on a chip by chip basis that I'm sure you were all hoping for.
This article is for the technologically illiturate that doesn't understand the differences between flash, SRAM, HDDs, etc... who may not realize that HDDs and running may not be the best mix, or that the ipod only has a ~6hr battery life and it isn't going to last their entire trip to europe. For this purpose it makes some valid points.
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
1. It's made by Apple.
2. It's made by Apple.
3. It's made by Apple.
4. It's made by Apple.
5. It's made by Apple.
1. Six-plus hours of battery life is not always enough.
That's why they make car chargers, like the PowerPod from Griffin Technology. As long as I've got gasoline, I've got power for my iPod. As for flying, until someone makes an airline power adapter for the iPod, all you need is a laptop (PC or PowerBook will work) with an air adaptor and a free Firewire port to charge your iPod. If you have a layover, you can just use the iPod AC adaptor and leech off a wall outlet in the terminal.
2. Jogging with a hard drive-based player is not cool.
Jog? Sorry, I only run when I'm chased.
3. The iPod is expensive.
So is everything worth a crap. You get what you pay for.
4. You want to make high-quality digital recordings.
No, I don't. I want to listen to my freaking MP3's.
5. You want a choice in online music stores.
No, I don't. In my household, there are three Macs, two iPods, and zero iTunes Music Store audio files. Having an iPod does not mean you are automatically an iTMS customer. $0.99/song?? Yeah, right. Call when they hit a nickel a piece, and I'll think about it.
So let me get this straight. He says to get a flash player because he doesn't believe experts who say a "jar" at the "precise moment" (once every 3-4 minutes average) wouldn't damage the drive? That's not a very convincing argument for sacrificing the storage and convenience of HD-based players.
Battery and weight, maybe, but his gut feeling just doesn't convince me on that point.
Find me in ~/.sig
Some experts say that it's impossible to damage the drive in this way, but I'm not buying that
Yeah, because he knows way more than any expert. He even figured out that you have to wait until the buffer is completely empty before you refill it.
And I'm sure he pored over the specs for the hard drive and saw that the G's he would put on the iPod while jogging would exceed the specs for the drive.
Basically, despite the line at the end calling the iPod the best designed player (added by an editor perhaps?), it's just an anti-iPod rant.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
cmdrtaco hates ipods - always has, always will
please refer to the ipod annoncement article, written by our favorite cmdrtroll. the very last sentence was merely "Lame."
what a clown. the fact that he's still caught up in this crap makes me think he's a really petty and small person
does cnet make referral income on that giant ad...er, story they just ran?
there seemed to be quite a few links to stores in there, and i've never known cnet to be a charitable organization.
Let me list some reasons:
Buying an Archos instead of an iPod was probably the best decision I made recently. At first, I was kind of wondering "Why did I buy this thing?", but these days it's mostly: "How did I do when I did not have one?".
(A very satisfied Archos customer)
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
I've found that the best thing out there is the Sony Minidisc. They offer models for every budget out there. I got mine for $150 CDN, which is like nothing. I've actually tried to make the thing skip, shaking it violently for liek 3 mintues... it doesn't skip. You can carry as much music with you as you want. Don't have to spend $500 on a 40 gig model if you don't need that now. If you're going to need more than 2.5 hours of music (what fits on one disc in good quality) before going back home, to get more discs, you're probably going to be carrying some sort of bag on you, where you can put more discs. Anyway, that's just my two cents. I love the Minidisc, the batteries last forever, the thing never skips, you can always carry more music with you, and it won't empty your wallet
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Eventhough I don't own an iPod, I did some looking and found that if you have one of the older pods, you can order and change out the battery. There are serveral sites with instructions on how to do so. So, point number 1 in the article is mute now, at least if you have an older iPod.
And if you wanted to know what I typed in google to find that out, it was just this:
replacing an iPod battery
simple enough.
eh, this sucks, I am going back to bed....
Find me in ~/.sig
Maybe you should stop talking about it until such time there's an actually working (high quality) implementation?
I use vorbis for everything, but hyping vaporware isn't doing it any favors.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
sorry, but I dont get it, what the insight on CNET articles really is. That reasons to not by the player holds for other players as well, the author cures his weird argument by suggesting a totally different device ever round of argument. That is only useful if there is that one killer argument, e.g. budget, to relly knock the decision down. For me that was one-hand-navigation. The title is really misleading and just Apple-bashing.
/. editors cure us from CNET-stories with journalistic levels of average high scool dropouts. Or put it under a special icon, so it can go where JonKatz went...
And I dont know what that fat slug thought what "jogging" might be about. Must be some illegal crack-driven violent smash-and-sloughter-thing. If you ever happen to read specs - that of the hard drive of the iPod are clearly beyond what this CNET guy could ever achieve by moving his ass.
Just the fact the author still doesnt believe itll work doesnt get me any insight except that CNET is never going to really try it before stating BS.
I have taken out the device for really hard action (including dropping it on concrete) - for those of you who need this kind of proof: it never skipped.
Dear
The articles mentions that the iPod battery is not replaceable, but that's not true. Check out http://www.ipodbattery.com/ I haven't used their service, but presumably it works. $49 sounds like a reasonable price to me, especially when you take into account the cost of the iPod itself.
-hero.
I agree. The article reeks of the same FUD Microsoft was throwing the day of the ITMS/Win launch. The article basically parallels with: "Don't buy a Mercedes. They're too expensive, they don't come with a winch for all your archaeological missions, and you can't put the cheapest grade of gas in it."
To counter:
1. Six-plus hours of battery life is not always enough.
A: For some. This is the most valid excuse. I would just plug mine into my PowerBook for some of that time, (or listen to the PB itself) but that's because I don't use the latter on the plane very much. I can understand how some have this battery problem. I would maybe suggest the old iPods, which IIRC got closer to 8hrs in their larger-sized case.
2. Jogging with a hard drive-based player is not cool.
A: Never had any problem running with my 10GB iPod. And if "Some experts say that it's impossible to damage the drive in this way," just believe them and go jogging already.
3. The iPod is expensive.
A: Oh please. I got mine for $239. The best $239 I've ever spent. I never leave the apartment without it. I never carry my CD-wallet around. Amortize it over the next year if you want to. If you get a the 10GB $299 model that I got, that's $0.82 a day for a year, and after that it's yours to keep. And they laser-engrave now for free. That looks cool.
And the suggestion here: CD-MP3 players! HA! I used two models of those and they are worthless. You have to burn mixes, just like regular CD mixes, but these mixes have to be about 20 hours long or you're wasting your time and CD. Sure they're under $50 now, because no one would pay more than that for 'em.
This is not a cheap player, people. This is a good thing. It's part of why it doesn't suck, because they don't have to make it from cheap Chinese plastic and a 2-line screen to make it under $50 retail.
4. You want to make high-quality digital recordings.
A: Give me another "Oh please." If you want to make hi-fi digital recordings with your portable MP3 player, that's like saying "I want to win a demolition derby in my new Toyota Prius Hybrid. The Prius is cool for a totally different application--driving efficiently on streets. The iPod is not targeted at DJs who need to record things. It is used by many DJs who want to use it to play songs at events, though, and if it were busy playing, how could any MP3 player record? Maybe just buy one of these "recording" MP3 units as your recording box, and use the iPod for playing and for personal recreational listening. But I'd hang on to your current recording gear if I were you. MP3 players, as a general rule, just aren't for that, and I doubt they'll do a good job.
Oh, and I don't care and 99.4% of people don't care about that either. Talk about a niche. More like a super-niche. And we don't want a more expensive MP3 player (or one with cheaper hardware to make up for it) to pay for your silly recording capability. So don't push for this.
5. You want a choice in online music stores.
A: Microsoft FUD. Choice? Please. You do have a choice. Good quality, legal AAC's, or good quality, legal AAC's/MP3's from your own CDs. Or un-legit MP3's too. That's way good enough for me. WMA stores are inadequate. The DRM is stifling at many. Why mess with a good thing?
Oh, and can you sync your calendar, address book with your Dell or Samsung MP3 players (or laughable CD-MP3 units)? Oh what? It doesn't even do that? How unfortunate for you.
I mean, if I was in your shoes... yeah, I wouldn't buy an iPod. At least not until the doll was evacuated.
www.pogoproducts.com/products.html
PogoProducts MP3 Player / Recorders work very nicely thank you.
I like the PogoProducts RipFlash Plus.
Expandable Storage, Direct MP3 recording of any audio - voice or line-in.
You can use it to record meetings, classes, or CD's - all without the need of a computer.
i(diot)Pod's cost way too much !
iPod's are just like the Apple 'Cube' - the most expensive way to make a product, without improving it's functionality.
> Some experts say that it's impossible to damage the drive in this way, but I'm not buying that
Yeah, because he knows way more than any expert
It has moving parts. Sooner or later, it will fail.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Gee, would you rather buy an iPod, or a device that is comprised of the best features of _SEVEN_ other devices? What, you can't buy such a device? This article is more a collection of reasons another device might suit your needs better than an iPod, not a collection of reasons not to get one. Sure, if you could make an MP3 player that has better battery life, was shock proof, costed less than an iPod, held as much music, could act as a recording studio, and could play any format ever created, I'd buy it. But you can't. That's why this guy has to use seven different devices to beat the iPod hands-down. I wonder how much free stuff this guy gets from Microsoft for spouting this shit.
`which fortune`
I know it's not as famous, but the old Archos did what the iPod does and more for far less.
:)
--user upgradeable hardrive (any 2.5 laptop drive-up to 80GB these days?)
--user upgradeable firmware (try the Rockbox alternative)
--FM tuner
--records as well as plays
--the older versions had AA NiMH batts-user upgradeable and never get caught without a fresh pair
Granted you won't be the babe magnet like with the iPod, but odds are it's better to have more cash to spend on the few babes you do get
I went to the city because I wished to live without deliberation.
1. If six hours isn't enough, take an airline power adapter with you and plug it in.
:)
Yeah, and in any case, if you're regularly going on > 6 hour plane flights, something tells me you could afford a spare iPod or 3. Or the external power packs Belkin has, listed right on Apple's site.
Are there really people out there who sit on a plane doing *nothing* but listen to music for 10 hours at a time? No laptop, nothing?
For that matter, find me a laptop that has > 6 hours battery life. Then play your mp3s off of that
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Almost every goddam response in this article is from a fanboy who seems profoundly hurt and confused that someone would say anything negative about their precious iPod. Not only that, but the moderators seem to be fanboys too. More than a few undeserving posts have been modded up, while all anti-Apple posts have been modded down.
Oops, it's actually now up to 25 minutes of 'skip protection', as they call it.
6. You don't want to use 3rd party software to manage files.
Although it has major other faults, the Archos jukebox has one selling point - No third-party software is necessary to upload and download files. It's just a hard drive that plays mp3s (and other stuff in later models). You can load and unload mp3s from it using Explorer, or mount it in Linux. Copy your mp3s just like any other files and play them. There is no necessary uploading software and no download controls. It's fully linux-compatible.
When I was researching MP3 players last May, this was a big selling point of the Archos.
"One touch of Darwin makes the whole world kin." George Bernard Shaw
http://www.macboy.com/cartoons/ballmer/
Warning - you'll want to hover your mouse pointer over your volume controls if there are other people about
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
As a college student who has to carry a lot of data with me between the campus and my home computer, it would be nice to not only have the iPod as an MP3 player but also as a Mass Storage Device since a 100 MB Zip disk doesn't go very far when it comes to large Flash and Photoshop files. It's too bad you have to install software on every single computer you're going to use your iPod on as a disk, and you're dead in the water if software installations are restricted on your machine.
1. A
2. P
3. P
4. L
5. E
Pull up the article, and check out the picture of the author, "Eliot Van Buskirk". Yeah, look real close. Look familiar? Tried the old Superman/Clark Kent trick of taking off his glasses. Threw on some headphones just to be extra careful.
Well nice try Bill, but we're on to you. Your FUD isn't going to work this time!
---------------------------------------------
SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I bought a Teac CD player that only takes the small CDs, but will play ISOs with MP3s. I'd swear it was under $100, and the advantage is I can take a fairly substantial music collection in a few CDs.
On the downside, it's kind of cheesy feature-wise, has so little buffering I can't put it on a belt pouch and walk fast, and gets less than 2 hours of play time on a set of 1800mAh NiMH rechargables.
I'd love an iPod, but they're just too expensive for the amount of use I'd actually get out of it. If they had one for under $200 I'd probably buy one, but $300 for a portable is just a little beyond my ability to justify it considering I don't use mine other than walking for exercise or on an airplane.
I have a 20gig Archos Jukebox. It's a souped up mp3 player. In additition to storing and playing mp3s, the thing has a little LCD screen, and it plays MOVIES! Or it can output the signal to a TV.
Additionally, it has compact flash and SD adaptors, so you can download the pictures from your camera to the device. This is handy when travelling: you can empty your CF cards and browse photos on the Archos whenever you feel like.
Best of all, it's easy hackable so you can stick a 60gig drive in there.
Revolutionary? Hardly. I've had mine more than 1 year. Currently, there's bigger and better Archos players out there, and doing more for less. Compared to Ipod hype and price, Archos stuff is a steal.
Witold
www.witold.org
witold.org
The article mentions the fact that the iPod has quite a few moving parts, and I couldn't agree more.
Am I the only one that FREAKS OUT every time he sees the new batch of iPod ads?
To bring everyone up to speed, the 30-second spots feature silhouettes of people jamming to their iPods while the song "Are you gonna be my girl" rocks in the background.
Here's the problem: While the people are jamming, they are violently shaking the crap out of their ipods. At one point, one dude even uses it to play 'air drums'
My jaw dropped when I saw this ad. I can't imagine that Apple would encourage this type of abuse on their iPods. I mean, it's a hard drive, for crap's sake! It's NOT MEANT TO BE THROWN AROUND LIKE THAT. I'm sure it's sturdier than your average desktop drive for obvious reasons, but in the end it's still just some spinning platters with a constantly moving needle. This kind of hardware was not meant to be beaten like this.
If I was an Apple tech that handled iPod warranty repair, and I saw this ad, I'd quit.
I agree the artical is skewed, though the gent does have a valid point, even if it's hidden under *don't buy this product*. What would be spiffy is if there was an option for the IPOD to replace the onboard HD with a flash drive, for cases where you want the benifits of flash media. Either that or have it accept flash media.
Apple typicaly being turn key technology, isn't likely to support such a drive replacement.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
jeebus friggin christ in a handbasket. just because you don't agree with his points, doesn't mean he's wrong. the fact that he expresses these points, doesn't make him right, either. They are just points to ponder.
"oh no, some guy is making potentially valid statements about our beloved apple products that I don't agree with! waaaa!"
fanboys. can't live with 'em, can't live with 'em.
The iPod is not just an MP3 player. It is also a darn nice portable, plug & play, hard drive. It's very handy for backing up and/or transporting a swack of files. It's often used when rebuilding an old mac or moving to a new one.
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
that cnet arkle is a stinkin' troller!
ipods are only expensive if you are foolish enough to pay full retail for bleeding edge - granted, that's most of the mac zealot market.
but for the rest of us, $170 for a refurb 2nd gen 10gb is not expensive. i paid that at retail for my archos recorder 15gb. i feel i got a better deal cuz it records, it's a usb2 HD, i can _easily_ upgrade the batteries (or carry spares), and i hack on and compile my os (rockbox). i can even rock that weak chicago font if i'm feeling nostalgic.
considering the chances of breaking or loosing a portable player i can't see why any price conscious person would not buy ipod refurb, especially considering it's first party apple refurb.
for the adventurous, get a used archos and upgrade to an 80gb drive. about $200 parts and smarts.
and yeah, jogging is really bad for you, ask your doctor. ``so don't do that''
iPod is a great product. Period. My friend had one, and he just loved it. I couldn't figure out what was about it, and, having my own MP3 plays, I used to think 'it's about the same, i guess'. Then, I borrow my friends iPod for a few hours. I was convinced, sold my mp3 player, and bought an iPod. Then, a second friend saw me with the iPod, and asked me about it. He borrowed it for 3 hours, and that weekend, he was buying one. Have you ever heard of anything like this with any other consumer electronics? It is a quality product, I haven't been so satisfied with a consumer electronic products in a looong time.
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
ThinkSecret just reported on the unusually high amount of bad press CNET has been giving to Apple. In general, there seems to be a theory that the bad press is organized:
http://www.thinksecret.com/news/tsnotes7.html
C'mon, there may be 5 reasons to not buy an iPod, some of which are very obscure and unimportant. However, there are a LOT more reasons to buy. Clearly, with a 50%+ marketshare of all mp3 players, Apple is owning the competition on this. People are afraid of Apple owning anything. Hence, CNET's crap-fest of reactionary pseudo-news.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
This article seems like little more than a ploy meant to increase CNet readership, not unlike the grumpy columns that John Dvorak spouted years ago on the pages of MacUser. But at least Dvorak usually took a position and stuck to it for the duration of his column, unlike this CNet author who can't make up his mind.
Of course, if you don't care about low battery life, aren't fond of jogging, have ample disposable income, don't need to record/encode music portably, and want to purchase music downloads only from the iTunes Music Store, then the iPod is the best the way to go. While not ideal for some niche activities, it's still hands down the best-designed MP3 player in the world.
battery life: If, after listening to your iPod for 6+ hours straight, you cannot stand to be without your music for a short while, I think you should be concerned about your own life, and not your battery life.
price: Price is always an issue, but you get what you pay for. If you have modest needs and not much money, go elsewhere. But if you want a good value, the iPod's not a bad bet.
jogging: I suppose this could be a problem, but that's true for any disk-based player. Apple's current TV ads show dancers boogying like crazy while holding an iPod in hand or clipped to a belt, and I don't recall that the iPod comes with any particular warnings about motion.
recording: Possible with iPod (plus add-on), but quality probably not great. However, if you want great quality, you probably want to record raw data and not compress it until after production. And you want a decent mic, and mixing, and and and... I don't think there are any tiny, battery powered, highly portable devices that would do the job. Get a PowerBook, a good mic, and an amp instead.
iTunes Music Store only: Fair enough, but you've got to pick your poison. You can be tied to Apple and AAC, which at least has reasonable DRM and improved sound quality, or you can be tied to Microsoft and WMA, which has no quality improvement over mp3 and shitty track record for any sort of reasonableness.
still hands down the best-designed MP3 player in the world: In other words, the author already knows all of the above, and is just looking to raise people's hackles for a cheap spike in readership and maybe a mention on Slashdot. I guess he knows what he's doing, but I think it points to a lack of integrity.
It should be Blatantly Obvious To The Most Casual Observer that the iPod is not the perfect player for all consumers, just as a BMW 325i is not the perfect car for all drivers. But it's a pretty nice player, and it offers a lot of features that others do not.
Let me get my 'opinion' outta the way... This guy is off his rocker.. :D
On to the facts:
"Six-plus hours of battery life is not always enough."
"go with the Dell Digital Jukebox DJ (15GB), which lasted almost 20 hours in our battery test--and it's less expensive than the iPod."
The iPod gets 8 hours (with the backlight off) of battery time. The Dell DJ gets 15 hours (according to TechTV & Dell) I agree with his point, but his facts are skewed to try to make his point stronger..
"Jogging with a hard drive-based player is not cool."
"Some experts say that it's impossible to damage the drive in this way, but I'm not buying that--hard drives spin thousands of times per minute, and they have tiny, fragile parts."
So.. this guy, a columnist, has more techincal say-so than 'some experts'.. If there was a 10gb/20gb/40gb flash mp3 player, he might have a point here, but flash hasn't reached that capacity yet..
"3. The iPod is expensive."
Yea.. he's kinda right here.. it is kinda pricey.. (Dell's DJ being about $100 less for the same capacity [on the 20gb]), however I feel that's a small premium to pay for 1394, weight, and style..
"4. You want to make high-quality digital recordings."
"DJs who want to record their sets, people who want to encode their vinyl or cassette collections to MP3, or musicians who are looking for a replacement for their DAT recorder need this feature."
DJ's who want to record their sets will record out to a digital, lossless format, not to MP3.. *rolleyes*
"5. You want a choice in online music stores."
"Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy the Apple iTunes Music Store; its AAC-encoded files sound great, the selection is decent, and it's easy to use. But I don't like feeling hemmed in. "
So.. In other words, he want's to use other music services where you 'rent' the music instead of 'own' the music.. Music that is encoded in WMA (a microsoft standard) instead of AAC (an open standard).. He says the selection in iTMS is 'decent', when it kills Napster, BuyMusic, and MusicMatch in their selection..
Sorry.. but this guy's rogerian argument is not going to work on me..
Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
Why lookey here
Might be exactly what you are looking for...but I would personally get a new 10 gig at least -- the new design and extra features make it more worthwhile -- besides, who couldn't use an extra firewire hard drive for back-ups and portability?
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
Not that I disagree, but I hope the irony wasn't lost on anyone that ipods are often used to play quality music that was downloaded for free.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Microsoft has everyone talking about the wide selection of players that support WMA as being better for you. What a load of crap.
WMA is a proprietary, closed format that can only be implemented via deals directly with Microsoft. Sure a lot of players support it now, but what about five years from now? Or in 18 months when Microsoft comes out with "WMA-Enhanced" or "WMA-Palladium"?
You can argue that AAC isn't an open standard, but it's at least a standard promoted by the MPEG LA. You can hate it for not being free, but it's an industry standard instead of a single company's product format.
Free is best, but industry standard trumps single-company product in this case.
AAC is not DRMed. AAC is a compression format, just like MP3. You can encode stuff to AAC and play it anywhere. It's not encrypted or restricted in any way.
What the iTunes Music Store sells is not plain AAC files; it sells .m4p files which are AAC wrapped in a separate DRM layer. It's this layer which restricts to you three Macs and their iPods. Plain AAC files are not restricted; so files you encode yourself or get from other sources are not DRMed.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
CNet has been ripping Apple a new asshole lately. While most of their criticisms aren't unjustified, they seem to going after Apple like Steve kicked their puppy or something.
I looked at the iPod when I was looking for an mp3 player, but I chose to gen a IRIVER mp3 player instead.
1. The cost was just $199.
2. It has 256 megs of ram, an intergrated FM tuner, has a ANALOG input for ripping mp3s directly and a built in microphone to record you PHBs rants.
3. But most of all it has no moving parts other than the buttons.
4. I get WEEKS of playing time on one lithium AA battery.
iriver
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
The iPods are very cool, but I consider the non-replacable battery to be a showstopper design flaw. As the article points out, these batteries will lose their ability to store a charge in a few years (all rechargable batteries do so), and buying a replacement battery (as one does for one's camcorder or discman every few years) isn't an option.
... well, an ipod with exchangable battery MIGHT persuade me, but with a neuros as an option (albeit a less polished one) is, quite frankly, more likely to win on that front.
Instead one has to throw away the ipod and buy a new one, and while one may argue that the technological changes in 5 years will be such that one would want to do this anyway (and perhaps most people would), I do not like buying a product with built in obsolescence in the form of "it will stop working properly in time X" when "it will be outdated in time X" is sufficient. I do have old technology I still use well beyond its end-of-life date, because it still works, and any ogg/mp3/wma/aac player should work until I decide I'm done with it.
Build an iPod with a changable battery and I'll seriously consider buying one. Add ogg and wma support, and any remaining question would vanish. But expect me to rerip my extensive collection in aac or mp3 format and
In short, the article's criticims are quite valid. The iPod is a very nice machine, but let's not kid ourselves about its limitations, which are non-neglibable to a great many of us.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Apple recently announced the availability of a voice-recorder accessory for the iPod, but there's still no way to use the device to record high-quality audio. DJs who want to record their sets, people who want to encode their vinyl or cassette collections to MP3, or musicians who are looking for a replacement for their DAT recorder need this feature.
*Cough* DJ's and muscians all have ZERO plans of getting rid of their DAT tapes anytime soon.
Sunny Dubey
can I not use other music download services with an ipod?
I don't think I am locked into ITMS if I have an ipod. ??
but isnt the "hard drive" in the iPod a pcmcia drive? arent these very similar to flash ram drives?
the history of the world
I wear mine in a "Tunes belt" while jogging, using stairclimbers, riding stationary bikes and lifting weights. I've yet to see any performance problems. I've certainly jarred it. Heck, I've dropped it to the floor at least a half dozen times. I do have one of the neoprene jackets for it but those only absorb so much in a 4-5 ft drop. I disagree with the author's assessment of the iPod's ruggedness. My iPod is one of the first 5G models and is nearly 2 years old.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Out of the possible solutions, he doesn't mention MiniDisc (which uses Sony's proprietary format). It's great for doing portable recordings (so long as you get a model with a mic jack) and has extroardinary battery life, with the extra bonus of only neading 1 cheap AA battery.
#1 (as said in the article) it's pretty much impossible to use when running, usually the player fills in the buffer, and when it's exhausted it just freezes (usually after 20-30 minutes)
#2 no cross fading! This is a major drawback for trance, compilations, live albums etc. etc., the ipod seems to pause for a second or so between tracks (presumably to buffer them)
-- the cake is a lie
Microsoft is not behind every negative article or study about every company in the technology space except for microsoft. Nor are they behind every review or study that shows a Microsoft product in a positive light.
A little healthy paranoia is a good thing. Seeing Microsoft behind EVERYTHING is definetly not healthy.
The reason other manufacturers of HD based players don't get it is because they think they can compete and win on price and features. Which is true, they can do pretty well - but in their desire to push the price down lower than an iPod they end up using cheaper materials which means that what they end up with:
- Looks cheap and nasty
- Feels cheap and nasty
When a HD based MP3 player hits the market which looks and feels good (and i'm sorry to say it but this is butt ugly and this looks only marginally better but still feels cheap and nasty) then they'll be onto a winner. Even if it has the same or less features.For many people, if you're going to pony up several hunded quid for a HD based MP3 player - it better not look like something made by Fischer Price.
However, there is light at the end of the tunnel, Toshiba might come up with the goods (and also Panasonic, but I can't find the product I was thinking of) ...
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
at the iriver IHP-120. It beats the Ipod in all aspects and has more functions. It plays Ogg too (AFAIK as the only HDD based portable player at this time).
Microsoft is not behind every negative article or study about every company in the technology space except for microsoft. Nor are they behind every review or study that shows a Microsoft product in a positive light.
A little healthy paranoia is a good thing. Seeing Microsoft behind EVERYTHING is definetly not healthy.
Clicky Clicky
Anyone on /. not bow down at the altar which is Apple...fanboys.
(fyi, I love my DAT decks)
the LONE manufacturer of DAT assemblies have stopped production and the last "new" DAT deck made is almost 3 years old.
so yes, musicians and other people in the industry are looking for a replacement for the DAT
the history of the world
I thought bit rate peeling was a reference to something else. Thanks for the clarification.
After looking around for more info I'm not sure how useful it could be though, especially as we'll be able to carry our big fat high quality files around with us as readily as we do 128kbit/sec aac's or whatever.
If bit rate peeling can happen quicker than storage issues are going away I'm sure it'll be a big deal.
...what if I want to go jogging for 30 hours and don't want to carry a pack of CDs with me? Then what? Huh? ;P
Un-news
1. You troll.
2. You troll.
3. You troll.
4. You troll.
5. You troll.
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
I'm curious... I might be totally in the dark here, but do a lot of other people actually use WMA format? I guess I'm sort of under the impression that MP3 is king, with a few OGG and AAC fans out there. I can't think of anyone I know that keeps their music in WMA format, only maybe a few random downloaded clips.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
Darn it where are those mod points when you need them...
Mod this guy up. I wonder why they don't include Ogg after so many releases... ah wait, because they want to impose their own system. So Microsoft...
The main problem with the article is that it's the iPod versus the world, and not one particular other device.
Note that each of the 5 has a separate list of alternative players that the iPod beats head to head.
For example, in one point he crows that one alternative has no moving parts and weighs less than the iPod, but in another point, he presents a solution involving an MP3 CD player (moving parts) that is also saddled with a case of CDs (total is far heavier and more unweildy than the iPod).
So it seems if I follow the advice of this article, I need to buy about 3 to 5 different players to beat the functionality of my iPod.
Obligatory car analogy: It's like saying, if you want a sports car, you should not buy Corvette because it's more expensive than a Mustang, might break more easily than a Lexus GS300, hauls less than a Chevy full size pickup, has a smaller fuel tank than a Hummer and is not as "cool" as an Aston Martin.
--- Ban humanity.
My reason (aside from not wanting to drop that much cash) for not getting an iPod is quite simple -- I don't like iTunes and I don't like having to use it (or any other program for that matter).
.10 quality Ogg I can fit maybe 10 albums on it and it gives me incentive to change what music I have on it regularly.
I mean, I'm a Mac user, but I don't like that the iPod functions as a hard drive and yet I can't just copy MP3s to it and have them play; I have to load them in iTunes and build playlists and syncronize everything (at least, the last time I payed with my gf's iPod it was like that -- if this is not the case then someone please let me know). This to me is counterintuative.. the only thing that iTunes gives you is playlists and something similar to that can be effected by using directories as artist/album delimiters. It's a hard drive and I should be able to treat it just like a hard drive and it should be smart enough.
Instead, I got a (comparativly) cheap PocketPC and a 256MB CF card or about half the cost of an iPod (and it's a PDA, ad infinatum). Yes, I know that 256MB != 15GB but if I transcode things to
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
Not all music stores have the same selection--I think Napster has something like double the amount of music available. (I'm sticking with iTunes anyway for the superior player... just fill in the missing music however I can I guess ;)
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
It's interesting that it's iPod versus everything else.
The article can pick other players that do better at some of iPod's shortcomings, but none that can do it all.
So it's kinda unfair, ain't it? iPod vs. the world?
Not to flame or anything but the artical is clearly flaming ipod with ****y reasons so here goes: The author of that article is clearly just a baffon that bought a ipod when he wanted to listen to N*SINK or Fity-cent, and therefore his opinion is null and void. IPod's are ment to play good music at high quality, wether or not they do is not something i can say, but i trust in Mac, because there is no way it can be as bad as Windows
peace, -ls-
"It has moving parts. Sooner or later, it will fail."
And the number of writes that flash-memory can handle is limited. Sooner or later, it will also fail.
Depending on use, one medium's `sooner' may be later than the other medium's `later'.
-rozzin.
"With about 1.5 million units sold, the iPod is the most popular MP3 player in the world..."
Not that I could name actual numbers, but I had thought that honor belongs to Winamp.
The nomad zen is much cheaper ($260), and has a 14 hours battery life.
I have an Archos Multimedia with a 20gig 2.5" laptop drive in it (Hitachi). I've always treated it super-sensitively, especially when it's spinning (and doubly so when it's spinning up or down). Are the 1.8" drives in the newer iPods any better? I know those IBM CF microdrives are much stronger.
Can these drives really handle jogging? Anyone have URLs with real-world tests?
I would love to be able to not worry about it, but just assumed it came with the teritory of hard-drive based mp3 players.
--Darren
Battery? I get 8 hours easy, sometimes more on a 3G iPod.
Cost? I work at McDonalds. If I can afford one so can you.
Moving Parts? Again, I work at McDonalds. If that isn't a stress test for jiggling and wiggling I don't know one. Never had a skip.
iTunes only? Um, and?
-
I couldn't believe the absence of the neuros player from this dude's article. Neuros has ALL of the features of the players in the article, combined (except maybe the low price-point of the CD players). More importantly, it has ogg and full linux support, and the FM receiver/transmitter is way cool :)
Why use a portable device to rip records/tapes to MP3? Most, if not all, iPod owners have a device called a "computer" that is equipped with a "sound card". You may have to record in wav and convert to mp3, but it still works. Best of all, the software required to do this is free (as in beer, at least).
I have a flashed based MP3 player that I love to death for trips to the gym and running, but I do have a need for something with greater capacity. But I'm not buying an iPod. It has a great design and would get me lot's of "ooohs" and "aahhhhhs", but I don't care about that. My MP3 player would spend more time in my backpack or pocket than it would out where ppl can admire it anyway.
What I care about is the fact there are so many cheaper MP3 players with sufficiently robust features, lower prices, similar audio quality, and more capacity.
So I'll mosrt likely spend my loot on one of those new Dell players. Superior battery life, lower cost, pretty good design. Should fit quite nicely into the old sack without draining my wallet. Now all I need is a way to NOT use the !#$%^&* MusicMatch software crap to load the music up. Anybody out there on SourceForge listening?
test
Oh my god! How could this be? Please! If CNet published anything closely resembling a positive article on the Mac or Apple products I think the earth would open up and swallow us. It's the pox e clipse! SHEESH!
The author of the article looks like Gilligan (aka Bob Denver).
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Uh, the responses from some Mac fans is just frightening. It's a company, not a religion folks.
Lets hear it for the Neurous... I just picked mine up last week and I'm loving it. 128/20gb combo. After upgrading to the beta 1.44 firmware I've really grown to love this device. Can't wait till they release the 2.0 firmware.
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
I own a "docking" IPod. This is my 3rd mp3 player and the best one.However, there are some things I don't like about it:
1 "Touchpad-like" controls- you touch it in a pocket, and it skips a song or does something else
2 Sometimes those buttons don't respond- have to touch up to ten times (not sure if I got a bad unit, or this is typical)
3 Can't "drug and drop" mp3 files on iPod- must use a software
4 Doesn't understand file names or directories- identifies fiels only by ID3 tags
5 Battery life- have to charge it as often as analog cell phone. Forget about overnight trips without a charger
6 Forgets the last played track after being connected to a PC, sometimes does it for no reason at all. Very annoying to audiobook listeners.
7 Clip on the remote is designed in such a way that the controls face outside only when clipped to a shirt with buttons on the left- ladies style.Does it confirm a popular Slashdot opinion that Apple is for gays?
"Some experts say that it's impossible to damage the drive in this way, but I'm not buying that--"
If you dont listen to the experts, who do you listen to? Lawyers? Politicians? I know, pollsters. Since polls always kknow my exact feelings. Anyone else get a sense that this was funded by someone who refuses to believe you can use more than one mouse button on a mac?
Ok, so he has a list of reasons why the iPod isn't the best. But instead of showing us a product that DOES beat all of the iPod's shortcomings, he shows us a different device for each of them. I dont know about you, but i don't have the money to have a different device for battery life, line in, jogging, or WMA. I'll stick with my iPod
Storage issues may be going away on the desktop, and on some hard drive-based portables, but for the most part, it's still an issue with portables as well as with most (non-LAN) networks. Sure, if I'm sending it from my home office to my living room I should be ok sending the full bitrate file. If I'm sending it to my cubicle at work, though, I'll get in trouble streaming (or downloading) full-sized files. Similarly, most of my MP3 files can't be sent through email because my provider has a limit on file sizes (so I have to split each file over 5 or more email attachments), but at a lower bit rate they could go through a little more easily, and even a little more quickly.
I don't need CD quality at the gym, or even in the car (where it would cost me even more to sound proof the interior to the point where I could tell), but I'd like it at home, and I shouldn't have to re-encode for every situation.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
1. You should DIE
2. You should DIE
3. You should DIE
4. You should DIE
5. You should DIE
Others have pointed out that it is possible to buy a replacement battery; so I'm not going to beat that particular dead horse. But I will say that it is pretty much dead easy to follow the instructions (complete with pretty pictures) and do so. My 15 yr-old son couldn't wait for me to get home to 'help' him replace the battery on his 2G iPod so he did it himself. No problems, scratches, or other difficulties. 3 months later it still holds a >8 hour charge.
First, lets look at the "why". Why run the article? Well, obviously it lured me in and exposed me to a few ads (none of which got clicked on). Oddly enough, right below the headline was a link to a separate article featuring showcased iPod accessories offered by sponsors. That's confusing and speaks volumes all at the same time. I don't need to expand on that. Now lets look at Eliot Van Buskirk's "points". 1. Six-plus hours of battery life is not always enough. That's true, and it's also true that I average 10-11 hours of usage from my iPod, so his six hour figure doesn't really seem to matter. Either way, if I'm traveling somewhere for six hours I'll have my iBook handy, and I can connect a firewire cable and charge my iPod while I listen to it. Try that on the Dell Jukebox he compares the iPod battery to. Barring that, I'll plug into the 12v or 120v power plug they supply on long duration flights. Eliot, have you travelled over 10 hours with a portable music player? I have, on a bus no less. With an iPod. 2. Jogging with a hard drive-based player is not cool. Any serious runner will tell you that jogging with a pronounced bounce is not cool either. The sort of level stride you need to maintain won't even jar a typical CD player. Regardless, I've mountain biked rigid-fork over rocky trails with my iPod. It's called 25 minute skip protection buffer. Eliot, do you run with a portable music player? I do. With an iPod. 3. The iPod is expensive. No. The iPod is my car's 100 CD changer, my home stereo, my portable music player, my PDA, my portable hard drive, and my notebooks' backup volume. All for well under $500. Most other jukeboxes are just that, your Jukebox. You'll need a pocketful of $150 keychain drives, and a $300 portable firewire hard drive, and a $199 Palm Zire 21 to match just some of the iPod's secondary functionality. Eliot, do you get disproportionately high utility out of your investment in a music player? I do. With an iPod. 4. You want to make high-quality digital recordings. The iPod offers a record feature that's three weeks old. There will be a line in tool, that's almost a dead certainty. Regardless, anyone who wants to do high end recording had better question why they're using their computer accessory instead of their actual computer. Considering you'll need to unplug the recording deck, hook it up to speakers, find the most recent track through the pocket interface, and hit play for every single take, the real functionality of a pocket drive in a recording session seems pretty low. Eliot, do you record yourself playing music? I do. With a real computer and multitrack software. Then I let others hear it. With an iPod. 5. You want a choice in online music stores. Do I? Apple is drawing in a documented 80% market share among this supposed wide selection of alternatives. Either way, Apple offers a device (that plays open-standard content) to Windows and Mac users. Choice. The author's other pet players shut out the segment of the market that's been buying the most music per capita. Mac users. Eliot, do you enjoy your entire music collection on the road, at any workstation, or in any tech environment? I do. With an iPod. My Point, And I Do Have One: C|Net, please hire some journalists. Armchair hobbyists with opinions are a dime a dozen. I don't appreciate being drawn to a site under the false premise that there's a real article there, only to be exposed to yet another rant by some self proclaimed expert. I'm all for thought out arguments exposing flaws in the iPod (there are flaws) but this kind of stuff is laughable, and won't keep companies like Apple on their toes, or push their competitors to innovate into the vacuum either. Question: How much of the news content you were exposed to today was mere editorializing? Of that, how much was credible and watertight against simple counterpoints? Question: C|Net advertisers. How hone
Your solution was one of the alternatives mentioned in the article
It almost seems like apple is quoting this but that could be down right silly.
Rio Karma is excellent. I bought one as soon as they came out. I love it, one firmware update later the thing is a waking dream. Ogg vorbis is wonderful.
for over a year.
It never is more than an arm's length away. The only downside comment I have is that you will need to experiment to find the best channel and position for FM broadcast (91.1, upside down on passenger seat, for me).
Well worth the $229 (I think that's what they're going for now, I paid more and think it was a great buy)
I would recommed getting extra power adapters, one for the office, car, home, etc. Mainly for hassle, but FM seems to work slightly better when the car adapter is connected.
Don't pick up the pho*(@)$*@&@!@ NO CARRIER
They make one or two good points on things like recording capabilities and battery life. But neither of those really make a difference to me. I dont exactly travel across country every day so the 6 hours per battery has made me more than happy with my 30GB ipod. The point that really made no sense though was the one about online music services. WMV is no more open than AAC. You cant play either on alternative operating systems (linux, bsd, etc). From what I've been reading in the press the DRM on Apple's iTunes is much less restricitive than that of BuyMusic.com, and the other serviecs. The feature I've always liked about the ipod is its UI. I cant find another player thats nearly as easy to use. The old style interface was better but I still like this. Then again I've yet to see the Dell or Samsung offerings in person.
IPod is great, but those FM antennas are a total rip off. There are these dongles that look like a cassette with a wire coming out of them -- the wire plugs into a headphone jack, the cassette goes into any casette reader. Maybe some tiny players/old cars dont have cassette readers, but most do. So, whats up with those FM transmitter things that have all kinds of trouble with reception? I mean why did apple reinvent the wheel on this? Whats the advantage of a transmitter?
/. at the time.
Oh ya PS: these things have been around for decades they are dirt cheap.
PPS: I tried submitting this on the first thread about those antennas but my ISP wasnt playing nice with
The iRiver 20gb model that is under reason #4 for making high quality recordings plays ogg (which is part of what my search funciton was). Now if they just made a 40gb model I would have the perfect player. Go figure. ;-p
We don't need an "overrated" so much as we need a "you completely missed the parent's point, dumbass..."
2. Jogging with a Ferrari is not cool. It's really heavy, and does not do well at such low speeds. Either you go nuts driving it or die pushing it. You can get much better tunes with a Walkman.
3. Ferraris are expensive!
4. High quality recordings are an add-on. Don't expect your Ferrari to be useful at a Greatful Dead concert.
5. Microsoft does not endorse Ferraris! Until they do and pay me more money, I'm not recomending it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"but as of this moment when you hit 128Kbps it just doesnt really matter if you use AAC or Ogg."
You're right... when you use low bit rates like 128kb, they all sound crappy... AAC, MP3, and WMA.
Of course, if you listen to crappy music recorded badly, I suppose you'd rather low-fi. But 128kb is closer to FM than it is CD.
Okay. What the hell does 25 minutes of skip protection actually DO? Comeon, tell me, fan boy.
And I bet most people on this website didn't either - mainly because we were in that niche of people who didn't have $50,000 to spend.
The article isn't saying the iPod is a terrible product - just pointing out that just because it is a great product for most people, it may not be the best one for YOU if you fall within certain niches.
Actually, if you do some research, Ferraris are pretty crappy cars - horrible reliability. There are better cars that can be bought for the kind of money they cost.
Mmmm.. Donuts
I hope people realize this, right?
MS owns a hefty chunk in this outfit?
Surprised?
Sure it pains you, but so must research of any kind. If you don't bother to read anything, I'm sure it really pains you to write.
Would you mind telling me how WMA is better for "the masses" or anyone than ogg? WMA is one of the lowest quality formats out there, ogg kicks it's ass in every way. Because ogg is patent and royalty free, there's no reason for it not to be adopted by everyone and be everywhere.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Major shortcomings??
1. The battery is a major shortcoming? The thing plays for hours and hours. It's not a shortcoming, just because the newly released Dell player does 20 hours.
2. The moving parts (hard drive) are a major shortcoming? I've jogged with my iPod hundreds of times. You set a playlist for the duration of your jog, press play the iPod fills up the memory cache with tunes, you jog. I maybe get one or two skips. Hard drive still not dead in my unit.
Indeed, not only "some experts", but even Apple says jogging with the iPod is okay, according to their official iPod FAQ:
Question 9: Can I use iPod while running, or doing other activities? Will my music skip?
Answer: iPod was designed for people with an active lifestyle. It is compact and lightweight enough to take with you wherever you go. It was designed to fit comfortably in the palm of your hand or to be slipped into a pocket or purse for easy transport. iPod offers up to 20 minutes of skip protection - twice that of other hard drive-based MP3 players on the market - so you can enjoy outdoor athletic activities without missing a beat.
3. The iPod is expensive. It is pretty expensive, but it's also very high quality. I've dropped the thing on hard ground a few times now, and it still works like a champ. It is well-designed, and it integrates with iTunes seamlessly.
The author suggests MP3 CD players as an alternative, but doesn't this violate his point #2? Yes. It does, you think jogging with an iPod is bad, but jogging with a cheaply manufactured MP3 CD player is better? These units probably have some skip protection, and probably almost no shock absorbtion (walking, driving).
4. You want to make high quality recordings. This is true, rumors are Apple is working on this, who knows.
5. You want a choice in online music stores. Well, I do have a choice in online music stores. I download AACs from iTunes Music Store, and I download MP3s from emusic.com and import them into iTunes.
I heard people bitch for years about how horrible and flakey MusicMatch and others were. Why would I want to go use them? iTunes Music Store is superb, and far exceeds the other choices out there.
Sure the iPod doesn't support "secure" (read: DRM-laden) WMA files, but I don't want to buy those, because they strip me of choice. I want unladen MP3s and perhaps minimally-DRM'd AAC files that are flexible, not draconian "secured" WMA files (which I HAVE experienced, thank you).
This article is just full of bullshit, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was shadow authored by John Dvorak or some MS PR drone*, with the stereotypical bone to pick with Apple.
* Note: I am not a Linux zealot.
Giving the general public an EQ was a huge mistake developed in the 80's that has generated the wide acceptance of the MP3. Taking away dynamics and replacing them with less than accurate band augmentation is a horrible idea. Don't recording engineers spend years of time in the studio to learn how to properly EQ whatever they're recording? More bass doesn't make it sound good, good speakers or headphones will take care of that. Ack, audio's going to hell! Peace
Yeah yeah, 5 nit picky things you _might_ not like about an ipod. Sure it's not perfect, but here's the thing... EVERYTHING ELSE OUT THERE SUCKS.
It's simple, elegant and easy to use. Why do you think they're selling like hotcakes (even though they're so F'ing expesive)?
-=sig=-
You knuckleheads can argue about the contents of the article all you want, but the bottom line is that CNET makes money by having people click through its various services to the retailer's site. This is just another way to get people to do just that. You don't even need to buy the item for CNET to generate revenue. Click throughs = $$ for CNET. Your mother is calling. Go help her fold the laundry.
You will all go deaf listening to your new fangled music on your new fangled mp3 players with your new fangled mp3's and oggs and wmas. you aren't supposed to stick little things that make noise into your ears or put big headphones on and blast your music at top volume.
... worse.
ok, curmudgeon mode off -
I love my ipod too, but i am in my second week of not using it because of the ringing in my ears.
Headphones are evil unless used in moderation and at a moderate volume. I remember when I got my first walkman in the 80's and my mother told me that headphones would damage my ears. I know that the dead kennedy concerts and raves with 20 foot walls of speakers didn't help, but honestly after a year of listening to an ipod the ringing in my ears is
music lover since 1969
Yep, I shopped at CircuitCity for an MP3 player about a year ago, and the salesman told me most of the employees there use MiniDisc players for that. Each disk (a couple bucks each?) could store 5 hours or so of MP3's. Overall it's a cheaper, more flexible alternative to other MP3 players.
Though I'm not sure if it has any real advantages to a mp3-cd player, if you can burn 700mb worth of MP3s per disc.
You want a sig? I can get you a sig... Hell, I can get you a sig by 3 o'clock this afternoon... with nail polish.
This dude must have gotten a spiff from M$ to write trash like that. WMA a necessity? What BS. Microsoft's failure in TV and web hosting markets gives lie to the "We've already won" line.
Oh well, it's no skin off my nose. I use an ogg playing Zaurus for my music. It still pains me to see M$ continuing to shuffle people from technically superior stuff to their overpriced garbage. Most people would be much happier with a Mac and an ipod than they are with a pile of M$ junk.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If the article was about 5 with Windows operating system and suggest you get Mac/Linux/BSD/Other instead?
Seriously, these are just recommendations of alternatives based on 5 problems they have with the Ipod. I really think a lot of people here are interpreting things as what they want to hear and getting worked up over nothing. Looking at their review for the old 20 gb Ipod and the much newer one, I really don't see any flamebate unless you count pointing out the cons of the Ipod He dose have some problems with the Ipod and brings them up in his articles covering other players, but he doesn't come off as biased unless you think talking about a product's flaws is. Plus with all the focus on the Ipod as if it is the only MP3 player, people might like to be informed that the Ipod might not be for them, and there are other products arising that address these issues.
Oh, and I noticed some people commenting on why he would recommend MP3 CD players when he complains about skipping. These are suggestions based on these complaints, and they are not meant to solve all of these problems. This was made just to help potential buyers consider other alternatives if they don't like the listed problems.
He said they were "secure". HA!! I'm gonna get an iPod now just to spite him, that microserf.
If I were to buy a mp3 player, it would be used mainly for running and exercise. All this article points out is that if you're looking for a mp3 player to exercise with, you are better off with one without any moving parts. And unless your name is Forrest Gump, you're not going to listen to 15GB worth of songs in one run.
CNET again shows how current they are, by referencing the 15GB iPod - which was discontinued last revision! Why do idiots always insist on comparing the latest PC gadgets with Apple gadgets from two revisions behind?
Check it out. It does make your iPod quite a bit larger though.
s ?Merchant_Id=1&Product_Id=148969
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.proces
The reason why WMA would be more useful is because more people use WMA.
/are/, however, selling DRM-wrapped WMA files. Appealing to more customers again.
/is/ a reason not to support it on an iPod: they already are paying for support of AAC and MP3s and can only fit a limited number of formats in its memory.
It doesn't matter if, on some ideological (or even technical) level Ogg is "better" (why do I get the image of that guy from SG1? Kom-chy-a!) most people do not use it. Full stop, end of story.
If I produce a word processor and I had a limited number of file formats I could support it would behoove me to select Word over OpenOffice. Why? Because more people use Word than OpenOffice and if I want to appeal to more people that is the way to go.
There is also the point that no one is selling DRM-wrapped Ogg files (not that this is not possible). They
>Because ogg is patent and royalty free, there's no reason
>for it not to be adopted by everyone and be everywhere.
There
AAC is a given, the Apple Music Store distributes in it and its what's used in mpeg4 files.
MP3 is a given.
AIFF/WAV are givens.
I want to see support for (smaller) lossless formats before I see Ogg support.
For me as an end user, I never (directly) see the license fees paid by Apple for mp3 or AAC support (if they even have to pay the latter). iTunes is distributed to me for free and it does not support ripping to ogg and my iPod won't play ogg, why should I bother with it?
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
If you bend a paperclip back and forth and back and forth, it will snap. But if you bend it within the design parameters (within the limit of elasticity of the material), you can bend it back and forth for ever and it won't break.
The article is claiming that _despite_what_the_experts_say_, he _thinks_ jogging with a iPod is a bad idea. The specs on IBM's latest laptop drive is 200G's shock resistance, and 1G sinewave vibration, 5-500Hz, Operating limits. I'd imagine that with a decent iPod holster on your hip (or better yet your upper arm), you'll put much less than 1G on the drive.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Your 99c belong to the RIAA - Steve Jobs
http://theregister.co.uk/content/6/33850.html
#7: It doesn't run Linux!!!
I've got an MZ-N707 NetMD player. I rarely charge the batteries about once a week, and I've got about 2.5 hours of commute time a day.
It's also smaller than an iPod, and transferring MP3's and WMA's to the device isn't a problem.
My only wish would be the ability to store data on my MiniDisc's for occasional file transfers between Home/Work.
I've also hacked the Firmware on my N707 to function as an R900, which gives added some playback modes and a timer. Unfortunately, the 707 doesn't have the memory necessary to remember individual MD settings.
Caveat - a normal CD player gets like 30-40 hours of playback on double aa's. Sony's high end discman gets 60 hours on a special (read expensive) rechargable. Their ATRAC3 player must have some special mojo to get 90 hours of CD playback. The CD format has a practical storage limit that works like this: 6 hours at an average of 256 kpbs, 12 hours at 128 kbps, 24 at 64, and so on.
I have an aiwa cdc-mp3 player in my car (old but solid), so I can vouch for the average of 10 to 12 hours per disc.
I'll also mention that the cheap CD medium is pretty nice for poor folks like me, but storing my whole collection on an one iPod is tempting. At least with that flexibility, I wouldn't have to choose between what 12 cd's/mixes I'll listen to in the car each month (which is about the frequency I can stand for selecting and burning new tunes for my car).
For some folks (which maybe the article should have pointed out) the battery life issue is mitigated by the fact most portable music listening is spent in a car (attached to a very large ICE battery charger :)
Oh - and don't you have to use sony's special software (SonicStage) to make the atrac3 discs ... there's a non-Windows alternative to that right?
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Just because you haven't had a failure yet, doesn't mean that it's a very, very valid risk. NO hard drive should be jostled or jarred. The heads are so close to the platters on these super-capacity hard drives, that it's very easy to destroy a hard drive by whacking it really good. You wouldn't shake around your PC while it was running, would you?
Personally, I think that any kind of mobile hard drive device is a bad idea, and that's exactly why I'd never buy an iPOD. I don't need 40 gig of music. I'd much rather have a player with no moving parts.
That is where Apple spends a lot of it's $$$ and I'm hapy to reap the benefits and rewards. They make music players that focus on the music, as opposed to other players that are too buy trying to LOOK like, uh, a music player! (think MusicMatch, and all of those shitty WinAmp skins that look great but suck for usability).
So what should I listen to? Hmm, gotta think ahead on this one and choose wisely ... 'cause I've only got 128MB to work with on this thing instead of the 10 - 20GB on an iPod!!
It's called a tradeoff. I'm willing to bet this is not a big issue for most folks. Like most of the items (except maybe $) he had to scratch himself raw to come up with "reasons".
1 Reason Not To Buy An iPod: You already have one.
"People who like a product defend that product against wrongheaded criticism"..."If it were a product that they though sucked, they would agree that it sucked"...you're a quick one.
You may want to believe 'mac zealots' are delusional, but the fact is they simply believe in the superiority of their choices in products -- as does CNet if you read the whole article. When presented with perpetual heckling and FUD, they are bound to reply with corrections and defenses. Maybe if non-Apple users would shut the fuck up about things they don't know about, there would be less zealous mac users around here, but until then, I think we will always have to listen to both sides slug it out.
Also, why does criticism of Mac users always devolve into name-calling matches? "inferiority complex"? I'll never argue the "price perception" issue, but I don't really think other arguments have legs...
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
emusic.com
If it was buy one song at a time, I might go for it, but I pay enough monthly subscriptions between dish, cell, dsl and netflix.
Their webpage hawks the free trial at you like crazy and hides the real price but it starts at $9.99/month for 40 downloads per month.
I'm trying to be satisfied with stuff I found through Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads and avoid supporting the dinosaurs completely. GarageBand looks promising- I can listen to RealAudio songs & "radio" at work, add the ones I like to my playlist & download 'em to my iPod at home.
If you want a player for jogging, an ipod is not ideal. Heck, technical reasons aside, it's too heavy!
If you are going to jog, you want some light tiny plastic thing strapped to your arm, or something, and you don't care that much about superb sound quality. You are jogging. For that matter, you don't want something expensive, either. What if it breaks? Gets lost? Falls off?
If you need the battery to last for long, long periods of time, listening for 15 hours solid, an ipod is not for you.
Me, I use my ipod for going to work, going home, walking around town, on the bus, on the plane. IT lasts plenty long.
For those plane rides where it might be dying a bit.. I do have my ibook with me. I can just plug it into the ibook and recharge it a bit.
It's not the perfect mp3 player for everything, of course...
But for an mp3 player that has 3000 of my favorite tunes on it, that fits in my pocket, looks slick, has good sound quality, and integrates well with my main computer, it can't be beat.
Apple has a longstanding policy of being hostile to their customers and resenting backwards compatability. The next step is the new ipod that can play two types of files - the old school itms files, and the "new and groundbreaking, far superior files." Then they will stop producing the old files altogether, or in some other way make the old school ipods incompatable with the "new" itms so you won't be able to use the store. Then all new ipods will only be compatable with the new files / new itms. Your old ipod is completely unable to be upgraded. You are screwed. Congratulations on being suckered into Apple! [at least, that's what they did to me with my imac & the OSX it couldn't run.)
Dear Anonymous Coward,
:)
Thank you for your kind response regarding my post. As you can imagine, I receive so many positive responses regarding my posts, that I cannot possibly reply to them all. But once again, thank you for your kind remarks regarding my post.
Sincerely,
ErnstKompressor
P.S. I think that is the most impressive pumpkin I have ever seen
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
ipods seem to be in short supply at the moment, I ordered mine on the 20th October, and it has yet to be assembled yet. Its astonishing apple can't keep on top of supplies. I've had 2 emails from them in the last two weeks telling me it will be dispatched in the subsequent weeks.
1. Amount of content is not sufficient
Compared a sample web page from CNET to Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and found the Dostoevsky's single book to provide far more content that CNET single web page.
2. Switching screens while viewing CNET is not cool
Compared switching between CNET web site screens and found it was no where near the fun of pushing buttons to switch screens on our new 42" Pioneer Plasma TV.
3. CNET is slow
Compared the load times of cnet.com and found the page load times to be significantly slower than localhost.com. What gives CNET? can we have a little optimization?
4. CNET does not allow to make high quality margaritas
Once again CNET faltered when compared to our new KitchenAid blender when it came to making margaritas. We were not even able to find any third party accessories to add this functionality to our CNET homepage.
5. You want a choice in online advertising
You would think that with an article on the Ipod you would atleast be able to check prices on it as they provide for most of the other players.
I've got a series 2 iPod. I get 12 hours (yes the newer ones don't do as well) and I can jog with it and it NEVER skips. I walk and run very heavy footed (just my way.. thump thump thump) and I never had problems with the iPod skipping. I hold it in my hand and let it swing around.
fud
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
The iRiver is ugly?
... its is not worth the money I saved.
Its skin deep and probably important to you Justin teenies who have to make sure that they are seen in the 'latest'....
iRiver plays OGG...that is why I bought it...
and I saved almost 200$ by not choosing the Ipod, which I have already lined up for another toy, because that's all they really are.
Oh!!! Did I say that it plays OGG?
I like Apple as much as the next guy but it is what it is... I still get over when I trid to opens a friends Mac the first time and found out that its verboten in the Mac world.
All this open-source droning on here about how we should support Linux, open-source and all that jazz but OGG is treated like the red-headed step-child.
We ream people here for talking 'nix and then running Win boxes but as soon as Apple has a new gizmo out, we drop our pants and our wallets in a sec.
I have my friends Ipod here as well as Im writing this so Im not talking out of my arse and while its a nice little toy
Its really all a question of tastes, money, uses.
The OGG is just my moral high horse until they Apple finally (or ever) get around to it.
zeke
All the money goes to the RIAA.
(see the register story.)
This supports only the existing business model: third parties can make money on player equipment, but not on distribution.
MiniDisc players cannot hold 5 hours of MP3s. They can hold 5 hours of ATRAC-encoded music. That means that you have to convert your files, either from your existing mp3s (AAC, WMA, OGG, whatever), resulting in further quality loss, or re-record everything in realtime. Sounds like a real pain in the ass.
Also, I tried an mp3 CD player before, and while it's nice, it just got annoying. I fucking hate carrying CDs around with me. If one CD can't hold my whole collection (it can't), I don't want it. Plus, they're huge.
But I'm still a cheap ass, so I bought an Archos Studio 10, and couldn't be happier with it. 10G, user-replacable AA recharageables, and works great in Linux. Yes it's ugly as sin, but I listen, not look, and it cost 1/3 what a comparable "sexy" iPod would.
Hell, this is not a 9600RPM harddrive. Since it needs to read MP3s that play in realtime, the lowest acceptable transfer speed is like 1/10 of a 1x CD and because of much higher data density, RPM could be even lower! You could make things VERY shock-proof with such speed requirements. )of course actual read speed is higher, but doesn't have to be much higher.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I think you might want to take a look at the Stereophile Review of the iPod. If you read the article, what is actually (between the lines) reviewed is the DAC of the iPod, which is incredible. I'll attest to this*. Sure, MP3 generally sounds like ass, as to lower bitrate AAC files, but that's a product of lossy compression, not the player itself. iPods themselves sound absolutely wonderful, especially if you use the line out (often from the dock) into your stereo.
*At home I have my iPod dock in the living room hooked to a mid-range NAD receiver and some Gekko speakers. It just sounds amazing.
I got a Nomad Zen a while back. Cheaper, longer battery life, holds 20 gigs of songs AND can be used as a back-up storage device. On top of that, it supports more formats than Ipod.
;)
Who cares about some pay to download service? Join the dark side and use Kazaa Lite like the rest of us.
Berrik
Current karma: Terrible (due to mods without a sense of humor)
Not trying to say this is better than that OR mine is longer than yours...or anything like that...But I have owned a Archos Jukebox recorder for over a year and it is rock solid. Uses regular batteries...so no special internal battery to replace...if the double A's stop holding a good charge, I go buy another set for $10 or so, and I am in good shape. The recorder works as advertised. And the best of all -- open source (ok reverse engineered) firmaware "Rockbox".
Just wonder why when people talk about the Ipod they talk about it like it is the first and only (of which it is neither) hard drive based mp3 player.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
The Rio Karma (previously mentioned here on slashdot) supports FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec), a very popular lossless format which typically results in compression factors of 2-4.
Every time I see another fool showing off his iPod on the morning commute, I resolve to never give in to the temptation of fattening Apple's quarterly reports. There is nothing quite so punchable as an Apple-loving nerd.
Sorry to say but nobody how is recording music professionaly will ever replace a DAT recorder with a MP3 recorder. The quality of MP3 is not good enough for mastering.
Cheers
I just bought one of these for my wife, and she loves it. And, it addressses all of the points in the article except their last one, (which in my mind is largely irrelevant):
1. Battery Life: The iPod apparently gets around 6 hours, jetAudio (or whatever the company is called) claims 25 hours, on (I think) a single AA battery (it might be 2). And what a blessing it is to be able to run into a convenience store, even overseas, and get a fully charged battery. I won't even bother considering any of the rechargeable-only MP3 players, whether flash- or hard-drive-based.
2. Jogging with a hard drive-based player is not cool. As you can probably guess from the battery life, the iAudio is flash based so jogging is not a problem. It's also extremely small. I specifically bought her this machine so she could strap it to her arm while she's working out/running, and it works like a charm. Wearing a fanny pack to run with an iPod just doesn't cut it, and it wouldn't work very well at all when you're on a weight machine or a bench.
3. The iPod is expensive. In Canada, the cheapest iPods are about $450 CDN; I think I got this think for around 275 CDN, and that includes a nice pair of Sennheiser earbuds.
4. You want to make high-quality digital recordings. The iAudio has a built-in digital voice recorder. I don't know about making "high-quality" recordings - I don't care about high-quality voice, but it means she doesn't need to tote her digital voice recorder around any more.
5. You want a choice in online music stores. I don't care about this at all, but I believe it plays WMA files.
Looks ? This thing is very, very attractive looking, and not only is it THE best looking flash player I've seen, it's also among the smallest MP3 flash players too. And it sounds AMAZING for a flash player, I've auditioned the iPod and to my ears this one sounds better.
Here are the negatives:
- are that it "only" stores 256 MB - for working out, this is more than enough for us, but the memory is not upgradeable,
- the interface is only USB 1.1 - it needs 2.0, at the least.
- you can use it as an external drive BUT you need to use Windows software to access it. If I could have used it like a regular pen drive I'd have bought one for myself (and then I would ONLY want USB 2, not IEE1394).
This thing is great.
Here's a solicited reply that I did send to the author:
Hello Eliot Van Buskirk,
This email is in regards to your CNET Reviews article titled "Five reasons not to buy an iPod" which is at [snip-for-lameness-filter].
My main concern that I wanted to bring up was your 5th point, entitled "5. You want a choice in online music stores".
Specifically, I don't consider the choice of online retailers to be as important as the choice of music file formats. You mention several stores as examples, such as BuyMusic, Musicmatch, and Napster, but they all offer Microsoft's proprietary WMA file format and nothing else. So if you want to buy your music in a format which isn't WMA, you have no other choice with those retailers.
At the end of the day, once the music is bought, all that you care about is what you can do with it, as the store is now out of the picture. WMA still restricts the music buyers in a lot more ways than AAC does.
So what you claim to be a greater amount of choice alternate to Apple's offering isn't really a choice at all. Its all WMA outside Apple regarding 'legal' music downloads. And any other choices are in the non-DRM realm, which the RIAA doesn't like.
So the real thing that your readers need to choose between is whether they want AAC or WMA (or a free and RIAA-illegal MP3 and others). In this respect, all of the WMA-using stores are lumped together in one pseudo-entity. So music buyers' choice then really comes down to what file format offers the music they want.
To my knowledge, Apple/AAC generally has a much wider selection, as well as better mind share with the people that make the music, who are clamoring to be listed on the iTunes music store, and especially a lot of independant artists.
-- Darren Duncan
And that "segment" is the group of people who like to waste money on items which have cheaper, effective alternatives. So, if you're a wealthy idiot, the iPod is reasonably priced.
Perhaps you should consider dropping the MP3 player altogether when running marathons.
Sean
Think Secret, an Apple rumors site has a story here about all the anti-Apple stuff coming out of CNET lately.
To quote:
Was the timing of all this bad news just coincidence, what with Microsoft announcing plans for its next OS and giving CNET an exclusive interview with Bill Gates, or was it something else? In this particular case, it looks suspicious even to other journalists.
I agree with everything you said, but the point of the article wasn't to find substitutes for the iPod but pointing out its weaknesses. It seems that for the portable recording niche, it falls flat where the MiniDisc excels. Just seemed like a conspicuous absence to me. Also, if you care about cheap replaceable/rechargeable batteries and extra long play, it fills that niche rather nicely too (not to mention that you can pick one of these things up for $100 at Walmart nowadays + about $1 per disc).
"DMCA will not allow you to circumvent this encryption (even for files you have bought)"
Other than burning them to CD and re-importing them as MP3 or non-protected AAC? While I won't argue that re-compressing lossy-compressed files leads to high-fidelity recordings, what more do you expect from a first-generation service? I know many people want the stars and the moon, but I don't think it is so outrageous to take baby steps...Besides there are still these places you can go and buy little round discs with full quality recordings on them. Sure you can't pick and choose individual songs, but you can pick what kind of encoding you'd like to utilize.
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
Nothing like buying a perfectly good MP3 device to a year later have a new OS come out and be told by Rio that they will not put out software for the new OS, and that you have to buy a new MP3 Player.
----- "It's all fun and games 'til somebody puts an eye out, then it's just funny."
Jesus fucking christ. For a person to appear objective and unbiased to an Apple fan, must he have absolute and unfaltering devoting to every one of Apple's products? THE CNET ARTICLE SAID THAT THE iPod IS "HANDS-DOWN" THE BEST MP3 PLAYER ON THE MARKET. The article pointed out some iPod flaws but it NOT just Apple bashing. What is wrong with this? What is wrong with exposing flaws that DO EXIST in a product that many desire? What the FUCK is wrong with at least pushing consumers to perhaps question the quality of the product that has been praised by the majority?
I have read probably several dozen articles about the iPod, and dozens more of testimonials on forums, and this cnet article is the first somewhat negative article I have read about the iPod. I've done my own comparisons and have known of these flaws for a long time, but god is it refreshing to see someone else who "thinks different" about the iPod.
Are there actually any tools out there that can take advantage of bitrate peeling? I know that Vorbis can toeoretically support it, but has it ever actually been implemented?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
This article was fairly interesting to me because as it turns out, I am looking for an MP3/any format player. I noted the points that they listed.
However, I also have to say that the article is flawed in that they dont really propose an alternative that's good for every point that they say the iPod is lacking. Example, iPod VS Dell. Dell is has longer battery life, I get that. But it doesnt help for point 2 which is that it's not shock resistant because it has a hard drive. Same with price, iPod is more expensive than cheap-ass D/mp3 player combo. Duh. Does the battery of the combo last 15 hours, can you jog with it, can you stick it in your shirt pocket, can you connect to it via software like iTunes? Maybe yes to some...
In conclusion, I am glad that I read the article because I find each point interesting on an individual basis and I will have to consider everything when I finally make my decision. So far, I find that the iPod is pretty well rounded even if for every single aspect, there might be a better product for that aspect.
They all use proprietary music storage formats.
Maybe that's okay for the masses, but I just can't afford to pay Thomson/Fraunhofer every time I want to encode or play my music.
Show me a compact portable player that supports Vorbis, and I'll show you a player I'll consider buying.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
A couple of months ago, I traded $400 for a 3rd-gen iPod. I had lots of alternatives, but I chose the iPod. Why?
Linux.
Using the iPod in Linux (kernel 2.6, anyway) was as simple as plugging it in, and "emerge gtkpod".
Linux is the same reason I ditched my otherwise excellent Sony Minidisc player.
Apple, you've made a customer out of me --- for making a product that doesn't suck!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
This is a ridiculous article.
Reason 1: It Can't do what MP3 player A can do
Reason 2: It Can't do what MP3 player B can do
Reason 3: It Can't do what MP3 player C and D can do
Reason 4: It Can't do what MP3 player E can do
Reason 5: It Can't do what MP3 player F can do
Obviously Player A cannot Do what B-F can do either. This is a wishlist, not a realistic review.
DrPascal: Not the language, the mathematician.
... what with Belkin being the /. Mortal Enemy of the Day(tm), and all...
with 6 plus hours of battery life it really doesn't make much sense to have 3 weeks equivalent of music; currently i use an MP3 CD player and i burn my audio as low bitrate mp3 (32kb) which is adequate as all i listen to are audiobooks (i think that whole national obsession with music as if it had been food or water is insane) i carry the mp3 cd player in my bag, which has a shoulder strap and i wear those earphones so its size or weight doesn't matter, but what really matters is that i carry NiMH batteries which are rechargeable and i can carry a foursome and change them when i need to.
So far i've not needed to buy an ipod and i guess i won't for a long time.
I've had lousy experiences with Apple's service/support. I've had problems with my iPod case since I ponied up the $500 to buy it in May. The seam between the white plastic and the metal bottom keeps coming apart on the right hand side. It's weird tho, because it will occasionally "fix" itself, and then come apart again. I've sent it back twice now - each time, it's been sent back to me sorta fixed, but not really, and it's obvious that it will break again once I start using it again. I've probably spent over 3.5 hours on the phone with support to date. They've basically accused me of dropping it (I did NOT), and have just stopped short of implying that I'm lying and trying to take advantage of the system. Plus they are totally lame in that everytime I call they claim that they have no idea who was dealing with my case, and what was done to "fix" it, etc. So pathetic. I'm getting so disgusted now because a) I spent $500 for it, b) it's still under warranty and it's obvious that they are trying to run my warranty out, and c) I WAS a huge fan/evangelist for apple products. Give me a break. They should be better than this. Support people have been polite, but the implication I get when talking to them is that I am some sort of liar. I'm sure they don't mean it, but come on, how can I interpret it any other way?
Just thought I'd share my experiences.
I own a new zen 30gig. It's not cheap or nasty. It's inexpensive, and a generally better deal than the IPOD for my money. It has at least as many features as the ipod, and, if macintosh does the smart thing, it may someday support itunes. the software it comes with isn't the best, but http://www.redchairsoftware.com has your hookup there. I don't think it's particularly homely, though I prefer the iPod's design. I do think the Zen has a sexy metal look to it.
i think Gabe from penny arcade sums up the whole thing pretty good. http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003-05 -28&res=l
the ipod is a great idea that is like every other one of apples beatiful products, (not sarcastic) too damn expensive.
Oh, come on. Ipod is popular because
1. It's a "cool" gadget, based on size and apperance. That's almost enough to make it a hit.
2. It's UI is (supposedly) the best, hands down.
That's it. Unless you have very special needs (features, not short-bus) it's all you need to know. Performance specs aren't for consumer driven products. They're for geeks (like us).
Sure there are areas in which it's not the best, but it rules in the two that matter the most. I have a panny CD-MP3 which I never use due to UI issues (no ff/rw & low volume). Otherwise it's a nice product...even gets 40 hours on a pair of AA batterie...but it doesn't work for me.
The iPod is consummate Apple: cool looking and easy to use. It's more numerous now because it's an early market product and everyone else hasn't figured out how to make a UI which isn't a)buggy or b)difficult to navigate or both. 80% (paid)downloadable marketshare? Sure, but it's a mighty small market...call me back in a couple of years.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
.... . Don't recording engineers spend years of time in the studio to learn how to properly EQ whatever they're recording?
I don't give a rat's ass how many years some recording engineer spends learning how to properly EQ something. What I do care about is that the music sounding good to me. What is more reasonable--adjusting my EQ so that I like the sound or going out and spending money on "good,good speakers or headphones" in the hopes that I will like the result?
Maybe the average person doesnt understand an EQ, but that hardly makes "giving the general public an EQ" a "huge mistake".
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Bitrate peeling exists to play/copy/stream low-bitrate samples from a higher-quality file, without the need to reencode. For a portable player, you could copy files in 64kbps from the 192kbps originals, without wasting time reencoding anything.
It's not a feature designed to make your music sound worse on-the-fly.
most people do not use [ogg]. Full stop, end of story ... more people use Word than OpenOffice and if I want to appeal to more people that is the way to go.
Your analogy is stupid. People share (legally) Word files a lot more often than they legally share music files. Unless you are somehow actively advocating the illegal sharing of music files, I don't see why popularity base has anything to do with your choice of music format.
Another problem with your reasoning is that while Word and OpenOffice are (usually) exclusive, the same is not true of WMA and OGG support (see next paragraph).
[the ipod] can only fit a limited number of formats in its memory.
To be honest, this is an inadequacy of the ipod much more than it is an inadequacy of the ogg format. I agree that this is a great reason to omit ogg support from the ipod, but it is not a great reason to avoid ogg support in other players. It is also not a great reason to avoid players that support ogg.
Moore's law has just about caught up to portable players to the point where they can reasonably be expected to support additional file formats for almost no marginal cost. Any modern player should support all of the formats. And that is a reason not to buy the ipod.
Reason 1: iPod battery not long enough.
Debunk: If you need more than EIGHT hours at a stretch, get the Belkin battery clip. Holds 4 AA batteries and more than double's the iPod's battery life.
Reason 2: Bad for jogging.
Debunk: This guy has his head in his ass. Even IF (And that's a BIG IF) the hard drive were joggled just as it was loading the buffer, it's fast enough that you wouldn't notice. These drives are also built to be resilient. You might as well say that you shouldn't move a laptop around when using it. Flash-Memory based MP3 players don't have anywhere near the iPod's capacity and can be VERY expensive.
Reason 3: Expensive
Debunk: That is true, but you get what you pay for. MP3 CD players and the 20 or so CDs are hardly portable. That's the reason people get an iPod: They want simple portability, not a bulkier Discman with a bigass CD wallet. Oh, and the battery IS REPLACABLE! There are several companies that sell replacement batteries. This guy didn't do much homework.
Reason 4: Recording
Debunk: True, but that is a pretty damned small market niche. Usually DJ's have something other than an MP3 player to record their tracks, like actual recording equipment or a laptop.
Reason 5: Music Stores
Debunk: That's what P2P is for!
Yes, women's shirts generally have the buttons on the opposite side of men's shirts.
Why is this?
It's easier to dress someone else when the buttons are oriented towards your right hand. Back when women didn't dress themselves, they had servants to do it (or daughters, if they weren't rich). Shirts just kinda carried over the tradition.
(Although I'm lost on the remote comment...now I have to go look at my wife's iPod clip)
Granted, not many other MP3 players will play back Ogg Vorbis files either. But more are starting to appear.
Although it looks like it would be hard to make the internal battery easily swappable in an iPod based on the third-generation designs...
Nothing compares to having every last bit of music in your shirt pocket. I grew up with vinyl records. Having portable music was difficult, lugging records around. CDs are nice, but but you still have to play them one by one. (unless you have one of those neeto 50cd changers)
It is soo cool to play your entire collection randomly. Half the time I say, who the hell is this? It is like getting new music.
The other nifty thing I found is streamripper. Record your favorite iradio station over night, synch your ipod, bring it to work the next day to listen. Keep what you like, delete what you dont. Buy the cd to further explore what you do like.
Yeah, I could use a modular battery, and I had to quit smoking to justify the 5 bones on the unit. If mp3 players with chips and no discs can hold 30GB, I would jump, but there is nothing close.
Yes, there are a few goofy software glitches, but it is the best 500 I spent in a long time.
Hey, leave comments about my mother out of this!
A
P
P
L
E
need I say more?
Agree 100%. Furthermore....
Ogg is nice.. but all teh ogg heads out there knew damn well before they went and encoded anything out there that ogg was the black sheep of portables. There is not a lot of ogg support out there. Sorry. You knew that when you started.
As for headphones... it's true to a point. Music is very psychological though... and it's not just about good or bad. Poorly encoded mp3 sounds *better* on cheaper headphones than it does on good ones, as the good ones reveal just how bad the recording is.
Yeah, I've been an EMusic subscriber and raving fan all year. The selection isn't that great for the modern pop/alternative stuff, but they have TONS of classic jazz. Lots of Riverside & Prestige labels. If they only had Blue Note...
Anyway, the sad thing about EMusic is that their (formerly unlimited) downloads will now be capped. Seems they got bought by another company trying to get into the iTunes/Napster 2.0 business. The closest equivelent plan under the new ownership is 300 downloads/month for $50. That's more than triple what I was paying on a per-track basis. No thanks.
Now that I got the notification e-mail saying that their terms are changing, I intended to fill my bandwidth with downloads--you know, go out in style--but of course, all the former unlimited subscribers have had the same idea. Everyone's been hitting their servers so hard it's like a DDOS attack. Their 'download manager' keeps hanging, no response from technical support. I thought it was cool that they had a Linux version of the download manager, but it didn't work on RH9.0 and they don't offer support for that. Time to move on.
Ok, so this article might not be pure flamebait, but the title is the problem. It was obviously created by some weasily editor or the writer, who wanted to grab some attention and some hits for the site.
And it looks like he succeeded.
I used to think Slashdot was a special group...
"In the future, people only run for fun!"
"Run for fun? What the hell kind of fun is that?"
He'd never seen a CD MP3 player that got more than 8 hours of battery life. 90-150 hours is significantly longer than 8 hours. It weighs only about 2 or 3 grams more than an iPod as well, and is just as thin. It's certainly a viable alternative unless you must have the smallest device possible, in which case you might want to look into a memory based MP3 player (like the new Sony NetWalkman) or even a MuVo.
I just got my iRiver iHP-120 last week, and I'm extremely impressed.
I'm very happy with Ogg Vorbis, and I wanted to buy the first good quality player that supported it. Well, iRiver, I must say you have outdone yourself. The iHP-120 is simply amazing:
I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture. Sorry, but the iPod doesn't even come close...
Perhaps the iHP-120 from iRiver IS ugly...
But it plays Ogg and I'd buy it for that over an iPod any day.
Polymorphism -- It's what you make of it.
You're missing the entire point if you think that supporting only one format is a positively desirable feature.
I am not by any means arguing that apple should drop WMA support for ogg support. I realize that apple is in a position where they can only support one format. They made the right decision in choosing the popular format.
BUT the fact that apple's ipod supports so few formats is a good reason not to buy the ipod! May I remind you that the topic of this article is reasons not to buy an ipod. We are not talking about whether the ogg format is better than the WMA format. Instead we are talking about whether other music players are better than the ipod. I would certainly prefer, say, the Rio Karma over the ipod based on the Karma's ability to support more formats.
I have already stated many times that I agree apple made the right decision in choosing WMA over ogg. But I do not agree that being forced to choose only one format is a good, or even neutral, feature of a music player.
I know that you don't consider ogg support important. In fact I even know that most consumers do not consider ogg support important. But for the few of us (like me) that do, it makes a lot of sense to choose a player other than the ipod.
Like every single other reason in the Cnet article, the lack of ogg support is a relatively "picky" shortcoming of the ipod that only applies to a small niche of the market. You will note that every single alternative player listed in the Cnet article has to make other tradeoffs against the ipod in order to fill its niche. I know that you are not in this small niche. But believe me it matters a lot to those of us who are in that small niche.
Some of the iRiver players support OGG Vorbis. iRiver is trying ahrd to get support on most of their players -- since most have upgradable flash memory.
Check out this link for more info.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
My Bondi Blue 233 has a happy li'l 60 gig harddrive in it and is serving as my music server (and doing so with Panther).
Though I'd trade it in a second for a 20 gig iPod.
(Sorry for the corney subject line. It just struck me.)
Um.... Anyway..... I have a lot of vinyl. At least 500 LP records. Yea, I purchased most of them in the late 80s early 90s when the quality of vinyl was crap but I still like them, except when I move. I found out the hard way that vinyl is heavy. A big motivation for joining emusic.com and looking on p2p networks for me is to find the stuff that I own on vinyl. As of yet I haven't found a whole lot.
However, when I started looking around on emusic.com I did find a lot of interesting stuff. As someone else mentioned they have a great collection of Jazz. I have lots of interests in music. My main interests lie in the relm of Experimental/Industrial. A lot of what I found on emusic.com was stuff that I already owned, and owned on CD (Invisible Records stuff).
There are lots of other musics that I enjoy, and some that I have an interest in but don't know much about and would like to explore. I have an interest in Modern Classical as well as more traditional Classical music. I have an interest in Trip-Hop, Downbeat and Ambient music, and was very interested in what they had beyond the Ambient-Industrial music that I'm already into.
Towards the end lots of people were creating personal lists of associated music or whatever. It was really fun looking at something of interest and just following links and reading descriptions for music I've never heard of. I like learning about new artists/projects and emusic.com really lended itself to just browse around and discover new stuff.
Well, for me it is over now but I'm probably going to spend the next year listening to all the stuff I downloaded. In some respects 40 downloads for $9.99 is an OK deal. When I get re-employed 300 downloads for $50 sounds interesting too. For now I hope that they reconsider and either provide more downloads for the $9.99 or find a way to reconcile the fact that some albums have a lot of very sort tracks.
Since a lot of the music I'm interested in is classical whose tracks are sometimes 2 minutes long. If they did something like no album will "cost" you more than 10 tracks that would make it a lot more fair to those who like such music. Some of the music I like has tracks that are 30-60 minutes so maybe it would even itself out. In the meantime I'm going to hold out a little to see what happens.
What I also find interesting is that maybe the reason they are limiting the tracks is so that some record companies are wary of signing up with unlimited downloads. Maybe in the near future they will be providing the old Wax Tracks! catalog of which contains much of my older vinyl. Maybe they will sign up Tzadic Records of which I would drool over getting 300 downloads for $50 to tantalize my New Musik lust. Again, I will wait and see.
This signature used to contain a cute kitty virus with ansii art. Please set the slashdot editors on fire. Thank you
it lets you use one 256kbit stream to derive a 128kbit, 64kbit stream. You don't need 256+128+64 = 448kbits to store them. (this is assuming CBR math, you get the idea)
...you try to tune the FM transmiting frequency in your Neuros? :)
what with that belkin voice recorder add-on and the docking port thingie... i would really, really like something that just provided a stereo digital input to the iPod. that would be damn near perfect. let me use my own a/d converter, just eat the data, have high capacity, and be tiny. i'll be overjoyed.
i'm convinced there's a small but lucrative market for this. somebody make it. give it TOSlink. i'll buy one.
[|]
After you find out you really like iTunes you will be OK. OK that is until you find out all 10,000 songs on your iPod Suck!
I on the other hand will be just fine. Just fine that is until the RIAA deploy their Anti-Vinyl Mobile.
Just be glad I didn't figure out a way to segway into the Evil Toilet vs. Evil Toilet Plunger in this post.
Does iTunes allow you to browse what they have in their catalog before signing up? That was another of the kewl things about emusic.com.
This signature used to contain a cute kitty virus with ansii art. Please set the slashdot editors on fire. Thank you
From: johram
2 4-1.html he lists areas where the iPod needs improvement.
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Subject: MP3 Insider
Date: November 7, 2003 12:55:07 PM PST
To: MP3Insider@cnet.com
I have a question.
It's surprising that Senior Editor of Hardware Reviews Eliot Van Buskirk is so out of touch with his own department.
In his "Five reasons to not buy an iPod" article"http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6450_7-51023
I've browsed CNET itself for reviews of the "better than iPod players" (as mentioned in the "five reasons not to buy an iPod article). All of them scored lower than the iPod on CNET reviews.
The Dell Digital Jukebox DJ is "Highly recommended" and scored an 8/10.
http://reviews.cnet.com/Dell_Digita...7-30
The iRiver iFP-395T is "very good" and scored an 8.7/10.
http://reviews.cnet.com/iRiver_iFP_...7-
The iRiver iHP-120 is "very good" and scored 8.7/10.
http://reviews.cnet.com/iRiver_iHP_...7-
The iRiver iMP-150 ChromeX is "good" and scored 7.3/10.
http://reviews.cnet.com/iRiver_iMP_..._7
The iRiver iMP-550 SlimX is "very good" and scored 8.7/10.
http://reviews.cnet.com/iRiver_iMP_...7-
The Samsung Napster YP-910GS (20GB) is "good" and scored 7.7/10.
http://reviews.cnet.com/Samsung_Nap...7-
The Philips Nike psa[cd8 is "good" and scored 7/7.
http://reviews.cnet.com/Philips_Nik...7-206
And finally the The Apple iPod 40GB scored an Editors Choice and 9/10 in a CNET review.
http://reviews.cnet.com/Apple_iPod_...7-
Sorry for that rant but here at last is my question.
I am wondering when you'll run similar "Five reasons not to buy" pieces for the aforementioned players?
"Fighting for peace is like fucking for chastity."
2. Jogging with a hard drive-based player is not cool.
Four iRiver products are mentioned
Then this *&^% says:
3. The iPod is expensive.
So this person recommends:
Another 2 iRiver devices which are WORSE for jogging than the iPod.
Why do I smell BS?
I wouldn't want one of the others (Dell, iRiver, etc) is because like the pc market, it will be outdated and unsupported soon. Having somthing everyone has (the iPod) is better, so you can share problems with a community, etc. With anything else, you just can't do this. Things in the PC industry seem to die off fast with no community to back it up. I had a hot d-link mp3 player, buttons and such fell out, crappy software with it, etc. Oh, and no community to back it up. That's why I choose apple products over most PC ones, lifespan and community support.
Sig: I stole this sig.
I had expected to read something like this: (1) It uses a crypted AAC format where personal data from iTunes is kept. If you share a song from iTunes, Apple can track you down. I surely don't hope my credit card number is put into the AAC files aswell! My name is bad enough! (2) Apples software can ONLY put songs to the iPod. You can't take a song out of the iPod. In order to do this, you need a third party program. (3) If you put songs from iTunes to your iPod in one country and you connect it to iTunes in another country, your songs is deleted!!! This is an old /. story.
About Vorbis on portables.
(1) A none FPU version of Vorbis excist.
(2) If you want the music to hold secret information Vorbis can crypt the song aswell. This features is made especially for portables!
Yeah, RIP emusic. It was a great deal at the former rate, unlimited downloads. If you don't listen to all that plastic radio shit, it was the best thing around -- great music, great quality, fast downloads, good price. Kicked the crap out of iTunes, Napster, and all the pay-per-song crowd. If I were using iTunes, my last year of emusic goodness would have cost me several thousand dollars.
the point of the article wasn't to find substitutes for the iPod
Oh really? Then why were there all those links to alternative products? It just seemed like some kind of advertising scheme to me.
Lump lingered last in line for brains, and the ones she got were sorta rotten and insane.
I guess I poorly phrased the sentence. What I meant was that the article wasn't trying to find carbon copies of the iPod, but alternative products for specific areas where the iPod doesn't perform well. I agree, though, that the article seemed like an advertising blitz, one NOT sponsored by Sony apparently.
" 1) Six-plus hours of battery life is not always enough. " This is the only part of his post that's reasonably sound, to an extent. I mean, it's such a hassle to reach over two inches and plug your iPod into the outlet in front of you, or next to your airline chair. " 2) Some experts say that it's impossible to damage the drive in this way, but I'm not buying that--hard drives spin thousands of times per minute, and they have tiny, fragile parts. " Yeah, nothing's impossible, but what do the EXPERTS know. They're only EXPERTS after all. In addition, don't you think Apple had this in mind with their PORTABLE MP3 player? 3) The iPod is expensive. Ok, but the iPod is not JUST an MP3 player. It's practically a high-capacity PDA. You can do a whole lot more with it than just listen to MP3s, and those are the features you're paying for. If you ONLY want an MP3 player, then buy a little MP3 player. If you want a firewire HDD, games, calendar, alarm clock, voice recorder, camera, portable stereo, and 20 other things, then get a bloody iPod. " 4) You want to make high-quality digital recordings. " That's why we have computers. That's why Apple added the digital/optical line in. That's why you have really nice sound cards and top-notch microphone to connect to your PC for good recording. " 5) But I don't like feeling hemmed in. Some other MP3 players let you choose between BuyMusic, Musicmatch, and Napster, all of which use Microsoft's secure WMA files. " I see. So you like being hemmed in AFTER you download your MP3s, because we all know Microsoft's secure WMA files can be played on a wide variety of software.
I mean, this is PATHETIC. Try to keep up with me here.
I love the iPod. It's nice. But god, it's not the be-all and end-all. The article says 'if you're really concerned about battery life, then don't get the iPod.' IF this is the major factor for you, THEN this is a reason not to get the iPod! Get it?
I mean, it's like we've got this really nice four-door car, plenty of trunk space, really reliable, really pretty, good gas milage, good power, etc. And they wrote an article called 'Five reasons not to buy this vehicle'.
1) You need a car that gets 50 miles to the gallon
2) You haul furnature for a living
3) You need to drive through the outback 40 miles each way every day
4) You can't afford it
5) You were actually looking for a boat
Get OVER it, it's a perfectly valid article! There are people for whom that car ISN'T the best vehicle; there are people for whom the iPod isn't the best portable media device! And THEY SHOULDN'T BUY ONE. Maybe that's only 10% of customers, but believe it or not, THEY NEED REVIEWS TOO!
Goddamn. Makes me embarrassed to be an Apple enthusiast, with people around who can't understand stuff like this. I mean, MacUser ran an article 10 years or so ago called 'Top Ten Reasons Not To Buy A Mac'. You guys would have flayed and roasted them, instead of taking it as constructive criticism, and useful information.
Sad.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
If all you need is a portable MP3 player, and all you have is $200.00, then by all means buy just that. Not my fault your pockets are shallow :)
Just don't try to tell anyone that $400 for an iPod just gets you a portable MP3 player.
And they give 5 differents models to buy instead... since noone seems to have less than 4 of these baaaaad reasons...
Not FUD, just gratuitous bashing...
Why is it iFacism is present whenever an iProduct is criticized. iZealots can't stand to hear a single critical word without slobbering like a bunch of iMorons.
:)
You know, it COULD be that there might be a better product out there than the iPod, but most of you Applephiles would never know it. OK...iFlame away!
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
1. Six-plus hours of battery life is not always enough.
6 to 8 hours might not be enough. But there are options. Buy an external battery pack. Or, if you are traveling on a plane, your seat may very well have power provided.
This probably shouldn't be an issue all the time, unless you are traveling a LOT, or don't do anything else all day besides listen to music.
He mentions the Dell player has better battery life, and he slips in a comment about the Dell being cheaper as well? We're talking about battery life. Backing up my point how it really isn't that much of an issue for most people, he even needed to go off topic to give his point some backbone...
2. Jogging with a hard drive-based player is not cool.
"If something jars a hard drive-based player at the precise moment when the hard drive is spinning to load the flash buffer, the player could skip."
Only that this doesn't happen with iPods when you jog, try it. If it does, try attaching it to a different part of your body.
Shock would be taken into the design of the iPod.
"Some experts say that it's impossible to damage the drive in this way, but I'm not buying that"
I thought his guy was the MP3 Player expert. Surely he'd know how hard drive players perform when used while jogging?
3. The iPod is expensive.
When you just compare the prices, and not the players themselves, it would seem that way.
When you take into account the design, ease of use, and support for things like iTunes and 3rd party add-ons, I believe it's a non issue.
Now he goes onto talking about burning MP3s to CDs, I thought the idea here was to have a small player with good battery life and that doesn't skip, CDs skip last time I checked.
4. You want to make high-quality digital recordings.
Look, the iPod is designed to play music, this is what it does best. However it has the OPTION to do things outside of it's design with dock connectors. USE IT. Features outside of the spec should not be forced onto the user to bloat the device. They need to draw the line somewhere for what an "MP3 Player" is.
And if I wanted to make "high quality digital recordings", I wouldn't be using a consumer MP3 player. Come on.
5. You want a choice in online music stores.
Sorry, but I find it hard to believe that people that know any better would "choose" a Microsoft format to buy their music in.
It's part of the reason why everyone outside of the USA is jealous of the service - we can do everything except buy.
I find it interesting that they compare the iPod to at least 7 other mp3 players. So what if it isn't the end all answer to peoples mp3 needs, it's still one of, if not the, best overall mp3 player (of course that's an opinion).
1. Most allergies are triggered by airborne allergins
2. Polution is rampant in most urban areas, why risk ingesting toxins
3. constant expansion of chest causes wrinkling of shirts
4. may accidently breathe with mouth open when engrossed in something... risk looking like Dork
5. Considering the low concentrations of Oxygen in atmospheric air, normal breathing is just too inefficient
That said, I'm very fond of breathing myself. I just wanted to point out 5 reasons why you might want to consider alternatives.
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
that I didn't know until tonight... they use LAME for the VBR encoding on their mp3's.
I almost didn't read this article when I saw it, but I was so glad I did. The article revealed that there were two devices that had stereo audio input and supported digital recording. I have been dreaming for this for more than a year. This is an extremely useful and powerful development that Apple really should not underestimate in their micro-managed effort to have the most elegant mp3 player design. It seems that there is a strong, ignornant force at Apple that does not understand the value of analog audio inputs. Repeatedly, Apple has removed analog inputs from both their desktop and laptop computers. Thankfully, the current machines have them -- but only from massive consumer requests (including a letter from myself). I already own the original revision iPod and I would jump in my car tomorrow and drive to an Apple store and buy a new one if it simply had a high-quality audio input.
But I'll tell you what's better. I hooked up my girlfriend's Archos to my amp using its built-in, idiot-proof digital coax and I bypass the DAC altogether. Maximal quality -- limited only by the bitrate and audio characteristics of the file being played. I hear the more modern players, like the iRiver, go on better and feature optical digital I/O.
Da Blog
However, even if we were to accept flac as a portable format, the ipod still loses, because it doesn't support flac, while other players like the Karma do support flac (and ogg too).
Believe me I have the same concerns that you do.
But, be honest with yourself: what are you doing about it?
Pardon me (and please correct me) if I'm wrong, but as far as I can tell, all you're doing about it is bitching on slashdot. Whereas I on the other hand am working very hard right smack in the eye of the DRM storm trying to make sure that what Microsoft does with the DRM technology is the right thing.
I don't always succeed 100 percent, but I am trying, and I am impacting Microsoft a lot more than you are. So please work with me instead of against me. If you can't even do that, please at least try not to actively antagonize the few people like me inside this company that might actually be sympathetic to your views.
I picked up a 20GB IPod from Bestbuy a couple of days ago. I hooked up and tried to connect to my PC without reading the manual, well, the IPod Deck has a FireWire cable and I don't have any firewire ports.
I read on the box and it said you need "Firewire [b]OR[/b] USB 2.0 ports". I shock my head and read the manual, and guess what they tell me?
"If you only have a USB port, then you need to the buy the [b]optional[/b] Firewire/USB cable" !! I returned the IPod the same day and got my money back, will probably buy an IRiver or something that doesn't make blatant lies on its box.
I suppose most forget that cnet is a paul allen company:
. ht m
http://www.fool.com/specials/1999/sp990617allen
"Allen has also pumped money into plenty of Internet content and commerce providers. Vulcan owns stakes in Priceline.com (Nasdaq: PCLN), Beyond.com (Nasdaq: BYND), Egghead.com (Nasdaq: EGGS), Value America (Nasdaq: VUSA), CNet (Nasdaq: CNET), "
How is the ability to play crappy, M$ DRM'd WMA files supposed to be a *good* thing?
Btw, I have other sources for mp3 besides iTMS. My physical CDs . . . and a little thing called gnutella.
I guess they needed one more to round it out, cause 5 is a bullshit reason.
# 1 - Dell Digital Jukebox 20GB v. Apple iPod 20GB
The Dell is 50% larger by volume, and 37% heavier. The Dell has a lower resolution display. The Dell doesn't support AIFF files. The Dell has no FireWire. The Dell doesn't support Macintosh. The Dell has no expansion port. Dell lists no specification for skip protection. The Dell doesn't support, and isn't supported by, the *most popular* online music source, Apple's iTunes Music Store. Hmm, I see no world travel adapter kit for the Dell. No remote for the Dell, either. The Dell has only 12 equalizer settings. The Dell is ugly! How about on-device playlist editing? I see nothing about it... PDA features? Song ratings? Multiple languages? Sleep timer? UPGRADEABLE FIRMWARE??? Nope, no info!
Oh, hey, did I mention that I can boot a Mac from my iPod? Can you boot a Windows machine from a Dell DJ?
Oh yeah, then there's that dock thing again. Can you offload your digital camera files to your Dell DJ without a PC? Or your PDA memory card files? No?
I could keep going, but I won't. The Dell is actually the only competitor listed that even comes close to offering similar features to the iPod. It's a good competitor to the *first generation* iPod. Whatever happened to the Philips unit? It has a pretty nice design, unlike the Dell box.
# 2 - Flash-based players? Give me a break. Those things are laughable. Why would I want even a 512MB player when I can have a (minimum) size of at least *thirty* times that? Oh, the skipping thing? Funny, my iPod doesn't skip--and if it did occasionally skip while I was running, I doubt I ever cared enough to notice.
#3 - The iPod is expensive. Yes, it is. Which is why I got mine for $175 instead of $299 (and no, I'm not telling you where--it's new and it's legal). Then again, you get what you pay for! Apple needs to get the entry price down to $199. I think that's what it's really worth, and what they'll be selling for once the glut passes--but Apple's already selling them as fast as they can make them at $299-499, so let's let the market be the judge, shall we? Since Dell is all about low prices, and their 20GB unit is only $70 less than Apple's--the real question is, is the iPod worth the extra $70 given it's additional features over the Dell unit? IMO, unequivocally.
As far as MP3 CD players are concerned, they may in fact be cheap to people who have nothing better to do with their time than arrange and burn MP3 CD's, but to me--my time is expensive. I bought my iPod to reduce the number, size, and weight of the things I carry on a daily basis, not to mention the annoyance of having to swap CD's on the fly when they run out. And they do run out--the amazing thing with having 500-5000 songs in your hand is how often you find you've listened to everything on the drive, and it's back at the beginning!
#4 - No high quality recording. I'm a musician and a sound designer. None of these devices are of acceptable quality for recording, yet, so this is a specious argument. Anybody who has that much invested in vinyl at this point isn't going to bother duping them to an inferior digital format. Cassettes? Who *really* cares? Seriously.
#5 - Choice of online music stores? Why? iTunes Music Store is so far superior to the competition as to invite ridicule on anyone attempting to claim that they would choose Napster, MusicMatch, or anything else over Apple's store at this point. And, BTW, you do know that iTunes (the application) supports more than just the iPod, don't you? If any other players ever support AAC, they should work just fine with the Music Store, too.
The article is just a blatant attempt by CNet to curry favor with the Windows-centric advertisers who pay their salaries that have been feeling a bit piqued over another demonstration of Apple's ability to crush their competition with superior firepower, with a disclaimer added so they don't look like complete and utter fools to their readers, just shills for The Man.
I wouldn't normally rebutt such a facetious article, but this time, my hackles went up...
I have an original bondi blue iMac running Jaguar Server without any hitches, plus an original 266 MHz Beige G3 running the same OS. You must be a complete imbecil!
is for booming bass at all costs even if it means making a human sound like Thor in the halls of Valhalla. There is something about "EQ" I find obnoxious as a "product". Why is it impossible to listen to the radio (even involuntarilly, in the back of a cab for example) without hearing people speak with the most unnatural boost in the low frequency. What people want in a sound system -- thanks to the abuse of equalizer systems -- is not to listen to music, but to have their limbic systems pulverized with sensation. That radio DJs can't broadcast without having their voices tweaked into oblivion is a direct byproduct of people expecting any hearable medium to ROCK THEIR WORLD. They have come to desire this because cheap accessories made it possible.
___________________________
I'm not a geek, but I play one on TV.
The iPod has already begun to replace DAT machines and recorders. It supports wave and AIFF playback. Many artists had been bringing their DAT machines with them to the recording studios to eliminate variance among different DAT tape players. Becuase of the capacity of the iPod and the ability to play back WAV & AIFF files allows for a greater control of quality than you get when switching DAT machines. And the iPod is much easier to carry.
Professional artists are not looking for the ability to record directly to an iPod, as the input levels on any consumer product are not sufficient. However, as a decent play back machine for demos it is an excellent choice.
The Samsung YP-910GS only supports MP3 & WMP play back, even if the portable allows for audio recording, it does not support the proper file formats for high - quality playback.
However the iRiver iHP-120 supports MPEG 1/2/2.5 Layer 3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, ASF, & WAV. This player does support file formats with a quality sufficient enough to replace a DAT machine. But the 10GB player lists for $399 and can be found for $349.
The 10GB ipod can be purchased for for $299.
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I'm not a geek, but I play one on TV.
Anyone who reads Slashdot should be savvy enough to know that anything CNet says is BS.
If I was an electrical engineer, I would design a flash memory based portable music player that played Mp3, Ogg, and gzip/bzip'd .wav files. It would run an embeded linux based OS of course, and would ship with an open source linux, freebsd, and MacOSX client to upload and download tunes to it. The unit itself would feature a user upgradable firmware (just like the BIOS in your PC),
Also, the flash memory it would accept will be removable, and will be the CompactFlash format - because I already own a 512 MB card for my digital camera, why should I have to pay extra for more memory if I don't need it?
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Basically, the article is saying that the iPod is a Jack of all trades, and master of none. It might be the best all-around player, but on any specific feature, there's probably something better.
The point is, don't assume that the iPod is the best player FOR YOU just because it is the best all-around player. If one specific feature happens to be supremely important to you, the iPod might fall short, and leave you disappointed.
I've an iPod. I define a 'few files' when I sync something on the order of magnitude of one to four CDs, which is about 60mb to 300mb. So I plug in my iPod, and 5 to 30 seconds later everything is done!
On a USB 1.1 interface that would become... 75 to 450 seconds later... or something like 1 to 7 minutes later...
Then lets say I want to back up my home directory once a week. All 300mb! Only a minute on the iPod (plus synching music, all at 16mb/s) vs 15 to 20 minutes on your Neuros...
So in the end, the question is 'What do you pay for usability?'
Neuros is huge, 3/4 of a pound, the size of a paperback novel, and slow.
The iPod is small, 1/3 of a pound, the size of a pack of cigs, and fast.
Plus if you leave them both in for 10 minutes (say you go to the bathroom or get a drink), the iPod will have charged by 10%, while the Neuros will have charged 2%... Effectively giving the iPod an additional hour of play!
GPL Deconstructed
I understand you need to troll, sir, but I strongly disagree that it's not a good thing. The same cultural change happened to the automobile freaks about 80 years ago. In 1910's or 1920's a fan of the automobile was usually someohe who spends entire day in his garage, endlessly tweaking and troubleshooting his self-made machine. Since about 1930's an automobile fan is just a person who likes to drive, who frequently buys a new machine, who is usually knows what new models are to be announced next quarter etc. But it is no longer a person who enjoys spartan interiors and thinks that automatic A/C or heated seats are "feminine". On the contrary, he enjoys everything modern techonogy can offer to make his voyage even more comfortable.
;-)). She appreciates the same things I do appreciate - ease-of-use, well-thought interface, robustness. The only difference is that I can always tell the build of the OS we both use and probably she does not even know the version or the proper name, because she just doesn't care.
The same thing happened to the computers. My wife is not a computer geek, but she uses the same equipment that I do (after all, I do the shopping
To say that it's not a good thing is like to say that it's not a good thing that we don't have to start our cars using a manual handle because of the feminine invention of a key-activated electric starter.
1) Belkin Battery Pack: More than 20 hours of battery life on four standard AA batteries. $50 or so. (Notice the author of this review points out the voice recorder accessory to validate his 4th reason, but completely "forgets" to point out this accessory.)
2) Not exactly substantiated.
3) [A] Expensive to whom? [B] Let's say you're in a rush to catch a flight; You've completely forgot to pack your bags. You also forgot to fill up the MP3 player you just purchased specifically for this long flight. So you have two jobs to do and lets say...30 minutes to do it. You start packing as your computer boots up. You launch iTunes and:
{iPod} You quickly throw together a single playlist consisting of your entire music library, and transfer all of it to MP3 player in one easy task.
{MP3CD Player w/ 20 CD-Rs} You throw together 20 playlists consiting of your entire music library, pop in first blank CD-R, click Burn, click Burn again, wait for CD to burn (perhaps pack some more stuff in the meantime), eject CD, put in second blank CD-R, (and repeat 19 more times)..and then finally put all 20 CDs into your CD wallet.
4) I thought this was a review of the Apple iPod, not the Belkin Voice Recorder...
5) Excuse me while I vomit... (reference to WMA =P )
Summary)
1st point: invalid to a degree.
2nd point: no proof
3rd point: [no offense] sounds like something a Windows user would do =P
4th point: where did this guy learn to review?
5th point: lol.
1. Battery life: I used to take 12-14 hour flights and the iPod battery was enough. Why? Because I didn't listen to music for 12 hours straight, dummy! I ate, watched movies, talked to the fellow next to me, slept, etc.
2. Jogging with hard drive based player is not cool: Erm, jogging with ANY music device isn't cool, it's STUPID. Excellent way to get run down. And if you're using a treadmill, I would suggest that the impact from the ground is less severe than asphalt. In any event, I have an original iPod and jogging on a treadmill has never hurt it. Now the darn thing is outdated, I want a NEW iPod, so maybe I wish the hard drive WOULD die to force me to buy a new one.
3. Yes, it is expensive. 4. It plays music. It's not a high quality recorder. Did anyone ever want to use their cassette for high quality recording of band sets? I, for one, don't need devices that do 6 things in a mediocre way. I like the iPod cause it does one thing VERY WELL. I didn't buy it for breakout, either, by the way.
5. Obviously, as a Mac user iTunes store is enough for me. It is lacking in selection but the other stores won't have the titles I want, either. For the time being, those eclectic bands and hard to find releases will still be CD purchases for me.
Five reasons why I stopped reading CNet.
Don't get me wrong, CNet is still my favorite PC cheerleader on the web. So, before you send me rants for putting down CNet, read my list, and realize that I used to love CNet a lot (OK, I lied).
1. Page download times are longer than my homepage. True, my homepage is about 600 bytes of html with pink type over a turquoise background saying, "look, Mom, I'm on the internet," but it loads two to three times as fast as any CNet page.
2. Cannot surf CNet while taking a shower. Although I cannot prove this, I believe that reading CNet articles while taking a shower can hurt your browser, and even your whole computer. Experts say this is impossible, but listen to me instead. If you want to read while in the shower, a plastic laminated copy of your local paper would be a far better choice.
3. CNet is expensive. I spend over $40 a month on my internet connection, and I wonder why. I could go see five movies, drink over ten lattes, or hang out at the cigar store reading foreign magazines until they chase me out of there - for less money than it takes to connect me to CNet.
4. I want porn from CNet. I heard there's lots of porn on the internet, but none of it is available on CNet. Clearly CNet is not your best choice for porn. There are millions of other sites that are only too happy to exchange porn for your credit card numbers.
5. I want choice in my computer industry news sources. When I read CNet, by defiinition, I am not reading hundreds of other high quality news sources. But I want those news sources. The only way I can do this, I found, is to stop reading CNet, and go to one of the other sites. What a shame!
Of course, if you don't care about load times, aren't fond of showering, have $40/month to blow, don't like porn, and don't want to read something else at the same time, CNet is the way to go. While not ideal for most humans, it's hands down the best Dell-sponsored shill you can read.
Having worried about those same messages before I got my 10 GB new iPod as a gift -- cutting short my dwelling-on-the-decision process -- I can say this hasn't proven true for me at all. Not in the gym, not jogging.
My iPod may have cut a song off on me once, in the time I've had it since this June. I haven't had it skip, to my knowledge, at all, and the one cutoff could easily have been a battery juice problem. (No, I can't say I was keeping track of the charge level, 'cause you don't need to that much, and I wasn't counting the minutes since I'd started running either. At the time I shrugged and ran quiet for a few minutes. Never had a repeat of it.)
I run 5k and 10k stretches on the street and on the treadmill. Lately I've used an armband holder, but for a while I either had the iPod in my hand or a pocket or a pack at my waist. No skips, no spin downs, no problems -- except the possible one. If I wanted to consciously try to make it skip, surely I could -- but you know, I'm not at all clear on how I'd cause it, or whether I'd be able to manage it with my first attempt -- so my confidence in the thing is pretty high, isn't it?
Seems like the perfect player for running and general workouts, to me. Probably it wouldn't want to be in your hand for a kickboxing aerobics class or something...
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
to the apple apologists, especially the ones who modded me down:
I worked at a Mac-only store and loaded OSX the day it came out on a partition of my G3-500. I loaded it perfectly, and everything crawled. Anytime I wanted to run anything, "classic" mode" opened and the overall performance was far, far worse than 9.1. I proceeded to put Yellow Dog on the other partition, which was far superior to OSX. I noticed none of you actually tried to argue against the main thrust of my post when you modded me down for saying anything negaitve about your precious company. Suckers.
Eliot Van Buskirk comes to praise the iPod, not to bury it!
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
I've gotten a nice 8 hours from mine...I dunno where they got the 6 hour figure. Maybe they kept the light on....